The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Snowshoe Trail, by Edison Marshall

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Title: The Snowshoe Trail

Author: Edison Marshall

Posting Date: March 8, 2009 [EBook #24695]
Release Date: February 26, 2008

Language: English

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THE SNOWSHOE TRAIL


by

EDISON MARSHALL



  Author of "The Strength of the Pines,"
  "The Voice of the Pack," etc.



With Frontispiece by Marshall Frantz




A.L. Burt Company Publishers, New York
Published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company.

Copyright 1921, By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved




To Agnes, of the South--this story of the North




The Snowshoe Trail

I

It was not the first time that people of the forest had paused on the
hill at twilight to look down on Bradleyburg.  The sight always seemed
to intrigue and mystify the wild folk,--the shadowed street, the spire
of the moldering church ghostly in the half-light, the long row of
unpainted shacks, and the dim, pale gleam of an occasional lighted
window.  The old bull moose, in rutting days, was wont to pause and
call, listen an instant for such answer as the twilight city might give
him, then push on through the spruce forests; and often the coyotes
gathered in a ring and wailed out their cries over the rooftops.  More
than once the wolf pack had halted here for a fleeting instant; but they
were never people to linger in the vicinity of men.

But to-night it was not one of these four-footed wild folk--this tall
form--that emerged from the dark fringe of the spruce forest to gaze
down at the town.  But he was none the less of the forest.  Its mark was
upon him; in the silence of his tread, the sinuous strength of his
motions; perhaps it lay even in a certain dimness and obscurity of
outline, framed by the thickets as he was, that was particularly
characteristic of the wild denizens of the woods.  But even in the
heavy shadows his identity was clear at once.  He was simply a
woodsman,--and he held his horse by the bridle rein.

The long file of pack horses behind him halted, waiting for their master
to go on.  He stood musing, held by the darkened scene below him.  Hard
to read, in the deepening shadows, was the expression on his bronzed
face.  It revealed relief, of course, simple and heartfelt joy at the
sight of his destination.  Men do not wander over the blazed trails of
the North Woods and not feel relief at the journey's end.  There was a
hint of fatigue in his posture, the horses' heads were low; and the
shacks below meant food and rest.  But there was also a pensiveness, a
dreamy quietude in his dark eyes that revealed the greater sweep of his
thoughts.

He had looked down on Bradleyburg on many previous occasions, but the
scene had never impressed him in quite this way before.  Already the
shadows had crept out from the dark forests that enclosed the little
city and had enfolded it in gloom: the buildings were obscured and the
street was lost, and there was little left to tell that here was the
abode of men.  A dim light, faint as the glowing eyes of the wild
creatures in the darkness, burned here and there from the window of a
house: except for this the wilderness would have seemed unbroken.

"It's getting you down," the man muttered.  "It's closing you in and
smothering you--just as it has me."

Perhaps, had his words carried far enough in the silence, the
townspeople in the houses below wouldn't have understood.  His horses,
sniffing at his knees, did not seem to hear.  But the woodsman could not
have made himself any clearer.  Words never come easy to those that
dwell in the silences of the North.  To him it seemed that the twilight
was symbolic of the wilderness,--stealing forth with slow
encroachments until all of the little town was enfolded within itself.
It was a twilight city, the little cluster of frame shacks below him.
It could be brave and gay enough in the daylight, a few children could
play in its streets and women could call from door to door, but the
falling darkness revealed it as it was,--simply a fragment that the
dark forests were about to claim.  The day was done in Bradleyburg; as
in the case of many of the gold camps of the North the wilderness was
about to take back its own.

It had had a glorious past, this little city lost in the northern
reaches of the Selkirks.  In the man's own boyhood it had been one of
the flourishing gold camps of the North; and miners had come from all
over the continent to wash the gravel of its streams.  In all directions
up the hillside the tents and shacks had stretched, dance halls were
gay, freighters plied along the winding road to the south.  The man's
mother had been one of the first women in the camp; and one of the last
to go.  The mines were fabulously rich; tens of thousands in dust were
often taken in a single day by a lone miner, fortunes were made and lost
at the gambling tables, and even the terrible winters could not triumph
over the gold seekers.  But in a little while the mines gave out, one
terrible winter night the whole town was destroyed by fire, and now that
the miners were drifting to other camps, few of the shacks were rebuilt.
Of the six thousand that had been, scarcely threescore remained.  A few
trappers ran their lines out from the town, a few men had placer claims
in the old diggings, two or three woodsmen made precarious livings as
guides for such wealthy men as came to hunt moose and caribou, and
Bradleyburg's course was run.  The winter cold had triumphed at last,
and its curse was over the city from October till June.  The spruce
forest, cleared away to make room for the cabins, had sprung up again
and was steadily marching toward the main street of the town.

But the man on the hilltop felt no regret.  Except for a few memories of
his young days he had no particular fondness for the little cluster of
shacks.  Long ago the wilderness had claimed him for its own; his home
was the dark forest from which even now he was emerging.  Bradleyburg
was simply his source of supplies and his post office, the market for
his furs.  He had reached back and stroked the warm nose of his horse.

"Another half mile, old fellow," he said gently.  "Then oats--rice and
meat for me at Johnson's--and oats--honest-to-goodness oats--for
you.  What you think about that, eh, Mulvaney?  Then show a little speed
this last half-mile."

The man swung on his horse, and even the cattlemen of the plains would
have found something to admire in the ease and grace with which his body
slipped down into the saddle.  The horse moved forward, the pack animals
pushed on behind him.  A few minutes later they had swung down into the
still street of the town.  Tired as he was, his hands were swift and
strong as he unpacked the animals and tied them in the bar back of
Johnson's,--the little frontier inn.  As always, after the supper
hour, a group of the townsmen were gathered about the hotel stove; and
all of them spoke to him as he entered.  He stood among them an instant,
warming his hands.

They had few words at first.  The lesson of silence is taught deeply and
sure in the North.  The hostess went to her kitchen to order the man's
supper, the townsmen drew at their pipes.

"Well, Bill," one of them asked at last, "how's everything with you?"

It was not the usual how-d'ye-do of greeting.  The words were spoken in
actual question, as if they had special significance.

The man straightened, turning sober eyes.  "Nothing startling yet," he
replied.

"In after supplies?"

"Yes--and my mail."

There was a long pause.  The conversation was apparently ended.  Bill
turned to go.  A stranger spoke from the other side of the fire.

"How's Grizzly River?" he asked.  Bill turned to him with a smile.

"Getting higher and higher.  All the streams are up.  You know that
bald-faced bay of Fargo's?"

Fargo was the Bradleyburg merchant, and the stranger knew the
horse,--one of the little band that, after the frontier custom,
Fargo kept to rent.  "Yes, I remember him."

"Well, I've got him this fall.  You know he's a yellow cuss."

The stranger nodded.  In this little community the dumb brutes were
almost as well known as the human inhabitants.  The meaning was wholly
plain to him too, and the term did not apply to the horse's color.
Yellow, on the frontier, means just one thing: the most damning and
unforgivable thing of all.  When one is yellow he gives up easily, he
dares not lift his arms to fight, and the wilderness claims him quickly.
"There's a little creek with a bad mudhole just this side of the ford,"
Bill went on.  "All the horses got through but  Baldy, and he could have
made it easy if he'd tried.  But what did he do but just sit back on his
haunches in the mud, like an old man in a chair, his head up and his
front legs in his lap, and just give up?  Quite a sight--that horse
sitting in the mud.  I had to snag him out."

The others smiled, but none of them with the brilliance of the
story-teller himself.  The wilderness picture--with the cowardly horse
sitting in the mud--was again before his eyes; and none of the
hardship of the journey could  cost him his joy in it.  Bill Bronson was
no longer just a dim form on the twilight hilltop.  The lamplight showed
him plain.  In this circle of townspeople he was a man to notice twice.

The forests had done well by him.  Like the spruce themselves he had
grown straight and tall, but his form was sturdy too.  There was a lithe
strength about him that suggested the larger felines; the hard trails
of the forest had left not a spare ounce of flesh on his powerful
frame.  His mold, except for a vague and indistinct refinement
in his long-fingered and strong hands, was simply that of a
woodsman,--sturdy, muscular, untiring.  His speech was not greatly
different from that of others: the woodspeople, spending many of the
long winter days in reading, are usually careless in speech but rarely
ungrammatical.  His clothes were homely and worn.  He wore a blue
mackinaw over a flannel shirt, dark trousers and rubber boots: garments
that were suited to his life.

But it was true that men looked twice into Bill Bronson's face.  His
features were rugged, now his mouth and jowls were dark with beard, yet
written all over his sunburned face was a kindliness and gentleness that
could not be denied.  There was strength and good humor in plenty; and
it was hard to reconcile these qualities with an unquestioned
wistfulness and boyishness in his eyes.  They were dark eyes, the eyes
of a man of action who could also dream, kindly, thoughtful eyes which
even the deep shadows of the forest had not blinded to beauty.

As he waited for his meal he crossed the dark road to the little
frontier post office, there to be given his two months' accumulation of
letters.  He looked them over with significant anxiety.  There were the
usual forders from fur buyers, a few advertisements and circulars, and a
small batch of business mail.  The smile died from his eyes as he read
one of these communications after another.  Their context was usually
the same,--that his proposition did not look good, and no investment
would be made in a plan as vague as his.  The correspondents understood
that he had been grubstaked before without result.  They remained,
however, his respectfully,--and Bill's great hand crumpled each in
turn.

Only one letter remained, written in an unknown hand from a far-off
city; and it dropped, for the moment, unnoticed into his lap.  His eyes
were brooding and lifeless as he stared out the hotel window into the
darkened street.  There was no use of appealing again to the business
folk of the provincial towns; the tone of their letters was all too
decisive.  The great plans he had made would come to nothing after all.
His proposition simply did not hold water.

He had been seeking a "grubstake,"--some one to finance another
expedition into the virgin Clearwater for half of such gains as he
should make.  In a few weeks more the winter would close down; the
horses, essential to such a trip as this, had to be driven down to the
gate of the Outside,--three hundred miles to the bank of a great
river.  He had time for one more dash for the rainbow's end, and no one
could stake him for it.  He had some food supplies, but the horse-rent
was an unsolved problem.  He could see no ray of hope as he picked up,
half-heartedly, the last letter of the pile.

But at once his interest returned.  It had been mailed in a far distant
city in the United States, and the fine, clear handwriting was obviously
feminine.  He didn't have to rub the paper between his thumb and
forefinger to mark its rich, heavy quality and its beauty,--the
stationery of an aristocrat.  The message was singularly terse:

My Dear Mr. Bronson:

I am informed, by the head of your provincial game commission, that
you can be employed to guide for hunting parties wishing to hunt in the
Clearwater, north of Bradleyburg.  I do not wish to hunt game, but I do
wish to penetrate that country in search of my fiance, Mr. Harold
Lounsbury, of whom doubtless you have heard, and who disappeared in the
Clearwater district six years ago.  I will be accompanied by Mr.
Lounsbury's uncle, Kenly Lounsbury, and I wish you to secure the outfit
and a man to cook at once.  You will be paid the usual outfitter's rates
for thirty days.  We will arrive in Bradleyburg September twentieth by
stage.  Yours sincerely, Virginia Tremont.

Bill finished the note, pocketed it carefully, and a boyish light was in
his eyes as he shook fragrant tobacco into his pipe.  "The way out," he
told himself.  "She won't care if I do my prospecting the same time."

His thought swung back to a scene of many Septembers before, of a camp
he had made beside a distant stream and of a wayfarer who had eaten of
his bread and journeyed on,--never to pass that way again.  There had
been one curious circumstance connected with the meeting, otherwise it
might not have lingered so clearly in Bill's memory.  It had seemed to
him, at the time, that he had encountered the stranger on some previous
occasion.  There was a haunting familiarity in his face, a fleeting
memory that he could not trace or identify.  Yet nothing in the
stranger's past life had offered an explanation.  He was a newcomer, he
said,--on his first trip north.  Bill, on the other hand, had never
gone south.  It had been but a trick of the imagination, after all.  And
Bill did not doubt that he was the man for whom the girl sought.

The little lines seemed to draw and deepen about the man's eyes.  "Six
years--but six years is too long, for Clearwater," he murmured.  "Men
either come out by then, or it gets 'em.  I'm afraid she'll never find
her lover."

* * * * *

He went to make arrangements with Fargo, the merchant, about supplies.
At midnight he sat alone in the little lobby of the inn; all the other
townsmen had gone.  The fire was nearly out; a single lamp threw a
doubtful glow on the woodsman's face.  His thoughts had been tireless
to-night.  He couldn't have told why.  Evidently some little event of
the evening, some word that he had not consciously noticed had been the
impulse for a flood of memories.  They haunted him and held him, and he
couldn't escape from them.

His thought moved in great circles, always returning to the same
starting point,--the tragedy and mystery of his own boyhood.  He knew
perfectly that there was neither pleasure nor profit in dwelling upon
this subject.  In the years that he had had his full manhood he had
tried to force the matter from his thoughts, and mostly he had
succeeded.  Self-mastery was his first law, the code by which he lived;
and mostly the blue devils had lifted their curse from him.  But they
were shrieking from the gloom at him to-night.  In the late years some
of the great tranquility of the forest had reposed in him and the bitter
hours of brooding came ever at longer intervals.  But to-night they held
him in bondage.

It was twenty-five years past and he had been only a child when the
thing had happened.  He had been but seven years old,--more of a baby
than a child.  He smiled grimly as the thought went home to him that
childhood, in its true sense, was one stage of life that he had missed.
He had been cheated of it by a remorseless destiny; he had been a baby,
and then he had been a man.  There were no joyous gradations between.
The sober little boy had sensed at once that the responsibilities of
manhood had been thrust upon him, and he must make good.  After all,
that was the code of his life,--to take what destiny gave and stand up
under it.

If the event had occurred anywhere but in the North, the outcome might
have been wholly different.  Life was easy and gentle in the river
bottoms of the United States.  Women could make a brave fight unaided;
even fatherless boys were not entirely cheated of their youth.  Besides,
in these desolate wastes the code of life is a personal code, primitive
emotions have full sway, and men to not change their dreams from day to
day.  Constancy and steadfastness are the first impulses of their lives;
neither Bill nor his mother had been able to forget or to forgive.  Here
was an undying ignominy and hatred; besides--for the North is a
far-famed keeper of secrets--the mystery and the dreadful uncertainty,
haunting like a ghost.  As a little boy he had tried to comfort his
mother with his high plans for revenge; and she had whispered to him,
and cried over him, and pressed him hard against her; and he had
promised, over and over again, that when manhood came to him he would
right her wrongs and his own.  He remembered his pathetic efforts to
comfort her, and it had never occurred to him that he had been in need
of comforting himself.  He had been a sober, wistful-eyed little boy,
bearing bravely the whole tragic weight upon his own small shoulders.

The story was very simple and short,--nothing particularly unusual in
the North.  His father had come early to the gold fields of Bradleyburg,
and he had been one of few that was accompanied by his wife,--a tender
creature, scarcely molded for life in the northern gold camps.  Then
there had been Rutheford, his father's partner, a man whom neither Bill
nor his mother liked or trusted, but to whom the elder Bronson gave full
trust.  Somewhere beyond far Grizzly River, in the Clearwater, Bronson
had made a wonderful strike,--a fabulous mine where the gravel was
simply laden with the yellow dust; and because they had prospected
together in times past, Bronson gave his partner a share in it.

They had worked for months at their mine, in secret, and then Rutheford
had come with pack horses into Bradleyburg, ostensibly for supplies.  He
had been a guest at the Bronson cabin and had reported that all was well
with his generous partner.  And the next night he had disappeared.

Weeks were to pass before the truth was known.  Rutheford did not return
to the mine at all; he was traced clear to the shipping point, three
hundred miles below Bradleyburg.  And he did not go empty-handed.  The
pack horses had not carried empty saddlebags.  They had been simply
laden with gold.  And Bronson never returned to his family in
Bradleyburg.

There was only one possible explanation.  The gold had represented
the season's washings--an amount that went into the hundreds of
thousands--and Rutheford had murdered his benefactor and absconded with
the entire amount.  No living human being except Rutheford himself knew
where the mine lay; there was no way for Bronson's family either to
reclaim the body or to continue to work on the mine.  Search parties had
sought it in vain, and the lost mine of the Bronsons became a legend, a
mystery that had grown constantly more dim in the passing years.

"When I am gone," little Bill would whisper to his mother, as she knelt
crying at his feet, "I will go out and find my papa's mine.  Also I will
chase down Rutheford, and track him all over the world until I find him,
and make him suffer for all he has done!"

This was a northern child, and his baby eyes would gleam and his
features draw, and then his mother, half-frightened, would try to quiet
him in her arms.  This was the North, the land of primitive emotions,
take and give, receive and pay, simple justice and remorseless
vengeance; and when the storm swept over the cabin and the snow deepened
at the doorway, those terrible, whispered promises seemed wholly fitting
and true.

"I'll follow him till I die, and he and his wife and his son will pay
for what he has done to us."

But the years had come and passed, and Rutheford had not been brought to
justice nor the mine found.  It was true that in a past summer Bill had
traced his father's murderer as far as the shipping point, but there all
trace of him was irremediably lost.  Bill had made many excursions into
the Clearwater in search of the lost mine, all without success.  He had
had but one guide,--a hastily scrawled map that Bronson had once drawn
for his wife, to show her the approximate position of the claim.  There
had been no hope of avenging the murder, but with each recurring spring
Bill had felt certain of clearing up the mystery, at least of finding
the mine and its wealth and the bones of his father.  But the last days
of his mother, gone at last to her old home in the United States, could
be made easier; but his own future would be assured.  But now, at
thirty-two, the recovery of the mine seemed as far distant as ever.
Devoting his life to the pursuit of it, he had not prepared himself for
any other occupation; he had only a rather unusual general education,
procured from the Bradleyburg schools and his winter reading, and now he
was face to face with economic problems, too.

He would try once more.  If he did not win, the dream of his youth would
have to be given over.  He had devoted his days to it; such a force as
was about to send Virginia Tremont into the wilderness in search of her
lover had never come up in his life.  He sat dreaming, the ashes cold in
is pipe.

He was called to himself by a distinct feeling of cold.  The fire was
out, the chill of the early midnight hours had crept into the room.  The
man rose wearily, then strode to the door for a moment's survey of the
sky.

For a breath he stood watching.  His was the only lamp still glowing:
only the starlight, wan and pale, lay over the town.  The night wind
came stealing, an icy ghost, up the dark street; and it chilled his
uncovered throat.  The moon rose over the spruce forest, ringed with
white.  Already the frost was growing on the roofs.

The ring around the moon, the nip in the air, the little wind that
came so gently, yet with such sinister stealth, all portended one
thing,--that the great northern winter was lurking just beyond the
mountains, ready to swoop forth.  Of course there would be likely time
in plenty for a dash into Clearwater; yet the little breath of fall
was almost gone.  Far away, rising and falling faint as a cobweb in
the air, a coyote sang to the rising moon,--a strange, sobbing song of
pain and sadness and fear that only the woodsman, to whom the North
had sent home its lessons, could understand.



II

Bill Bronson found that he had the usual number of difficulties to
contend with, when arranging for the journey.  He had to procure more
horses for the larger outfit, and he was obliged to comb the town of
them before he had enough.  This was not an agricultural land, this wild
realm of the Selkirks, and all of the animals were originally Indian
stock,--the usual type of mountain cayuses with which most big-game
hunters are acquainted.  Some of them were faithful and trustworthy
animals, but many were half-broken, many cowardly and vicious.  On those
he rented he took the risk; he would be charged on the books for all
those that were not returned to their owners at Bradleyburg by October
twentieth.

Bill knew perfectly that he would play in good fortune if the loss in
horseflesh did not cost him most of the gains of the undertaking.  Even
the sturdy mustangs were not bred for traversing the trails of
Clearwater.  There were steep hills where a single misstep meant death,
there were narrow trails and dangerous fords, and here and there were
inoffensive-looking pools where the body of a horse may sink out of
sight in less time than it takes to tell it.  These were not the
immense-chested moose or the strong-limbed caribou, natives of the place
and monarchs of its trails.  Besides, if the winter caught them on the
higher levels, they would never eat oats in Johnson's barn again.  The
six feet of snow covers all horse feed, and the alternatives that remain
are simply a merciful bullet from the wrangler's pistol or death of slow
starvation.

Bill had certain stores in his cabins,--the long line of log huts
from which he operated in the trapping season,--yet further supplies
were needed for the trip.  He bought sugar, flour, great sacks of
rice--that nutritious and delightful grain that all outdoor men learn
to love--coffee and canned goods past all description.  Savory bacon,
a great cured ham of a caribou, dehydrated vegetables and cans of
marmalade and jam: all these went into the big saddle-bags for the
journey.  He was fully aware that the punishing days' ride could never
be endured on half-rations.  Camp equipment, rifles, shells and a
linen tent made up the outfit.

He encountered real difficulty when he tried to hire a man to act as
cook.  Evidently the Bradleyburg citizens had no love for the mountain
realms in the last days of fall.  For the double wage that he promised
he was only able to secure a half-rate man,--Vosper by name, a
shifty-eyed youth from one of the placer mines, farther down toward the
settlements.

Up to the time that he heard the far-off sound of their automobile
struggling up the long hill, he had made no mental picture of his
employers.  He rather hoped that Mr. Kenly Lounsbury--uncle of the
missing man--would represent the usual type of middle-aged American
with whom he had previously dealt,--cold-nerved, likeable business men
that came for recreation on the caribou trails.  Virginia Tremont would
of course be a new type, but he felt no especial interest in her.  But
as he waited at the door of the hotel he began to be aware of a curious
excitement, a sense of grave and portentous developments.  He did not
feel the least self-conscious.  But he did know a suddenly awakened
interest in this girl who would come clear to these northern realms to
find her lover.

The car was in evident difficulties.  It was the end of the road: in
fact, the old highway for the last three miles of its length was simply
two ruts on the hillside.  As soon as it came in sight Bill recognized
the driver,--a man who operated a line of auto-stages, during the
summer months, on the long river-road below.  The next instant the car
drew up beside the hotel.

To a man of cities there would have been nothing particularly unusual in
this sight of a well-groomed man and girl in the tonneau of an
automobile.  The man was a familiar type, of medium size, precise, his
outing clothes just a trifle garish; the girl trim and sweet-faced, and
stylish from the top of her head to the soles of her expensive little
boots.  But no moment of Bill's life had ever been fraught with a
greater wonder.  None had ever such a quality of the miraculous.  None
had ever gone so deep.

He had not known many women, this dark man of the forests.  He had seen
Indian squaws in plenty, stolid and fat, he had known a few of the wives
of the Bradleyburg men,--women pretty enough, good housekeepers,
neatly clad and perhaps a little saddened and crushed by the very
remorselessness of this land in which they lived.  But there had been no
girls in Bradleyburg to grow up with, no schoolday sweethearts.  He had
known the dark and desolate forests, never a sweetheart's kiss.  His
mother was now but a memory: tenderness, loveliness, personal beauty to
hold the eyes had been wholly without his bourne.  And he gazed at
Virginia Tremont as a man might look at a celestial light.

If the girl could have seen the swift flood of worship that flowed into
his face, she would have felt no scorn.  She was of the cities, caste
had hardened her as far as it could harden one of her nature, she was a
thoroughbred to the last inch, used to flattery and the attentions of
men of her own class; yet she would have held no contempt for this tall,
bronzed man that looked at her with such awe and wonder.  The surge of
feeling was real in him; and reality is one thing, over the broad earth,
that no human being dares to scorn.  If she could have read deeper she
would have found in herself an unlooked-for answer, in a small measure
at least, to a lifelong dream, an ideal come true, and even she--in
her high place--would have known a little whisper of awe.

All his life, it seemed to him, Bill had dreamed dreams--dreams that
he would not admit into his conscious thought and which he constantly
tried to disavow because he considered their substance did not exist in
reality and thus they were out of accord with the realism with which he
regarded life.  On the long winter nights, when the snow lay endless and
deep over the wilderness, and the terrible cold locked the land tight,
he would sit in his trapping cabins, gazing into the smoke clouds from
his pipe, and a tender enchantment would steal over him.  He would have
admitted to no human being those wistful and beautiful hours that he
spent alone.  He was known as a man among men, one who could battle the
snows and meet the grizzly in his lair, and he would have been ashamed
to reveal this dreamy, romantic side of his nature, these longings that
swept him to the depths.  He would go to his bed and lie for long,
tingling, wakeful hours stirred by dreams that through no earthly chance
could he conceive as coming true.  Arms about him, lips near, beauty and
tenderness and hallowed wakenings,--he had imagined them all in his
secret hours.

In the deep realms of his spirit, it seemed to him, he had always known
this girl,--this straight, graceful, lovely being with eyes of an
angel and smile of a happy child.  He had denied her existence, and here
she was before him.  Dark hair, waving and just a little untidy in the
brisk wind, oval face and determined little chin, shadowing lashes and
the exquisite contrasts of brunette beauty, a glimpse of soft, white
flesh at the throat through her dark furs, smart tailored suit and
dainty hands,--they were all known to him of old.  For all the
indifference and distance with which she looked at him and at the other
townspeople, there was a world of girlish sweetness in her face.  For
all her caste, there was spiritual beauty and gracious charm in every
facial line.

Curiously, Bill had no tinge of the resentment he might have expected
that his dream should come half-true only to be shattered like the
bubble it was.  Because he had no delusions.  He knew that he was only
an employee, that a girl of her caste would ever regard him as the great
regard those that serve them--kindly but impersonally--but for now
he asked for nothing more.  To him she was a creature past belief, a
being from another world, and he was content to serve her humbly.  He
knew that he was of the forest and she of the cities of men, and soon
they would take separate trails.  His only comfort, heretofore, had
been that his dream could not possibly come true, that the stuff of
which it was made could never exist in the barren, dreadful, accursed
place that was his home; but his nature was too big and true for any
bitterness--to hate her because she was of a sphere so infinitely apart
from his.  But he wouldn't give her his love, he told himself, only his
adoration. He wasn't going to be foolish enough to fall in love with a
star!  Yet he was swept with joy, for did not a whole month intervene
before she would go back to her kind?  Would she not be in his own
keeping for a while, before she left him to his forests and his snows?
Could he not see her across the fire, exult in her beauty, even aid her
in finding her lost lover?  His eye kindled and his face flushed, and
he leaped to help her from the tonneau.

"I suppose you are Mr. Bronson?" she asked.

It was the same friendly but impersonal tone that he had expected, but
he felt no resentment.  His spirits had rallied promptly; and he was
already partly adjusted to the fact that his joy in the journey would
consist of the mere, unembellished fact of her presence.

"Yes.  Of course this is Miss Tremont and Mr. Lounsbury.  And just as
soon as I pack the horses we'll be ready to start."

"I don't see why you haven't got 'em already packed," Lounsburg broke
in.  "If I ran my business in this shiftless way----"

Bill turned quickly toward him.  He saw at once that other elements
beside pleasure were to enter into this journey.  The man spoke
querulously, in a tone to which Bill was neither accustomed nor
reconciled.  If the girl had chosen to abuse him, he would have taken it
meekly as his due; but it hadn't been his training to accept too many
rude words from a fellow man.  Yet, he remembered, he was the uncle of
the girl's fiance, and that meant he was a privileged person.  Besides,
his temper had likely been severely strained by the rough road.

"Don't be ridiculous, Uncle," the girl reproved her.  "How did he know
exactly when we were going to arrive?"  She tuned back to Bill.  "Now
tell us where we can get lunch.  I'm starved."

"This country does--stimulate the appetite," Bill responded gravely.
Then he showed them into the hotel.

He did a queer and sprightly little dance as he hurried toward the barn
to get his horse.



III

Mr. Kenly Lounsbury, addressed affectionately as Uncle by his nephew's
fiancee, was in ill humor as he devoured his lunch.  In the first place
he hadn't been getting the attention that he had expected.  He was used
to being treated with a certain deference, an abject humility was as
fitting to a man of wealth and position.  These northern people,
however, didn't seem to know how to fawn.  They were courteous enough,
gave good service, but were inclined to speak to him as man to
man,--an inference of equality that he regarded with great displeasure.
His nephew's penniless fiancee, instead of himself, received all the
attentions.  Even the burly ruffian who was to guide them looked at her
as if she were an angel.

The girl's voice rang over the table.  "What's worrying you now, Uncle?"
she asked.

Lounsbury looked up angrily.  "What's worrying me now is--that I was
such a fool as to come up into this country at the approach of winter.
I don't like the place, and I don't like the people, and I abominate the
service!  Fancy eating on these great, thick plates for a month!  I
don't trust that big outlaw who is going to take us into the woods,
either.  Virginia, I have a distinct premonition of disaster."

"I rather think--that we'll be glad enough to have any china plates at
all before we get back.  And Mr. Bronson----"

"By the way, don't call him _Mr._ Bronson.  You must learn to teach
these beggars their places.  Call him just Bronson.  You'll get twice
the service."

"Yes, Uncle.  I was just going to say that he seemed very trustworthy.
And it's hardly--well, the sporting thing to become discouraged so
soon."

All through the journey so far this had been Lounsbury's one
satisfaction--that he was doing the sporting thing.  He knew perfectly
that many of his business associates, many of his city's great whom
he would have been flattered to know, came up into these gloomy
forests every year in pursuit of big game; and he had heard of
enduring hardships in a "sporting" way.  But the term was already
threadbare,--and the journey only commenced.  The reason went back to
the simple fact that Lounsbury was not a sportsman and never could be,
that the red corpuscle content in his blood was wholly within the law.

Yes, Virginia felt at a disadvantage.  This man's money had financed the
trip; the fortune her own father had left had been almost depleted from
reverses resulting from the war, and only the most meager sort of an
income--according to her standards--was left.  An orphan, she had
always looked up to her fiance's uncle as her guardian and adviser; to
see signs of discouragement in him now was a serious blow to her.

She had been somewhat surprised, in the first place, at his willingness
to undertake the journey.  He usually did not care to go so far from the
White Way of his native city.  The years had taught her to look for
selfish motives behind his every action; certainly, she told herself, he
was not of the unselfish mold of his nephew, Harold Lounsbury, the
sweetheart of her youth, but in this particular case the expedition
seemed entirely altruistic.  She wondered now whether, after all her
dreams, she would be forced to turn back before her purpose was
accomplished.

They pushed back their chairs and started to leave the dining room.  But
it was not written that Kenly Lounsbury should reach the door without
further annoyance.  The waiter came shouting after them.

"Excuse me, Mister," he said kindly, holding out a quarter, "you left
some money on the table."

Virginia laughed with delight and pocketed the coin herself, but
Lounsbury's face became purple.  These northern fools did not even know
the meaning of a tip.

A few minutes later the pack train emerged through the little alley at
the side of the hotel and halted in front.  Bill Bronson led his own
bay, Mulvaney, and the pack horses were tailed,--the halter rope of
each tied to the tail of the horse in front, like elephants on parade.
The idea was simply to keep them in formation till they were launched
forth upon the trail.  Vosper, the cook, led three horses with riding
saddles at the end of the line.

Virginia had changed to outing clothes when she emerged into the street,
leaving her tailored suit in charge of the innkeeper.  Bill beamed at
her appearance.  "Miss Tremont," he began, doing the honors, "this is
Mr. Vosper, who will cook the beans."

Both nodded, the girl smiling rather impersonally, and Bill noticed a
horrifying omission.  Vosper actually lacked the intelligence to remove
his hat!  The first instinct of the woodsman was to march toward him and
inflict physical violence for such an insult to his queen, but he caught
himself in time.  Vosper, damaged in the encounter, would likely refuse
to make the trip, upsetting all their plans.

But at that instant Bill forgot all about it.  He suddenly noticed his
employers' clothes.  And he gazed in open-mouthed astonishment.

