'I didn't stop to look, I--' His eyes rested suspiciously on the
door to the other room, then interrogated the priest. The latter
shook his head; but the doubt seemed to linger.
Father Roubeau breathed a swift, silent prayer, and rose to his
feet. 'If you doubt me, why--' He made as though to open the door.
A priest could not lie. Edwin Bentham had heard this often, and
believed it.
'Of course not, Father,' he interposed hurriedly. 'I was only
wondering where my wife had gone, and thought maybe--I guess
she's up at Mrs. Stanton's on French Gulch. Nice weather, isn't
it? Heard the news? Flour's gone down to forty dollars a hundred,
and they say the che-cha-quas are flocking down the river in
droves.
'But I must be going; so good-by.' The door slammed, and from the
window they watched him take his guest up French Gulch. A few
weeks later, just after the June high-water, two men shot a canoe
into mid-stream and made fast to a derelict pine. This tightened
the painter and jerked the frail craft along as would a tow-boat.
Father Roubeau had been directed to leave the Upper Country and
return to his swarthy children at Minook. The white men had come
among them, and they were devoting too little time to fishing,
and too much to a certain deity whose transient habitat was in
countless black bottles.
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