“Yes, in time.  Of course it would be slow going, as there are no trails, the brush is heavy, and the country is absolutely unexplored.  You see it has never been considered a gold country—­and of course the Indians won’t go except where they can go in canoes.  Some of the hills must be impassable, too.  I’ve heard my father speak about it—­how that if any criminal—­or any one like that—­could take down this river in a canoe in high water—­and get through into that great, virgin, trackless country a hundred miles below, it would be almost impossible to get him out.  Unless the officers could chase him down the same way he went—­by canoe—­it would take literally weeks and months for them to get in, and by that time he could be hidden and located and his tracks covered up.”

“And with good ambushes, able to hold off and kill a dozen of them, eh?” Ben’s hands shook, and he locked them behind him.  “They call that country—­what?”

“‘Back There.’  That’s all I’ve ever heard it called—­’Back There.’”

“It’s as good a name as any.  Of course, the reason they were able to make it through in high water was due to the fact that most of the rocks and ledges were submerged, and they could slide right over them.”

“Of course.  Many of our rivers are safer in high water.  But you seriously don’t intend to take such a trip—­”

He looked up to find her eyes wide and full upon his.  Yet her concern for him touched him not at all.  She was his enemy:  that fact could never be forgotten or forgiven.

“I want to hear about it, anyway.  I heard in town the river is higher than it’s been for years—­due to the Chinook—­”

“It is higher than I’ve ever seen it.  But it’s reached its peak and has started to fall, and it won’t come up again, at least, till fall.  When the Yuga rises it comes up in a flood, and it falls the same way.  It’s gone down quite a little since this morning; by the day after to-morrow no one could hope to get through Devil’s Gate—­the first cataract in the gorge.”

“Not even with a canoe?  Of course a raft would be broken to pieces.”

“Not a canoe, either, in two or three days, if the river falls like it usually does.  But tell me—­you aren’t serious—­”

“I suppose not.  But it gets my imagination—­just the same.  I suppose a man would average better than twenty miles an hour down through that gorge, and would come out at Back There.”

Their talk moved easily to other subjects; yet it seemed to Ben that some secondary consciousness held up his end of the conversation.  His own deeper self was lost in curious and dark conjectures.  Her description of the river lingered in his thoughts, and he seemed to be groping for a great inspiration that was hovering just beyond his reach—­as plants grope for light in far-off leafy jungles.  He felt that it would come to him in a moment:  he would know the dark relation that these facts about the river bore to his war with Neilson.  It was as if an inner mind, much more subtle and discerning than his normal consciousness, had seen great possibilities in them, but as yet had not divulged their significance.