Both Virginia and Lounsbury were well gotten up according to their idea
of proper garb for outdoor people.  The man wore knickerbockers with
gold stockings, riding habit and stock, the girl a beautifully tailored,
fine-textured lady's riding habit.  Both were immediately conscious of
the guide's stare, and Virginia was aware of a distinct embarrassment.
Something, somewhere, had evidently gone wrong.  Lounsbury took refuge
in hauteur.

"Well?" he demanded icily.

"Excuse me," Bill replied.  "But those aren't--are those the clothes
you're going to wear on the trip?"

"We're not parading for any one's benefit, I hope," was the sarcastic
answer.  "These are our rough clothes.  Have you any objections to 'em?"

The guide's eyes puckered about the corners.  "No, sir--not any
objections--and they'd be all right for a day or two--until bad
weather.  But they are hardly the togs for the North.  What you want is
a good pair of slicker pants, both of you, and plenty of wool inside.
Also a rubber coat of some kind, over sheepskin.  In the first good snow
those clothes would just melt away.  If you'll come with me, I'll help
you lay in some--and I'll pack 'em right on one of the horses for the
time of need.  There's a store adjoining the hotel----"

Virginia's confusion had departed, giving way to mirth, but Lounsbury
was swollen and purple with wrath.  "You--you----" he began.  His face
grew crafty.  "I suppose you get a commission on every garment you
sell."

Bill turned rather quiet eyes on the man; and for one little instant the
craven that dwelt under Lounsbury's skin told him he had said one
sentence too many; but he took heart when Bill looked away.  "I'll keep
what I've got on," he announced.  "I'm not used to being told what kind
of clothes to wear.  Virginia, we'll start on."

"Wait just a minute, Uncle," the girl replied coolly.  She turned to
Bill.  "You say these won't do at all?"

"They'll be torn off of you in the brush, Miss Tremont.  And they won't
turn the cold and the snow, either.  This is the North, you know."

"Then I, for one, am going to take your advice.  Please help me pick out
the things, Bronson."

They left Lounsbury fuming in the road, and they had a rather enjoyable
ten minutes searching through Fargo's stock for suitable garb.  He
selected a pair of slicker pants to wear over riding trousers, a coat
lined with sheepskin, boy's size, and an awkwardly made but effective
rubber coat for outside wear when the snow lay on the branches.  It was
not, Virginia decided, quite like choosing gowns at her modiste's; yet
she was bright-eyed and laughing at the end.

Bill unhitched a pack, inserted the bundle of clothes, then bracing his
boots against the horse's side pulled and tugged until the pack was
right again.  "You'll be glad you've got these things before the trip is
done," he prophesied.  He pointed to the North, an unlooked for sobriety
upon his face.

Far against the horizon the clouds were beginning to spread, dark and
gray and strange, over the northern hills.  These were not the clouds of
summer rains.  They were the first banners of an enemy--a grim and
dreadful foe who had his ramparts in the wilds, and his ambush laid for
such feeble creatures as would dare to brave his fastness.

* * * * *

Bill Bronson gave his last directions, tightened the last cinch, and
slipped his rifle into the saddle scabbard.  "There's just one thing
more--the choice of horses," he said.  "Miss Tremont, of course you
can take your pick."  His tone was trustful.  "Of course that will be
all right with the other gentlemen--for you to have the best and
safest horse."

Strangely, neither of the two men seemed to greet this suggestion with
especial enthusiasm.  "I want a good and a safe horse," Lounsbury said
evenly.  "Of course you must provide Miss Tremont with the same."

The woodsman sighed, ever so softly.  He returned to Vosper, but if the
latter had any suggestions to offer, the hard eyes of the guide caused
him to think better of them.  "I'm sorry to say that good horses--and
safe horses--aren't to be found in the same animal up here," Bill
explained.  "If you have a good horse--one that'll take the mud and
swim the river and stand up under the day's march--he'll likely have
too much sense and spirit to be safe.  He'll more than likely prance
around when you get on and buck you off if he thinks he can get away
with it.  If you've got a safe horse, one that's scared to death of you,
he won't be a good horse--a yellow cuss that has to be dragged through
every mud-puddle.  These are all Indian ponies, the best that can be got
up here, but they're not old ladies' driving mares.  Miss Tremont, the
best horse in this bunch is my bay, Mulvaney--but nobody can ride him
but me.  I'd love to let you ride him if you could, and after a day or
two I'd be willing for you to try it.  But he doesn't know what fear is,
and he doesn't know when to give up."

The man spoke soberly.  It was wholly plain that Mulvaney was very dear
to his heart.  Men do not ride over the caribou trails without
engendering strong feelings toward their mounts.  Sometimes it is love.
And not unusually it is detestation.

"That little black there--Buster, we call him--is the next best bet.
It's an important choice you're making, and I'll tell you about him.  He
threw a man off once, and when I got him he was supposed to be the most
vicious animal in the Northwest.  The truth is, he hasn't got a vicious
hair on his head.  But he will try to get away, and he will dance a bit
when you first get on and wheel in circles, and he's hard to catch in
the morning.  But he's sure-footed and courageous and strong; he'll take
you up hills where the others can't go.  The other two horses--Colt
and Scotty--maybe seem safer, but they haven't got the life Buster
has, nor the sense."

Bill reached to pet the black Buster, and the animal shied nervously.
Virginia walked up to him and seized his bridle rein.  In an instant she
had vaulted into the saddle.

He wheeled and plunged at first, but soon she quieted him.  In none too
good humor, Lounsbury made his selection, and Vosper took what was left.
Bill led his animal to Virginia's side.

"And are there any special instructions--before we start?" he asked.

"I can give you some special instructions," Lounsbury interrupted.  "I
didn't come up here to risk my life on a wild mustang in the mountains.
I want you to pick easy trails--you can if you've just got energy
enough to try."

A half-smile lingered a moment at the woodsman's lips.  There was no
choice of trails into Clearwater.  He might have told Lounsbury that
once they were out of sight of the roofs of the town they were venturing
into the Unknown, a land where the caribou and the moose made trails
through the forest but where men came not, a land of beasts rather than
men, of primeval grandeur but savage might.  "Have you any orders to
give?" he asked the girl again.

"None.  All I can do is tell you what I have already done--and then
let you do the best you can.  As you know, he left six years ago."

"I know.  I saw him when he came through."

His eyes were fast upon her, and he saw her start.  Her face seemed to
flame.  Stranger as he was to the hearts of women, Bill could
understand.  It was word of her lover, a message from the dead, and it
moved her to the depths.  But he couldn't understand the curious weight
of depression that descended upon him.

"You did?" she answered quickly.  "Was he all right--then?"

"All right, but that was just after he came to the North.  I was camping
on this side of Grizzly River, and he stayed to eat with me.  He said
his name was Lounsbury.  I've never heard of him since."

The surface lights died in her eyes.  "Then that doesn't help us much,
except to know that he got that far, at least," she went on.  "I'll tell
you the whole thing, simply; maybe it will help you in deciding where to
look for him.  He was twenty-seven then--and he'd spent the fortune
his father left him.  He had to have more, and he came up here--to
look for gold.

"Like many other men--before him," Bill interrupted gravely.

"He had some sort of definite plan--a vacation place to go--but he
never told me what it was.  He told me he was going into Clearwater.  He
had to have money--he was in debt and besides, he was engaged to marry
me.  The last word I ever heard of him was a note he wrote from
Bradleyburg.  I was just a girl then--and I've waited ever since.
His friends, his aunt, sometimes even his uncle thought that he was
dead.  I've always felt, just as sure as I am here, that he was still
alive--and in some trouble--and he couldn't come back.  Mr. Lounsbury
has hired detectives, but none of them have ever made a real search.
He's financing this trip now--I've been able to persuade him at last to
make one great try to find him.  What's what we've hired you to do."

"It's a big order," Bill spoke softly.  "There's just one thing we can
do--to look into the country where he's gone and try to trace him.
Every man who goes through Clearwater leaves his mark--there's not so
many of them that their trails get crossed.  My plan would be to watch
for the camps he made--there'd be some sign of 'em yet--the trees he
cut and the trails he blazed--and trace him clear to the Valley of the
Yuga."

"And what is there?"

Bill's ears, trained to the silences of the woodland, caught the almost
imperceptible tremor in her voice.  "There are a few Indians who have
their tents there--trappers and fishers--and I know how to get
things out of 'em.  If he's passed that way, they'd know about it.  If
he hasn't--something has happened to him--somewhere between here and
there.  He couldn't have remained out of sight so long."

"I want you to make every try.  I can't bear--to give up."

Even this woodsman, knowing men to the heart but stranger to the world
of women, knew that she meant what she said.  She wasn't of the mold
that gives up quickly.  For all her cool exterior, her impersonal voice,
the grace and breeding that went clear to her finger tips, he had some
measure of understanding of an ardor and an intensity that might have
been native to his own wilderness.  Not often has girlhood love stood
such a test as this,--six years of silence.  He could not doubt its
reality; no small or half-felt emotion could have propelled her forth
into these desolate wastes.  Her love had gone deep and it lived.

He answered very gravely and humbly, perhaps a even a little sadly:
"I'll do everything I can to find him for you, Miss.  I'll get your
sweetheart for you if it can be done."

To Vosper and Lounsbury the two little sentences were just the
assurances of a hired employee, half-felt and forgotten soon.  But
Virginia heard more clearly.  She had a vague feeling that she was a
witness to a vow.  It seemed to her that there was the fire of a zealot
in his dark eyes, and by token of some mystery she did not understand,
this strong man had seen fit to give her his oath.  She only knew that
he spoke true, that by a secret law that only strong men know he would
be as faithful to this promise as if he had given bond.



IV

It was one of the decrees of the forest gods that no human being shall
ride for five miles through the spruce forests of the Selkirks and fail
to glean at least some slight degree of wilderness knowledge.  Both
Virginia and Lounsbury had been on horseback before.  Virginia had
ridden in the parks of her native city: long ago and far away a
barefoot, ragged boy--much to be preferred to the smug and petulant
man who now tried to hard to forget those humble days--had bestrode an
old plow horse nightly on the way to a watering trough.  But this riding
had qualities all its own.  There was no open road winding before them.
Nor was there any trail,--in general or particular.

It was true that the moose had passed that way, leaving their great
footprints in the dying grass.  They had chosen the easiest pathway over
the hills, and Bill was enough of a woodsman to follow where they led.
Traversing the Clearwater was simply a matter of knowing the country and
going in a general direction.  Almost at once the evergreen thickets
closed around them.

Virginia found that safety depended upon constant watchfulness.  The
evergreen branches struck cruel blows at her face, the spruce needles
cut like knives.  Sometimes the horse in front would bend down a young
tree, permitting it to whip back with a deadly blow; she had to watch
her knees in the narrow passages between the trunks; and the vines
reached and caught at her.  Sometimes the long-hanging limbs of the
young trees made an impassable barrier, and more than once she was
nearly dragged from the saddle.  Shortly they came to the first fallen
log.

Mulvaney, Bill's horse, took it lightly; and the man turned to watch the
girl.  Her horse stepped gingerly, making it without trouble.  Then the
guide saw fit to give her a little good advice.

"Kick Buster in the ribs just before you come to a log," he said.
"He'll jump 'em then.  It's a whole lot safer--if he tries to step
over 'em he's apt to get his foot caught and give you a bad fall."

Virginia looked up coldly.  She wasn't accustomed to being spoken to in
quite this tone of voice, particularly by an employee.  But she saw his
sober eyes and immediately forgot her resentment.  And she found an
actual delight in bounding over the next obstruction.

"And there's one more thing," the guide went on.  "I've ridden plenty of
horses, and I've found there's only one way to handle 'em.  I'm going to
try a new way to-day, because there's a lady in the party.  But if I'm
tried too heavy----"

"Go ahead," the girl replied, smiling.  "I suppose you mean--to
swear."

"Not just to swear.  Call names.  These horses won't think we're present
if we don't swear at 'em.  And the only name they know refers to them is
one that casts slurs upon their ancestry, but I'll try to avoid it
to-day.  I suppose I can make a roaring sound that sounds enough like it
to fool the horses."

Virginia was naturally alert and quick-witted, and she needed both of
these traits now.  The guide helped her all he could, warning her of
approaching thickets; yet the first hour was a grim initiation to the
woods.  Lounsbury was having even a more difficult time.  He was afraid
of his horse, to start with--and this is never an auspicious
beginning.  A frightened rider means a nervous, excited animal--and
nervousness and excitement are unhealthy qualities in the Selkirks.
Neither put trust in the other, and Lounsbury's cruel, lashing blows
with the long bridle ends only made matters worse.  The horse leaped and
plunged, slipped badly on the hills, progressed awkwardly over the
fallen logs, and flew into wild panic when he came to the quagmires.
The man's temper fell far below the danger point in the first hour, and
he was savage and desperate before half of the afternoon's ride was
done.

The thickets were merciless.  They knew him, those silent evergreens:
they gave no welcome to his breed; and it seemed to him they found a
hundred ways to plague him.  Their needles scratched his face, their
branches whipped into his eyes, the limbs dealt cruel blows at his side
and the tree trunks wrenched at his knees.  Worse still, they soon came
to a hill that Bill advised they take on foot.

"Not me," Lounsbury shrilled.  "I'll swear I won't walk any hills.
You've provided a vicious horse for me, and I'm going to ride him
up if it kills him.  I didn't come out here to break my wind on
mountains--and this horse needs the devil taken out of him, anyway."

It was in Virginia's mind that none of the emphatic but genial oaths
that Bill had let slip from time to time grated on her half so much as
this frenzied complaint of her companion, but she kept her thoughts to
herself.  But Bill turned with something dangerously like a smile.

"Suit yourself, of course," he replied.  "I'm not asking you to walk up
to spare your horse.  Only, from time to time a horse makes a misstep on
this hill--just one little slip--and spins down in backward
somersets a thousand feet.  If you want to try it, of course it's all
right with me."

He swung off his horse, took the bridle reins of both his own animal and
Virginia's, and started the long climb.  And it was to be noticed that
at the first steep pitch Lounsbury found that he was tired of riding and
followed after meekly, but with wretched spirit.

They stopped often to rest; and from the heights Virginia got her first
real glimpse of Clearwater.  Her first impression was simply vast and
unmeasured amazement at the dimensions of the land.  As far as she could
see lay valley after valley, range upon range, great forests of spruce
alternating with open glades, dim unnamed lakes glinting pale blue in
the afternoon sun, whole valleys where the foot of white man had never
trod.  She felt somewhat awed, scarcely knowing why.

Rivers gleamed, marshes lay yellow and somber in the sun, the dark
forests stretched until the eyes tired; but nowhere were there any
homes, any villages or pastures, not a blaze upon a tree, not the smoke
of a camp fire.  Bradleyburg was already obliterated and lost in the
depths of the woodland.  The silence was incredible,--as vast and
infinite as the wilderness itself.  It startled her a little, when they
paused in their climb, to hear the pronounced tick of her wrist watch,
even the whisper of her own breath.  It was as if she had gone to an
enchanted land, a place that lay in a great sleep that began in the
world's young days, and from which the last reaches of time it could
never waken.

Bill, standing just above her, pointed to a dash of golden across the
canyon.  "That's quivering asp," he told her, "turned by the frost.  It
seems good to see a bit of color in this world of dark woods.  It's just
like a flash of sunshine in a storm."

She listened with some surprise.  The same detail had held her gaze, the
same thought--almost the same simile--had come into her mind; but
she had hardly expected to find a love of the beautiful in this bronzed
forester.  In fact, she found that a number of her preconceived ideas
were being turned topsy-turvy.

Heretofore, it seemed to her, her thought had always dwelt on the
superficialities rather than the realities of life.  Her income was
pitifully small according to her standards, yet she had never had to
consider the question of food and shelter.  She had known social
success, love of beauty and of art, gayety and luxury; she had had petty
discouragements and triumphs, worries and fears, but of the simple and
primitive basis of things she took no cognizance.  She had never dealt
with essentials.  They had always seemed outside her life.

Virginia had never lived in the shadow of Fear,--that greatest and
most potent of realities.  In truth she didn't know the meaning of the
word.  She had been afraid in her bed at night, she had been
apprehensive of a block's walk in the twilight, but Fear--in its true
sense--was an alien and a stranger.  She had never met him in the
waste places, seen him skulking on her trail through the winter snows,
listened to his voice in the wind's wail.  She didn't know the fear of
which the coyotes sang from this hill, the blind and groping dread of an
immutable destiny, the ghastly realization of impotence against a cruel
and omnipotent fate.  She hadn't ever learned about it.  Living a
protected life she didn't know that it existed.  Food and shelter and
warmth and safety had always seemed her birthright; about her house
marched the officers of the law protecting her from evildoers; she lived
in sight of great hospitals that would open their doors to the sick and
injured and of charitable institutions that would clothe and feed the
needy: thus the world had kept its bitter truths from her.  But she was
beginning to learn them now.  She was having her first glimpse of life,
life stripped of all delusion, stark and naked, the relentless reality
that it was.

Fear was no stranger to these forests.  Its presence, in every turn of
the trail, filled her with awe.  A single misstep, a little instant of
hesitation in a crisis, might precipitate her a thousand feet down the
canyon to her death.  Dead trees swayed, threatening to fall; snow
slides roared and rumbled on the far steeps; the quagmire sucked with
greedy lips, the trail wandered dimly,--as if it were trying to decoy
her away into the fastnesses where the wilderness might claim her.  No
one had to tell her how easy it would be to lose the trail, never to
find it again.  The forests were endless; there were none to hear a
wanderer's cry for help.  Wet matches, an accident to the food supplies,
a few nights without shelter in the dismal forest,--any of these might
spell complete and irrevocable disaster.

What had she known of Death?  It was a thing to claim old people,
sometimes to take even her young friends from their games among the
flowers, but never had it been an acquaintance to hers.  It was as
wholly apart from her as the beings of another planet.  But here she had
come to the home of Death,--cold and fearful obliteration dwelling in
every thicket.  She found herself wondering about it, now, and dreading
it with a new dread that she had never dreamed of before.  The only real
emotions she had ever known were her love for Harold Lounsbury and her
grief at his absence: in these autumn woods she might easily learn all
the others.  She had never known true loneliness; here, except for her
fiance's uncle with whom she had never felt on common ground and two
paid employees--the latter, she told herself, did not count--she was
as much alone as if she had been cast upon an uninhabited sphere.
Already she knew something of the great malevolence that is the eternal
tone of the wilderness, the lurking peril that is the North.

This new view influenced her attitude toward Bill.  At first she had
felt no interest in him whatever.  Of a class that does not enter into a
basis of equality with personal employees, to her he had seemed in the
same category with a new house servant or chauffeur.  He had been hired
to do her service; he was either a bad servant or a good one, and from
her he would receive kindness and patronage, but never real feeling or
friendship, never more than an impersonal interest.  But now that she
knew something of the real nature of this expedition, affairs had taken
a new turn.  She suddenly realized that her whole happiness, her
comfort, perhaps even life itself depended upon him.  He was their
protector, their source of supplies, their refuge and their strength as
well.

The change did not mean that she was willing to enter upon a basis of
comradeship with him--yet.  But she did find a singular satisfaction
in the mere fact of his presence.  Here was one who could build a fire
in the snow if need be, whose strong arms could cut fuel, who could
manage the horses and bring them safe to the journey's end.  His rifle
swung in his saddle scabbard, his pistol belt encircled his waist; he
knew how to adjust the packs, to peg the tent fast in a storm, to find
bread and meat in the wilderness.  She began to notice his lithe, strong
figure as he sat in his saddle, the ease with which he controlled his
horse and avoided the pitfalls in the trail.  When the moose tracks were
too dim for her eyes to see, he followed them with ease.  When the
horses bolted from some unfamiliar smell in the thicket, he was quick to
round them up.  The animals were swift in obedience when he spoke to
them, but they were only terrified by Lounsbury's shrill shouts.  He was
cool of nerve, self-possessed, wholly self-reliant.  She listened with
an eager gladness to his soft whistling: simple classics that she
herself loved but which came strangely from the lips of this son of the
forest.

His eyes were bright and music was in his heart,--in spite of the dark
menace of these northern woodlands.  He was not afraid: rather he seemed
to be getting a keen enjoyment out of the afternoon's ride.  And the
great truth suddenly came to her that in his strength lay hers, that she
had entrusted her welfare to him and for the present, at least, it was
secure.  And she put her own cares away.

She would not have admitted that she had simply followed the example of
the uncounted millions of women that had preceded her through the long
reaches of the centuries that had found strength and peace in the
shelter of a strong man's arm.  She only knew that her mind no longer
dwelt on danger, but it had marvelously opened to receive the image of
the grim but ineffable beauty of this wild land through which she rode.
She felt secure, and she began to have an intangible but ever-increasing
delight in the wonderland about her.

* * * * *

Her first impression of the wilderness was that of a far-stretching
desert, forgotten and desolate and unpeopled as the fiery stars.
Likewise this was Lounsbury's view, as in the case of every tenderfoot
who had preceded him, but Lounsbury would likely grow old and perish
without discovering his mistake.  Clear eyes are needed to read the
secrets of the wild: the dark glass through which he gazed at the world
had never cleared.  Vosper had lived months and years in the North, but
he had only hatred in his heart of these waste places and thus received
no glory from them.  But Virginia soon found out the truth.

"There's an old bull been along here not twenty minutes ago," Bill told
her after they reached the hilltop.  "The mud hasn't begun to dry in his
tracks."

"An old bull?" she repeated.  "Do cattle run here----?"

"Good Lord, there isn't a cow this side of the shipping point.  I mean a
bull moose.  And he's a lunker, too.  Maybe we'll catch a glimpse of
him."

In her time she had talked enough to big-game hunters to have
considerable respect for the moose, the largest of all deer tribe, and
she thrilled a little at the thought that she was in his own range.  She
didn't get a sight of the great creature, but she began to pay more
attention to the trail.  Seeing her interest the guide began to read to
her the message in the tracks,--how here a pair of otters had raced
along in the dawn, stopping at intervals to slide; how a cow caribou and
calf had preceded them at midday; how a coyote had come skulking the
previous night.  Beside a marsh he showed her the grim evidence of a
wilderness tragedy,--the skeleton and feathers of a goose that a
stalking wolf had taken by surprise.  And once he showed her a great
tear in the bark of a tree, nearly as high as she could reach on
horseback.

"What is it?" she inquired.

"That's the sign that the lord of the manor has been along.  Miss
Tremont, did you ever hear of an animal called the grizzly bear?"

"Good heavens!  A bear couldn't reach that high----"

"Couldn't?  Some of these bears could scoop the man out of the moon!"

He showed her gray, crinkling hairs that had caught in the bark,
explaining that mysterious wilderness custom of the grizzly of measuring
his length on the tree trunks and leaving a mark, as high as he can
bite, for all to see.  According to many naturalists any bear that
cannot bite an equal height immediately seeks a new range, leaving the
district to the larger bear.  But Bill confessed that he took the legend
with a grain of salt.  "I've seen too many bear families running around
the woods together," he explained.  "Pa bears, ma bears, and baby bears,
all different sizes."

Virginia noticed that he spoke with great respect for that huge forest
king, the grizzly; but she needn't have wondered.  The great creature
was worthy of it.

Perhaps the most intelligent wild animal that roams the American
continent--on the same intellectual plane with the dog and
elephant--he was also the most terrible.  The truth has been almost
established among the big-game hunters that wild animals, with few
exceptions, even when wounded practically never charge or attack the
hunter.  But his imperial majesty, the grizzly, was first on the list
of exceptions.  He couldn't be entirely trusted.  His terrible strength,
his ferocity, most of all his courage won him a wide berth through this
mountain land.

She began to catch glimpses of bird life,--saucy jays and
glorious-colored magpies and grossbeaks.  She cried out in delight when
a pine squirrel scampered up a little tree just over her head, pausing
to look down at these strange forms that had disturbed the cathedral
silence of the tree aisles.  And all at once Bill drew up his horses.

"Miss Tremont, do you like chicken?" he asked.

She was somewhat startled by the abrupt question, and her horse nosed
Mulvaney's flanks before she drew him to a halt.  It occurred to her
that such a query scarcely came under the title of small talk, and she
found some difficulty in shaping her answer.  "Why yes," she agreed.
"I'm very fond of chicken."

"It's pretty good, boiled with rice," the man went on gravely.  "We'll
have some for supper."

Virginia stared at him in blank amazement as he slipped down from the
saddle and drew his automatic, small-calibered pistol from the holster.
He stole forward into the flaking shadows of late afternoon, and at once
the brush obscured him.  Then he shot,--four times in succession.

She was wholly unable to guess what manner of target he had.  Chickens
were one thing that she found it hard to believe ranged in these
northern woods.  She felt certain that he had missed the first three
shots, but she waited with considerable interest the result of the
fourth.  And soon he pushed through the thickets to her side.

In his hand he held a queer, gray, shapeless bundle that at first she
could not recognize.  Then she saw that they were gray grouse, almost
the color of a Plymouth Rock hen, and there was not one, but four!  He
started to stuff them into his saddlebag.  "Pretty lucky that time," he
explained.  "Got 'em through the neck.  That leaves the meat clean----"

He seemed wholly matter-of-fact about the incident, but Virginia
continued to stare at him in open-mouthed astonishment.  "Four of them?"
she cried.

"One apiece.  There was five in the flock, but the other looked like a
tough old hen.  But don't look so amazed, Miss Tremont.  They are fool
hens--Franklin's grouse--and that means that they'll set all day and
let you pepper at 'em.  And with a little practice it's easy to get them
in the neck pretty near every time."

He swung into the saddle, and they started forth upon the last hour of
their day's journey.  And Vosper made the only remark worth recording.

"When I was in Saskatchewan last year," he began in a thin, far-carrying
voice, "I must 'a shot a thousand grouse and didn't miss one."

Virginia felt that she'd like to go back and shake him.



V

Now that they were upon the last hour of the day's ride Virginia began
to be aware of the full measure of her fatigue.  She was strained and
tired from the saddle, her knees ached, her face burned from the scratch
of the spruce needles.  Ever she found it more difficult to dodge the
stinging blows of the boughs, she was less careful in the control of her
horse.  From sheer exhaustion Lounsbury had stopped his complaints.

The first grayness of twilight had come, like mist, over the distant
hills; but the peaks were still bathed in the sunset's glow.  She began
to have a real and overwhelming longing for camp and rest.  And in the
midst of her dejection the dark man in front threw her a smile.

"It goes hard at first," he told her gently.  "But we'll soon be in
camp--with a good fire.  You'll feel better right away."

It had not been Virginia's way--or the way of Virginia's class--to
depend upon their menials for encouragement; but, strangely, the girl
felt only grateful.

She was hungry, chilled through by the icy breath of the falling night,
half-sick with fatigue.  The last mile seemed endless.  And she was
almost too tired to drag herself off the horse when they came to camp.

Back among the dark spruce, by the edge of a fast-flowing trout stream,
Bill had built a cabin,--one of the camps of his trap line.  It was
only a hut, perhaps ten feet long by eight wide; it had no floor and but
slabs for a roof, no window and no paneled interior; only the great
logs, lifted one upon another; yet no luxurious hotel that had been her
lodging for the night on previous journeys had ever seemed to her such a
haven; none had ever been such a comfort to her tired spirit.  Her heart
flooded with joy at the sight of it.  Bill smiled and held the door open
wide.

"Sit down on that busted old chair," he advised.  "I'll have a fire for
you in a minute."

A rusted camp stove had been erected in the cabin and she watched,
fascinated, his quick actions as he built a fire.  With astonishingly
few strokes he cut down a pitch-laden spruce, trimmed the branches, and
soon came staggering into camp with a four-foot length of the trunk
across his brawny back, grunting like a buffalo the while.  This he
split and cut into lengths suitable for the stove.  With his hunting
knife he cut curling shavings, and in a moment a delicious warmth began
to flood the cabin.  The girl's body welcomed it, it stole into her
tissues and buoyed up her spirits.  She opened her hands to it as to a
beloved friend.

It was only warmth,--the exhalation from a rusted stove in a crudely
constructed cabin.  Yet to Virginia it was dear beyond all naming.  In
one little day on that dreadful trail she had, in some measure at least,
got down to essentials; the ancient love of the fire, implanted deeply
in the germ plasm, was wakened and recalled.  It was not a love that she
had to learn.  The warp and woof of her being was impregnated with it;
only in her years of ease she had forgotten what an ancient friend and
comfort it was.

In her past life Virginia had never known the real meaning of hunger.
Her meals were inadvertent; she had them more from a matter of habit
than a realization of bodily craving.  But curiously, for the last hour
her thought had dwelt on food,--the simple, material substance with no
adornment.  The dainty salads and ices and relishes that had been her
greatest delight in her city home hadn't even come into her mind, but
she did remember, with unlooked-for fondness, potatoes and meat.  And
now she watched Vosper's supper preparations with an eagerness never
known before.

Although Vosper had been hired for cook, Virginia noticed that Bill kept
a watchful eye over the preparation of the food; and she felt distinctly
grateful.  She saw the grouse in the process of cleaning, and the red
stains on Vosper's hands did not repel her at all.  She beheld the
smooth cascade of the rice as Bill poured it into the boiling water, her
own hand opened a can of dehydrated vegetables that was to give flavor
to the dish.  She gave no particular thought to the fact that the hour
was revealing her not as an exquisite creature of a higher plane, but
simply a human animal with an empty stomach.  If the thought did come to
her she didn't care.  She only knew she was hungry,--hungry as she had
never dreamed she could be in all her days.

The white flesh of the grouse was put with the rice, one bird after
another, until it seemed impossible that four human beings could consume
them all.  In went the seasoning, spaghetti and the vegetables, and not
even Lounsbury railed at the little handful of ashes that floated on top
the mixture.  And Virginia exulted from head to toes when Bill passed
the tin plates.

It was well for Virginia's peace of mind that no one told her how much
she ate.  In her particular set it wasn't a mark of breeding to eat too
heartily; and an entire grouse, at least two cups of the stew and
several inch-thick slices of bread with marmalade would have been
considered a generous meal even for a harvest-hand.

As soon as the meal was done she felt ready for bed.  Bill ventured into
the darkness with an ax over his shoulder, but not until his return did
she understand his mission.  His arms were heaped with fragrant spruce
boughs.  These he laid on the cot in the cabin, spreading the blankets
he had provided for her over them.  He placed the pillow and turned down
the blanket corners.

"Any time you like," he told her gently.  "Vosper is putting up the
linen tent for we three men, and I'll build a fire in front of it to
keep us warm while we smoke.  You must be tired."

She smiled wanly.  "I am tired, Bronson," she confessed.  "And thank
you, very much."

She didn't notice the wave of color that flowed into his bronzed cheeks
and the strange, jubilant light in his eyes.  She only knew that she was
warm and full-fed, and the wind would bluster and threaten around her
cabin walls in vain.

For a long hour after Virginia was asleep Bill sat by the fireside
alone, his pipe glowing at his lips.  Lounsbury had gone to his
blankets, Vosper was splitting wood for the morning's fire.  As
often, late at night, he was held and intrigued by the mystery about
him,--the little, rustling, whispered sounds of living things in the
thicket, the silence and the darkness and the savagery.

He knew perfectly the tone and spirit of these waste places: their
might, their malevolence, their sadness, their eternal beauty.  He hated
them and yet he loved them, too.  He had felt their hospitality, yet he
knew that often they rose in the still night and slew their guests.
They crushed the weak, but they lent their own strength to the strong.
And Bill felt that he was face to face with them as never before.

He was going to plumb their secret places,--not only for the missing
man, but for the lost mine he had sought so long.  He must not only
fight his own battles, but he had in his charge a helpless, tender thing
of whom his body must be a shield.  Never, it seemed to him, had he met
the wilderness night in just this mood,--threatening, vaguely
sinister, tremulous and throbbing with impending drama.

"You've got something planned for me, haven't you?" he asked his forest
gods.  "You've got your trap all set, and you're going to test me as
never before.  And Heaven give me strength to meet that test!"

