Hollister did not say that to himself in so many words. He was only
subconsciously aware of this conclusion. Nevertheless it guided his
actions. Through long, bitter months he had rebelled against spiritual
isolation. The silent woods, the gray river, the cloud-wrapped hills
seemed friendly by comparison with mankind,--mankind which had marred
him and now shrank from its handiwork.

So he passed by this community in the wilderness, not because he
wished to but because he must.

Within half a mile he struck fast water, long straight reaches up
which he gained ground against the current by steady strokes of the
paddle, shallows where he must wade and lead his craft by hand. So he
came at last to the Big Bend of the Toba River, a great S curve where
the stream doubled upon itself in a mile-wide flat that had been
stripped of its timber and lay now an unlovely vista of stumps, each
with a white cap of snow.

On the edge of this, where the river swung to the southern limit of
the valley and ran under a cliff that lifted a thousand foot sheer, he
passed a small house. Smoke drifted blue from the stovepipe. A pile of
freshly chopped firewood lay by the door. The dressed carcass of a
deer hung under one projecting eave. Between two stumps a string of
laundered clothes waved in the down-river breeze. By the garments
Hollister knew a woman must be there. But none appeared to watch him
pass. He did not halt, although the short afternoon was merging into
dusk and he knew the hospitality of those who go into lonely places to
wrest a living from an untamed land. But he could not bear the thought
of being endured rather than welcomed. He had suffered enough of that.
He was in full retreat from just that attitude. He was growing afraid