Stretching out his arms, he cried: "My old river--it's me--Johnny
Keith! I've come back!"
And the river, whispering, seemed to answer him: "It's Johnny Keith!
And he's come back! He's come back!"
IV
For a week John Keith followed up the shores of the Saskatchewan. It
was a hundred and forty miles from the Hudson's Bay Company's post of
Cumberland House to Prince Albert as the crow would fly, but Keith did
not travel a homing line. Only now and then did he take advantage of a
portage trail. Clinging to the river, his journey was lengthened by
some sixty miles. Now that the hour for which Conniston had prepared
him was so close at hand, he felt the need of this mighty, tongueless
friend that had played such an intimate part in his life. It gave to
him both courage and confidence, and in its company he could think more
clearly. Nights he camped on its golden-yellow bars with the open stars
over his head when he slept; his ears drank in the familiar sounds of
long ago, for which he had yearned to the point of madness in his
exile--the soft cries of the birds that hunted and mated in the glow of
the moon, the friendly twit, twit, twit of the low-flying sand-pipers,
the hoot of the owls, and the splash and sleepy voice of wildfowl
already on their way up from the south.
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