At that instant he started and looked up.  The stars were obscured, the
firelight died swiftly in unfathomable darkness, the tops of the spruce
were lost in gloom.  A flake of wet snow had fallen and struck his hand.

* * * * *

All night long the storm raged over the spruce forest; lashing rain that
beat and roared on the cabin roof, then the unutterable silence of
falling snow.  The camp fire hissed and went out, the tent sagged with
the load, the horses were wet and miserable in the glade below.
Virginia slept fitfully, waking often to listen to the clamor of the
storm, then falling into troubled dreams.  Bill lay at the tent mouth
for long hours, staring into the darkness.

In the morning the face of the wilderness was changed.  Every bough,
every spruce needle, every little grass blade had its load of snow.  The
streams were higher, a cold and terrible beauty dwelt in the forest.
The sky was still full of snow, dark flakes against the gray sky, and
the clouds were sullen and heavy.  Bill rose before daylight to build
the fire at the tent mouth.

This was no work for tenderfeet, striking a blaze in the snow-covered
grass.  But Bill knew the exact course to pursue.  He knew just how to
lay his kindling, to protect the blaze from the wind, to thrust a
fragment of burning candle under the shavings.  Soon the blaze was
dancing feebly in the darkness.  He piled on fuel, and with Vosper's aid
started breakfast preparations.

When the meal was nearly ready he knocked at the cabin door.  "Yes?"
Virginia called.

Bill hesitated and stammered.  He didn't exactly know whether or not he
was stepping outside the bounds of propriety.  "Would you like to have
me come in and build a fire for you to dress by?" he asked.

Virginia considered.  Few were the eyes, in her short days, that had
beheld her in bed; but to save her she could not think of a reason why
this kind offer should not be accepted.  She was down to the realities;
besides, the room was disagreeably chilly.  She snuggled down and drew
the blankets about her throat.

"Come ahead," she invited.

With scarcely a glance at her he entered and built a fire, and a few
minutes later he brought in her steaming breakfast.  The door was open
then, and she saw the snow without.

Her face was a little pale and her voice was strained when she spoke
again.  "What does it mean?" she asked.

"What?  The snow?"

"Yes.  Does it mean that winter has come?"

"No.  When winter does come, there never is any question about it--and
it really isn't due for another month.  If I thought it was real winter
I'd advise going back.  But I think it's just an early snowfall--to
melt away the first warm day."

"But isn't there danger--that by going farther we'd be snowed in?"

"Even if winter should close down, and we find the snow deepening to the
danger point, it wouldn't be too late to turn back then.  Of course
we've got to keep watch.  A week or so of steady snow might make these
mountains wholly impassable--the soft, wet snow of the Selkirks can't
even be manipulated with snowshoes to any advantage.  We'd simply have
to wait till the snow packed--which might not be for months.  But we
can go on a few days, at least, and ride safely back through two feet of
snow or more.  Of course--it depends on how badly you want to go on."

"I want to go--more than anything in the world."

"Then we will go on.  I've already sent Vosper to get the horses."

He turned to his work.  Lounsbury, his mood still unassuaged, called
from his bed.  "Bring me my breakfast here, Bronson," he commanded.
"Lord, I've had a rotten night.  This bed was like stones.  I can't
compliment you on your accommodations."

Bill brought him his breakfast, quietly and gravely.  "They're not my
accommodations," Bill replied.  "They're God Almighty's.  And I made it
just as comfortable for you as I can."

"I think you could have provided folding cots, anyway.  I've a great
mind to turn back."  He looked into the snow-filled sky.  "By George, I
will turn back.  There's no sense in going any farther in this wild
goose chase.  It's a death trip, that's all it is--going out in this
snow.  Tell Miss Tremont that we're starting back."

Bill stood straight and tall.  "I've already talked that over with Miss
Tremont," he answered quietly.  "She has given the order to go on."

The fleshy sacks under Lounsbury's eyes swelled with wrath.  "She has,
has she?  I think she's already told you that I'm financing this trip,
not her, and I've told you so too.  I'm doing the hiring and giving the
orders."

"In that case, it's your privilege to order me to turn back, and of
course I will obey.  You will owe me, however, for the full thirty
days."

For a moment a spectator would have eyed Lounsbury with apprehension; to
all appearances he had swollen past the danger mark and was about to
explode.  "You'd hold me up, would you--you--you--I'd like to see
you get it."

Bill eyed him long and grimly.  There was a miniature flake of fire in
each of his dark eyes and a curious little quiver, vaguely ominous, in
his muscles.  There was also a grim determination in the set of his
features.  "I'd get it all right," he assured him.  Then his voice
changed, friendly and soft again.  "But you'd better talk it over with
Miss Tremont, Mr. Lounsbury.  The snow is likely only temporary.  I'll
see that you turn back before it gets too deep for safety."

They folded the tent and packed the horses, and shortly after eight Bill
led the way deeper into the forest.  The snow-swept trees, the white
glades between, the long line of pack horses following in the wake of
the impassive form of Bill made a picture that Virginia could never
forget.  And ever the snow sifted down upon them, ever heavier on the
branches, ever deeper on the trail.

If the record of the wild things had been clear in yesterday's mud it
was an open book to-day.  Everywhere the trail was criss-crossed with
tracks.  In that first mile she saw signs of almost every kind of living
creature that dwelt in this northern realm.  Besides those of the larger
mammals, such as bear and moose and caribou, she saw the tracks of those
two savage hunters, the wolverine and lynx.  The latter is nothing more
nor less than an overgrown tomcat, except for a decorative tuft at his
ears, and like all his brethren soft as flower petals in his step; but
because he mews unpleasantly on the trail he has a worse reputation than
he deserves.  But not so with the wolverine.  Many unkind remarks have
been addressed to him, but no words have ever been invented--even the
marvelous combinations of expletives known to the trapper--properly to
describe him.  The little people of the forest--the birds in the
shrubbery and the squirrels in the trees and the little digging rodents
in the ground--fear him and hate him for his stealth and his cunning.
Even the cow caribou, remembering his way of leaping suddenly from
ambush upon her calf, dreads him for his ferocity and his strength; and
the trapper, finding his bait stolen from every trap on his line, calls
down curses upon his head.  But for all this unpopularity he continues
to prosper and increase.

Virginia saw where a marten and a squirrel had come to death grips in
the snow: the tracks and an ominous red stain told the story plainly.
The squirrel had attempted to seek safety in flight, but the marten was
even swifter in the tree limbs than the squirrel himself.  The little
animal had made a flying leap to the ground,--a small part of a second
too late.  The marten, Bill explained, were no longer numerous.  Fur
buyers all over the world were paying many times their weight in gold
for the glossy skins.

"Marten can catch squirrel, but fisher can catch marten," is an old
saying among the trappers; and as they rode Bill told her some of his
adventures with these latter, beautiful fur bearers.  The fisher, it
seemed, hunted every kind of living creature that he could master except
fish.  When the names of the animals were passed around, Bill said, the
otter and the fisher got their slips mixed, and the misnomer had
followed them through the centuries.  He showed her the tracks of the
ermine and, now that they were reaching the high altitudes, the trail of
the ptarmigan in the snow.  Mink, fox, and coyote had hunted each other
gayly through the drifts, and all three had hunted the snowshoe rabbit
and field mouse; a half-blind gopher had emerged from his den to view
the morning and had ducked quickly back at the sight of the snow; an owl
had snatched a Canada jay from her perch and had left a few clotted
feathers when the daylight had driven him from his feast.

The rigors of the day's travel were constantly increasing.  The wet snow
steaming on their sides sapped the vitality of the horses; to keep them
at a fair pace required a constant stream of nervous energy on the part
of their riders.  Virginia found it almost impossible to dodge the
snow-laden branches.  They would slap snow into her face, down her neck
and into her sleeves: it sifted into her eyes and hair and chilled her
hands until they ached.  The waterproof garments that she wore were
priceless after the first mile.

Lounsbury had an even more trying time.  His clothes soaked through at
once, and the piercing, biting cold of the northern fall went into him.
He was drenched, shivering, incoherent with wrath when they stopped for
noon.  He was not enough of a sportsman to take the consequences of his
arrogance in good spirit.  He didn't know the meaning of that ancient
law,--that men must take the responsibility of their own deeds and
with good spirit pay for their mistakes.  He didn't know how to smile at
the difficulties that confronted him.  That ancient code of
self-mastery, of taking the bitter medicine of life without complaint
clear to the instant of death was far beyond his grasp.  "You've made
everything just as hard for us as you could," he stormed at Bill.  "If I
ever get back alive I'll get your guide's license snatched away from you
if I never do another thing.  You don't know how to guide or pick a
trail.  You brought us out here to bleed us.  And you'll pay for it when
I get back."

Bill scarcely seemed to hear.  He went on with his work, but when the
simple meal was over and the packing half done, he made his answer.  He
drew a cloth sack from one of the packs, swung it on his shoulder, and
stepped over to Lounsbury's side.

"There's a couple of things I want to tell you," he began.  He spoke in
a quiet voice, so that Virginia could not hear.

Lounsbury looked up with a scowl.  "I don't know that I want to hear
them."

"I know you don't want to hear 'em, but you are going to hear 'em just
the same.  I want to tell you that first I'm doing everything any human
being can to make you more comfortable.  You can't take Morris chairs
along on a pack train.  You can't take electric stoves, and you can't
boss the weather.  It's your own fault you didn't provide yourself with
proper clothes.  And I'm tired of hearing you yelp."

Lounsbury tried to find some crushing remark in reply.  He only
sputtered.

"I can only stand so much, and then it makes me nervous," the guide went
on, in a matter-of-fact tone.  "I don't care what you do when you get
back to town.  I just don't want you pestering me any more with your
complaints.  I've stood a lot for Miss Tremont's sake--she probably
wouldn't like to see anything happen to you.  But just a few more little
remarks like you made before lunch, and you're apt to find yourself
standing in mud up to your knees in one of these mud holes--wrong end
up!  And that wouldn't be becoming at all for an American millionaire."

Lounsbury opened his mouth several times.  The same number of times he
shut it again.  "I see," he said at last, clearly.

"Good.  And here's some clothes of mine.  They're not handsome, and
they'll not fit, but they'll keep you dry."

He dumped the larger portion of his own waterproofs on the ground at
Lounsbury's feet.



VI

In the two days that followed, the pack train crossed the divide into
Clearwater.  From now on the little rivers, gathering headway as they
coursed down into the ravines, flowed into the Grizzly and from thence
into the great Yuga, far below.  The party had crossed ridge on ridge,
hill on hill that were a bewilderment to Virginia; they had gained the
high places where the marmots whistled shrill and clear at the mouth of
their rocky burrows and the caribou paced, white manes gleaming, in the
snow; they had seen a grizzly on the far-away slide rock; they had lost
their way and found it again; walked abrupt hillsides where the horses
could scarcely carry their packs, descended into mysterious, still
gullies, forded creeks and picked their way through treacherous marshes;
and made their noon camp on the very summit of a high ridge.  The snow
was deeper here--nearly eighteen inches--but the gray clouds were
breaking apart in the sky.  Apparently the storm was over, for the time
being at least.

They had trouble with slipping packs on the steep pitches of the
morning's march and made slow progress.  Bill glanced at his watch with
displeasure.  He rushed through the noon meal and cut their usual rest
short by a full half-hour.

"We're behind schedule," he explained, "and we've got a bad half-day
before us.  I was counting on making Gray Lake cabin to-night, and we've
got to hurry to do it."

"That is beyond Grizzly River," Lounsbury remarked.

Bill turned in some wonder.  He hadn't know that Lounsbury was so well
acquainted with the topography of the region.  Stranger still, the man
started at his glance, flushing nervously.  "I heard some one say that
Gray Lake was beyond Grizzly River," he explained lamely.  "By all means
make it if we can."

There was no possible deduction to make from the incident, so Bill
turned his thought to other matters.  "It's almost necessary--that we
make it," he said.  "There's no horse feed nor decent camp site between
here and there.  Besides, I don't like to put Miss Tremont up in a tent
to-night.  The best cabin in my whole string is at Gray Lake--a really
snug little place, with a floor and a stove.  Keep most of my trapping
supplies there.  If we can make the ford by dark, we'll run in there
easy, it's only a mile or so over a well-run moose trail."

"And you think we're entirely safe in going on?" the girl asked.

"As far as I can see.  I'm a little bit worried about Grizzly
River--I'm afraid it's up pretty high--but I'll try it first and see if
it's safe to ford.  The snow-storm has quit--I think we'll have nice
weather in a few days.  If it should begin again we could turn back and
make it through before the drifts got too deep to cross--that is, if
we didn't delay.  And besides, when we get across Grizzly River we're in
favorable country for your search.  We can put up at the cabin a few
days and make a thorough hunt for any sign of the missing man.  If the
weather will permit--and I believe it will--we can follow down the
river to the Yuga and make inquiries of the Indians."

His words heartened the party.  Even Lounsbury had begun to show some
eagerness; Vosper, flinching before the hard work of the trail, was
jubilant at the thought of a few days' rest.  They pushed on into the
snow-swept waste.

The clouds knit again overhead, but as yet the air was clear of snow.
The temperature, however, seemed steadily falling.  The breath of the
horses was a steam cloud; the potholes in the marsh were gray and
lifeless with ice.  And it seemed to Virginia that the wild things that
they passed were curiously restless and uneasy; the jays flew from tree
to tree with raucous cries, the waterfowl circled endlessly over the
gray lakes.

This impression grew more vivid as the hours passed; and there was an
elusive but sinister significance about it that engrossed her, but which
she couldn't name or understand.  She didn't mention the matter to Bill.
She couldn't have told why, for the plain reason that in her simplicity
she was not aware of her own virtues.  A sportswoman to the last hair,
she simply did not wish to depress him with her fears.  There was a
suspense, a strange hush and breathlessness in the air that depressed
her.

The same restlessness that she observed in the wild creatures began to
be noticeable in the horses.  Time after time they bolted from the
trail, and the efforts of all the party were needed to round them up
again.  Their morale--a high degree of which is as essential in a pack
train as in an army--was breaking before her eyes.  They seemed to
have no spirit to leap the logs and battle the quagmire.  They would try
to encircle the hills rather than attempt to climb them.

She wondered if the animals had a sixth sense.  She was a wide-awake,
observing girl, and throughout the trip she had noticed instances of a
forewarning instinct that she herself did not possess.  On each occasion
where the horses were more or less unmanageable she found, on
progressing farther, some dangerous obstacle to their progress,--a
steep hill or a treacherous marsh.  Could it be that they were
forewarned now?

Fatigue came quickly this afternoon, and by four o'clock she was longing
for food and rest.  She was cold, the snow had wet the sleeves and
throat of her undergarments, the control of her horse had cost her much
nervous strength.  The next hour dragged interminably.

But they were descending now, a steep grade to the river.  Twilight,
like some gray-draped ghost of a shepherdess whom Apollo had wronged and
who still shadowed his steps, gathered swiftly about them.

Bill urged his horse to a faster walk; tired as the animal was he
responded nobly.  Because Virginia's horse was likewise courageous he
kept pace, and the distance widened between the two of them and the
remainder of the pack train.  Lounsbury's shrill complaints and Vosper's
shouts could not urge their tired mounts to a faster gait.  The shadows
deepened in the tree aisles; the trail dimmed; the tree trunks faded in
the growing gloom.

"We won't be able to see our way at all in five minutes more," Virginia
told herself.

Yet five minutes passed, and then, and still the twilight lingered.  The
simple explanation was that her eyes gradually adjusted themselves to
the soft light.  And all at once the thickets divided and revealed the
river.

She didn't know why her breath suddenly caught in awe.  Some way the
scene before her eyes scarcely seemed real.  The thickets hid the stream
to the right and left, and all she could see was the stretch of gray
water immediately in front.  It was wide and fretful, and in the
half-light someway vague and ominous.  It had reached up about the
trunks of some of the young spruces on the river bank, and the little
trees trembled and bent, stirred by the waters; and they seemed like
drowning things dumbly signaling for help.  Because the farther bank was
almost lost in the dusk the breadth of the stream appeared interminable.
In reality it was a full ninety yards at the shallower head of the
rapids where the moose trail led down to the water.

The roar of the river had come so gradually to her ear that now she was
hardly aware of it; indeed the wilderness seemed weighted with silence.
But it was true that she heard a terrifying roar farther down the
stream.  Yet just beyond, perhaps a mile from the opposite bank, lay
camp and rest,--a comfortable cabin, warmth and food.  She hoped they
would hurry and make the crossing.

But Bill halted at the water's edge, and she rode up beside him.  He
seemed to be studying the currents.  The pack train caught up, and
Lounsbury's horse nudged at the flank of her own animal.  "Well?"
Lounsbury questioned.  "What's the delay?  We're in a hurry to get to
camp."

"It's pretty high," Bill replied softly.  "I've never tried to cross
when it was so high as this."  It was true.  The rains and the snow had
made the stream a torrent.

"But, man, we can't camp here.  No horse feed--no cabin.  We've got to
go on."

"Wait just a minute.  Time is precious, but we've got to think this
thing out.  We can put up a tent here, and cold as it is, make through
the night someway.  I'm not so sure that we hadn't ought to do it.
The river looks high, and it may be higher than it looks--it's hard
to tell in the twilight.  Ordinarily I cross at the head of the
rapids--water less than three feet deep.  But it isn't the depth that
counts--it's the swiftness.  If the river is much over three feet, a
horse simply can't keep his feet--and Death Canyon is just below.  To
be carried down into that torrent below means to die--two or three
parties, trying to ship furs down to the Yuga, have already lost their
lives in that very place.  The shallows jump right off into ten feet of
water.  It'll be tough to sleep out in this snow, but it's safer.  But
if you say the word we'll make the try.  At least I can ride in and see
how it goes--whether it's safe for you to come."

Lounsbury didn't halt to ask him by what justice he should take this
risk--why he should put his own life up as a pawn for their comfort
and safety.  Nor did Bill ask himself.  Such a thought did not even come
to him.  He was their guide, they were in his charge, and he followed
his own law.

"Try it, anyway," Lounsbury urged.

Bill spoke to his horse.  The animal still stood with lowered head.  For
one of the few times in his life Bill had to speak twice,--not
sharply, if anything more quietly than at first.  The the brave Mulvaney
headed into the stream.

As Bill rode into those gray and terrible waters, Virginia's first
instinct was to call him back.  The word was in her throat, her lips
parted, but for a single second she hesitated.  It was part of the creed
and teachings of the circle in which she moved to put small trust in
instinct.  By a false doctrine she had been taught that the deepest
impulses of her heart and soul were to be set aside before the mandates
of convention and society; that she must act a part rather than be
herself.  She remembered just in time that this man was not only an
employee, a lowly guide to whom she must not plead in personal appeal.
She had been taught to stifle her natural impulses, and she watched in
silence the water rise about the horse's knees.

But only for a second the silence endured.  The the reaction swept her
in a great flood.  The generous, kindly warmth of her heart surged
through her in one pulse of the blood; and all those frozen enemies of
her being--caste and pride of place and indifference--were scattered
in an instant.  "Oh, come back!" she cried.  "Bronson--Bill--come
back.  Oh, why did I ever let you go!"

For Bill did not look around.  Already the sound of the waters had
obscured the voices on the shore.  Again she called, unheard.  Then she
lashed her horse with the bridle rein.

The animal strode down into the water.  Vosper, his craven soul
whimpering within him, had fallen to the last place in the line, but
Lounsbury tried to seize her saddle as she pushed forward.

"Where are you going, you little fool?" he cried.  "Come back."

The girl turned her head.  Her face was white.  "You told him to go in,"
she replied.  "Now--it's the sporting thing--to follow him."

The water splashed about her horse's knees.  Lounsbury called again,
commandingly, but she didn't seem to hear.  She lifted her feet from the
stirrups as Bill had done before her, and the angry waters surged
higher.

Already she knew the strength of the river.  She felt its sweeping force
against the animal's frame: the brave Buster struggling hard to keep his
feet.  Ahead of her, a dim ghost in the half-light, Bill still rode on
toward the opposite shore.  And now--full halfway across--he was in
the full force of the current.

It was all too plain that his horse was battling for its life.  The
stream had risen higher than Bill had dreamed, and the waters beat
halfway at the animal's side.  He knew what fate awaited him if he
should lose his foothold.  Snorting, he threw all of his magnificent
strength against the current.

It was such a test as the animal had never been obliged to endure
before.  He gave all that he had of might and courage.  He crept forward
inch by inch, feeling his way, bracing against the current, nose close
to the water.  In animals, just the same as in men, there are those that
flinch and those that stand straight, the courageous and the cowardly,
the steadfast and the false,--and Mulvaney was of the true breed.
Besides, perhaps some of his rider's strength went into his thews and
sustained him.  Slowly the water dropped lower.  He was almost to
safety.

At that instant Bill glanced around, intending to warn his party not to
attempt the crossing.  He saw the dim shape of Virginia close behind
him, riding into the full strength of the current.

All color swept in an instant from his face, leaving it gray and ashen
as the twilight itself.  Icy horror, groping and ghastly, flooded his
veins as he saw that he was powerless to aid her.  Yet his mind worked
clear and sure, fast as lightning itself.  Even yet it was safer for her
to turn back than attempt to make the crossing.  He knew that Buster's
strength was not that of Mulvaney, and he couldn't live in the deepest,
swiftest part of the river that lay before her.

"Turn back," he said.  "Turn your horse, Virginia--easy as you can."

At the same instant he turned his own horse back into the full fury of
the torrent.  It had been his plan to camp alone on the other side of
the river, returning to the party in the better light of the morning;
but there was not an instant's hesitation in turning to battle it again.
His brave horse, obedient yet to his will, ventured once more into that
torrent of peril.  Virginia, cool and alert, pressed the bridle rein
against her horse's neck to turn him.

On the bank Lounsbury and Vosper gazed in fascinated terror.  Buster
wheeled, struggling to keep his feet.  Mulvaney pushed on, clear to the
deepest, wildest portion of the stream.  And then Virginia's horse
pitched forward into the wild waters.

Perhaps the animal had simply made a misstep, possibly an irregularity
in the river bottom had upset his balance.  The waters seemed to pounce
with merciless fury, and struck with all their power.

In the half-light it was impossible even for Bill to follow the
lightning events of the next second.  He saw the horse struggle,
flounder, then roll on his back from the force of the current.  It swept
him down as the wind sweeps a straw.  And he saw Virginia shake loose
from the saddle.

He had but an instant's glimpse of a white face in the gray water, of
hair that streamed; an instant's realization of a faint cry that the
waters obscured.  And then he sprang to her aid.

He could do nothing else.  When the soul of the man was made it was
given a certain strength, and certain basic laws were laid down by which
his life was to be governed.  That strength sustained him now, those
laws held him in bondage.  He could be false to neither.

He knew the terror of that gray whirlpool below.  He had every reason to
believe that by no possible effort of his could he save the girl; he
would only throw away his own life too.  The waters were icy cold:
swiftly would they draw the life-giving heat from their bodies.  Soaked
through, the cold of the night and the forest would be swift to claim
them if by any miracle they were able to struggle out of the river.  Yet
there was not an instant's delay.  The full sweep of his thoughts was
like a flash of lightning in the sky; he was out of the saddle almost
the instant that the waters engulfed her.  He sprang with his full
strength into the stream.

On the bank the two men saw it as in a dream: the horse's fall, the
upheaval of the water as the animal struggled, a flash of the girl's
face, and then Bill's leap.  They called out in their impotence, and
they gazed with horror-widened eyes.  But almost at once the drama was
hidden from them.  The twilight dropped its gray curtains between;
besides, the waters had swept their struggling figures down the stream
and out of their sight.

Already the river looked just the same.  Mulvaney, riderless, was
battling toward them through the torrent, but the stress and struggle of
the second before had been instantly cut short.  There was no spreading
ripples, no break in the gray surface of the stream to show where the
two had fallen.  The stream swept on, infinite, passionless for all its
tumult, unconquerable,--like the River of Death that takes within its
depths the souls of men, never to yield them, never to show whence they
have gone.

The storm recommenced, the wind wailed in the spruce tops, and the snow
sifted down into the gray waters.



VII

Bill Bronson had no realization of the full might of the stream until he
felt it around his body.  The waters were fed from the snowfields on the
dark peaks, and every nerve in his system seemed to snap and break in
the first shock of immersion.  But he quickly rallied, battling the
stream with mighty strokes.

He knew that if the rescue were accomplished, it would have to be soon.
The torrent grew ever wilder as it sped down the canyon: no human being
could live in the great, black whirlpool at its mouth.  Besides, the
cold would claim him soon.  Just a few little instants of struggle, and
then exhaustion, if indeed the icy waters did not paralyze his muscles.

He swam with his eyes open, full in the current, and with a really
incredible speed.  And by the mercy of the forest gods almost at once he
caught a glimpse of Virginia's dark tresses in the water.

She was ten feet to one side, toward the Gray Lake shore of the river,
and several feet in front.  The man seemed simply to leap through the
water.  And in an instant more his arm went about her.

"Give yourself to the current," he shouted.  "And hang on to me."

He knew this river.  They were just entering upon a stretch of water
dreaded of old by the rivermen that had sometimes plied down the stream
in their fur-laden canoes,--a place of jagged rocks and crags and
bowlders that were all but submerged by the waters.  To be hurled
against their sharp edges meant death, certain and speedily.  He knew
that his mortal strength couldn't avail against them.  But by yielding
to the current he thought that he might swing between them into the open
waters below.  His arm tightened about the girl's form.

He had not come an instant too soon.  Already she had given up.  A fair
swimmer, she had been powerless in the rapids.  She had not dreamed but
that the trail of her life was at an end.  She was cold and afraid and
alone, and she had been ready to yield.  But the sight of the guide's
strong body beside her had thrilled her with renewed hope.

Even in the shadow of death she was aware of the strong wrench of his
muscles as he swam, the saving might of his powerful frame.  She knew
that he was not afraid for himself, but only for her.  Even death, with
all its shadow and mystery, had not broken his spirit or bowed his head:
he faced it as he faced the wilderness and the whole dreadful battle of
life,--strongly, quietly, with never-faltering courage.  And the girl
found herself partaking of his own strength.

Up to now she had not entered into comradeship with this man.  But had
held herself on a different plane.  But he was a comrade now; no matter
the outcome, even if they should find the inhospitable Death at the end
of their trial, this relationship could never be destroyed.  They fought
the same fight, in the same shadow.  Now she would not have to enter the
dark gates of Eternity alone and afraid.  Here was a comrade; she knew
the truth at the first touch of his arm.  He could buoy up her spirit
with his own.

"If I let go of you, can you hang on to my shoulder?" he asked her.

"Yes----"

He tried to look into her face, to see if she spoke the truth.  But the
shadows were almost impenetrable now, and the air was choked with
falling snow.

"Then put your hand on my shoulder.  I can't make progress the way I'm
holding you now.  I'll try to work in to the nearest shore."

She seized his shoulder, but nearly lost her grasp in a channel of swift
water.  Her fingers locked in the cloth of his shirt.  And he began, a
little at a time, to cross the sixty feet of wild water between them and
the shore.

He had never been put to a greater test.  Every ounce of his strength
was needed.  The tendency of the stream was to carry him into the center
of the current, he was heavily clothed and shod, and the girl,
exhausted, was scarcely able to give aid at all.  More than once he felt
himself weakening.  Once a sharp pain, keen as a knife wound, smote his
thigh, and he was shaken with despair at the thought that swimmer's
cramps--dreaded by all men who know the water--were about to put an
end to the struggle.  In the icy depths his bodily heat was flowing from
him in a frightfully rapid stream.

Closer and closer he swam, and at last only thirty feet of fast, deep
water stretched between.  But it seemed wholly impossible to make this
last stretch.  The sharp pain stabbed him again, and it seemed to him
that his right leg only half responded to the command of his nerves.  In
a moment more they would be flung again into the cascades.

"I'm afraid I can't make it," he said, too softly for Virginia to hear.
He wrenched once more toward the shore.

But the river gods were merciful, after all.  A jack pine had fallen on
the shore, struck down by a dead tree that had fallen beyond, and its
green spire, still clothed with needles, lay half-submerged, forty feet
out into the stream.  Bill's arm encountered it, then snatched at it in
a final, spasmodic impulse of his muscles.  And his grip held fast.

For an instant they were tossed like straws in the water, but gradually
he strengthened his grip.  He caught a branch with his free hand, then
slowly pulled up on it.  "Hang on," he breathed.  "Only a moment more."

He drew himself and the girl up on the slender trunk, then crawled along
it toward the shore.  Now they were half out of the water.  And in a
moment later they both felt the river bottom against their knees.

He drew her to the bank, staggered and fell, and for a moment both of
them lay lifeless to the soft caress of the snow.  But Bill did not dare
lose consciousness.  He was fully aware that the fight was only half
won.  And despair swept the girl when her clear thought returned to tell
her they had emerged upon the opposite shore from the party, and that
they were drenched through and lost in the night and storm,--endless,
weary paces from warmth and shelter.

Before the thought had gone fully home she saw that Bill was on his
feet.  The twilight had all but yielded to the darkness, yet she saw
that he still stood straight and strong.  It was not that he had already
recovered from the desperate battle in the river.  Strong as he was, for
himself he had only one desire--to lie still and rest and let the
terrible cold take its toll.  But he was the guide, the forester, and
the girl's life was in his care.

"Get off your clothes," he commanded.  "All of them--the darkness
hides you--and I'll wring 'em out.  If I don't you can't live to get
to the cabin.  Your stockings first."

The thought of disobedience did not even come to her.  He was fighting
for her life; no other issue remained.

"Rub your skin all over with your hands," he went on, "and keep moving.
Above all things keep the blood going in your veins.  Rub as hard as you
can--I can't make a fire here--with no ax--in the snow."

Already she had tossed him her drenched stockings, and he was wringing
them in his strong hands.  She rubbed her legs dry with her palms, and
put the stockings back on.  Then she drew off her coats and outing suit,
and he wrung them as dry as he could.  Then quickly she dressed again.

"Now--fast as you can walk toward the cabin."

He was not sure that he could find it in the darkness.  He hoped to
encounter the moose trail where it left the ford; beyond that he had to
rely on his woodsman's instincts.  He was soaked through and exhausted
and he knew from the strange numbness of his body that he was slowly
being chilled to death.  It was a test of his own might and endurance
against the cruel elements and a power beyond mere physical strength
came to his aid.

They forced their way through the evergreen thickets of the river bank,
walking up the stream toward the ford.  He broke through the brushy
barriers with the might of his body; he made a trail for her in the
snow.  The darkness deepened around them.  The snow fell ever heavier,
and the winds soughed in the tree tops.

After the first half-mile all consciousness of effort was gone from the
girl.  She seemed to move from a will beyond her own, one step after
another over that terrible trail.  She lost all sense of time, almost of
identity.  Strange figures, only for such eyes as might see in the
darkness, they fought their way on through the drifts.

But they conquered at last.  Partly by the feel of the snow under his
feet, partly by his woodsman's instincts, but mostly because the forest
gods were merciful, Bill kept to the moose trail that led from the ford
to the cabin.  And the man was swaying, drunkenly, when he reached the
door.

His cold hands could scarcely draw out the rusted file that acted as a
brace for the chain.  Yet his voice was quiet and steady when he spoke.

"There are blankets in there, plenty of 'em," he told her.  "It's
my main supply cabin.  Spread some of them out and take off your
clothes--all of 'em--and get between them.  I'll build a fire as fast
as I can."

She turned to obey.  She heard him take down an ax that had been left
hanging on the cabin walls and heard his step in the snow as he began to
cut into kindling some of the pieces of cordwood that were heaped
outside the door.  She undressed quickly, then lay shivering between the
warm, heavy blankets.

