The Arizona Callahan — Context and Discussion

heard shots, faint reports cracking down the wind, drawing her to the point of land to see what was happening out there toward Garden Island. For a long while there was nothing to see, until the boat came into sight. It was only a blotch, rising and then gone again, gradually sinking from sight altogether. Few would have seen it. Nelly Callahan, however, was an island girl, and her eye was instantly caught by anything outside the settled scheme of things. So she knew it for a boat, and after a time knew that it had gone down entirely.

Presently she made out the man. To her intense astonishment he was sitting in the stern of a canoe, and paddling. Canoes are rare things in the Beaver Islands these days; here in the center of Lake Michigan, with the nearest land little more than a mirage above the horizon, there are other and safer playthings, and life is too bitter hard to be lightly held.

Yet here was a canoe driving down the storm, a rag of sail on a stumpy mast forward, tarpaulins lashed over freight-rolls amidships, the man paddling in the stern. What connection was there between him and that sunken boat, and those shots behind the curtain of rain and mist?

That he was trying to get in under the curving line of exposed ledge and shoal that ran out from the point was obvious. If he missed, he would be carried on out to the open lake, for once around the point his chances of getting to land were slim. Nelly Callahan watched him admiringly as he fought, gaining inch by inch, now leaning hard on his paddle, now stroking desperately as the gusty wind threw off the canoe’s head. The odds were worse than he could realize, too; all along the point there were shoals, running only two to three feet of water, and his canoe evidently carried a centerboard.

Suddenly she saw the paddle snap in his hands. The canoe swayed wildly over, swayed back again, rose on a sweeping foam-crest and was flung forward. Another instant, and she would have been rolled over, but the man snatched out another paddle and dug it in. Again the stubborn, straining fight, but he had lost ground, and the current was setting out around the point of land.

Still, he had a good chance to win. He was closer, now; Nelly Callahan could see that his shirt was torn to ribbons, that his mouth was bleeding; and those things did not come from wind and rain alone. The canoe was a wide lake-cruiser, safe enough in any sea except for her heavy load--but this rock-studded shore water was safe for no craft. All the wide expanse around the Beavers is treacherous with rocks barely awash.

An invisible hand seemed to strike the man suddenly, knocking him forward on his face. The canoe staggered, lay over on one side--she had struck bottom. Frantically the man recovered, jerked up the centerboard, threw in the pin. But he was too late; he had lost the game. The bow, with its scrap of sail, bore off before the sweep of wind, and like an arrow the canoe darted out around the point and was gone.

For a moment Nelly Callahan stood motionless at the edge of the trees. Then she turned and started to cut across the base of the long point, to get a view of the north shore beyond. There was no trail, however. Nobody lived on Hog Island; the brush was heavy and almost impenetrable. Excited, breathless, the girl struggled on her way, but knew that she was too slow. However, she kept on. Presently she burst through the final barrier, her feet slipping and sliding on the ground-pine that trailed across the sand, and came out on the northern stretch of shore. Nothing was in sight.

For a little while she stood there, dismayed, agonized, incredulous. She had been a long while getting here, of course; yet some sign of man or canoe, even had the latter capsized, must have been within sight. Here around the point the force of the rollers was lessened, too. Yet everything was empty. Man and canoe had vanished.

A shout roused the girl. She glanced over her shoulder, fear flitting into her blue eyes; then she turned and retraced her steps.

When she stepped back into the clearing of the camp, the others had returned. She shrank within herself slightly, as always, as her eyes swept them; for though Nelly was a Beaver girl, she was also something more. Her mother had come from the mainland, and there was none of the closely interbred strain in Nelly Callahan.