CHAPTER VIII
White Water
IN BROAD daylight Alan Law opened bewildered eyes to realize the substance of a dream come true. He lay upon a couch of balsam, in a corner of somebody's camp—a log structure, rudely furnished. His clothing lay upon a chair at his side.
He arose and dressed, exulting in his sense of renewed well-being, a prey to hints of an extraordinary appetite. There were evidences of a woman's recent presence: blankets neatly folded upon a second bed of aromatic balsam in the corner, a pair of dainty buckskin gauntlets depending from a nail in the wall, and, in an old preserve jar on the table, a single rose, warm and red, dew upon its petals!
There was fire in the cook-stove and things to cook, but despite his hunger Alan didn't stop for that. He rushed to the door, threw it open, and looked out. There was no living thing in sight.
The place was a table of level land some few acres in area, bounded on one hand, beneath the cliff from which he had dropped, by a river fat with recent rains; on the other by a second cliff of equal height.
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