In a moment the man faltered in, his arms heavy with wood.  She heard
him fumbling back of the little stove, then a match gleamed in the
gloom.  She had never seen such a face as this before her now.  Its
lines were deep and incredibly dark: utter fatigue was inscribed upon
the drawn features and in the dark, dull eyes.  She was suddenly shaken
with horror at the thought that perhaps she was looking upon the first
shadow of death itself.

He had cut the kindling with his knife, inserted the candle end, and a
little blaze danced up.  She watched him feed the fire with strange,
heavy motions.  He took a pan down from the wall, then went out into the
darkness.

Haunted by fears, it seemed to her she waited endless hours for him to
return again.  When he came the pan was filled with water from a little
stream that flowed behind the cabin.  He put it on the stove to heat.

She dozed off, then wakened to find him sitting on the edge of her bed,
holding a cup of some steaming liquid.  Vaguely she noticed that he had
taken off his wet clothes and had put on a worn overcoat that had been
hanging back of the stove, wrapping two thick blankets over this.  He
put his left arm behind her and lifted her up, then fed her spoonfuls of
the hot liquid.  She didn't know what it was, other than it contained
whisky.

"Take some of it yourself," she told him at last.

He shook his head and smiled,--a wistful yet manly smile that almost
brought tears to her eyes.  That smile was the last thing that she
remembered.  The warm, kindly liquor stole through her veins, and she
dropped into heavy slumber.

* * * * *

In the stress of that first hour after the disaster of the river,
Lounsbury and Vosper had a chance to test the steel of which they were
made.  This was the time for inner strength, and courage, and beyond all
things else, for self-discipline.  But only the forest creatures, such
little folk as watch with beady eyes from the coverts all the drama of
the wilderness, beheld how they stood that test.

For the first few seconds Lounsbury sat upon his horse and simply stared
in mute horror.  Then he half-climbed, half-fell from the saddle, and
followed by Vosper, started running down the river bank.  Immediately he
lost sight of Virginia and Bill.  Almost at once thereafter the cold and
the darkness got into his spirit and appalled him.

"They're lost, they're lost," he cried.  "There's not a chance on earth
to get 'em out."

The branches tripped him and he fell sprawling in the snow.  He got up
and hastened on.  Vosper, his thews turning to mushroom stalks within
him, could only follow, swearing hoarsely.  At each break of the trees
they would clamber down to the water's edge and look over the tumultuous
wastes, and each time the twilight was deeper, the snow flurries
heavier.  And soon they came to a steep bank which they could not
descend.

"It's a death trip.  I knew it was a death trip," Lounsbury moaned.
"And what's the use of going farther.  They haven't a chance on earth."

They did, however, push on a short distance down the river.  Lounsbury
was of the opinion it was very far indeed.  In reality it was not two
hundred yards in all.  And they halted once more to stare with
frightened eyes at the stream.

"It ain't the first this river's taken," Vosper told him.  "And they
never even found their bodies."

"And we won't find these, now," Lounsbury replied.  They waited a little
while in silence, trying to pierce the shadows.  "What do you suppose
we'd better do?" he questioned.

"I don't know.  What can we do?"

"There's no chance of saving them.  They're gone already.  No swimmer
could live in that stream.  Why did we ever come--it was a wild-goose
chase at best.  If they did get out they'd be lost--and couldn't find
their way.  It seems to me the wisest thing for us to do is to go
back--and build a big fire--so they can find their way in if they did
get out."

It was a worthy suggestion!  The voice of cowardice that had been
speaking in Lounsbury's craven soul had found expression in words at
last.  He was frightened by the storm and the darkness, and he was cold
and tired, and a beacon light for the two wanderers in the storm was
only a subterfuge whereby he might justify their return to camp.  The
understrapper understood, but he didn't disagree.  They were two of a
kind.

It was not that they did not know their rightful course.  Both were
fully aware that such a fire as they could build could only gleam a few
yards through the heavy spruce thicket.  They knew that braver men would
keep watch over that dreadful river for half the night at least, calling
and searching, ready to give aid in the feeble hope that the two
exhausted swimmers might come ashore.

"Sure thing," Vosper agreed.  "It'll be hard to make a good fire in the
snow, and we can't build one at all if them pack horses has got away by
now."

"You mean--we'd die?" Lounsbury's eyes protruded.

"The ax is in the pack.  We wouldn't have a chance."

Lounsbury turned abruptly, scarcely able to refrain from running.  The
pack horses, however, hadn't left their tracks.  And now the brave
Mulvaney had gained the shore and was standing motionless, gazing out
over the troubled waters.  No man might guess the substance of his
thoughts.  He scarcely glanced at the two men.

They unpacked the animals, and by scraping off the snow and by the aid
of the keen ax and a candle-stub soon lighted a fire.  To satisfy the
feeble voice of his conscience Lounsbury himself cut wood to make it
blaze high.  They made their coffee and cooked an abundant meal.

They stretched the tent in the evergreen thicket, and after supper they
sat in its mouth in the glow of the fire.  Its crackle drowned out the
voices of the wilderness about them,--such accusations as the Red Gods
pour out upon the unworthy.  And for all their shelter they were
wretched and terrified, crushed by the might of the wilderness about
them,--futile things that were the scorn of even the beasts.

"Of course we'll never find the bodies," Lounsbury suggested at last.

"No chance, that I can see.  The winter's come to stay.  We won't be
able to get any men from Bradleyburg to help us look for 'em.  They
couldn't get through the snow."

"You think--" Lounsbury's voice wavered, "you think--we can get back
all right ourselves?"

"Sure.  That is, if we start first thing to-morrow.  There's a clear
trail through the snow most of the way--our own trail, comin' out.
But it will be hard goin' and not safe to wait."

"Then I suppose--the horses will be sent down below, because of the
snow.  That's another reason why they can't even search for the bodies."

"Yes.  Of course they may float down to the Yuga and be seen somewhere
by the Indians.  But not much chance."

They lighted their pipes, and the horror of the tragedy began slowly to
pass from them.  The blinding snow and the cold and their own discomfort
occupied all their thoughts.  There was only one ray of light,--that
in the morning they could turn back out of the terrible wilderness, down
toward the cities of men.

They didn't try to sleep.  The snow and the cold and the shrieking wind
made rest an impossibility.  They did doze, however, between times that
they rose to cut more fuel for the fire.  The hours seemed endless.

Darkness still lay over the river when they went again to their toil.
Lounsbury, himself offered to cook breakfast and tried to convince
himself the act entitled him to praise.  In reality, he was only
impatient to hasten their departure.  Vosper packed the hungry horses,
slyly depositing portions of their supplies and equipment in the
evergreen thickets to lighten his own work.  He further lightened the
packs by putting a load on Mulvaney.  And they climbed down to the
water's edge to glance once more at the turbulent stream.

"No use of waiting any more," Lounsbury said at last.

"Of course not.  Get on your horse."  Then they rode away, these
two worthy men, back toward the settlements.  Some of the pack
horses--particularly the yellow Baldy and his kind--moved eagerly when
they saw that their masters had changed directions.  But Vosper had to
urge Mulvaney on with oaths and blows.



VIII

In Virginia's first moment of wakening she could not distinguish
realities from dreams.  All the experiences of the night before seemed
for the moment only the adventures of a nightmare.  But disillusionment
came quickly.  She opened her eyes to view the cabin walls, and the full
dreadfulness of her situation swept her in an instant.

Her tears came first.  She couldn't restrain them, and they were simply
the natural expression of her fear and her loneliness and her distress.
For long moments she sobbed bitterly, yet softly as she could.  But
Virginia was of good metal, and in the past few days she had acquired a
certain measure of self-discipline.  She began to struggle with her
tears.  They would waken Bill, she thought--and she had not forgotten
his bravery and his toil of the night before.  She conquered them at
last, and, miserable and sick of heart, tried to go back to sleep.

Her muscles pained her, her throat was raw from the water, and when she
tried to make herself comfortable her limbs were stiff and aching.  But
she knew she had to look her position in the face.  She turned, pains
shooting through her frame, and gazed about her.

The cabin, she could see, was rather larger than any of those in which
they had camped on their journey.  It was well-chinked and sturdy, and
even had the luxury of a window.  For the moment she didn't see Bill at
all.  She wondered if he had gone out.  Then, moving nearer to the edge
of her cot, she looked over intending to locate the clothes she had
taken off the night before.  Then she saw him, stretched on the floor in
the farthest corner of the room.

He gave the impression of having dropped with exhaustion and fallen to
sleep where he lay.  She could see that he still wore the tattered
overcoat he had found hanging on the wall, and the two blankets were
still wrapped about him.  He was paying for his magnificent efforts of
the night before.  Morning was vivid and full at the window, but he
still lay in heavy slumber.

She resolved not to call him; and in spite of her own misery, her lips
curled in a half-smile.  She was vaguely touched; someway the sight of
this strong forester, lying so helpless and exhausted in sleep, went
straight to some buried instinct within her and found a tenderness, a
sweet graciousness that had not in her past life manifested itself too
often.

But the tenderness was supplanted by a wave of icy terror.  She was a
woman, and the thought suddenly came to her that she was wholly in this
man's power, naked except for the blankets around her, unarmed and
helpless and lost in the forest depths.  What did she know of him?  He
had been the soul of respect heretofore, but now--with her uncle on
the other side of the river--; but she checked herself with a revulsion
of feeling.  The strength that had saved her life would save him against
himself.  They would find a way to get out to-day; and she thought that
this, at least, she need not fear.

He had been busy before he slept.  His clothes and hers were hung on
nails back of the little stove to dry.  He had cut fresh wood, piling it
behind the stove.  She guessed that he had intended to keep the fire
burning the whole night, but sleep had claimed him and disarranged his
plans.

His next thought was of supplies.  The simple matter of food and warmth
is the first issue in the wilderness; already she had learned this
lesson.  Her eyes glanced about the walls.  There were two or three
sacks, perhaps filled with provisions, hanging from the ceiling, safely
out of the reach of the omnivorous pack-rats that often wreak such havoc
in unoccupied cabins.  But further than this the place seemed bare of
food.

Blankets were in plenty; there were a few kitchen utensils hanging back
of the stove, and some sort of an ancient rifle lay across a pair of
deer horns.  Whether or not there were any cartridges for this latter
article she could not say.  Strangest of all, a small and battered
phonograph, evidently packed with difficulty into the hills, and a small
stack of records sat on the crude, wooden table.  Evidently a real and
fervent love of music had not been omitted from Bill's make-up.

Then Bill stirred in his sleep.  She lay still, watching.  She saw his
eyes open.  And his first glance was toward her.

He flashed her a smile, and she tried pitifully to answer it.  "How are
you?" he asked.

"Awfully lame and sore and tired.  Maybe I'll be better soon.  And
you----?"

"A little stiff, not much.  I'm hard to damage, Miss Tremont.  I've seen
too much of hardship.  But I've overslept--and there isn't another
second to be lost.  I've got to dress and go and locate Vosper and
Lounsbury."

"I suppose you'd better--right away.  They'll be terribly
distressed--thinking we're drowned."  She turned her back to him,
without nonsense or embarrassment, and he started to dress.  She
didn't see the slow smile, half-sardonic, that was on his lips.

"I'm not worrying about their distress," he told her.  "I only want to
be sure and catch them before they give us up for lost--and turn back.
I can never forgive myself for failing to waken.  It was just that I was
so tired----"

"I won't let you blame yourself for that," the girl replied, slowly but
earnestly.  "Besides, Uncle Kenly won't go away for two or three days at
least.  He's been my guardian--I'm his ward--and I'm sure he'll make
every effort to learn what happened to us."

"I suppose you're right.  You know whether or not you can trust
Lounsbury.  I only know--that I can't trust Vosper."

"They'll be waiting for us, don't fear for that," the girl went on.  She
tried to put all the assurance she could into her tone.  "But how can we
get across?"

"That remains to be seen.  If they're there to help, with the horses, we
might find a way."  The man finished dressing, then turned to go.  "I'm
sorry I can't even take time to light your fire.  You must stay in bed,
anyway--all day."

He left hurriedly, and as the door opened the wind blew a handful of
snow in upon her.  The snow had deepened during the night, and fall was
heavier than ever.  Shivering with cold and aching in every muscle, she
got up and put on her underclothing.  It was almost dry already.  Then,
wholly miserable and dejected, she lay down again between her blankets,
waiting for Bill's return.  And his step was heavy and slow on the
threshold when he came.

She couldn't interpret the expression on his face when she saw him in
the doorway.  He was curiously sober and intent, perhaps even a little
pale.  "Go to sleep, Miss Tremont," he advised.  "I'll make a fire for
breakfast."

He bent to prepare kindling.  The girl swallowed painfully, but shaken
with dread shaped her question at last.  "What--what did you find
out?"

He looked squarely into her eyes.  "Nothing that you'll want to hear,
Miss Tremont," he told her soberly.  "I went to the river bank and
looked across.  They--they----"

"They are gone?" the girl cried.

"They've pulled freight.  I could see the smoke of their fire--it was
just about out.  Not a horse in sight, or a man.  There's no chance for
a mistake, I'm afraid.  I called and called, but no one answered."

The tears rushed to the girl's eyes, but she fought them back.  There
was an instant of strained silence.  "And what does it mean?"

"I don't know.  We'll get out someway----"

"Tell me the truth, Bill," the girl suddenly urged.  "I can stand it.  I
will stand it--don't be afraid to tell me."

The man looked down at her in infinite compassion.  "Poor little girl,"
he said.  "What do you want to know?"

She didn't resent the words.  She only felt speechlessly grateful and
someway comforted,--as a baby girl might feel in her father's arms.

"Does it mean--that we've lost, after all?"

"Our lives?  Not at all."  She read in his face that this, at least, was
the truth.  "I'll tell you, Miss Tremont, just what I think it means.
If we were on the other side of the river, and we had horses, we could
push through and get out--easy enough.  But we haven't got horses--even
Buster is drowned--and it would be a hard fight to carry supplies
and blankets on our backs, for the long hike down into Bradleyburg.  It
would likely be too much for you.  Besides, the river lays between.
In time we might go down to quieter waters and build a raft--out of
logs--but the snow's coming thicker all the time.  Before we could get
it done and get across, we couldn't mush out--for the snows have come
to stay and we haven't got snowshoes.  We could rig up some kind of
snowshoes, I suppose, but until the snow packs we couldn't make it into
town.  It's too long a way and too cold.  In soft snow even a strong man
can only go a little way--you sink a foot and have to lift a load of
snow with every step.  Every way we look there's a block.  We're like
birds, caught in a cage."

"But won't men--come to look for us?"

"I've been thinking about that.  Miss Tremont, they won't come till
spring, and then they'll likely only half look for us.  I know this
northern country.  Death is too common a thing to cause much stir.
Lounsbury will tell them we are drowned--no one will believe we could
have gotten out of the canyon, dressed like we were and on a night like
last night.  If they thought we were alive and suffering, the whole male
population would take a search party and come to our aid.  Instead they
know--or rather, they think they know--that we're dead.  There won't
be any horses, it will be a fool's errand, and mushing through those
feet of soft snow is a job they won't undertake."

"But the river will freeze soon."

"Yes.  Even this cataract freezes, but it likely won't be safe to cross
for some weeks--maybe clear into January or February.  That depends on
the weather.  You see, Miss Tremont, we don't have the awful low
temperatures early in the winter they get further east and north.  We're
on the wet side of the mountains.  But we do get the snow, week after
week of it when you simply can't travel, and plenty of thirty and forty,
sometimes more, below zero.  But the river will freeze if we give it
time.  And the snow will pack and crust late in the winter.  And then,
in those clear, cold days, we can make a sled and mush out."

"And it means--we're tied up here for weeks--and maybe months?"

"That's it.  Just as sure as if we had iron chains around our ankles."

Then the girl's tears flowed again, unchecked.  Bill stood beside her,
his shoulders drooping, but in no situation of his life had he ever felt
more helpless, more incapable of aid.  "Don't cry," he pleaded.  "Don't
cry, Miss Tremont.  I'll take care of you.  Don't you know I will?"

Her grief rent him to the depths, but there was nothing he could say or
do.  He drew the blankets higher about her.

"Perhaps you can get some more sleep," he urged.  "Your body's torn to
pieces, of course."

Fearful and lonely and miserable, the girl cried herself to sleep.  Bill
sat beside her a long time, and the snow sifted down in the forest and
the silence lay over the land.  He left her at last, and for a while was
busy among the supplies that he found on a shelf behind the stove.  And
she wakened to find him bending over her.

His face was anxious and his eyes gentle as a woman's.  "Do you think
you can eat?" he asked.  "I've warmed up soup--and I've got coffee,
too."

He had put the liquids in cups and had drawn the little table beside her
bed.  She shook her head, but she softened at the swift look of
disappointment in his face.  "I'll take some coffee," she told him.

He held the cup for her, and she drank a little of the bracing liquid.
Then she pushed the cup away.

He waited beside a moment, curiously anxious.  "Give me your hand," he
said.

"Why?"

Cold was her voice, and cold the expression on her face.  It seemed to
her that the lines of Bill's face deepened, and his dark eyes grew
stern.  But in a moment the expression passed, and she knew she had
wounded him.  "Why do you think?  I want to test your pulse."

He had seen that she was flushed, and he was in deadly fear that the
plunge into the cold waters had worked an organic injury.  He took her
soft, slender wrist in his hand, and she felt the pressure of his little
finger against her pulsing arteries.  Then she saw the dark features
light up.

"You haven't any fever," he told her joyfully.  "You're just used up
from the experience.  And God knows I can't blame you.  Go to sleep
again if you like."

She dozed off again, and for a little while he was busy outside the
cabin, cutting fuel for the night's blaze.  He stole in once to look at
her and then turned again down the moose trail to the river.  He had
been certain before that the others had gone; now he only wanted to make
sure.

The long afternoon was at an end when he returned.  He had gazed across
the gray waters and called again and again, but except for the echo of
his shout, the wilderness silence had been inviolate.  Virginia was
awake, but still miserable and dejected in her blankets.  They talked a
little, softly and quietly, about their chances, but he saw that she was
not yet in a frame of mind to look the situation squarely in the face.
Then he cooked the last meal of the day.

"I don't want anything," she told him, when again he proffered food.  "I
only want to die.  I wish I had died--in the river last night.  Months
and months--in these awful woods and this awful cabin--and nothing
but death in the end."

He did not condemn her for the utterance, even in his thoughts.  He was
imaginative enough to understand her despair and sympathize with it.  He
remembered the sheltered life she had always lived.  Besides, she was
his goddess; he could only humble himself before her.

"But I won't let you die, Miss Tremont.  I'll care for you.  You won't
even have to lift your hand, if you don't want to.  You'll be happier,
though, if you do; it would break some of the monotony.  There's a
little old phonograph on the stand, and some old magazines under your
cot.  The weeks will pass someway.  And I promise this."  He paused, and
his face was gray as ashes.  "I won't impose--any more of my company
upon you--than you wish."

The response was instantaneous.  The girl's heart warmed; then she
flashed him a smile of sympathy and understanding.  "Forgive me," she
said.  "I'll try to be brave.  I'll try to stiffen up.  I know you'll do
everything you can to get me out.  You're so good to me--so kind.  And
now--I only want to go to sleep."

He watched her, standing by her bed.  After all, sleep was the best
thing for her--to knit her torn nerves and mend her tired body.
Besides, the wilderness night was falling.  He could see it already,
gray against the window pane.  The first day of their exile was gone.

"I'll be all right in the morning," she told him sleepily.  "And maybe
it's for the best--after all.  At least--it gives you a better
chance to find Harold--and bring him back to me."

Bill nodded, but he didn't trust himself to speak.



IX

There is a certain capacity in young and sturdy human beings for
accepting the inevitable.  When Virginia wakened the next morning, her
physical distress was largely past and she was in a much better frame of
mind.  She pulled herself together, stiffened her young spine, and
prepared to make the best of a deplorable situation.  She had come up
here to find her lost beloved, and she wasn't defeated yet.  This very
development might bring success.

She realized that the fact that she had thus found a measure of
compensation for the disaster would have been largely unintelligible to
most of the girls of her class,--the girls she knew in the circle in
which she had moved.  It was not the accustomed thing to remain faithful
to a fiance who had been silent an missing for six years, or to seek him
in the dreary spaces of the North.  The matter got down to the simple
fact that these girls were of a different breed.  Culture and
sophistication and caste had never destroyed an intensity and depths of
elemental passion that might have been native to these very wildernesses
in which she was imprisoned.  Cool an self-restrained to the finger
tips, she knew the full meaning of fidelity.  Orphaned almost in
babyhood, she had lived a lonely life: this girlhood love affair of hers
had been her single, great adventure.  She had been sure that her lover
still lived when all her friends had judged him dead.  Months and years
she had dreamed of finding him, of sheltering again in his arms, and
proving to all the world that her faith was justified.

Bill was already up, and the room warmed from the fire.  The noise of
his ax blows had wakened her.  And she took advantage of his absence to
dress.

"You up?" he cried in delight when she entered.  His arms were heaped
with wood.  "I'm not sure that you hadn't ought to rest another day.
How do you feel?"

"As good as ever, as far as I can tell.  And pretty well ashamed of
being such a baby yesterday."

But his smile told her that he held no resentment.  "I trust you'll be
able to eat to-day?"

"Eat?  Bill, I am famished.  But first"--and her face grew instantly
sober--"I want to know just how we stand, and what our chances are.  I
remember what you told me yesterday about getting out.  But we can't
live here on nothing.  What about supplies?"

"That's what we've got to see about right now.  It's an important
matter, true enough.  For a certain very good reason I couldn't make a
real investigation till you got up.  You'll see why in a minute.  Well,
we have a gun at least; you can see it behind the stove.  It's an old
thing, but it will still shoot.  And we've got at least one box of
shells for it--and not one of them must be wasted.  They mean our meat
supply.  I'm still wearing my pistol, and I've got two boxes of shells
for it in my pocket--it's a small caliber, and there's fifty in each
box.  There are plenty of blankets and cooking utensils, magazines for
idle hours and, Heaven bless us, an old and battered phonograph on the
table.  Don't scorn it--anything that has to be packed on a horse this
far mustn't be scorned.  We can have music with our meals, if we like."
He stopped and smiled.

"There's a cake of soap on the shelf," he went on, after the gorgeous
fact of the phonograph had time to sink home, "and another among the
supplies--but I'm afraid cold cream and toilet water are lacking.  I
don't even know how you'll comb your hair."

The girl smiled--really with happiness now--and fished in the
pockets of a great slicker coat she had worn the night of the disaster.
She produced a little white roll, and with the high glee opened it for
him to see.  Wrapped in a miniature face towel was her comb, a small
brush, and a toothbrush!

They laughed with delight over the find.  "But no mirror?" the man said
solemnly.

"No.  I won't be able to see how I look for weeks--and that's
terrible.  But where are your food supplies?  I see those sacks hanging
from the ceiling--but they certainly haven't enough to keep us alive.
And there's nothing else that I can see."

"We'd have a hard time, if we had to depend on the contents of those
sacks.  Miss Tremont, can you cook?"

"Cook?  Good Heavens--I never have.  But I can learn, I suppose."

"You'd better learn.  It will help pass away the time.  I'll be busy
getting meat and keeping the fires high, among other things."

"But what is there to cook?"

He walked, with some triumph, to the bunk on which she had slept the
night before, and lifting it up, revealed a great box beneath.  She
understood, now, why he had not been able to make a previous
investigation.  They danced with joy at its contents,--bags of rice
and beans, dried apples, marmalade and canned goods, enough for some
weeks at least.  Best of all, from Bill's point of view, there were a
few aged and ripened plugs of tobacco, for cutting up for his pipe.

"The one thing we haven't got is meat," Bill told her, "except a little
jerky; but there's plenty of that in the woods if we can just find it.
And I don't intend to delay about that.  If the snow gets much deeper,
we'd have to have snowshoes to hunt at all."

"You mean--to go hunting to-day?"

"As soon as we can stir up a meal.  How would pancakes taste?"

"Glorious!  I'll cook breakfast myself."

"Not breakfast--lunch," he corrected.  "It's already about noon.  But
it would be very nice if you'd do the cooking while I cut the night's
fuel.  You know how--dilute a little canned milk, and a little baking
powder, stir in your flour--and it's wheat mixed with rye, and bully
flour for flapjacks--and fry 'em thick.  Set water to boil and we'll
have coffee, too."

They went to their respective tasks.  And the pancakes and coffee, when
at last they were steaming on the little, crude board-table, were really
a very creditable effort.  They were thick and rich as befits wilderness
flapjacks, but covered with syrup they slid easily down the throat.
Bill consumed three of them, full skillet size, and smacked his lips
over the coffee.  Virginia managed two herself.

He helped her wash the scanty dishes, then prepared for the hunt.  "Do
you want to come?" he asked.  "It's a cool, raw day.  You'll be more
comfortable here."

"Do you think I'd stay here?" she demanded.

She didn't attempt to analyze her feelings.  She only knew that this
cabin, lost in the winter forest, would be a bleak and unhappy place to
endure alone.  The storm and the snow-swept marshes, with Bill beside
her, were infinitely preferable to the haunting fear and loneliness of
solitude.  The change in her attitude toward him had been complete.

Dressing warmly, they ventured out into the snowy wastes.  The storm had
neither heightened nor decreased.  The snow still sifted down steadily,
with a relentlessness that was someway dreadful to the spirit.  The
drifts were about their knees by now; and the mere effort of walking was
a serious business.  The winter silence lay deep over the wilderness.

It was a curious thing not to hear the rustle of a branch, the crack of
a twig; only the muffled sound of their footsteps in the snow.  Bill
walked in front, breaking trail.  He carried the ancient rifle ready in
his hands.

The truth was that Bill did not wish to overlook any possible chance for
game.  Each hour traveling was more difficult, the snow encroached
higher, and soon he could not hunt at all without snowshoes.  It was not
good for their spirits or their bodies to try to live without meat in
the long snowshoe-making process.  This was no realm for vegetarians.
The readily assimilated animal flesh was essential to keep their tissues
strong.

Fortune had not been particularly kind so far on this trip--at least
from Virginia's point of view--but he did earnestly hope that they
might run into game at once.  Later the moose would go to their winter
feeding grounds, far down the heights.  Every day they hunted, their
chance of procuring meat was less.

He led her over the ridge to the marshy shores of Gray Lake,--a dismal
body of water over which the waterfowl circled endlessly and the loons
shrieked their maniacal cries.  He noticed, with some apprehension, that
many sea birds had taken to the lake for refuge,--gulls and their
fellows.  This fact meant to the woodsman that great storms were raging
at sea, and they themselves would soon feel the lash of them.  They
waited in the shadow of the spruce.

"Don't make any needless motions," he cautioned, "and don't speak aloud.
They've got eyes and ears like hawks."

It was not easy to stand still, in the snow and the cold, waiting for
game to appear.  Virginia was uncomfortable within half an hour,
shivering and tired.  In an hour the cold had gripped her; her hands
were lifeless, her toes ached.  Yet she stood motionless, uncomplaining.

It was a long wait that they had beside the lake.  The short,
snow-darkened afternoon had not much longer to last.  Bill began to be
discouraged; he knew that for the girl's sake he must leave his watch.
He waited a few minutes more.

Then the girl felt his hand on her arm.  "Be still," he whispered.
"Here he comes."

They were both staring in the same directions, but at first Virginia
could not see the game.  Her eyes were not yet trained to these wintry
forests.  It was a strange fact, however, that the announcement was like
a hot stimulant in her blood.  The sense of cold and fatigue left her in
an instant.  And soon she made out a black form on the far side of the
lake.

"He's coming toward us," the man whispered.

Although she had never seen such an animal before, at once she
recognized its kind.  The spreading horns, the great frame, the long,
grotesque nose belonged only to the moose,--the greatest of American
wild animals.  Her blood began to race through her veins.

The animal was still out of range, but the distance between them rapidly
shortened.  He was following the lake shore, tossing his horns in
arrogance.  Once he paused and gazed a long time straight toward them,
legs braced and head lifted; but evidently reassured he ventured on.
Now he was within three hundred yards.

"Why don't you shoot?" the girl whispered.

"I'm afraid to trust this old gun at that range.  I could get him with
my thirty-five.  Now don't make a motion--or a sound."

Now the creature was near enough so that she could receive some idea of
his size and power.  She knew something of the quagmires such as lay on
the lake shore.  She had passed some of them on the journey.  But the
bull moose took them with an ease and a composure that was thrilling to
see.  Where a strong horse would have floundered at the first step, he
stretched out his hind quarters, and, striking with his long, powerful
front legs, pulled through.  Then she was aware that Bill was aiming.

At the roar of the rifle she cried out in excitement.  The old bull had
traversed the marches for the last time: he had fought the last fight
with his fellow bulls in the rutting season.  He rocked down easily, and
Bill's racing fingers ejected the shell and threw another into the
barrel, ready to fire again if need be.  But no second bullet was
required.  The man's aim had been straight and true, and the bullet had
pierced his heart.

The two of them danced and shouted in the snow.  And Virginia did not
stop to think that the stress of the moment had swept her back a
thousand--thousand years, and that her joy was simply the rapture of
the cave woman, mad with blood lust, beside her mate.



X

The shoulder of a bull moose was never a load for a weak back.  The
piece of meat weighed nearly one hundred pounds and was of awkward shape
to carry.  Bill, secure in his strength, would never have attempted it
except for the fact that after one small ridge was climbed, the way was
downhill clear to the cabin.

He skinned out the quarter with great care; then, stooping, worked it on
his back.  Virginia took his gun and led the way back over their snow
trail.

By resting often, they soon made the hilltop.  From thence on they
dragged the meat in the immaculate snow.  Twilight had fallen again when
they made the cabin.

Already Virginia thought of it as home.  She returned to it with a
thrill in her veins and a joy in her heart.  She was tired out and cold;
this humble log hut meant shelter from the storm and warmth and food.
Bill hung the meat; then with his knife cut off thick steaks for their
supper.  In a few moments their fire was cracking.

Bill showed her how to broil the steak in its own fat, and he cooked hot
biscuits and macaroni to go with it.  No meal of her life had ever given
her greater pleasure.  They made their plans for the morrow; first to
construct a crude sled and then to bring in the remainder of the meat.
"If the wolves don't claim it to-night," Bill added, as he lighted his
pipe.

"It's strange that I don't want to smoke myself," the girl told him.

"You?  Why should you?"

"I smoke at home.  I mean I did.  It's getting to be the thing to do
among the girls I know.  Someway, the thought of it doesn't seem
interesting any more."

"Did you--really enjoy it then?  If you did, I'll split my store with
you.  You've got as much right to it as I."  The man spoke rather
heavily.

"I didn't think I did enjoy it.  I did it--I suppose because it seemed
sporting.  It never made me feel peaceful--only nervous.  I don't
believe tobacco is a temperamental need with women as it is with some
men--otherwise it wouldn't have taken so many centuries to establish
the custom.  It would only--seem silly, up here."

He had an impression that she was speaking very softly.  The quality of
absolute and omnipresent silence had passed from the wilderness.  There
was a low stir, a faint murmur that at first was so far off and vague
that neither of them could name it.

But slowly the sound grew.  The tree tops, silent before with snow, gave
utterance; the thickets cracked, stirred, and moved as if some dread
spirit were coming to life within them.  The candle flickered.  A low
moan reached them from the chimney.  Bill strode to the door and threw
it wide.

He did not have to peer out into that unfathomable darkness to know the
enemy that was at his gates.  It spoke in a sudden fury, and the snow
flurries swept past, like strange and wandering spirits, in the dim
candle light.  No longer the flakes drifted easily and silently down.
They seemed to be coming from all directions, whirling, eddying, borne
swiftly through the night and hurled into drifts.  And a dread voice
spoke across the snow.

"The north wind," Bill said simply.

Virginia's eyes grew wide.  She sensed the awe and the dread in his
tones; even she, fresh from cities, knew that this foe was not to be
despised.  She felt the sharp pinch of the cold as the heat escaped
through the open door.  The temperature was falling steadily; already it
was far below freezing.  Bill shut the door and walked back to her.

