They were still looking when Hollister gave his last backward
glance, then turned his attention to the reddish-yellow gleam of
new-riven timber which marked his own dwelling. Twenty minutes later
he slid the gray canoe's forefoot up on a patch of sand before his
house.
"We're here," he said. "Home--such as it is--it's home."
He helped her out, guided her steps up to the level of the bottomland.
He was eager to show her the nest he had devised for them. But Doris
checked him with her hand.
"I hear the falls," she said. "Listen!"
Streaming down through a gorge from melting snowfields the creek a
little way beyond plunged with a roar over granite ledges. The few
warm days had swollen it from a whispering sheet of spray to a
deep-voiced cataract. A mist from it rose among the deep green of the
fir.
"Isn't it beautiful--beautiful?" Doris said. "There"--she pointed--"is
the canyon of the Little Toba coming in from the south. There is the
deep notch where the big river comes down from the Chilcotin, and a
ridge like the roof of the world rising between.
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