breathing had ceased to be quick and sharp she was still
wondering why the odor of stale alcohol should recall to her, with
elusive vagueness, the threatening face of a red-haired riverman who
found it hard to keep his feet.

CHAPTER XIX

SOME LETTERS AND A REPLY

Her letter came to him a week later, though she had posted it the
morning she took the train from Morrison. It had lain for days in the
post-office box of the East Coast Company, waiting the day when one of
the teamsters should call and carry it in overland. Steve had never
before seen her handwriting. It was his first letter from her; yet he
recognized it the instant Big Louie put it in his hand. And he was
glad that night that both Fat Joe and Garry were absent from the
up-river camp--glad that he was to have the next hour alone. But when
he broke the flap of it Big Louie, who lingered uneasily in the open
doorway--even Big Louie, whose wits were not particularly keen--knew
from the expression which passed over his superior's face that this
heavy envelope which he had brought had not contained good news. The
quick contraction of muscles which tightened his jaw was too much like
a spasm of pain. For her first letter, so the sentence ran, was to be
her last; she wrote "less kindly than she would have wished to write,"
that she and Mr. Wickersham had decided upon the first of May, and
after the silence had become a throbbing thing Big Louie decided,
instinctively, that he would let go until later the demand which he had
planned to make for a raise to meet that raise which, so he had heard
it gossiped in town, was being paid the men in the northern
lumber-camps. He stumbled going out and lost his balance so that the
door crashed to behind him, violently. But Steve stood as he had stood
when his eye's sought the first line of her note, nor did the crash
penetrate his ears.

Repeatedly, in the interval which had elapsed since she had bidden him
good-bye, the latter had told himself that she would not write, but the
repetition had been unconvincing. He knew that now. With the note
which smelled faintly of her there in his hand he realized that he had
gone beyond mere expectation of a letter; he had dared to hope
concerning its contents. How was he to know that she, too, after
mailing it, had suffered as keenly as he was suffering that moment,
wishing that she had employed less abrupt phrases, rebelliously
regretting that she had sent it at a