"What does it mean?" she asked breathlessly.

"Winter.  The northern winter.  I've seen it break too many times.
Perhaps we can drown out the sound of it--with music."

He walked toward the battered instrument.  Her heart was cold within
her, and she nodded eagerly.  "Yes--a little ragtime.  It will be
frightfully loud in the cabin, but it's better than the sound of the
storm."

She didn't dream that this wilderness man would choose any other kind of
music than ragtime.  She was but new to the North, otherwise she would
have made no such mistake.  Superficiality was no part of these northern
men.  They knew life in the raw, the travail of existence, the pinch of
cold and the fury of the storm; and the music that they felt in their
hearts was never the light-hearted dance music of the South.  Music is
the articulation of the soul, and the souls of these men were darkened
and sad.  It could not be otherwise, sons of the wilderness as they
were.

The pack song, on the hilltop in the winter moon, was never a melody of
laughter.  Rather it was the song of life itself, life in the raw, and
the sadness and pain and the hopeless war of existence find their echo
in the wailing notes.  None of the wilderness voices were joyous.  When
Bill had chosen his records he took those that answered his own mood and
expressed his own being.

Not all of them were sad music, in the strictest sense.  But they were
all intense, poignant and tremulous with the deepest longings of the
human soul.

"I haven't any ragtime," the man explained humbly.  "I could only bring
up a few records, and so I took just the ones I liked best.  They're
simple things--I'm sorry I haven't any more."

She looked at this man with growing wonder.  Of course he would like the
simple things.  No man of her acquaintance had ever possessed truer
standards: no sophistication or cultural growth such as she herself had
know could have given him a truer gentility.  What was this thing that
men could learn in the woods and in the North that gave them such poise,
such standards, and brought out such qualities of manhood?  Yet she knew
that the forests did not treat all men alike.  Those of intrinsic virtue
were made better, their strength was supplemented by the strength of the
wilderness itself, but the weaklings perished quickly.  This was not a
land for soft men, for the weak and the cowardly and the vicious.  The
wild soon found them out, harried them by storms and broke their hearts
and their spirits, and kept from them its gracious secrets.  Perhaps in
this latter thing lay the explanation.  It seemed to her that Bill was
always straining, listening for the faintest, whispered voices of the
forest about him.  He was always watching, always studying--his soul
and his heart open--and Nature poured forth upon him her incalculable
rewards.

He put on a record, closed the doors of the instrument tight to muffle
the sound, and set the needle.  She recognized the melody at once.  It
was Drdla's "Souvenir"--and the first notes seemed to sweep her into
infinity.

It was a beautiful, haunting thing, sweet as love, warm as a maiden's
heart, tender as motherhood; and all at once Virginia was aware of a
heart-stirring and incredible contrast.  The melody did not drown out
the sound of the storm.  It rose above it, infinitely sweet and
entreating, and all the time the wild strains of the storm outside made
a strange and dreadful background.  Yet the two songs mingled with such
harmony as only old masters, devotees to music, can sometimes hear in
their inmost souls but never express in notes.

She felt the tears start in her eyes.  Her cheeks flamed.  Her heart
raced and thrilled.  For all the exquisite beauty of the song, a vague
dread and an incomprehensible fear seemed to come upon her.  For all the
stir and impulse of the melody, a strange but exquisite sadness engulfed
her spirit.  In that single instant the North drew aside its curtains of
mystery and showed her its secret altar.  For a breath at least she knew
its soul,--its travail, its dreadful beauty, its infinite sadness, its
merciless strength.

In her time Virginia had now and then known the fear of Death.  Two
nights previous, as the waters had engulfed her, she had known it very
well.  But never before had she known fear of life.  That's what it
was--fear of _life_--life that could only cost and could not pay, that
could take and could not give, that could pain but could not heal.  She
knew now the dreadful persecution of the elements, cold and storm and
the snow fields stretching ever from range to range.  She knew the fear
of hunger, of struggle to break the spirit and rend the body, of
disaster that could not be turned aside, of cruel and immutable destiny.
She knew now why the waterfowl had circled all day so restlessly: they
too had known the age-old fear of the northern winter.  They had sensed,
in secret ways, the swift approach of the storm.

Winter was at hand.  It would lock the streams and sweep the land with
snow, the sun would grow feeble in the sky, and the spirit of Cold would
descend with its age-old terrors.  And the creepy fear, the haunting
terror known to all northern creatures, man or beast, crept into her
like a subtle poison.

It was a moment of enchantment.  The music rose high, fell in soaring
leaps, trembled in infinite appeal, and slowly died away.  Outside the
storm increased in fury.  The wind sobbed over the cabin roof, the trees
complained, the snow beat against the window pane.  And still the spell
lingered.  Her lustrous eyes gazed out through the darkened pane, but
her thoughts carried far beyond it.

And it was well for her peace of mind that she did not glance at Bill.
The music had moved him too: besides the fear of the North he had been
torn by even a deeper emotion, and for the instant it was written all to
clearly upon his rugged features.  He was watching the girl's face, his
eyes yearning and wistful as no human being had ever seen them.

The soaring notes, with the dreadful accompaniment of the storm, had
brought home a truth to him that for days on the trail he had tried to
deny.  "I love you, Virginia," cried the inaudible voice of his soul.
"Oh, Virginia--I love you, I love you."



XI

It was one of Bill Bronson's basic creeds to look his situations
squarely in the face.  It was part of the training of the wilderness,
and up till now he had always abided by it.  But for the past few days
he had found himself trying to look aside.  He had tried to avoid and
deny a truth that ever grew clearer and more manifest,--his love for
Virginia.

He had told himself he wouldn't give his love to her.  He would hold
back, at least.  He had reminded himself of the bridgeless gap that
separated them, that they were of different spheres and that it only
meant tragedy, stark and deep, for him to let himself go.  He had fought
with himself, had tried to shut his eyes to her beauty and his heart to
her appeal.  But there was no use of trying further.  In the stress and
passion of the melody he had found out the truth.

And this was no moment's passion,--the love that he had for her.  Bill
was not given to fluency of emotion.  He was a northern man, intense as
fire but slow to emotional response.  He had known the great discipline
of the forest; he was not one to lose himself in infatuation or
sentimentality.  He only knew that he loved her, and no event of life
could make him change.

He had had dreams, this man; but they were never so concrete, so fond as
these dreams that swept him now.  In the soft candlelight the girl's
beauty moved him and glorified him, the very fact of her presence
thrilled him to the depths, the wistfulness and appeal in her face
seemed to burn him like fire.  This northern land was never the home of
weak or half-felt emotions.  The fine shades and subtle gradations of
feelings were unknown to the northern people, but they had full
knowledge of the primordial passions.  They could hate as the she-wolf
hates the foe that menaces her cubs, and they could love to the moment
of death.  He knew that whatever fate life had in store for him it could
not change his attitude toward her.  She would leave the North and go
back to her own people, and still he would be true.

Even in the first instant he knew enough not to hope.  They would have
their northern adventure together, and then she would leave him to his
snows and his trackless forests.  She would go to her own land, a place
of mirth and joy and warmth, to leave him brooding and silent in his
waste places.  He knew that all his days this same dream would be before
his eyes, this wistful-eyed, tender girl, this lovely flower of the
South.  Nothing could change him.  The years would come and go--spring
and summer flowering in the forest, dancing once and tripping on to a
softer, gentler land; fall would touch the shrubs with color, whisk off
the golden leaves of the quivering aspen, and speed way; and winter,
drear and cheerless, would shroud the land in snow--and find his love
unswerving.  The forest folk would mate in fall, the caribou calves
would open their wondering eyes in spring, the moose would bathe and
wallow in the lakes in summer, and in winter the venerable grizzly would
seek his lair, and still his dreams, in his lonely cabin, would be
unchanged.  His love would never lessen or increase.  He had held none
of it back; no more could be given or taken away.  He had given his all.

But if he couldn't keep this knowledge from himself, at least he could
hold it from the girl.  It would only bring her unhappiness.  It would
destroy the feeling of comradeship for him that he had begun to observe
in her.  It would put an insurmountable wall between them.  Besides, he
didn't believe that she could understand.  Perhaps it would only offend
her,--that this son of the forests should give her his love.  She had
never dealt with men of his breed before, and she had no inkling of the
smoldering, devouring fires within the man.  He would not invite her
pity and her distrust by letting her know.

Strangest of all, he felt no bitterness or resentment.  This development
was only a fitting part of the tragedy of his life: first his father's
murder, his dreams that had never come true, his lost boyhood, his exile
in the waste places, and now the lonely years that stretched before him
with nothing to atone or redeem.  He knew that there could be no other
woman in his life.  It was well enough for the men of cities to give and
take back their love; for them it was only wisdom and good sense, but
such a course was impossible to such sons of the forest as he.  Life
gives but one dream to the forest folk, and they follow it till they
die.  He knew that the yearning in his heart and the void in his life
could never be filled.

Yet he didn't rail at fate.  He had learned what fate could do to him,
and he had learned to take its blows with a strange fatalism and
composure.  Besides, would he not have the joy of her presence for many
days to come?  Their adventure had just begun: weeks would pass before
she could go home.  In those days he could serve her, toil for her,
devote himself wholly to her happiness.  He could see her face and know
her beauty, and it was all worth the price he paid.  For life in the
North is life in its simplest phases; and the northern men have had a
chance to learn that strangest truth of all,--that he who counts the
cost of his hour of pleasure shall be crushed in the jaws of Destiny,
and that a day of joy may be worth, in the immutable balance of being, a
whole life of sorrow.

Virginia had no suspicion of his thoughts.  She was still enthralled by
the after-image of the music, and her own thoughts were soaring far
away.  But soon the noise of the storm began to force itself into her
consciousness.  It caused her to consider her own prospects for the
night.

Vaguely she knew that this night was different from the others.  The two
previous nights she had been ill and half-unconscious: her very
helplessness appealed to Bill's chivalry.  To-night she stood on her own
feet.  Matters were down to a normal basis again, and for the first time
she began to experience a certain embarrassment in her position.  She
was suddenly face to face with the fact that the night stretched before
her,--and she in a snowswept cabin in the full power of a strange man.
She felt more than a little uneasy.

Already she was tired and longed to go to sleep, but she was afraid to
speak her wish.  As the silence of the cabin deepened, and the noise of
the storm grew louder--blustering at the roof, shaking the door, and
beating on the window pane--her uneasiness gave way to stark fear.

But all at once she looked up to find Bill's eyes upon her, full of
sympathy and understanding.  "You'll want to turn in now," he told her.
"You take the bunk again, of course--I'll sleep on the floor.  I'm
comfortable there--I could sleep on rocks if need be."

"Can't you get some fir boughs--to-morrow?"  The girl spoke nervously.

"They'd be in the way, but maybe I can arrange it.  And now I've got to
fix your boidoir."

He took one of the boxes that served as a chair and stood it up on the
floor, just in front of her bunk.  Then, holding one of the blankets in
his arm and a few nails in his hand, he climbed upon the box.  She
understood in an instant.  He was curtaining off the entire end of the
cabin where Virginia slept.

The girl's relief showed in her face.  Her eyes lighted, her
apprehension was largely dispelled.  She wasn't blind to his
thoughtfulness, his quick sympathy; and she felt deeply and speechlessly
grateful.  And she was also vaguely touched with wonder.

"You can go in there now," he told her.  "But there's one thing--I
want to show you--before you turn in."

"Yes?"

"I want to show you this little pistol."  He took a light arm of blue
steel from his belt,--the small-calibered and automatic weapon with
which he had gilled the grouse.  "It's only a twenty-two," Bill went on,
"but it shoots a long cartridge, and it shoots ten of 'em, fast as you
pull the trigger.  You could kill a caribou with it, if you hit him
right."

"Yes?"  And she wondered at this curious interlude in their moment of
parting.

"You see this little catch behind the trigger guard?"  The girl nodded.
"When you want to fire it, all you have to do is to push up the little
catch with your thumb and pull the trigger.  To-morrow I'm going to
teach you how to shoot with it--I mean shoot straight enough to take
the head off a grouse at twenty feet.  And so it will bring you luck, I
want you to sleep with it,--under your pillow."

Understanding flashed through her, and a slow, grateful smile played at
her lips.  "I don't want it, Bill," she told him.

"You'd feel safer with it," the man urged.  He slipped it under her
pillow.  "And even before you learn to shoot it well--you could--if
you had to--shoot and kill a man."

He smiled again and drew her curtain.

* * * * *

Bill was true to his promise to teach Virginia to shoot.  The next day
he put up an empty can out from the door of the cabin and they had
target practice.

First he showed her how to hold the weapon and to stand.  "See the can
just over the sights and press back gradually," he urged.

The first shot went wide of its mark.  The second and third were no
better.  But by watching her closely, Bill found out her mistake.

"You flinch," he told her.  "It's an old mistake among hunters--and
the only way you can avoid it is by deepest concentration.  Skill in
hunting--as well as in everything else--depends upon throwing the
whole energy of your mind and body into that one little part of an
instant when you pull the trigger.  It's all right to be excited before.
You're not human if, the game knocked over, you're not excited after.
But unless you can hold like iron for that fraction of a second, you
can't shoot and you never can shoot."

"But I'm not excited now," she objected.

"You haven't got full discipline of your nerves, just the same.
You're a little afraid of the sound and the explosion, and you flinch
back--just a little movement of your hand--when you pull the trigger.
If it is only an eighth of an inch here, it's quite a miss by the time
the bullet gets out there.  Try again, but convince yourself first that
you won't flinch.  You won't jerk or throw off your aim."

She lowered the weapon and rested her nerves.  Then she quietly lifted
the gun again.  And the fourth bullet knocked the can spinning from the
log.

The man shouted his approval, and her flushed face showed what a real
triumph it was to her.  Few of her lifelong  accomplishments she had
valued more.  Yet it caused no self-wonder; she only knew that she
respected and prized the good opinion of this stalwart woodsman, and by
this one little act she had proved to him the cool, strong quality of
her nerves.

And it was no little triumph.  She had really learned the basic concept
of good shooting,--to throw the whole force of the nervous system into
the second firing.  It was the same precept that makes toward all
achievement.  The fact that she had grasped it so quickly was a guaranty
of her own metal.  She felt something of that satisfaction that strong
men feel when they prove, for their own eyes alone, their self-worth.
It was the instinct that sends the self-indulgent business man, riding
to his work in a limousine, into the depths of the dreadful wilderness
to hunt, and that urges the tenderfoot to climb to the crest of the
highest peaks.

It did not mean that she was a dead shot already.  Months and years of
practice are necessary to obtain full mastery of pistol or rifle.  She
had simply made a most creditable start.  There would be plenty of
misses thereafter; in fact, the next six shots she missed the can four
times.  She had to learn sight control, how to gauge distance and wind
and the speed of moving objects; but she was on the straight road to
success.

While Virginia cooked lunch, Bill cut young spruce trees and made a
sled: and after the meal pushed out through the whirling snow to being
in the remainder of the moose meat.  It was the work of the whole
afternoon to urge the sled up the ridge and then draw it home through
the drifts.  The snow mantle had deepened alarmingly during the night,
and he came none too soon.  It was only a matter of days, perhaps of
hours, before the snow would be impassable except with snowshoes.  Until
at last the snowfall ceased and packed, traveling even with their aid
would be a heart-breaking business.

Virginia was lonely and depressed all the time Bill was absent, and she
had a moment of self-amazement at the rapidity with which she brightened
up at his return.  But it was a natural development: the snow-swept
wilds were dreary indeed for a lonely soul.  He was a fellow human
being; that alone was relationship enough.

"You can call me Virginia, if you want to," she told him.  "Last names
are silly out here--Heaven knows we can't keep them up in these weeks
to come.  I've called you Bill ever since the night we crossed the
river."

Bill looked his gratitude, and she helped him prepare the meat.  Some of
it he hung just outside the cabin door; one of the great hams suspended
in a spruce tree, fifty feet in front of the cabin.  The skin was
fleshed and hung up behind the stove to dry.

"It's going to furnish the web of our snowshoes," he explained.

That night their talk took a philosophical trend, and in the candlelight
he told her some of his most secret views.  She found that the North,
the untamed land that had been his home, had colored all his ideas, yet
she was amazed at his scientific knowledge of some subjects.

Far from the influence of any church, she was surprised to find that he
was a religious man.  In fact, she found that his religion went deeper
than her own.  She belonged to one of the Protestant churches of
Christianity, attended church regularly, and the church had given her
fine ideals and moral precepts; but religion itself was not a reality to
her.  It was not a deep urge, an inner and profound passion as it was
with him.  She prayed in church, she had always prayed--half
automatically--at bedtime; but actual, entreating prayer to a literal
God had been outside her born of thought.  In her sheltered life she had
never felt the need of a literal God.  The spirit of All Being was not
close to her, as it was to him.

Bill had found his religion in the wilderness, and it was real.  He had
listened to the voices of the wind and the stir of the waters in the
fretful lake; he had caught dim messages, yet profound enough to flood
his heart with passion, in the rustling of the leaves, the utter silence
of the night, the unearthly beauty of the far ranges, stretching one
upon another.  His was an austere God, infinitely just and wise, but His
great aims were far beyond the power of men's finite minds to grasp.
Most of all, his was a God of strength, of mighty passions and moods,
but aloof, watchful, secluded.

In this night, and the nights that followed, she absorbed--a little at
a time--his most harboured ideas of life and nature.  He did not speak
freely, but she drew him out with sympathetic interest.  But for all he
knew life in the raw and the gloom of the spruce forest, his outlook had
not been darkened.  For all his long acquaintance with a stark and
remorseless Nature, he remained an optimist.

None of his views surprised her as much as this.  He knew the snows and
the cold, this man; the persecution of the elements and the endless
struggle and pain of life, yet he held no rancor.  "It's all part of the
game," he explained.  "It's some sort of a test, a preparation--and
there's some sort of a scheme, too big for human beings to see, behind
it."

He believed in a hereafter.  He thought that the very hardship of life
made it necessary.  Earthly existence could not be an end in itself, he
thought: rather the tumult and stress shaped and strengthened the soul
for some stress to come.  "And some of us conquer and go on," he told
her earnestly.  "And some of us fall--and stop."

"But life isn't so hard," she answered.  "I've never known hardship or
trial.  I know many men and girls that don't know what it means."

"So much to their loss.  Virginia, those people will go out of life as
soft, as unprepared, as when they came in.  They will be as helpless as
when they left their mother's wombs.  They haven't been disciplined.
They haven't known pain and work and battle--and the strengthening
they entail.  They don't live a natural life.  Nature meant for all
creatures to struggle.  Because of man's civilization they are having an
artificial existence, and they pay for it in the end.  Nature's way is
one of hardship."

This man did not know a gentle, kindly Nature.  She was no friend of
his.  He knew her as a siren, a murderess and a torturer, yet with great
secret aims that no man could name or discern.  Even the kindly summer
moon lighted the way for hunting creatures to find and rend their prey.
The snow trapped the deer in the valleys where the wolf pack might find
easy killing; the cold killed the young grouse in the shrubbery; the
wind sang a song of death.  He pointed out that all the wilderness
voices expressed the pain of living,--the sobbing utterance of the
coyotes, the song of the wolves in the winter snow, the wail of the
geese in their southern migrations.

In these talks she was surprised to learn how full had been his reading.
All through her girlhood she had gone to private schools and had been
tutored by high-paid intellectual aristocrats, yet she found this man
better educated than herself.  He had read philosophy and had browsed,
at least, among all the literature of the past; he knew history and a
certain measure of science, and most of all, the association of areas of
his brain were highly developed so that he could see into the motives
and hearts of things much more clearly than she.

In the nights he told her Nature lore, the ways of the living-creatures
that he observed, and in the daytime he illustrated his points from
life.  They would take little tramps together through the storm and
snow, going slowly because of the depth of the drifts, and under his
tutelage, the wild life began to reveal to her its most hidden secrets.
Sometimes she shot grouse with her pistol; once a great long-pinioned
goose, resting on the shore of frozen Gray Lake, fell to her aim.  She
saw the animals in the marshes, the herds of caribou that are, above all
creatures, natives and habitants of the snow-swept mountains, the
little, lesser hunters such as marten and mink and otter.  One night
they heard the wolf pack chanting as they ran along the ridge.

Life was real up here.  The superficialities with which she had dealt
before were revealed in their true light.  Of all the past material
requisites, only three remained,--food and warmth and shelter.  Others
that she did not think she needed--protection, and strength and
discipline--were shown as vitally necessary.  Comradeship was needed,
too, the touch of a helping hand in a moment of fear or danger; and
love--the one thing she lacked now--was most necessary of all.  It was
not enough just to give love.  For years she had poured her adoration
upon Harold, lost it too, reciprocally; and this she might find strength
for the war of life, even a tremulous joy in meeting and surmounting
difficulties.

The snow fell almost incessantly and the tree limbs could hold no more.
The drifts deepened in the still aisles between trunk and trunk.  When
the clouds broke through and the stars were like great precious diamonds
in the sky, the cold would drop down like a curse and a scourge, and the
ice began to gather on Grizzly River.

On such nights the Northern Lights flashed and gleamed and danced in the
sky and swept the forest world with mystery.



XII

Virginia found the days much happier than she had hoped.  She took a
real interest in caring for their little cabin, cooking the meals, even
mending Bill's torn clothes.  She had a natural fine sense of flavors,
and out of the simple materials that they had in store she prepared
meals that in Bill's opinion outclassed the finest efforts of a French
chef.  He would exult over them boyishly, and she found an unlooked-for
joy in pleasing him.  She had made delicious puddings out of rice and
canned milk and raisins, she knew just the identical number of minutes
it required to broil a moose porterhouse just to his taste, and she
could fry a grouse to surpass the most succulent fried chicken ever
served in a southern home.  All these things pleased her and occupied
the barren hours.  She learned to sew on buttons, wash her own clothes,
and keep the cabin clean and neat as a hospital ward.

She liked the hours of sober talk in the evenings.  Sometimes they would
play through the records, and so well had Bill made his selections that
she never tired of them.  His preference tended toward melodies in the
minor, wailing things that to him vaguely reflected the voices of the
wild things and the plaintive utterances of the forest: she liked the
soul-stirring, emotional melodies.  They worked up a rare comradeship
before the first week was done.  She had never known a human being to
whom she opened her thoughts more freely.

She had her lonesome hours, but not so many as she had expected.  When
time hung heavy on her hands she would take out one of the old magazines
that Bill had brought up to read on the winter nights, and devour it
from cover to cover.  She had abundant health.  The experience seemed to
build her up, rather than injure her.  Her muscles developed, she
breathed deep of the cold, mountain air, and she had more energy than
she could easily spend.

She fought away the tendency to grow careless in dress or appearance.
She kept her few clothes clean and mended, she dressed her hair as
carefully as in her city house.  Her skin was clear and soft, but she
didn't know how the wilderness life was affecting her beauty.  What Bill
observed he did not tell her.  Often the words were at his lips, but he
repressed them.  In the first place he was afraid of speaking too
feelingly and giving away his heart's secret; in the second he had a
ridiculous fear that such a personal remark might tend to destroy the
fine balance of their relationship.  She had no mirror, but soon she
became used to going without one.  But one day, on one of their tramps,
she caught a perfect image of herself in a clear spring.

She had stopped to drink, but for a few seconds she only regarded
herself with speechless delight.  She had had her share of beauty
before; now perfect health had brought its marvelous and indescribable
charm.  Her hair was burnished and shimmering with life, her skin clear
and transparent, her throat had filled out, and her eyes were bright and
clear as she had never seen them.  She felt no further need of
cosmetics.  Her lips were red, and Nature had brought a glow to her
cheeks that no human skill could equal.

"Good Heavens, Bill!" she cried.  "Why didn't you tell me that I was
getting prettier every day?"

"I didn't know you wanted me to," he replied.  "But you are.  I've been
noticing it a long time."

"You're a cold, impersonal person!"  But at once her talk tripped on to
less dangerous subjects.

Their cabin life was redeemed by their frequent excursions into the
wild.  The study of Nature was constantly more absorbing to the girl.
Although the birds had all gone south--except such hardy fowl as the
ptarmigan, that seemed to spend most of their time buried in the
snow--there was still mammalian life in plenty in the forest.  The
little furred creatures still plied, nervous and scurrying as ever,
their occupations; and the caribou still wandered now and then through
their valley as they moved from ridge to ridge.  The moose, however,
had mostly pushed down to the lower levels.

The grizzlies had gone into hibernation, and their tracks were no longer
to be seen in the snow; but the wolf pack still ran the ridges.  And one
day they had a miniature adventure that concerned the gray band.

They were climbing a ridge one wintry day, unappalled by the three feet
or more of snow, when the girl suddenly touched his arm.

"First blood on caribou," she cried.

His eyes lighted, and he followed her gaze.  Lately they had been having
a friendly contest as to who would get the first glimpse of any living
creature that they encountered in their tramps, and Bill was pleased to
admit that he had been barely holding his own.  The girl's eyes were
practically as quick as his and better at long distances, and always
there was high celebration when she saw the game first.  But to-day they
were fated for more exciting business.

The caribou were plunging as fast as they could through the snow.  They
came, in caribou fashion, in a long file, each stepping into the tracks
of the other, and it was a good woodsman, coming along behind them, that
could tell whether there were two or ten in the band.  An old bull with
sweeping horns led the file.

When going is at all easy, the caribou can travel at an incredible pace.
Even their swinging trot can carry them from range to range in a single
day; but when they choose to run their fastest, they seem to have wings.
To-day, however, the soft snow impeded their speed.  They seemed to be
running freely enough, in great bounds, but Bill could tell that they
were hard pressed.  He would have liked to have taken one of the young
cows to add to his larder, but they were too far to risk a shot.  Then
he seized the girl by the hand.

"Plow fast as you can up hill," he urged.  "I think we'll see some
action."

For he had guessed the impulse behind the wild race.  They plunged
through the snow as fast as they could, then sank almost out of sight in
the drifts.  And in a moment Bill pointed to a gray, shadowy band that
came loping toward them out of the haze.

It was the wolf pack, and they were deep in the hunt.  They were great,
shaggy creatures, lean and savage, and Virginia felt glad that this
stalwart form was beside her.  The wolves of the North, when the
starvation time is on, are not always to be trusted.  They looked
ghostly and incredibly large through the flurries.

They came within a hundred yards, then their keen senses whispered a
warning.  Just for an instant they stood motionless in the snow, heads
raised and fierce eyes grazing.

Bill raised his rifle.  He took quick aim at the great leader, and the
report rang far through the silences.  But the entire pack sprang away
as one.

"I can't believe that I missed," Bill cried.  He started to take aim
again.

But no second shot was needed.  Suddenly the pack leader leaped high in
the air and fell almost buried in the snow.  His brethren halted,
seemingly about to attack the fallen, but Bill's shout frightened them
on.  The great, gaunt creature would sing no more to the winter stars.

He was a magnificent specimen of the black wolf, head as large as that
of a black bear, and a pelt already rich and heavy.  "We'll add a few
more from time to time," Bill told her, "and then you can have a coat."

In these excursions Virginia learned to use her pistol with remarkable
accuracy.  Her strength increased: she could follow wherever Bill led.
Sometimes they climbed snowy mountains where the gales shrieked like
demons, sometimes they dipped into still, mysterious glens; they tracked
the little folk in the snow, and they called the moose from the thickets
beside the lake.

They did not forget their graver business.  Ever Virginia kept watch for
a track that was not an animal track, a blaze on a tree that was not
made by the teeth of a porcupine or grizzly, a charred cook rack over
the ashes of a fire.  But as yet they had found no sign of human
wayfarers other than themselves.  There were no cut trees, no blazed
trails, no sign of a habitation.  Yet she didn't despair.  She had begun
to have some knowledge of the great distances of the region: she knew
there were plenty of valleys yet unsearched.

Bill never ceased to search for his mine.  He looked for blazes too, for
a sign of an old camp or a pile of washings beside a stream.  When he
found an open stream he would wash the gravel, and it seemed to him he
combed the entire region between the two little tributaries of Grizzly
River indicated on his map.  But with the deepening snow search was ever
more difficult.  Unlike Virginia, he was almost ready to give up.

The spirit of autumn had never shown her face again: winter had come to
stay.  Every day the snow deepened, the cold in the long nights was more
intense.  Travel was no longer possible without snowshoes, but the hide
stretched in the cabin was almost dry and ready to cut into thongs for
the webs.  The less turbulent stretches of Grizzly River were frozen
fast: the actual crossing of the stream was no longer a problem.  Beyond
it, however, lay only wintry mountains, covered to a depth of five feet
or more with soft and impassable snow; and until the snow crusted, the
journey to Bradleyburg was as impossible as if they had been cast away
on another sphere.

Even the rapids of the river had begun to freeze.  Often the clouds
broke away at nightfall and let the cold come in,--stabbing,
incredible cold that meant death to any human being that was caught
without shelter in its grasp.  The land locked tight: no more could Bill
hunt for his mine in the creek beds.  The last of the moose went down to
their yarding grounds, and even the far-off glimpse of a caribou was a
rarity.  The marmots had descended into their burros, the snowshoe
rabbit hopped, a lonely figure in the desolation, through the drifts.
Such of the other little people that remained--the weasel and the
ptarmigan--had turned to the hue of the snow itself.

But now the snowshoe frames were done, wrought from tough spruce, and
the moose hide cut into thongs and stretched across to make the webs.
For a few days Bill and Virginia had been captives in the cabin, and
they held high revels in celebration of their completion.  Now they
could go forth into the drifts again.

It did not mean, however, that the time was ripe for them to take their
sled and mush into Bradleyburg.  The snow was still too soft for long
jaunts.  They had no tent or pack animals, and they simply would have to
wait for the most favorable circumstances to attempt the journey with
any safety whatever.  In the soft snow they could only make, at the
most, ten miles a day; the sled was hard to drag; and the bitter cold of
the nights would claim them quickly.  It was not merely an alternative
or a convenience with them to wait for the crust.  It was simply
unavoidable.  Worst of all, the early winter storms were not done; and a
severe blizzard on the trail would put a swift end to their journey.

But once more Virginia could search the snow for traces of her lover.
And after the jubilant evening meal--held in celebration of the
completion of the snowshoes--the girl stood in the cabin doorway,
looking a long time into the snow-swept waste.

It was a clear, icy night, and the Northern Lights were more vivid and
beautiful than she had ever seen them.  Bill thought that she was
watching their display; if he had known the real subject of her
thoughts, he would not have come and stood in the doorway with her.  He
would have left her to her dreams.

The whole forest world was wan and ghostly in the mysterious light.  The
trees looked strange and dark, perspective was destroyed, the far
mountain gleamed.  The streamers seemed to come from all directions, met
with the effect of collision in the sky, and filled the great dome with
uncanny light.  Sometimes the flood of radiance would spread and flutter
in waves, like a great, gorgeous canopy stirred by the wind, and
fragments and balls of fire would spatter the breadth of the heavens.
As always, in the face of the great phenomena of nature, Bill was deeply
awed.

"We're not the only ones to see it," Virginia told him softly.
"Somewhere I think--I feel--that Harold is watching it too.
Somewhere over this snow."

Bill did not answer, and the girl turned to him in tremulous appeal.

"Won't you find him for me, Bill?" she cried.  "You are so strong, so
capable--you can do anything, anything you try.  Won't you find him
and bring him back to me?"

The man looked down at her, and his face was ashen.  Perhaps it was only
the effect of the Northern Lights that made his eyes seem so dark and
strange.



XIII

One clear, icy night a gale sprang up in the east, and Virginia and Bill
fell to sleep to the sound of its complaint.  It swept like a mad thing
through the forest, shattering down the dead snags, shaking the snow
from the limbs of the spruce, roaring and soughing in the tree tops, and
blustering, like an arrogant foe, around the cabin walls.  And when Bill
went forth for his morning's woodcutting he found that his snowshoes did
not break through the crust.

