The Eternal Masculine by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

The boy stopped sharply in the portage, and swung about and glanced inquiringly at Josef. Light as the sound was, quickly as the boy had heard it, Josef had heard first. He stood rooted in the path, a line of lean strength, in vague-colored clothes, his black locks tumbling from under his battered felt hat, a scarlet bandanna in the belt at his slim waist pricking the dim light with an explosion of color. His extraordinary eyes, very light blue, very large, with pupils dilated over the irises, as animals' eyes dilate, snapped electrically; his glance searched the woods to this side and that.

The boy had been trained under Josef and knew his ways; he stood stock-still as the guide listened, as he sent that concentrated glance ahead into the confused masses of shadow and brightness and foliage and water of the Canadian forest. It flashed, that blue search-light, straight through tangled branches and across bulks of emerald velvet, which were moss-covered bowlders; it went on deep into the inscrutable forest-Josef's glance. And the boy knew that he was seeing things in those mysterious depths, and reading them as wild creatures see and read the woodland, as the boy himself, trained woodsman though he was, might never hope to do. With that, the tense pose relaxed, the wonderful eyes came back from their exploring and-gentle, friendly, shy-met the boy's eyes. Josef smiled.