He did not want Bateese to suspect this change in him, and
he slouched lower against the dunnage-pack with his eyes still on
the girl. He was finding it increasingly difficult to keep from
looking at her. She had resumed her paddling, and Bateese was
putting mighty efforts in his strokes now, so that the narrow,
birchbark canoe shot like an arrow with the down-sweeping current
of the river. A few hundred yards below was a twist in the
channel, and as the canoe rounded this, taking the shoreward curve
with dizzying swiftness, a wide, still straight-water lay ahead.
And far down this Carrigan saw the glow of fires.
The forest had drawn back from the river, leaving in its place a
broken tundra of rock and shale and a wide strip of black sand
along the edge of the stream itself. Carrigan knew what it was--an
upheaval of the tar-sand country so common still farther north,
the beginning of that treasure of the earth which would some day
make the top of the American continent one of the Eldorados of the
world. The fires drew nearer, and suddenly the still night was
broken by the wild chanting of men. David heard behind him a
choking note in the throat of Bateese.
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