The wind had blown and crusted the drifts during the night.  But it did
not mean that he and his companion could start at once down the
settlements.  The crust was treacherous and possibly only temporary.
The clouds had overspread again, and any moment the snowfall might
recommence.  The fact remained, however, that it was the beginning of
the end.  Probably in a few more weeks, perhaps days, it would be safe
to start their journey.  Bill was desolated by the thought.

The morning, however, could not be wasted.  It permitted him to make a
dash over to a certain stream further down toward the Yuga River in
search of any sign of the lost mine.  The stream itself was frozen to
blue steel, and the snow had covered it to the depth of several feet,
but there might be blazes on the trees or the remnants of a broken cabin
to indicate the location of the lost claim.  He had searched this
particular stream once before, but it was one of the few remaining
places that he hadn't literally combed from the springs out of which it
flowed to its mouth.  He started out immediately after breakfast.

It was not to be, however, that Bill should make the search that day.
When about two miles from the cabin he saw, through a rift in the
distant trees, a distinct trail in the snow.

It was too far to determine what it was.  Likely it was only the track
of a wild animal,--a leaping caribou that cut deep into the drifts, or
perhaps a bear, tardy in hibernating.  No one could blame him, he
thought, if he didn't go to investigate.  It was a matter he would not
even have to mention to Virginia.  He stood a moment in the drifts, torn
by an inner struggle.

Bill was an extremely sensitive man and his senses were trained even to
the half-psychic, mysterious vibrations of the forest life, and he had a
distant premonition of disaster.  All of his fondest hopes, his dreams,
all of the inner guardians of his own happiness told him to keep to his
search, to journey on his way and forget he had seen the tracks.  Every
desire of Self spoke in warning to him.  But Bill Bronson had a higher
law than self.  Long ago, in front of the ramshackle hotel in
Bradleyburg, he had given a promise; and he had reaffirmed it in the
gleam of the Northern Lights not many nights before.  There was no one
to hold him to his pledged word.  There were none that need know; no one
to whom he must answer but his own soul.  Yet even while he stood,
seemingly hesitating between the two courses, he already knew what he
must do.

It was impossible for Bill to be false to himself.  He could not disobey
the laws of his own being.  He would be steadfast.  He turned and went
over to investigate the tracks.

He was not in the least surprised at their nature.  Those that had
ordained his destiny had never written that he should know the good
fortune of finding them merely the tracks of animals.  The trail was
distinctly that of snowshoes, and it led away toward the Yuga River.

Bill glanced once, then turned back toward his cabin.  He mushed the
distance quickly.  Virginia met him with a look of surprise.

"I'm planning a longer dash than I had in mind at first," he told her.
"It's important----" he hesitated, and a lie came to his lips.  But it
was not such a falsehood as would be marked, in ineffaceable letters,
against him on the Book of Judgement.  He spoke to save the girl any
false hopes.  "It's about my mine," he said, "and I'll not likely be
back before to-morrow night.  It might take even longer than that.
Would you be afraid to stay alone?"

"There's nothing to be afraid of here," the girl replied.  "But it will
be awfully lonesome without you.  But if you think you've got a real
clew, I wouldn't ask you to stay."

"It's a real clew."  The man spoke softly, rather painfully.  She
wondered why he did not show more jubilation or excitement.  "You've got
your pistol and you can bolt the door.  I've got plenty of wood cut.
There's kindling too--and you can light a fire in the morning.  If you
put a big log on to-night you'll have glowing coals in the morning.  It
will be cold getting up, and I wish I could be here to build your fire.
But I don't think I can."

She gave him a smile and was startled sober in the middle of it.  All at
once she saw that the man was pale.  He had, then, found a clew of real
importance.  "Go ahead, of course," she told him.  "We'll fix some lunch
for you right away."

He took a piece of dried moose meat, a can of beans and another of
marmalade, and these, with a number of dried biscuits, would comprise
his lunch.  "Be careful of yourself," he told her at parting.  "If I
don't get back to-morrow, don't worry.  And pray for me."

She told him she would, but she did not guess the context of the prayer
his own heart asked.  His prayer was for failure, rather than success.

Following his own tracks, he went directly back to the mysterious
snowshoe trail.  He followed swiftly down it, anxious to know his fate
at the first possible instant.  He saw that the trail was fresh, made
that morning; he had every reason to think that he could overtake the
man who had made it within a few hours.

He was not camped on the Yuga,--whoever had come mushing through the
silences that morning.  From the river to that point where he had found
the tracks was too great a distance for any musher to cover in the few
hours since dawn.  There was nothing to believe but that the stranger's
camp lay within a few miles of his own.  He decided, from his frequent
stops, that the man had been hunting; there was nothing to indicate
that he was following a trap line.  The frequent tracks in the snow,
however, indicated an unusually good tracking country.  He wondered if
strangers--Indians, most likely--had come to poach on his domain.

He did not catch up with the traveler in the snow.  The man had mushed
swiftly.  But shortly after the noon hour his keen eyes saw a wisp of
smoke drifting through the trees, and his heart leaped in his breast.
He pushed on, emerging all at once upon a human habitation.

It was a lean-to, rather than a cabin.  Some logs had been used in its
construction, but mostly its walls were merely frames, thatched heavily
with spruce boughs.  A fire smoldered in front.  And his heart leaped
with indescribable relief when he saw that neither of the two men that
were squatted in the lean-to mouth was the stranger that had passed his
camp six years before.

Bill had old acquaintance with the type of man that confronted him now.
One of them was Joe Robinson,--an Indian who had wintered in
Bradleyburg a few years before.  Bill recognized him at once; he came of
a breed that outwardly, at least, changes little before the march of
time.  There was nothing about him to indicate his age.  He might be
thirty--perhaps ten years older.  Bill felt fairly certain, however,
that he was not greatly older.  In spite of legend to the contrary, a
forty-year old Indian is among the patriarchs, and pneumonia or some
other evil child of the northern winter, claims him quickly.

Joe's blood, he remembered, was about three-fourths pure.  His mother
had been a full-blooded squaw, his father a breed from the lake region
to the east.  He was slovenly as were most of his kind; unclean; and the
most distinguished traits about him were not to his credit,--a certain
quality of craft and treachery in his lupine face.  His yellow eyes were
too close together; his mouth was brutal.  His companion, a half-breed
with a dangerous mixture of French, was a man unknown to Bill,--but
the latter did not desire a closer acquaintance.  He was a boon
companion and a mate for Joe.

Yet both of them possessed something of that strange aloofness and
dignity that is a quality of all their people.  They showed no surprise
at Bill's appearance.  In these mighty forests human beings were as rare
a sight as would be an aeroplane to African savages, yet they glanced at
him seemingly with little interest.  It was true, however, that these
men knew of his residence in this immediate section of Clearwater.  The
loss of his father's mine was a legend known all over that particular
part of the province; they knew that he sought it yearly, clear up to
the trapping season.  When the snows were deep, they were well aware
that he ran trap lines down the Grizzly River.  Human inhabitants of the
North are not so many but that they keep good track of one another's
business.

But they had a better reason still for knowing that he was near.  The
prevailing winds blew down toward them from Bill's camp, and sometimes,
through the unfathomable silence of the snowy forest, they had heard the
faint report of his loud-mouthed gun.

It is doubtful that a white man--even a resident of the forest such as
Bill--could ever have heard as much.  He was a woodsman, but he did
not inherit, straight from a thousand woodsman ancestors, perceptions
almost as keen as those of the animals themselves.  As it was, he hadn't
had a chance to guess their presence.  The wind always carried the sound
of their rifles away from him rather than toward him; besides, their
guns were of smaller caliber and had a less violent report.

Last of all, they had been careful about shooting.  For a certain very
good reason they had no desire for Bill to discover their presence.
There are certain laws, among the northern men, as to trapping rights.
Nothing can be learned in the provincial statute books concerning these
laws.  Mostly they are unwritten; but their influence is felt clear
beyond the Arctic Circle.  They state quite clearly that when a man lays
down a line of traps, for a certain distance on each side of him the
district is his, and no one shall poach on his preserves.  And these
Indians had lately been partners in an undertaking to clear the whole
region of its furs.

They had no idea but that Bill had discovered their trap lines and had
come to make trouble.  For all that they sat so still and aloof, Joe's
mind had flashed to his rifle in the corner of the lean-to, six feet
away.  He rather wished it was nearer.  His friend Pete the Breed was
considerably reassured by the feel of his long, keen-bladed knife
against his thigh.  Knives, after all, were very effective at close
work.  The two of them could really afford to be insolent.

And they were considerably amazed at Bill's first question.  He had left
the snowshoe trail that evidently passed in front of the shelter and had
crossed the snow crust to the mouth of the lean-to.  "Did one of you
make those tracks out there?" he asked.  He felt certain that one of
them had.  He only asked to make sure.

There was a quality in Bill's voice that usually, even from such gentry
as this, won him a quick response.  Joe's mind gave over the insolence
it had planned.  But for all that Bill's inner triumph was doomed to be
short-lived.

"No," Joe grunted.  "Our partner made it.  Follow it down--pretty soon
find another cabin."



XIV

Bill only had to turn to see the snowy roof of the cabin, two hundred
yards away down the glade.  Ordinarily his sharp eyes would have
discerned it long before: perhaps the same inner spirit, encountered
before this eventful day, was trying to protect him still.  He turned
without a word, and no man could have read the expression on his
wind-tanned face.  He mushed slowly on to his journey's end.

It was a new cabin, just erected, and smoke drifted faintly from its
chimney.  Bill rapped on the door.

"Come along in," some one answered gruffly.  Bill removed his snowshoes,
and the door opened before his hand.

He did not have to glance twice at the bearded face to know in whose
presence he stood.  His inner senses told him all too plainly.  Changed
as he was, there was no chance in heaven or earth for a mistake.  This
was Harold Lounsbury, the same man who had passed his camp years before,
the same lost lover that Virginia had come to find.

Even now, Bill thought, it was not too late to withdraw.  He could
pretend that he had came to quarrel in regard to his trapping rights.
After one glance he knew that, from the standard of good sense, there
was a full reason for withdrawal.  In the years he might even reconcile
his own conscience to the act.  Harold leaned forward, but he didn't get
up to meet him.

Bill scarcely noticed the man's furtive preparations for self-defense.
His rifle lay across his knees, and ostensibly he was in the act of
cleaning it, but in reality he was holding it ready for Bill's first
offensive move.  He had known of Bill of old; in the circle in which he
moved--lost utterly to the sight of the men of Bradleyburg--there
were stories in plenty about this stalwart woodsman.  For days--ever
since he had come here with his Indians and laid down his trap
line--he had dreaded just such a visit.  The real reason for Bill's
coming did not even occur to him.

Bill saw that the man was frightened.  His lips were loose, his eyes
nervous and bright, his hands did not hold quite steady.  But all these
observations were at once obliterated and forgotten in the face of a
greater, more profound discovery.  In one scrutinizing glance the truth
swept him like a flood.  Here was one that the wilderness had crushed in
its brutal grasp.  As far as Bill's standards were concerned, it had
broken and destroyed him.

This did not mean that his health was wasted.  His body was strong and
trim: except for a suspicious network of red lines in his cheeks and a
yellow tinge to the whites of his eyes, he would have seemed in superb
physical condition.  The evidence lay rather in the expression of his
face, and most of all in the surroundings in which he lived.

He had been, to some extent at least, a man of refinement and culture
when he had passed through Bill's camp so long ago.  He had been
clean-shaven except for a small mustache; courteous, rather patronizing
but still friendly.  Now he was like a surly beast.  His eyes were
narrow and greedy,--weasel eyes that at once Bill mistrusted and
disliked.  A scowl was at his lips, no more were they in a firm,
straight line.  The light and glory of upright manhood, if indeed he had
ever possessed it, had gone from him now.  He was a friend and a
companion of Joe and Pete: in a measure at least he was of their own
kind.

When the white man chooses to descend, even the savages of the forest
cannot keep pace with him.  Bill knew now why Harold had never written
home.  The wilderness had seized him body and soul, but not in the
embrace of love with which it held Bill.  Obviously he had taken the
line of least resistance to perdition.  He had forgotten the world of
men; in reality he was no longer of it.  Bill read the truth--a
familiar truth in the North--in his crafty, stealthy, yet savage face.

He was utterly unkempt and slovenly.  His coarse beard covered his lips,
his matted hair was dull with dirt, his skin was scarcely less dark than
that of the Indians themselves.  The nails on his hands were foul; the
floor of the house was cluttered with rubbish and filth.  It was a
worthy place, this new-built cabin!  Even the desolate wastes outside
were not comparable with this.

Yet leering through his degeneracy, his identity could not be mistaken.
Here was the man Virginia had pierced the North to seek.

Harold removed his pipe.  "What do you want?" he asked.

For a moment Bill did not answer.  His thoughts were wandering afar.  He
remembered, when Harold had passed his camp, there had been something
vaguely familiar, a haunting resemblance to a face seen long before.
The same familiarity recurred to him now.  But he pushed it away and
bent his mind to the subject in hand.  "You're Lounsbury, of course," he
said.

"Sure."  This man had not forgotten his name, in the years that he was
lost to men.  "I ask you again--what do you want?"

"You've been living on the Yuga.  You came up here to trap in my
territory."

The man's hands stirred, ever so little, and the rifle moved on his
knees.  "You don't own this whole country."  Then he seemed to
take courage from Bill's impassive face.  He remembered his stanch
allies--Pete and Joe.  "And what if I did?"

"You knew I trapped here.  You brought up Joe Robinson and a breed with
you.  You meant to clean up this winter--all the furs in the country."

Harold's face drew in a scowl.  "And what are you goin' to do about it?"

"The queer thing is----" and Bill spoke quietly, slowly, "I'm not going
to do anything about it--now."

Harold's crafty eyes searched his face.  He wondered if Bill was
afraid--some way it didn't fit into the stories that he had heard of him
that this woodsman should be afraid.  But he might as well go on that
supposition as any other.  "Maybe it's a good thing," he said.  And for
an instant, something of his lost suavity of speech came back to him.
"Then to what--do I owe the honor of this visit?"

Bill sighed and straightened.  The struggle within himself had, an
instant before, waged more furiously than ever.  Why should he not leave
this man to his filthy cabin and his degeneracy and never let Virginia
know of their meeting?  He wondered if such had been his secret plan,
concealed in the further recesses of his mind, when he had told her
to-day's expedition concerned his mine,--so that he could withdraw if
he wished.  In this course most likely lay the girl's ultimate
happiness, certainly his own.  He could steal back; no one would ever
know the truth.  The man had sunk beneath her; even he, Bill, was more
worthy of her than this degenerate son of cities and culture.

Yet who was he to dare to take into his own hands the question of
Virginia's destiny?  He had promised to bring her lost lover back to
her; the fact that he was no longer the man she had known could be only
a subterfuge to quiet his own conscience.  Besides, the last sentence
that the man had spoken had been singularly portentous.  For the instant
he had fallen into his own native speech, and the fact offered
tremendous possibilities.  Could it be that the old days were not
entirely forgotten, that some of the virtues that Virginia had loved in
him still dwelt in his degenerate hulk, ready to be wakened again?  He
had heard of men being redeemed.  And all at once he knew his course.

So intent was he upon his thoughts that he scarcely heard the sound of
steps in the snow outside the cabin door, then the noise of some one on
the threshold in the act of removing snowshoes.

The task that confronted him now was that, no more and no less, to which
he had consecrated his life,--to bring happiness to the girl he loved.
There was work to do with this man.  But even yet he might be redeemed;
with Bill's aid his manhood might return to him.  His own love for the
girl tore at his heart, the image of his life stretched lonely and drear
before him, yet he could not turn aside.

"I didn't come to see you about trapping.  I came--about Virginia
Tremont."

His eyes were on Harold's face, and he saw the man start.  He had not
forgotten the name.  Just for an instant his face was stark pale and
devoid of expression.  "Virginia!" he cried.  "My God, what do you know
about her?"

But he didn't wait the answer.  All at once he looked, with an annoyance
and anxiety that at first Bill could not understand, toward the door of
the cabin.  The door knob slightly turned.

Bill wheeled, with a sense of vast and impending drama.  Harold swore, a
single brutal oath, then laughed nervously.  An Indian squaw--for all
her filth an untidiness a fair representative of her breed--pushed
through the door and came stolidly inside.  She walked to the back of
the cabin and began upon some household task.

Bill's face was stern as the gray cliffs of the Selkirks when he turned
again to Harold.  "Is that your woman?" he asked simply.

Harold did not reply.  He had not wished this man, emissary from his old
acquaintances of his native city, to know about Sindy.  He retained that
much pride, at least.  But the answer to Bill's question was too
self-evident for him to attempt denial.  He nodded, shrugging his
shoulders.

Bill waited an instant; and his voice when he spoke again was singularly
low and flat.  "Did you marry her?"

Harold shrugged again.  "One doesn't marry squaws," he replied.

Once more the silence was poignant in the wretched cabin.  "I came to
find Harold Lounsbury, a gentleman," Bill went on in the same strange,
flat voice, "and I find--a squaw man."

* * * * *

Bill realized at once that this new development did not in the least
affect his own duty.  His job had been to find Harold and return him to
Virginia's arms.  It was not for him to settle the girl's destiny.  For
all he had spent his days in the great solitudes of nature he knew
enough of life to know that women do not give their love to angels.
Rather they love their men as much for their weaknesses as for their
virtues.  This smirch in Harold's life was a question for the two of
them to settle between them.

It did, however, complicate the work of regeneration.  Bill had known
squaw men before, and few of them had ever regenerated.  Usually they
were men that could not stand the test of existence by their own toil:
either from failure or weakness they took this sordid line of least
resistance.  From thence on they did not struggle down the trap line in
the bitter winter days.  They laid comfortably in their cabins and their
squaws tended to such small matters.  It was true that the squaws wore
out quickly; sometimes they needed beating, and at about forty they
withered and died, or else the blizzard caught them unprotected in the
forest,--and then it became necessary to select another.  This was an
annoyance, but not a tragedy.  One was usually as faithful and as
industrious as another.

It was perfectly evident that Sindy had been at work setting out traps.
Bill stared at the woman and for the moment he did not see the little
sparks growing to flame in Harold's eyes.

"What did you say?" he asked, menacing.  He had caught a word that has
come to be an epithet in the North.

But by taking it up Harold made a severe strategical error.  Bill had
never hesitated, by the light of an ancient idiom, to call a spade a
spade.  Also he always had good reasons before he took back his words.
"I said," he repeated clearly, "that I'd found--a squaw man."

Harold's muscles set but immediately relaxed again.  He shrugged once.
"And is it anybody's business but my own?" he asked.

"It hadn't ought to be, but it is," was the answer.  "It's my business,
and somebody else's too."  he turned to the woman.  "Listen, Sindy, and
give me a polite answer.  You're Joe Robinson's sister, aren't you?"

The Indian looked up, nodded, then went back to her work.

"Then you left Buckshot Dan--to come here and live with this white
man?"

Harold turned to her with a snarl.  "Don't answer him, Sindy.  It's none
of his business."  Then his smoldering eyes met Bill's.  "Now we've
talked enough.  You can go."

"Wait!"  Something in the grave face and set features silenced the squaw
man.  "But it's true--we have talked just about enough.  I've got one
question.  Lounsbury--do you think, by any chance--you've got any
manhood left?  Do you think you're rotten clear through?"

Harold leaped then, savage as a wolf, and his rifle swung in his arms.
Instantly Bill's form, impassive before, seemed simply to waken with
life.  There was no rage in his face, only determination; but his arm
drove out fast as a serpent's head.  Seemingly with one motion he
wrenched the gun from the man's hand and sent him spinning against the
wall.

Before even his body crashed against the logs, Bill had whirled to face
the squaw.  He knew these savage women.  It would be wholly in character
for her whip a gleaming knife from her dress and spring to her man's
aid.  But she looked up as if with indifference, and once more went back
to her work.

Bill was considerably heartened.  At least he didn't have to deal with
the savage love that sometimes the Indian women bore the whites.  Sindy
was evidently wholly indifferent to Harold's fate.  The match obviously
had not been a great success.

For an instant Harold lay still, crumpled on the floor; then his
bleeding hands fumbled at his belt.  Once more Bill sprang and snatched
him to his feet.  The holster, however, was empty.

"No more of that," Bill cautioned.  The man's eyes smoldered with
resentment, but for the moment he was cowed.  "Before you start anything
more, hear what I've got to offer you."  His voice lowered, and the
words came rather painfully.  "It's your one chance, Lounsbury--to
come back.  Virginia Tremont has come into the North, looking for you.
She's at my camp.  She wants to take you back with her."

Lounsbury's breath caught with a strange, sobbing sound.  "Virginia--up
here?" he cried.  "Does she know about--this----"  He indicated the
cabin interior, and all it meant, with one sweep of his arm.

"Of course not.  How could she?  Whether you tell her or not is a matter
for you and she to decide.  She's come to find you--and bring you
back."

"My God!  To the States?"

"Of course."

For the instant the black wrath had left his face, and his thought swung
backward to his own youth,--to the days he had known Virginia in a
far-off city.  He was more than a little awed at this manifestation of
her love.  He supposed that she had forgotten him long since and had
never dreamed that she would search for him here.

Once more the expression of his face changed, and Bill couldn't have
explained the wave of revulsion that surged through him.  He only knew a
blind desire to tear with his strong fingers those leering lips before
him.  Harold was lost in insidious speculations.  He remembered the
girl's beauty, the grace and litheness of her form, the holy miracle of
her kisses.  Opposite him sat his squaw,--swarthy, unclean, shapeless,
comely as squaws go but as far from Virginia as night was from day.
Perhaps it wasn't too late yet----

But at that instant he heard the East Wind on the roof, and he recalled
that the old problem of existence faced him still.  He had solved it up
here.  His cabin was warm, he was full-fed; the squaw grubbed his living
for him out of the frozen forests.  He did not want to be forced to face
the competition of civilized existence again.  He was dirty, care-free;
his furs supplied food and clothes for him and certain rags for her, and
filled his cupboard with strong drink.  He remembered that the girl had
had no money, and that he had come first to the North to find gold.  If
he had succeeded, if his poke were heavy with the yellow metal, he could
go back to his city and take up his old life anew, but he couldn't begin
at the bottom.  With wealth at his command he might even find a more
desirable woman than Virginia: perhaps the years had changed her even as
himself.  There was no need of dreaming further about the matter.  Only
one course, considering the circumstances, lay before him.

"You're very kind," he said at last.  "But I won't go.  Tell her you
didn't find me."

Bill straightened and sighed.  "Make no mistake about that, Lounsbury,"
he answered.  "You're going with me--" and then he spoke softly, a pause
between each word--"if I have to drag you there through the snow.  I
was told to bring you back, and I'm going to do it."

"You are, eh?"  Harold scowled and tried to find courage to attack this
man again.  Yet his muscles hung limp, and he couldn't even raise his
eyes to meet those that looked so steadfastly at him now.

"Sindy can go home to Buckshot Dan.  He'll take her back--you stole
her from him.  And you, Lounsbury, rotten as you are, are coming with
me.  God knows I hope she'll drive you from her door; but I'm going to
bring you, just the same."

Harold's eyes glowed, and for the moment his brain was too busy with
other considerations openly to resent the words.  Then his face grew
cunning.  It was all plain enough: Bill loved Virginia himself.  Through
some code of ethics that was almost incredible to Harold, he was willing
to sacrifice his own happiness for hers.  And the way to pay for the
rough treatment he had just had, treatment that he couldn't, at present
at least, avenge in kind, was to win the girl away from him.  The thing
was already done.  She loved him enough to search even the frozen realms
of the North for him: simply by a little tenderness, a little care, he
could command her to love to the full again.  The fact that Bill wanted
her made her infinitely more desirable to him.

"You won't tell her--about Sindy?"

"Not as long as you're decent.  That's for you to settle for
yourself--whether she finds out about her."

Harold believed him.  While he himself would have used the smirch as a
weapon against his rival, he knew that Bill meant what he said.  "I'll
go," he announced.  "If she's at the Gray Lake cabin, we've got plenty
of time to make it before dark."



XV

Harold Lounsbury found to his surprise that they were not to start at
once.  It soon became evident that Bill had certain other matters on his
mind.

"Build a fire and put on some water to heat--fill up every pan you
have," he instructed Sindy.  He himself began to cram their little stove
with wood.  Harold watched with ill-concealed anxiety.

"What's that for?" he asked at last.

Bill straightened up and faced him.  "You didn't think I was going to
take you looking like you do, do you--into Virginia's presence?  The
first thing on the program is--a bath."

Harold flushed: the red glow was evident even through the sooty
accumulation on his face.  "It seems to me you're going a little outside
your authority as Miss Tremont's representative.  I don't know that I
need to have any hillbilly tell me when I need a bath."

"Yes?"  Bill's eyes twinkled--for the first time during their talk.
"Hillbilly is right--in contrast to a cultured gentleman of cities.
But let me correct you.  You may not know it, but I do.  And you need
one now."  He turned once more to Sindy.  "And see what you can do about
this gentleman's clothes, too; if he's got any clean underwear or any
other togs, load 'em out."

"Anything else?" Harold asked sarcastically.

"Several things.  Have you got any kind of a razor?"

"No.  I don't want one either."

"Better look around and find one.  If you don't, I'll be obliged to
shave you with my jackknife--and it will be inclined to pull.  It's
sharp enough for skinning grizzlies but not for that growth of yours.
And I'll try to trim your hair up for you a little, too.  When you
bathe, bathe all over--don't spare your face or your hair.  Water may
seem strange at first, but you'll get used to it.  And I'll go over and
sit with Joe Robinson and his friend until you are ready.  The
surroundings are more appetizing.  If you can polish yourself well in an
hour, we'll make it through to-night."

Harold's heart burned, but he acquiesced.  Then Bill turned and left him
to his ablutions.

Less than an hour later Harold came mushing up the lean-to where Bill
waited.  And the hour had wrought a profound and amazing change in the
man's appearance.  He had conscientiously gone to work to cleanse
himself, and he had succeeded.  His hair, dull before, was a glossy
dark-brown now; he had shaved off the matted growth about his lips,
leaving only a small, neat mustache; his hair was trimmed and carefully
parted.  The man's skin had also resumed its natural shade.

For the first time Bill realized that Harold was really a rather
handsome man.  His features were much more regular than Bill's own.  The
lips were fine,--just a little too fine, in fact, giving an intangible
but unmistakable hint of cruelty.  The only thing that had not changed
was his eyes.  They were as smoldering and wolfish as ever.

By Bill's instructions he had loaded his back with blankets, his pistol
was at his belt, and he carried a thirty-five rifle in the hollow of his
arm.

"I'm ready," he said gruffly.

"I'm glad to hear it."  Bill glanced at his watch.  "It's late, but by
mushing fast we can make it in by dark.  I told Virginia that I'd likely
need an extra day at least--she'll think I've worked fast.  She'd know
it--if she had seen how you looked an hour ago.  I was counting on
finding you somewhere along the Yuga."

"We moved up--a few weeks ago."

"There's one other thing, before we start.  I want you to tell these
understrappers of yours to take that squaw and clear out of Clearwater.
Tell 'em to take her back where she belongs--to Buckshot Dan.  He'll
take her in, all right.  I've been working in Miss Tremont's interests
until now--now I'm working in my own.  This happens to be my trapping
country.  If I come back in a few weeks and find them still here there's
apt to be some considerable shedding of a bad mixture of bad blood.  In
other words--skin out while you yet can."

The half-breeds, understanding perfectly, looked to Harold for
confirmation.  The latter had already learned several lessons of
importance this day, and he didn't really care to learn any more.  His
answer was swift.

"Go, as he says," Harold directed.

Their dark faces grew sullen.  The idea was evidently not to their
favor.  Then one asked a question in the Indian vernacular.

Bill was alert at once.  Here was a situation that he couldn't handle.
Harold glanced once at his face, saw by his expression that he was
baffled, and answered in the same language.  From the tone of his voice
Bill would have said that he uttered a promise.

Once more the Indian questioned, and Harold hesitated an instant, as if
seeking an answer.  It seemed to the other white man that his eye fell
to the rifle that Bill carried.  Then he spoke again, gesturing.  The
gesture that he made was four fingers, as if in an instinctive motion,
held before the Indian's eyes.  Then he announced that he was ready to
go.

The afternoon was almost done when they started out.  The distant trees
were already dim; phantoms were gathered in the spaces between the
trunks.  The two mushed swiftly through the snow.

Bill had enough memory of that glance to his rifle to prefer to walk
behind, keeping a close eye on Harold.  Yet he could see no reason on
earth why the man should make any attempt upon his life.  The trip was
to Harold's own advantage.

He had plenty of time to think in the long walk to his cabin.  Only the
snowy forest lay about him: the only sound was the crunch of their shoes
in the snow, and there was nothing to distract him.  Now that it was
evident that Harold had no designs upon his life, he walked with bowed
head, a dark luster in his eyes.

He had fulfilled his contract and found the missing man.  Even now he
was showing him the way to Virginia.  He wondered if he had been a fool
to have sacrificed his own happiness for an unworthy rival.  The world
grew dreary and dark about him.

He had tried to hide his own tragedy by a mask of brusqueness, even a
grim humor when he had given his orders to Harold.  But he hadn't
deceived himself.  His heart had been leading within him.  Now he even
felt the beginnings of bitterness, but he crushed them down with all the
power of his will.  He mustn't let himself grow bitter, at least,--black
and hating and jealous.  Rather he must follow his star, believe yet
in its beauty and its fidelity, and never look at it through glasses
darkly.  He must take what fate had given him and be content,--a few
wonderful weeks that could never come again.  He had had his fling of
happiness; the day was at an end.

It was true.  As if by a grim symbolism, darkness fell over Clearwater.
The form in front of him grew dim, ghostly, yet well he knew its
reality.  The distant trunks blurred, faded, and were obliterated; the
trees, swept and hidden by the snow, were like silent ghosts that faded;
the whole vista was like a scene in a strange and tragic dream.

The silence seemed to press him down like a malignant weight.  The
mysterious and eerie sorrow of the northern night went home to him as
never before.

He knew all too well the outcome of this day's work.  There would be a
few little moments of gratitude from Virginia; perhaps in the joy of the
reunion she would even forget to give him this.  He would try to smile
at her, to wish her happiness; he would fight to make his voice sound
like his own.  She would take Harold to her heart the same as ever.  He
had not the least hope of any other consummation.  Now that Harold was
shaved and clean he was a handsome youth, and all the full sweep of her
old love would go to him in an instant.  In fact, her love had already
gone to him--across thousands of miles of weary wasteland--and
through that love she had come clear up to these terrible wilds to find
him.

His speech, his bearing seemed already changed.  He was remembering that
he was a gentleman, one of Virginia's own kind.  He already looked the
part.  Perhaps he was already on the way toward true regeneration.
It was better that he should be, for Virginia's happiness.  Her
happiness--this had been the motive and the theme of Bill's work clear
through: it was his one consolation now.  In a few days the snow crust
would be firm enough to trust, and hand in hand they would go down toward
Bradleyburg.  He would see the joy in their faces, the old luster of
which he himself had dreamed in Virginia's eyes.  But it would not flow
out to him.  The holy miracle would not raise him from the dead.  He
would serve her to the last, and when at length they saw the roofs and
tottering chimneys of Bradleyburg she would go out of his work and out
of his life, never to return.  In their native city Harold Lounsbury
would take his old place.  He's have his uncle's fortune to aid him in
is struggle for success.  The test of existence was not so hard down
there; he might be wholly able to hold Virginia's respect and love, and
make her happy.  Such was Bill's last prayer.

They were nearing the cabin now.  They saw the candlelight, like a pale
ghost, in the window.  Virginia was still up, reading, perhaps, before
the fire.  She didn't guess what happiness Bill was bringing her across
the snow.

