Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/107

Rh derisively. Her manner on such occasions was striking; the soldiers of his company would have given her the blanket characterization of the army and said that she was hard-boiled; his mother would have said that she carried a chip on her shoulder; Taylor himself thought her defiance splendid. She could not divorce herself from her forest; when men belittled it and the idea behind it, it was as though they had made uncouth fun of her. To be a friend of the girl required that sympathy for her undertaking be made evident; to be outside her favor it was necessary only to show no charity for the work her father started. Nothing else seemed to influence her to any extent.

Such things he saw, and others: Saw her jump lightly from log to log as she went over the face of that tangle, poised like a splendid animal, lithe and alive and as sure of her body as she was of her mind. He watched her cross the river, leaving behind a rank of logs which rose sluggishly from the immersion her weight gave them, but she reached the boom of high-riding cedars without wetting her stout boots. And he saw her in a canoe, driving the light craft upstream, arms and shoulders and torso working with a rhythm which set his heart in faster measure.

He had been at the mill one morning and was walking through the forest to the skidway. At the house Black Joe came from the woods and scarcely grunted in return to John's salutation. But after Taylor had passed, he heard the man hail him.

Turning about, he saw Aunty May standing in the kitchen door. They were within ear-shot of the woman, but Joe said, "Say, tell her Miss Helen won't be down for