The bright eyes of little
brown-faced children peered shyly out at him from behind stumps. He
could see rows of split salmon hung by the tail to the beams of an
open-fronted smokehouse. Around another bend he came on a buck deer
standing knee-deep in the water, and at the sight of him the animal
snorted, leaped up the bank and vanished as silently as a shadow.
Hollister marked all these things without ceasing to ply his paddle.
His objective lay some six miles up-stream. But when he came at last
to the upper limit of the tidal reach he found in this deep, slack
water new-driven piling and freshly strung boom-sticks and acres of
logs confined therein; also a squat motor tugboat and certain lesser
craft moored to these timbers. A little back from the bank he could
see the roofs of buildings.
He stayed his paddle a second to look with a mild curiosity. Then he
went on. That human craving for companionship which had gained no
response in the cities of two continents had left him for the time
being. For that hour he was himself, sufficient unto himself.
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