Bill could fancy her, bright eyes intent, face a little thoughtful,
perhaps, but tender as the eyes of angels.  He could see her hair
burnished in the candlelight, the soft, gracious beauty of her face.
Her lips, too,--he couldn't forget those lips of hers.  A shudder of
cold passed over his frame.

He strode forward and put his hand on Harold's arm.  "Wait," he
commanded.  "There's one thing more."

Harold paused, and the darkness was not so dense but that this face was
vaguely revealed, sullen and questioning.

"There's one thing more," Bill repeated again.  "I've brought you here.
I've given you your chance--for redemption.  God knows if I had my
choice I'd have killed you first.  She's not going to know about the
squaw, unless you tell her.  These matters are all for you to decide, I
won't interfere."

He paused, and Harold waited.  And his eager ears caught the faint throb
of feeling in the low, almost muttered notes.

"But don't forget I'm there," he went on.  "I work for her--until she
goes out of my charge and I'm her guide, her protector, the guardian of
her happiness.  That's all I care about--her happiness.  I don't know
whether or not I did wrong to bring a squaw man to her--but if you're
man enough to hold her love and make her happy, it doesn't matter.  But
I give--one warning."

His voice changed.  It took on a quality of infinite and immutable
prophecy  In the darkness and the silence, the voice might have come
from some higher realm, speaking the irrevocable will of the forest
gods.

"She'll be more or less in your power at times, up here.  I won't be
with you every minute.  But if you take one jot of advantage of that
fact--either in word or deed--I'll break you and smash you and kill
you in my hands!"

He waited an instant for the words to go home.  Harold shivered as if
with cold.  And because in his mind already lay the vision of their
meeting, he uttered one more sentence of instructions.  He was a strong
man, this son of the forest--and no man dared deny the trait--but he
could not steel himself to see that first kiss.  The sight of the girl,
fluttering and enraptured in Harold's arms, the soft loveliness of her
lips on his, was more than he could bear.

"Go on in," he said.  "She's waiting for you."

And she was.  She had waited six years, dreaming all the while of his
return.  Harold went in, and left his savior to the doubtful mercy of
the winter forest, the darkness that had crept into his heart, and the
hush that might have been the utter silence of death itself had it not
been for the image of a faint, enraptured cry, the utterance of dreams
come true, within the cabin door.



XVI

When Virginia heard the tramp of feet on her threshold she didn't dream
but that Bill had returned a day earlier than he had planned.  Her heart
gave a queer little flutter of relief.  The cabin had been lonely
to-night, the silence had oppressed her; most of all she had dreaded the
long night without the comforting reassurance of his presence.  She
wouldn't have admitted, even to herself, that her comfort was so
dependent upon this man.  And she sprang up, joyously as a bird
springing from a bough, to welcome him.

The next instant she stopped, appalled.  The door did not open, the
steps did not cross her threshold.  Instead, knuckles rapped feebly on
the door.

Even in a city, it is a rather discomforting experience for a girl,
alone in a home at night, to answer a tap on the door.  Here in this
awful silence and solitude she was simply and wholly terrified.  She
hadn't dreamed that there was a stranger within many miles of the cabin.
For an instant she didn't know what to do.  The knock sounded again.

But Virginia had acquired a certain measure of self-discipline in these
weary weeks, and her mind at once flashed to her pistol.  Fortunately
she had not taken it from her belt, and she had full confidence in her
ability to shoot it quickly and well.  Besides, she remembered that her
door was securely bolted.

"Who's there?" she asked.  "Is it you, Bill?"

"It's not Bill," the answer came.  "But he's here."

The first thought that came to her was that Bill had been injured, hurt
in some adventure in the snow, and men had brought him back to the
cabin.  Something that was like a sickness surged through her frame.
But an instant more she knew that, had he been injured, there would have
been no wayfarers to find him and bring him in.  There was only one
remaining possibility: that this man was one whom Bill had gone out to
find and who had returned with him.

The thought was so startling, so fraught with tremendous possibilities
that for a moment she seemed to lose all power of speech or action.

"Who is it?" she asked again, steadily as she could.

And the answer came strange and stirring through the heavy door.  "It's
I--Harold Lounsbury.  Bill told me to come."

Virginia was oppressed and baffled as if in a mysterious dream.  For the
moment she stood still, trying to quiet her leaping heart and her
fluttering nerves.  Yet she knew she had to make answer.  She knew that
she must find out whether this voice spoke true--whether or not it was
her lost lover, returned to her at last.

Yet there could be no mistake.  The voice was the same that she
remembered of old.  It was as if it had spoken out of the dead years.
Her hands clasped at her breast, then she walked to the threshold and
opened the door.

Harold Lounsbury stepped through, blinking in the candlelight.
Instinctively the girl flung back, giving him full right of way and
staring as if he were a ghost.  He turned to her, half apologetic.
"Bill told me to come," he said.

The man stood with arms limp at his side, and a great surge of mingled
emotions swept the girl as in a flood.  She was pale as a ghost, and her
hands trembled when she stretched them out.  "Harold," she murmured
unsteadily.  She tried to smile.  "Is it really you, Harold?"

"It's I," he answered.  "We've come together--at last."

The words seemed to rally her scattered faculties.  The dreamlike
quality of the scene at once dissolved.  Utter and bewildering surprise
is never an emotion that can long endure; its very quality makes for
brevity.  Already some leveling, cool sense within her had begun to
accept the fact of his presence.

Instinctively her eyes swept his face and form.  All doubt was past:
this man was unquestionably Harold.  Yet she was secretly and vaguely
shocked.  Her first impression was one of change: that the years had
some way altered him,--other than the natural changes that no living
creature may escape.

In reality his face had aged but little.  He had worn just such a
mustache when he went away.  Perhaps his eyes were changed: for the
moment she thought that they were, and the change repelled her and
estranged her.  His mouth was not quite right, either; his form, though
powerful, had lost some of its youthful trimness.

It seemed to her, for one fleeting instant, that there was a brutality
in his expression that she had never seen before.  But at once the
reaction came.  Of course these northern forests had changed him.  He
had fought with the cold and the snow, with all the primeval forces of
nature: he had simply hardened and matured.  It was true that the calm
strength of Bill's face was not to be seen in his.  Nevertheless he was
clean, stalwart, and his embarrassment was a credit to him rather than a
discredit.

This thought was the beginning of the reaction that in a moment grasped
her and held her.  The truth suddenly flamed clear and bright: that
Harold Lounsbury had returned to her arms.  Her search was over.  She
had won.  He stood before her, alive and well.  He had come back to her.
Her effort had been crowned with success.

He was her old lover, in the flesh.  Of course she would experience some
shock on first meeting him, see some changes; but they were nothing that
should keep her from him.  He seized her hands in both of his.
"Virginia," he cried.  "My God, I can't believe it's you!"

She remained singularly cool in the ardor of this cry.  "Why didn't you
write?" she asked.  "Why didn't you come home?"

The questions, instead of embarrassing him further, put Harold at his
ease.  He was on safe grounds now.  He had prepared for just these
queries, on the long walk to the cabin.

"I did write," he cried.  "Why didn't you answer?"

The words came glib to his lips.  She stared at him in amazement.  "You
did--you say you wrote to me?" she asked him, deeply moved.

"Wrote?  I wrote a dozen times.  And I never received a word--except
from Jules Nathan."


"But Jules Nathan--Jules Nathan is dead!"

"He is?"  But Harold's surprise was feigned.  This was one piece of news
that had trickled through the wastes to him,--of the death of Jules
Nathan, a man known to them both.  It was safe to have heard from
him. The contents of the letter could never be verified.  "He told
me--after I'd written many times, and never got an answer--that you
were engaged to be married--to a Chicago man.  I thought you'd forgotten
me.  I thought you'd been untrue."

Virginia held hard on her faculties and balanced his words.  She had
known Chicago men during the six years that she had moved in the most
exalted social circles of her own city.  The story held water, even if
she had been inclined to doubt it.  She knew it was always easy for an
engagement rumor to start and be carried far, when a prominent girl was
involved.  "I didn't get your letters," she told him.  "Are you sure you
addressed them right----"

"I thought so----"

"And you didn't get mine----"

"No--not after the first few days.  I changed my address--but I told
you of the change in a letter.  I never heard from you after that."

"Then it's all been a misunderstanding--a cruel mistake.  And you
thought I had forgotten----"

"I thought you'd married some one else.  I couldn't believe it when Bill
came to my cabin to-day and told me you were here--I've been trapping
over toward the Yuga.  And now--we're together at last."

But curiously these last words cost her her self-possession.  Instantly
she was ill at ease.  The reestablishment of their old relation could
only come gradually: although she had not anticipated it, the six years
of separation had wrought their changes.  She felt that she needed time
to become adjusted to him--just as a man who has been blind needs time
to become adjusted to his vision.  And at once their proximity, in this
lonely cabin, was oddly embarrassing.

"Where's Bill?" she asked.  She turned to the door and called.  "Bill,
where are you?"

His voice seemed quite his own when he answered from the stillness of
the night.  "I'll be in in a moment--I was just getting a load of
wood."

It wasn't true.  He had been standing dumb and inert in the darkness,
his thoughts wandering afar.  But he began hastily to fill his arms with
fuel.  Virginia turned back to her new-found lover.

She was a little frightened by the expression on his face.  His eyes
were glowing, the color had risen in his cheeks, he was curiously eager
and breathless.  "Before he comes," he urged.  "We've been apart so
long----"

His hands reached out and seized hers.  He drew her toward him.  She
didn't resist: she felt a deep self-annoyance that she didn't crave his
kiss.  She fought away her unwonted fear; perhaps when his lips met hers
everything would be the same again, and her long-awaited happiness would
be complete.  He crushed her to him, and his kiss was greedy.

Yet it was cold upon her lips.  She struggled from his arms, and he
looked at her in startled amazement.  In fact, she was amazed at
herself.  When she had time to think it over, alone in her bed at night,
she decided that her desperate struggle had been merely an attempt to
free herself from his arms before Bill came in and saw them.  She only
knew that she didn't want this comrade of hers, this stalwart forester,
to see her in Harold's embrace.  But in the second of the act she had
known a blind fear, almost a repulsion, and an overwhelming desire to
escape.

She turned with a radiant smile to welcome the tall form that strode in,
looking neither to the right nor left, arms heaped with wood.  She
found, much to her surprise, that she felt more at ease after Bill came
in.  She asked him how he had happened to get trace of the missing man;
he answered in an even, almost expressionless tone that someway puzzled
her.  Then she launched desperately into that old life-saver in moments
of embarrassment,--a discussion of the fates and fortunes of mutual
acquaintances.

"But I'm tired, Harold," she told him in an hour.  "The surprise of
seeing you has been--well, too much for me.  I believe I'll go to my
room.  It's behind that curtain."

Harold rose eagerly as if something was due him in the moment of
parting; Bill got up in respect to her.  But her glance was impartial.
A moment later she was gone.

The first night Bill and Harold made bunks on the floor of the cabin,
but health and propriety decreed that such an arrangement could only be
temporary.  They could not put their trust in an immediate deliverance.
They might be imprisoned for weeks to come.  And Bill solved the problem
with a single suggestion.

They would build a small cabin for the two men to sleep in.  Many times
he had erected such a structure by his own efforts; the two of them
could push it up in a few hours' work.

Harold had no fondness for toil of this kind, but he couldn't see how he
could well avoid it.  His indifference to his own fate was quite past by
now.  The single moment before Bill had entered the cabin door had
thoroughly wakened his keenest interests and desires; already, he
thought, he had entirely re-established his relations with Virginia.  He
was as anxious to make good now as she was to have him.  Already he
thought himself once more a man and a gentleman of the great outside
world.  His vanity was heightened; the girl's beauty had increased, if
anything, since his departure; and he was more than ready to go through
the adventure to its end.  And he didn't dare run the risk of
displeasing Virginia so soon after their meeting.

He knew how she stood on the matter.  He had ventured to make one
protest,--and one had been quite enough.  "I'm really not much good at
cabin building," he had said.  "But I don't see why Bill shouldn't go
work at it.  I suppose you hired him for all camp work."

For an instant Virginia had stared at him in utter wonder, and then a
swift look of grave displeasure had come into her face.  "You forget,
Harold, that it was Bill that brought you back.  The thirty days he was
hired for were gone long ago."  But she had softened at once.  "It's
your duty to help him, and I'll help him too, if I can."

They had cut short logs, cleaned away the snow, and with the strength of
their shoulders lifted the logs one upon another.  With his ax Bill
cunningly cut the saddles, carving them down so that the rainfall would
drain down the corners rather than lie in the cavities and thus rot the
timbers.  Planks were cut for the roof, and tree boughs laid down for
the floor.

The floor space was only seven feet long by eight wide--just enough
for two bunks--and the walls were about as high as a sleeping-car
berth.  The work was done at the day's end.

In the next few days Bill mostly left the two together, trying to find
his consolation in the wild life of the forest world outside the cabin.
Harold had taken advantage of his absence and had made good progress:
Virginia's period of readjustment was almost complete.  She was prepared
to make the joys of the future atone for the sorrows of the past.

Harold was still good-looking, she thought; his speech, though breaking
careless at times, was attractive and charming; and most of all his
love-making was more arduous than ever.  In the city life that they
planned he would fit in well; his uncle would help him to get on his
feet.  Fortunately for their peace of mind, they did not know the real
truth,--that Kenly Lounsbury himself was at that moment struggling
with financial problems that were about to overwhelm him.  She told
herself, again and again, that her life would be all that she had
dreamed, that her fondest hopes had come true.  A few weeks more of the
snow and the waste places,--and then they could start life anew.

Yet there was something vaguely sinister, something amiss in the fact
that she found herself repeating the thought so many times.  It was
almost as if she were trying to reassure herself, to drown out some
whispering inner voice of doubt and fear.  She couldn't get away from a
haunting feeling that, in an indescribable way, her relations with
Harold had changed.

His ardent speeches didn't seem to waken sufficient response in her own
breast.  She lacked the ecstasy, the wonder that she had known when, as
a girl, she had first become engaged to Harold.  They embarrassed her
rather than thrilled her; they didn't seem quite real.  Perhaps she had
simply grown older.  That was it: some of her girlish romance had died a
natural death.  She would give his man her love, would take his in
return, and they would have the usual, normal happiness of marriage.
All would come out well, once they got away from the silence and the
snows.

Perhaps his large and extravagant speeches were merely out of place in
the stark reality of the wilderness; they could thrill her as ever when
she returned to her native city.  Likely he could dance, after a little
practice, as well as ever; fill his niche in society and give her all
the happiness that woman has a right to expect upon this imperfect
earth.  There was certainly nothing to be distressed over now.  They had
been brought together as if by a miracle; any haunting doubt and fear,
too subtle and intangible to put into words or even concrete thought,
would quickly pass away.

She did not, however, go frequently into his arms.  Someway, an
embarrassment, a sense of inappropriateness and unrest always assailed
her when he tried to claim the caresses that he felt were his due.  And
at first she could not find a plausible explanation for her reserve.
Perhaps these tendernesses were also out of place in the grim reality of
the North; more likely, she decided, it was a subtle sense, the guardian
angel of her own integrity, warning her that too intimate relations with
that man must be avoided, isolated and exiled as they were.  "Not now,
Harold," she would tell him.  "Not until we're established again--at
home."

Finally his habits and his actions did not quite meet with her approval.
The first of these was only a little thing,--a failure to keep shaved.
Shaving in these surroundings, without a mirror, with a battered old
razor that had lain long in the cabin and had to be sharpened on a
whetstone, where every drop of hot water used had to be laboriously
heated on the stove, was an annoying chore at best: besides, there was
no one to see him except Virginia and the guide.  The stubble matted and
grew on his lips and jowls.  Bill, in contrast, shaved with greatest
care every evening.  A more important point was that his avoidance of
his proper share of Bill's daily toil.  He neither hewed wood nor drew
water, nor made any apologies for the omission.  Rather he gave the idea
that Bill's services were due him by rights.

There was a little explosion, one afternoon, when he ventured to advise
her in regard to her relations with Bill.  The forester himself was
cutting wood outside the cabin: they heard the mighty ring of his ax
against the tough spruce.  Virginia was at work preparing their simple
evening meal; Harold was stretched on her own cot, the curtain drawn
back, his arms under his head, his unshaven face curiously dark and
unprepossessing.

"You must begin to keep on your own ground--with Bill, Virginia," he
began in the silence.

Virginia turned to him, a wave of hot resentment flowing clear to her
finger tips.  If he had seen her flushed, intent face he would have
backed ground quickly.  Unfortunately he was gazing quietly out the
window.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Wholly aware of her own displeasure, wondering at it and anxious to hide
it, she was able to control her voice.  Its tone gave no key to her
thoughts.  Harold answered her, still unwarned:

"I mean--keep him at his distance.  He's a different sort from you and
I.  I don't mean he isn't all right, as far as his kind goes--but he
hasn't had the advantages."  Harold spoke tolerantly, patronizingly.
"Those fellows are apt to take advantage of any familiarity.  They're
all right if you keep 'em in their place--but they're mighty likely to
break lose from it any minute.  I'm sorry you ever let him call you
Virginia."

Virginia's eyes blazed.  If it is one of the precepts of good breeding
ever to let anger control the spirit, Virginia had made a breach indeed.
Her little hands clenched, and she had a fierce and insane desire to
beat those babbling lips with her fists.  Then she struggled to regain
her composure.

"Listen, Harold," she began at last coldly.  "I don't care to hear any
more such talk as that."

The man looked up then.  He saw the righteous indignation in her face.
He felt the rising tide of his own anger.  "I'm only trying to warn
you----" he began weakly.

"And I don't need or want any such warnings.  I don't care what you
think of Bill--for that matter, you can be sure that Bill doesn't care
at all either--but I'll ask you to keep your thoughts to yourself.
Oh, if you only knew--how good, how strong, how true he has been--how
tender he has been to me----"

Harold was torn with jealous rage, and in his fury and malice he made
the worst mistake of all.  "I hope he hasn't been _too_ tender----" he
suggested viciously.

But at once he was on his feet, begging her pardon.  He knew that he had
made a dangerous and regrettable mistake.  She forgave him--forgiveness
was as much a part of her as her graciousness or her loyalty--but she
didn't immediately forget.  And Harold sat long hours with smoldering
eyes and clenched hands, a climbing fire and fury in his brain, while
the malice and resentment and jealousy that he held toward Bill grew to
hatred, bitter and black.



XVII

The addition of Harold to their number did not influence, for long,
Virginia's old relations with Bill.  They were comrades as ever; they
talked and chatted around the little stove in the hushed nights; they
played their favorite melodies on the battered phonograph, and they took
the same joyous, exciting expeditions into the wild.  These latter
diversions were looked upon with no favor by Harold, but he couldn't see
how he could reasonably interfere.  Nor did he care, at first, to
accompany them.  He had no love for the snow-swept wastes.

The crust on the snow was steadily strengthening; most the days were
clear and excessively cold.  The journey could be undertaken soon.  Only
a few more days of the adventure remained.

Their excursions at first were a matter of pleasure only, but by one
unexpected stroke from the sinister powers of the wild they were
suddenly made necessary.  Her first knowledge of the blow came when Bill
entered her cabin to build the morning fire.

She had not yet risen.  It had always been her practice to wait till the
room was snug and warm before she dressed.  She was asleep when Bill
came in, and aroused by his footsteps, she was aware of the fleeting
memory of unhappy dreams.  She couldn't have told just what they
were.  It seemed to her that some unseen danger had been menacing her
security,--that evil and dangerous forces were conspiring and making
war against her.  Hidden foes were in ambush, ready to pounce forth.

The danger seemed different and beyond that which she had faced every
day: snow and cold and the other inanimate forces of the wild.  And she
was vastly relieved to hear Bill's voice calling her from sleep.

But the next instant her fears returned--not the ghastly fear of evil
dreams but of actual and real disaster.  It wasn't Bill's usual custom
to waken her.  He wanted her to spend as many as possible of the
monotonous hours in sleep.  There was a subdued quality in his voice,
too, that once or twice she had heard before.  She drew aside the
curtain, far enough to see his face.  There was no paleness, however,
nor no fear, for all that his eyes were sober.

"You'd better get up as soon as you can, Virginia," he said.  "We've got
to take a real hunt to-day."

"Hunt?  After meat?"

"Yes.  We're face to face with a new problem.  The pack came by last
night--the wolf pack.  As usual, when men are near, they didn't make a
sound.  I didn't hear them at all.  And they got away with the big moose
ham, hanging on the spruce.  Stripped the bone clean."

"Then we're out of meat?"

"All except the little piece outside the door.  We've been going through
it pretty fast."

Bill spoke true.  Their meat consumption had practically doubled since
Harold had come.  For all his lack of physical exercise, the latter was
an unusually heavy eater.

"But we won't be able to find any now.  The moose are gone----"

"We're not very likely to, that's certain; but it won't be a tragedy if
we don't.  It would only be an annoyance.  It's true that we've got to
have more supplies to start down--I don't believe we could make it
through with what we have, considering the loss of this ham--but if
it's necessary I can mush over to me Twenty-three Mile cabin and get the
supplies I left over there.  Harold tells me he hasn't a thing in his
old place.  However, I can do it, if we don't happen to pick up some
meat to-day."

"We might track down the wolves, and get one of those----"

"Wolf meat hasn't a flavor you'd care for, I'm afraid.  The Indians have
been known to eat it, but they can but away beaver and tough old grizzly
bear.  Those things are starvation meats only.  But if you care to, we
can dash out and see if we can pick up a young caribou or a left-over
moose.  It's pleasant out to-day, anyway.  It's rather warm--I believe
there's going to be a change of weather."

"Good or bad?" the girl asked.

"Haven't had any government bulletins on that point, this morning.
Probably bad.  The weather in the North, Virginia, goes along the way it
is a while, and then it gets worse."

She dressed, and at breakfast their exultation over their trip grew
painful to Harold's ears.  He announced his intention of going along.

Curiously, even Virginia did not receive this announcement with
particular enthusiasm.  It was not that her regard for Bill was any kin
to that she held for Harold.  Rather, it was a fear that Harold's
presence might blunt the edge of the fine companionship she enjoyed with
the woodsman.  It would throw a personal element into an otherwise
care-free and adventurous day.  But she smiled at him, rather fondly.

"Just as you like, Harold."

They put on their snowshoes, their warmest wraps, and started gayly
forth.  Bill took rather a new course to-day.  He bent his steps toward
a stream that he called Creek Despair,--named for the fact that he had
once held high hopes of finding his lost mine along its waters, only to
meet an utter and hopeless failure.  From the map he had judged that the
lost claim lay somewhere along its course, but he had washed it from its
mother springs clear to its mouth, finding scarcely the faintest traces
in the pan.  Because he had made such a tireless search in this
particular section in previous years he had completely avoided it in the
present adventure.  Even on his pleasure trips with Virginia he had
never forgotten his search: thus he had led her into more favorable
regions where he might reasonably keep his eyes over for clews.  Now
that he had given up finding the claim--for this season, at least, and
perhaps forever--one way was as good as another.  And he remembered
that an old caribou trail lay just beyond the stream on the steep
hillside.

Bill led the way, mushing quietly an swiftly, and Virginia sped after
him.  The cold had brought a high color to her cheeks and a luster to
her eyes; her nerves and muscles tingled with life.  She was in
wonderful spirits.  Never she took a hundred paces without experiencing
some sort of a little, heart-gladdening adventure.

Every manifestation of the forest life about her filled her with
delight.  The beauty of the winter woods, the absorbing record that the
wild creatures had left in the snow, the long sweep of range and valley
that she could glimpse from a still hilltop, all had their joy for her.
With Bill she found something to delight her, something to make her
laugh and quicken her blood, in every hundred yards of their course.
Sometimes when the snow record was obscure, Bill stopped and explained,
usually with a graphic story and unconscious humor that made the woods
tingle and ring with her joyous, rippling laughter.  More than often,
however, she was able to piece our the mystery by herself.

Bill had a long and highly fanciful conversation with a little,
black-tailed ermine that tried to run under his feet; he imitated--to
Virginia's delight, the spectacle of a large and stiff cow moose pulling
herself through the mud; he repeated for her the demented cries of the
loons that they had sometimes heard from the still waters of Gray Lake.
But he didn't forget that the main purpose of their expedition was to
hunt.  When at last they reached the caribou range he commanded silence.

Harold, silent in the others' gayety, immediately evinced a decided
inclination to talk.  He had not particularly enjoyed the excursion so
far.  In the first place he had no love either for the winter forest or
the creatures that inhabited it; he would have been much more
comfortable and at ease beside the cabin stove.  He couldn't much with
comfort at Bill's regular pace: he was rather out of breath and
irritated after the first two hundred rods.  Most of all, he was
savagely conscious of the fact that Virginia was not giving him a
rightful share of her attention.  For the time being she seemed to have
forgotten his presence.  He was resentful, wishing disaster upon the
hunt, eager to turn back.

"The rule is silence, from now on," Virginia answered his first remark.
"Bill says we're in a game country."

The answer didn't satisfy him.  But his heart suddenly leaped when Bill
glanced back in warning and pointed to an entrancing wilderness picture,
a hundred yards in front.

In a little glade and framed by the forest stood a large bull caribou,
flashing and incredibly vivid against the snow.  There is no animal in
all North American fauna, even the bull elk, that presents a more
splendid figure than that huge member of the deer family, Osburn's
caribou.  His mane is snow white, his back and sides a glossy brown,
his eye flashes, and his antlers--in the season that he carries
them--stream back like young trees.  The bull did not stir out of his
tracks, yet he gave the impression of infinite movement and pulsing,
quivering vitality.  He shook and threw his head, he lifted his fore
foot nervously, and framed by the winter forest he was a sight never to
forget.  Incidentally he made a first-class target,--one that seemed
impossible to miss.

"I'll take him," Harold shouted.  "Let me take him."

In a flash Harold realized that here was his opportunity: in one stroke,
one easy shot, he could turn the day's ignominy into triumph.  He could
focus Virginia's admiration upon himself.  But the impulse had even
deeper significances.  It was not the way of sportsmen, wandering in
file on mountain trails, to clamor for the first shot at game.  Whatever
is said is usually in solicitation to a companion to shoot; and Virginia
felt oddly embarrassed.  Harold's gun leaped to his shoulder.

But in the fields of sport there is always a penalty for extreme
eagerness.  There is a retributive justice for those that attempt to
grasp opportunities.  Harold was afraid that Bill might raise and shoot,
thus rubbing him of his triumph, and he pressed back against the trigger
just a fifth of a second too soon.  The target looked too big to miss,
but his bullet flung up the snow behind the animal.

The caribou's powerful limbs pushed out a mighty leap.  Frenzied, Harold
shot again; but his nerve was broken and his self-control blown to the
four winds.  The animal had gained the shelter of the thickets by now,
and Harold's third and fourth shots went wild.  Then he lowered his
weapon with a curse.

It is part of the creed of a certain type of hunter to never admit a
clean miss.  "My sights are off," Harold shouted.  "They didn't shoot
within three feet of where I aimed.  Damn such a gun--but I think I
wounded him the third shot.  You'll find him dead if you follow him long
enough."

Bill answered nothing, but went to see.  In the firing he hadn't even
raised his own gun to his shoulder.  There is a certain code among
hunters in regard to shooting another's game: an unwritten law that,
except in a case of life and death, one hunter does not interfere with
another's shooting.  It was through no desire to embarrass Harold that
he didn't assist him in putting down his trophy.  He was simply giving
the man full play.  Bill stared at the caribou tracks in the snow,
followed them a hundred feet, and then came mushing back.

"You didn't seem to have put one in," he reported simply.

"I didn't, eh?" Harold answered angrily.  "How could you tell, so soon?
I suppose you're woodsman enough to know that a wounded animal doesn't
always show blood.  I'd be ready to bet that if we followed him far
enough we'd find him dead."

"We'd have to follow him till he died naturally of old age," was the
good-humored reply.  "We can't always hit, Lounsbury.  He began to trot
when he got into the trees--a perfectly normal gait.  I think we'd
better look for something else."

"Then I want you to carry my gun awhile, and let me take yours.  The
sights are off a mile.  It's all ready, and here's a handful of extra
shells.  You ought to be willing to do that, at least."

Harold had forgotten that this man was not his personal guide, subject
to his every wish.  He held out gun and shells; and, smiling, Bill
received them, giving his own weapon in exchange.  They mushed on down
the trail.

But Harold's miss had not been his greater sin.  To miss is human; no
true sportsman holds it against his fellow.  The omission that followed,
however, was by all the codes of the hunting trails unpardonable.  He
supposed that he had refilled his rifle magazine with shells before he
put it in Bill's hands.  In his confusion and anger, he had forgotten to
do so; and the only load that the gun contained was that in the barrel,
thrown in automatically when the last empty shell was ejected.



XVIII

Several seasons before there had been a fatality on the hillside above
Creek Despair.  An ancient spruce tree, one that had watched the forest
drama for uncounted years, whose tall head lifted above all the
surrounding forest and who had known the silence and the snow of a
hundred winters, had languished, withered and died from sheer old age.
For some seasons it had stood in its place, silent and grim and majestic
in death.  On the day that the three hunters emerged on their snowshoes
in search of meat for their depleted larder, the wind pressed gently
against it.  Because its trunk was rotted away it swayed and fell
heavily.

There was nothing particularly memorable in this.  All trees die; all of
them fall at last.  Its particular significance lay in the fact that as
it shattered down, sliding a distance on the steep hillside, it scraped
the snow from the mouth of a winter lair of a scarcely less venerable
forest inhabitant,--a savage, long-clawed, gray-furred grizzly bear.

The creature had gone into hibernation weeks before: he was deep in the
cold-trance--that mysterious coma of which the wisest naturalists have
no real knowledge--when the tree fell.  He hadn't in the least counted
on being disturbed until the leaves budded out in spring.  He had filled
his belly well, crawled into a long, narrow cavern in the rock, the snow
had sifted down and sealed him in, his bodily heat had warmed to a
sufficient degree the little alcove in the cavern that he occupied, his
blood temperature had dropped down and his breathing had almost ceased,
and he had lain in a deep, strange stupor, oblivious to the passage of
time.  And he felt the rage known to all sleepy men on being awakened.

The grizzly is a particularly crafty, intelligent animal--on the
intellectual plane of the dog and elephant--and he had chosen his
winter lair with special purpose in mind of a long and uninterrupted
sleep.  The cavern mouth was so well concealed that even the sharp eyes
of the wild creatures, passing up and down the creek hardly a hundred
feet away, never guessed its existence.  The cavern maw had been large
once, for all to see, but an avalanche had passed over it.  Tons of
snow, picking up a great cargo of rocks and dirt that no stream dredge
in the world could lift, had roared and bellowed down the slope,
narrowly missing the trunk of the great spruce, changing the contour of
the creek bed and concealing its landmarks, and only a square yard of
the original entrance was left.  This opening was concealed by a little
cluster of young spruce that had sprung up in the fallen earth.  Yes,
old Ephraim had had every reason to believe that no one would find him
or break his sleep, and he was all the more angry at the interruption.

The falling tree had made a frightful crash just over his head, and even
the deep coma in which the grizzly lay was abruptly dissolved.  He
sprang up, ready to fight.  A little gleam of sunlight ventured through
the spruce thicket, down into the mouth of the cavern, and lay like a
patch of gold on the cavern floor.  It served to waken some slight
degree of interest in the snowy world without.  It might be well to look
around a moment, at least, before he lay down to sleep again.  At least
he had to scrape more snow over the cabin mouth.  And in the meantime he
might be lucky enough to find the dearest delight in his life,--a
good, smashing, well-matched fight to cool the growing anger in his
great veins.

Ephraim was an old bear, used to every hunting wile, and his disposition
hadn't improved with years.  He was the undisputed master of the forest,
and he couldn't think of any particular enemy that he would not
encounter with a roar of joy.  As often, in the case of the old, his
teeth were rotting away; and the pain was a darting, stabbing devil in
his gums.  His little, fierce eyes burned and smoldered with wrath, he
grunted deep in his throat, and he pushed out savagely through the
cavern maw.  It was only a step farther through the spruce thicket into
the sunlight.  And at the first glance he knew that his wish was coming
true.

Three figures, two abreast and one behind, came mushing through the
little pass where the creek flowed.  He knew them well enough.  There
were plenty of grizzly traditions concerned with them.  He recognized
them in an instant as his hereditary foes,--the one breed that had not
yet learned to give him right-of-way on the trail.  They were tall,
fearful forms, and something in their eyes sent a shudder of cold clear
to his heart, yet he was not in the humor to give ground.  His nerves
were jumpy and unstrung from the fall of the tree, his jaw wracked him;
a turn of the hair might decide whether he would merely stand and let
them pass, or whether he would launch into that terrible, death-dealing
charge that most grizzly hunters, sooner or later, come to know.  His
mental processes did not go far enough to disassociate these enemies
with the stabbing foe in his gums.  For the same reason he blamed them
for disruption of his sleep.  His ears laid back, and he uttered a deep
growl.

There was no more magnificent creature in all of the breadth of the
forest than this, the grizzly of the Selkirks.  He was old and savage
and wise; but for all his years, in the highest pinnacle of his
strength.  No man need to glance twice at him to know his glory.  No
tenderfoot could look at him and again wonder why, in the talk round the
camp fire, the tried woodsmen always spoke of the grizzly with respect.

It was true that in the far corners of the earth there were creatures
that could master him.  The elephant could crush the life from his
mighty body with the power of his knees; Kobaoba the rhino, most surly
of all game, could have pierced his heart with his horn; perhaps
even the Cape buffalo--that savage explosive old gentleman of the
African marshes, most famous for his deadly propensity to charge on
sight--could have given him a fair battle.  But woe to the lion that
should be obliged to face that terrible strength!  Even the tiger,
sinuous and terrible--armed with fangs like cruel knives and dreadful,
raking, rending claws--could not have faced him in a fair fight.

But these were folk of the tropics, and his superiority was unquestioned
among the northern animals.  Even the bull moose had no wish to engage
in a stand-up-and-take, close-range, death fight with a grizzly.  The
bull caribou left his trail at the sound of his heavy body in the
thicket; the wolf pack, most deadly of fighting organizations, were glad
to avoid him in the snow.  His first cousins, the Alaskan bears, were
more mighty than he, but they were less agile and, probably, less
cunning.  Such lesser creatures as wished to continue to enjoy the
winter sunlight stepped softly when they journeyed past his lair.

He was a peculiar gray in color,--like brown hair that has silvered in
many winters.  His huge head was lowered between his high, rocking
shoulders, his forelegs were simply great, knotty, cast-iron bunches of
fiber and tendons; his long claws--worn down by digging in the rocks
for marmots--were like great, curved fingers.  As he stepped, his
forefeet swung out, giving to his carriage an arrogance and a swagger
that would have been amusing if it hadn't been terrible.  His wicked
teeth gleamed white in foam, and the hair stood stiff at his shoulders.

There is no forest crisis that presents such a test to human nerves as
the charge of a grizzly.  There is no forest voice more fraught with
ferocity and savagery of the beasts of prey than his low, deep,
reverberating growl.  Human beings have not yet reached such perfection
of self-mastery that they can hear such a sound, leaping suddenly like a
thing of substance through the bush, and disregard it.  It was to be
that these three foes, journeying toward him along Creek Despair, did
not disregard it now.  For all the depth of the snow, he pushed through
the spruce thicket into the sunlight.

Thus the three hunters met him--in all his strength and glory--not
fifty feet distant at the base of the hill.  He seemed to be poised to
charge.

Bill's keen eyes saw the bear first.  All at once its huge outline
against the snow leaped to his vision.  At the same instant the bear
growled, a sound that halted halted Virginia and Harold in their tracks.
For an instant all four figures stood in indescribable tableau: the bear
poised, the three staring, the snowy wastes silent and changeless and
unreal.

It was the last sight in the world that Bill had expected.  He had
supposed that the grizzlies were all in hibernation now; he hadn't
conceived of the possibilities whereby the great creature had been
called from his sleep.  And he knew in one glance the full peril of the
situation.

Often in his forest travels Bill had met grizzlies, and nearly always he
had passed them by.  Usually the latter were glad to make their escape;
and Bill would hasten their departure with shouts of glee.  Yet this man
knew the grizzly, his power and his wrath, and most of all he knew his
utter unreliability.  It is not the grizzly way to stand impassive when
he is at bay, and neither does he like to flee up hill.  If the animal
did think his escape was cut off--a delusion to which the bear family
seem particularly subject--he would charge them with a fury and might
that had no equal in the North American animal world.  And a grizzly
charge is a difficult thing to stop in a distance of fifty feet.

The presence of Virginia in their party had its influence in Bill's
decision.  In times past he had been willing enough to take a small
measure of risk to his own life, but the life of every grizzly in the
North could not pay for one jot of risk to hers.  Lastly he realized at
the first sight of those glowing, angry eyes, the ears back, and the
stiff hairs on the shoulder that the grizzly was in a fighting mood.

For all the complexity of his thought, his decision did not take an
instant.  There was no waiting to offer the sporting opportunity to
Harold.  Virginia was not aware of a lapse in time between the instant
that Bill caught sight of the bear and that in which his gun came
leaping to his shoulder.  He had full confidence in the hard-hitting
vicious bullet in Harold's thirty-five, and most of all he relied on the
four reserve shots that he supposed lay in the rifle magazine.  The
grizzly dies hard: he felt that all four of them would be needed to
arrest the charge that would likely follow his first shot.

He didn't wait for those great muscles to get into action.  The animal
was standing broadside to him, his head turned and red eyes watching; if
Bill had his own gun, he would have aimed straight for the space between
the eyes.  This is never a sportsman's shot; but for an absolute
marksman, in a moment of crisis, it is the surest shot of all.  But he
did not know Harold's gun well enough to trust such a shot.  Indeed, he
aimed for the great shoulder, the region of the lungs and heart.  The
gun cracked in the silence.

The bullet went straight home, ripping through the lungs, tearing the
great arteries about the heart, shivering even a portion of the heart
itself.  And yet the grizzly sprang like a demon through the deep snow,
straight towards him.

It is no easy thing to face a grizzly's charge.  The teeth gleam in red
foam, the eyes flash, the great shoulders rock.  For all the deep snow
that he bounded through, the beast approached at an unbelievable pace.
He bawled as he came--awful, reverberating sounds that froze the blood
in the veins.  If the course had been open, likely he would have been
upon him before Bill could send home another shot.  There could only be
one result to such a meeting as this.  One blow would strike the life
from Bill's body as the lightning strikes it from a tree.  But the snow
impeded the bear, and it seemed to Virginia's horrified eyes that Bill
would have time to empty the magazine.  She saw his fingers race as he
worked the lever action of the gun: she saw his eyes lower again to the
sights.  The bear seemed almost upon him.  And she screamed when she
heard the impotent click of the hammer against the breech.  Bill had
fires the single shot that was in the gun.

Before ever he heard the sound Harold remembered.  In one wave of horror
he recalled that he had forgotten to refill the magazine with shells.
Yet leaping fast--red and deadly and terrible upon the heels of his
remorse--there came an emotion that seared him like a wall of fire.
He saw Bill's fate.  By no circumstance of which he could conceive could
the man escape.  A shudder passed over his frame, but it was not of
revulsion.  Rather it was an emotion known well to the beasts of prey,
though to human beings it comes but rarely.  Here was his enemy, the man
he hated above all living creatures, and the blood lust surged through
him like a madness.  In one wave of ecstasy he felt that he was about to
see the gratification of his hatred.

In the hands of a brave and loyal man, the rifle Harold carried might
yet have been Bill's salvation.  It was a large-caliber, close-range gun
of stupendous striking power.  Yet Harold didn't lift it to his
shoulder.  Part of it was willful omission, mostly it was the paralysis
of terror.  Yet he would have need enough for the gun if the bear turned
on him.  He saw that Bill's had was groping, hopeless though the effort
was, for one of the shells that Harold had given him and which he
carried in his pocket.

But there was no time to find it, to open his gun and insert it, and to
fire before the ravening enemy would be upon him.  He made the effort
simply because it was his creed: to struggle as long as his life blood
pulsed in his veins.  He knew there was no chance to run or dodge.  The
bear could go at thrice his own pace in the deep snow.  His last hope
had been that Harold would come to his aid: that the man would stop the
bear's charge with Bill's own heavy rifle; but now he knew that Harold's
enmity of cowardice had betrayed him.

But at that instant aid came from an unexpected quarter.  Virginia was
not one to stand helpless or to turn and flee.  She remembered the
pistol at her belt, and she drew it in a flash of blue steel.  True and
straight she aimed toward the glowing eyes of the grizzly.

At the angle that they struck, her bullets did not penetrate the brain,
but they did give Bill an instant's reprieve.  The bear struck at the
wounds they made, then halted, bawling, in the snow.  His roving eye
caught sight of Virginia's form.  With a roar he bounded toward her.

The next instant was one of drama, of incredible stress and movement.
For all his mortal wounds, the short distance between the bear and the
girl seemed to recede with tragic swiftness.  The animal's cries rang
through the silent forest: near and far the wild creatures paused in
their occupations to listen.  Virginia also stood her ground.  There was
no use to flee; she merely stood straight, her eyes gazing along her
pistol barrel, firing shot after shot into the animal's head.  Because
it was an automatic, she was able to send home the loads in rapid
succession.

But they were little, futile things, with never the shocking power to
stop that blasting charge.  Her safety still lay in that in which she
had always trusted, the same that had been her fort and her stronghold
in all their past adventures.  Bill saw the grizzly change in direction;
his response was instinctive and instantaneous.  He came leaping through
the snow as if a great hand had hurled him, all of his muscles
contracting in response to the swift, immutable command of his will.
For all the burden of his snowshoes and the depths of the drifts, his
leap was almost as fast as the grizzly's own.  He had but one
realization: that the girl's tender flesh must never know those rending
claws and fangs.  He leaped to intercept the rending charge with his own
body.

But his hand had found the shell by now, dropped it into the gun, and as
a last instinctive effort, pulled back the lever that slid the cartridge
into the barrel.  There was no time to raise the gun to his shoulder.
He pointed it instinctively toward the gray throat.  And the end of the
barrel was against the bear's flesh as he pressed the trigger.

No human eye could follow the lightning events of the next fraction of a
second.  All that occurred was over and done in the duration of one
heart-beat,--before the shudder and explosion in the air from the
rifle's report had passed away.  One instant, and the three figures
seemed all together; Bill crouched with rifle held pointed in his arms,
Virginia behind him, the grizzly full upon them both.  The next, and
Harold stood alone in the snow and the silence,--awed, terrified, and
estranged as if in a dream.

Except for the three forms that lay still, half-buried and concealed in
the drifts, it was as if the adventure never occurred.  The spruce trees
stood straight and aloof as ever.  The silence stretched unbroken; its
immensity had swallowed and smothered the last echo of the rifle report
and the grizzly's roar.  There was no movement, seemingly no life,--only
the drifts and the winter forest and the futile sun, shining down
between the snow-laden trees.

Yet he knew vaguely what had occurred.  The bullet had gone true.  It
had pierced the animal's neck, breaking the vertebrae of the spinal
column, and life had gone out of him as a flame goes out in the wind.
But it had come too late to destroy the full force of the charge.  Bill
had been struck with some portion of the bear's body as he fell and had
been hurled like a lifeless doll into the drifts.  Virginia, too, had
received some echo of that shock, probably from Bill's body as he
shattered down.  Now all three lay half-hidden in the snow.  Which of
them lived and which were dead Harold dared not guess.

But he had no time to go forward and investigate before Bill had sprung
to his feet.  He had received only a glancing blow; the drifts into
which he had fallen were soft as pillows.  In reality he had never even
lost consciousness.  Still subject to the one thought that guided and
shaped his actions throughout the adventure, he crawled over to
Virginia's side.

No living man had ever seen his face as white as it was now.  His eyes
were wide with the image of horror; he didn't know what wounds the dying
bear might have inflicted on the girl.  There was no rend in her white
flesh, however; and his eye kindled and his face blazed when he saw that
she yet lived.

He didn't waste even a small part of his energies by futile pleadings
for her to waken.  He seized her shoulders and shook her gently.

Instantly her eyes opened.  Her full consciousness returned to her with
a rush.  She was not scratched, not even shocked by the fall, and she
reached up for Bill's hands.  And instantly, with a laugh on her lips,
she sprang to her feet.

"You killed him?" she asked.

It was the first breath she had wasted, and no man might hold it against
her.  She had only to look at the huge gray form in the drifts to know
her answer.  Bill, because he was a woodsman first, last, and always,
slipped additional shells into Harold's rifle; then walked over to the
bear.  He gazed down at its filming eyes.

"Bear's all dead," he answered cheerfully.  And Virginia's heart raced
and thrilled, and a delicious exaltation swept through her, when she
glanced down at this woodsman's hands.  Big and strong and brown, there
was not a tremor in their fingers.

The both of them whirled in real and superlative astonishment.  Some one
was speaking to them.  Some one was asking them if they were both all
right.  It was a strange voice,--one that they scarcely remembered
ever hearing before.

But they saw at once that the speaker was Harold.  He had come with them
to-day, quite true.  Both of them had almost forgotten his existence.



XIX

In the weeks they had been together, Bill had always been careful never
to try to show Harold in a bad light.  It was simply an expression of
the inherent decency of the man: he knew that Virginia loved him, that
she had plighted her troth to him, and as long as that love endured and
the engagement stood, he would never try to shatter her ideals in regard
to him.  He knew it meant only heartbreak for her to love and wed a man
she couldn't respect.  He knew enough of human nature to realize that
love often lives when respect is dead, and no possible good could come
of showing up the unworthiness that he beheld in Harold.  He had never
tried to embarrass him or smirch his name.  For all his indignation now,
his voice was wholly cheerful and friendly when he answered.

"We're quite all right, thanks," he said.  "The only casualty was the
bear.  A little snow on our clothes, but it will brush off.  And by the
way----"

He paused, and for all his even tones, Harold had a sickening and
ghastly fear of the sober query in Bill's eyes.  "Why did you give me an
unloaded gun and tell me it was full?" he went on.  "Except for a good
deal of luck there'd been a smile on the face of the grizzly--but no
Bill!"

He thought it only just that, in spite of Virginia's presence, Harold
explain this grave omission.  He felt that Virginia was entitled to an
explanation too, and Harold knew, from her earnest eyes, that she was
waiting his answer.  He might have been arrogant and insulting to Bill,
but he cared enough for Virginia's respect to wish to justify himself.
He studied their faces; it was plain that they did not accuse him, even
in their most secret thoughts, of evil intent in handing Bill an almost
empty gun.  But by the stern code of the North sins of carelessness are
no less damning than intentional ones and Harold knew that he had a
great deal to answer for.

"And by the way," Bill went on, as he waited for his reply, "I don't
remember hearing my gun off during the fray.  You might explain that,
too."

"I didn't shoot because I couldn't," Harold replied earnestly.  "At
first you were between me and the bear--and then Virginia was.  It
all happened so quickly that there was nothing I could do.  I can't
imagine why I forgot to reload the rifle.  A man can't always
remember--everything.  I thought I had.  Thank God that it didn't turn
out any worse than it did."

Bill nodded; the girl's face showed unspeakable relief.  She was glad
that this lover of hers had logical and acceptable reasons for his
omissions.  The incident was past, the issue dead.  They gathered about
the gray grizzled form in the snow.

"Does this--help our food problem any?" Virginia asked.

"Except in an emergency--no.  Virginia, you ought to try to cut that
foreleg muscle."  He lifted one of the front feet of the bear in his
hands.  "You'd see what it would be like to try to bite it.  He's an
old, tough brute--worse eating than a wolf.  Strong as mink and hard
as rock.  If we were starving, we'd cut off one of those hams in a
minute; but we can wait a while at least.  If we don't pick up some more
game during the day, I'll hike over to my Twenty-three Mile cabin and
get the supplies I've left over there.  There's a smoked caribou ham,
among other things.  I'll bring back a backload, anyway."  Then his
voice changed, and he looked earnestly into Virginia's eyes.  "But you
won't want to hunt any more to-day.  I forgot--what a shock this
experience would be to you."

She smiled, and the paleness about her lips was almost gone.  "I'm
getting used to shocks.  I feel a little shaky--but it doesn't amount
to anything.  I want to climb up and look at the caribou trail, at
least."

"Sure enough--if you feel you can stand it.  It's only a hundred yards
or so up the hill.  I'd like to take old Bruin's hide, but I don't see
how we could handle it.  I believe we'd better leave him with all his
clothes on, in the snow.  And Heaven knows I'd like to find out what the
old boy was doing out--at a time when all the other bears are
hibernating."

They continued on up the creek until the grade of the hill was less,
then clambered slowly up.  Fifty yards up the slope they encountered the
old caribou trail, but none of these wilderness creatures had been along
in recent days.  They followed it a short distance, however, back in the
direction they had come and above the scene of their battle with the
bear.

"No profit here," Bill said at last.  "We might as well go down to the
creek bed and find better walking."

They turned, and in an instant more came back to their own tracks.  And
suddenly Bill stopped and stared at them in dumb amazement.

He looked so astonished, so inexpressibly baffled, that for a moment his
two companions were stricken silent.  Virginia's heart leaped in her
throat.  Yet the tracks contained no message for her.

"What's the matter?"  Harold asked.  "What do you see?"

Bill caught himself and looked up.  "Nothing very important--but
mighty astonishing at that.  We've just walked in a two-hundred-yard
circle, up the creek to where we climbed the hill, back along the hill
in this direction, and then down.  And we haven't crossed that grizzly's
tracks anywhere."

"Well, what of it?"

"Man, this snow has been here for weeks, with very little change.  Do
you mean to tell me that a lively, hungry bear is going to stay that
long in one place unless he's asleep?  Virginia, as sure as you live
we--or somethin'--wakened that bear out of hibernation.  And his den
is somewhere in that two-hundred-yard circle."

"There's probably a cave in the rock," Harold suggested.  "And I'm more
interested in the cabin and dinner than I am in it."

"Nevertheless, I've never looked into a den of hibernation, and I've
always wanted to know what they're like.  It will only take a minute.
Come on--it will be worth seeing."

But Harold had very special and particular reasons why such a course
appealed to him not at all.  "Yes--and maybe find a couple of other
bears in there, in the dark and no chance to fight.  I'm not interested,
anyway.  Go and look, if you like."

"I will, if you don't mind.  Do you want to come too, Virginia?  There's
no danger--really there isn't.  If this had been an old she-bear we
might have found some cubs, but these old males travel around by
themselves."

"I certainly wouldn't stay away," the girl replied.  And her interest
was real: the study of the forest life about her had been an ever
increasing delight.  She felt that she would greatly like to peer into
one of those dark, mysterious dens where that most mysterious American
animal, the grizzly, lies in deep coma through the long, winter months.

"It will only take a minute.  We haven't got to back-track him more than
a hundred yards at most.  We'll be back in a minute, Harold.  And if you
don't mind--I'll take my own gun."

They exchanged rifles, and Virginia and Bill started back toward the
fallen grizzly.  But the exploration of the winter lair had not been the
only thing Bill had in view.  He also had certain words to say to
Virginia,--words that he could scarcely longer repress, and which he
couldn't have spoken with ease in Harold's presence.  But now that they
were alone, the sentences wouldn't shape on his lips.

He mushed a while in silence.  "I suppose I haven't got to tell you,
Virginia," he said at last.  "That you--your own courage--saved my
life."

She looked up to him with lustrous eyes.  The man thrilled to the last
little nerve.  In her comradeship for him their luster was almost like
that of which he had dreamed so often.  "I know it's true," she answered
frankly.  "And I'm glad that--that it was mine, and not somebody
else's."  She too seemed to be having difficulty in shaping her
thoughts.  "I've never been happier about any other thing.  To
pay--just a little bit of debt.  But in paying it, I incurred another--so
the obligation is just as big as ever.  You know--you saved my life,
too."

He nodded.  This was no time for deception, for pretty lies.

"I saw you throw yourself in front of me," she went on.  "I can
never forget it.  I'll see that picture, over and over again, till I
die--how you plunged through the snow and got in front.  So since we
each did for the other--the only thing we could do--there's nothing
more to be said about it.  Isn't that so, Bill?"

The man agreed, but his lips trembled as they never did during the
charge of the grizzly.

"I've learned a lesson up here--that words aren't much good and don't
seem to get anywhere."  The girl spoke softly.  "Only deeds count.
After they're done, there is nothing much--that one can say."

So they did not speak of the matter again.  They came to the bear's body
and back-tracked him through the snow.  They pushed through the young
spruce from whose limbs the grizzly had knocked the snow.  They they
came out upon the cavern mouth.

Instantly Bill understood how the fall of the tree had knocked away the
snow from the maw.  "There's been a landslide here too, or a snowslide,"
he said.  "You see--only the top of the cave mouth is left open.  The
dirt's piled around the bottom."

He crawled up over the pile of rocks and dirt and, stooping, stepped
within the cavern.  The girl was immediately behind him.  Back five feet
from the opening the interior was dark as night: the cavern walls, gray
at the mouth, slowly paled and faded and were obliterated in the gloom.
But there was no stir of life in the darkness, no sign of any other
habitant.  But the walls themselves, where the light from without
revealed them, held Bill's fascinated gaze.

The girl stood behind him, silent, wondering what was in his mind.
"This cave--I've never seen a cave just like this.  Virginia----"

The man stepped forward and scratched a match on the stone.  It flared;
the shadows raced away.  Then Bill's breath caught in a half-sob.

Instantly he smothered the match.  The darkness dropped around them like
a curtain.  But in that instant of light Bill beheld a scene that tore
at his heart.  Against the cavern wall, lost in the irremediable
darkness, he had seen a strange, white shape--a ghostly thing that lay
still and caught the match's gleam--a grim relic of dead years.

He turned to the girl, and his voice was almost steady when he spoke.
"You'd better go out, Virginia--into the light," he advised.

"Why?  Is it--_danger?_"

"Not danger."  His voice in the silence thrilled her and moved her.
"Only wickedness.  But it isn't anything you'd like to see."

The single match-flare had revealed him the truth.  For one little
fraction of an instant he had thought that the white form, so grim
and silent against the stone, revealed some forest tragedy of years
ago,--a human prey dragged to a wild beast's lair.  But the shape of the
cavern, the character of its walls, and a thousand other clews told the
story plainly.  The thing he had seen was a naked skeleton, flesh and
garments having dropped away in the years; and the grizzly had simply
made his lair in the old shaft of his father's mine.  Bill had found his
father's sepulcher at last!

* * * * *

For a moment he stood dreaming in the gloom.  He understood, now, why
his previous search had never revealed the mine.  He had supposed that
his father had operated along some stream, washing the gold from its
gravel: it had never occurred to him that he had dug a shaft.  In all
probability, considering the richness of their content, they had
burrowed into the hill and had found an old bed of the stream, had
carried the gravel to the water's edge in buckets, and washed it out.
He had never looked for tunnels and shafts: if he had done so, it was
doubtful if he could have found the hidden cavern.  The snowslide of
some years before had covered up all outward signs of their work, struck
down the trees they had blazed, and covered the ashes of their own camp
fires.  The girl's voice in the darkness called him from his musings.

"I believe I understand," she said.  "You've found your mine--and your
father's body."

"Yes.  Just a skeleton."

"I'm not afraid.  Do you want me to stay?"

"I'd love to have you, if you will.  Some way--it takes away a lot of
my bitterness--to have you here."

It was true.  It seemed wholly fitting that she should be with him as he
explored the cavern.  It was almost as if the tragedy of his father's
death concerned her, too.

"I can hold matches," she told him.  She came up close, and for a moment
her hand, groping, closed on his,--a soft, dear pressure that spoke
more than any words.  When it was released he lighted another match.

They stood together, looking down at the skeleton.  But she wasn't quite
prepared for what she saw.  A little cry of horror rang strangely in the
dark shaft.

This had been no natural death.  Undoubtedly the elder Bronson had been
struck down from behind, as he worked, and he lay just as he fell.
There was one wound in the skull, round and ghastly, and in a moment
they saw the weapon that made it.  A rusted pick, such as miners use,
lay beside the body.

"I won't try to do much to-day," the man told her, "except to see up one
of my cornerposts and erect a claim notice.  My father's notice has of
course rotted away in the years and the monument that probably stood out
there beyond the creek bed was covered in snowslide.  You see, a claim
is made by putting up four stone monuments--one at each corner of the
area claimed.  We'll be starting down in a day or two, and I'll register
the claim.  Then I'll come back--and give these poor bones decent
burial."

From there he walked back to the end of the shaft, scratching another
match.  It was wholly evident that the mine was only scratched.  He held
the light close, studying the rear wall of the cave.  It was simply a
gravel bed, verifying his guess that here lay an old bed of the creek.
In the first handful of stone he scraped out he found a half-ounce
nugget.

"It's rich?" she asked.

"Beyond what I ever dreamed.  But there's nothing more we can do now.
I've made my find at least--but it doesn't seem to make me--as happy
as it ought to.  Of course that man--there against the wall--would
naturally keep a man from being very happy.  Of, if I could only find
and kill the devil who did it!"

His voice in the gloom was charged with immeasurable feeling.  She had
never seen this side of him before.  Here was primeval emotion, the
desired for vengeance, filial obligation, hate that knew no mercy and
could never be forgotten.  She understood, now, the savage feuds that
sometimes spring up among the mountain people, unable to forget a blow
or an injury.  She had the first inkling of how deeply his father's
murder had influenced him.

But his face was calm when they emerged into the light.  They walked
over to the creek, and beneath its overhanging banks there were the snow
had not swept, he found enough rocks for his monument.  He gathered them,
carried them in armfuls to a place fifty yards beyond the creek and down
it, level with such a turn in the hillside above, beyond which the old
creek bed obviously could not lie; then heaped them into a moment.  Then
he drew an old letter from his coat pocket, and searching farther, found
a stub of a pencil.  Virginia looked over his shoulders as he wrote.

One hundred yards up the stream Harold watched them, dumbfounded as to
what they were doing.  He saw Bill finish the writing, then place the
larger on the monument, fastening it down with a large stone.  Then he
came mushing toward them.

So intent were they upon their work that they didn't notice him until he
was almost up to them.  But both of them would have paused in wonder if
they had observed the curious mixture of emotions upon his lips.  His
lips hung loose, his eyes protruded, and something that might have been
greed, or might have been jealousy or some other unguessed emotion drew
and harshened his features.

"You've found a mine?" he asked.

Virginia looked up, joyful at Bill's good fortune.  "We've found his
father's mine--the old shaft where the bear was been sleeping.  But
there's a dreadful side of it too."

"Show me where it is.  I want to see it.  Take me into it,
Virginia--right away----"

Bill had a distinct sensation of revulsion at the thought of this man
going into his father's sepulcher, and he didn't know why.  It was an
instinct too deeply buried for him to trace.  But he tried to force it
down.  There was no reason why Virginia's fiance shouldn't view his mine.
Already, Virginia was pointing out the way.

"You can claim half to it," he was whispering into her ear.  "You were
the one with him when he found it."

"I can--but I won't," she replied coldly.  "He asked me to go with
him.  The thought's unworthy of you, Harold."

But he was in no mood to be humbled by her disapproval.  Curiously, he
was intensely excited.  He mushed away toward the cavern mouth.

Two minutes later he stood in the darkness of the funnel, fumbling for a
match.  "Gold, gold, gold," he whispered.  "Heaps and heaps of it--what
I've always hunted.  And Bill had to find it.  That devil had to walk
right into it."

He was sickened by the thought that except for his own cowardice he
would have accompanied them into the den.  At least he should have done
that much, he told himself, to atone for his conduct during the bear's
charge.  Then he would have been in a position to claim half the
mine--and get it too.  Dark thoughts, curiously engrossing and lustful,
thronged his mind.

He found a match at least and it flared in the darkness.  And the white
skeleton lay just at his feet.

He drew back, startled, but instantly recognized his poise.  He knelt
with unexplicable intentness.  He too saw the ghastly wound and its grim
connection with the rusted pick.  And he bent, slowly, like a man who is
trying to control an unwonted eagerness, lifted the pick in his arms.

His fingers seemed to curl around it, like those of a miser around his
gold.  Some way, his grasp seemed caressing.  Oh, it was easy to handle
and lift!  How naturally it swung in his arms!  What a deadly blow the
cruel point could  inflict!  Just one little tap had been needed.
Bronson had rocked and fallen, no longer to hold his share in the mine's
gold.  If there were an enemy before him now, one tap, and one alone was
all that would be needed.

He could picture the scene of some twenty years before; the flickering
candles, the gray walls covered with dancing shadows, the yellow
gold,--beautiful in the light.  He could see Bronson working,--always the
plodder, always the fool!  Behind him Rutheford, his partner, the pick
in his arms and his brave intent in his brain.  Then one swift
stroke----

Harold did not know that at the thought his muscles made involuntary
response.  He swung the pick down, imagining the blow, with a ferocity
and viciousness that would have been terrible to see.

In the darkness his face was drawn and savage, and ugly fires glowed and
smoldered and flamed in his eyes.



XX

Bill made plans for an early start to his Twenty-three Mile cabin.  The
hike would have been easy enough, considering the firm snow that covered
the underbrush, but the hours of daylight were few and swift.  And he
had no desire to try to find his way in that trackless country in the
darkness.

"I'll leave before dawn--as soon as it gets gray," he told Virginia as
he bade her good night.  "I'll come back the next day, with a backload
of supplies.  And with the little we have left, we will have enough to
go on.  We can start for Bradleyburg the day after that."

Virginia took no pleasure in bidding him good-by.  She had already
learned that this winter forest was a bleak and fearful place when her
woodsman was away.  Curiously, she could find little consolation in the
thought that she and Harold could have a full day together, alone.  And
before the night was half over, it seemed to her, she heard his stealing
feet on the cabin floor outside her curtain.

He seemed to be moving quietly, almost stealthily.  She heard the stove
door open, and the subdued crack of a match scratched gently.  A warm
glow flooded her being when she understood.

For all the arduous day's toil that waited him, Bill hadn't forgotten to
build her fire.  The cabin would still be warm for her to dress.  She
didn't know that her eyes were shining in the gloom.  She drew aside the
curtain.

"I'm awake, Bill.  I want to tell you good-by again," she said.

"I don't see what makes me so clumsy," Bill returned impatiently.  "I
thought I could get this fire going without waking you up.  But I'm glad
enough to have another good-by."

"And you'll be--awfully careful?"  Her voice did not hold quite
steadily.  "So many--many things can happen in those awful
woods--when you are alone.  I never realized before how they're always
waiting, always holding a sword over your head, ready to cut you down.
I'm afraid to have you go----"

He laughed gently, but the deathless delight he felt at her words
rippled through the laugh like flowing water.  "There's nothing to be
afraid of, Virginia.  You'll see me back to-morrow night.  I've wandered
these woods by myself a thousand times----"

"And the thousandth and first time you might fall into their trap!  But
why can't we take some of that grizzly meat----"

"Virginia, you'd break your pretty teeth on it.  Of course we could in a
pinch--but this is no march, to-day.  Good-by."

"Good-by."  Her voice sank almost to a whisper, and her tones were sober
and earnest.  "I'll pray for you, Bill--the kind of prayers you told
me about--entreating prayer to a God that can hear--and understand--and
help.  A real God, not just an Idea such as I used to believe in.  Here's
my hand, Bill."

He groped for it as a plant gropes for sunlight, as the blind grope to
find their way.  He found it at last: it was swallowed in his own palm,
and the heart of the man raced and thrilled and burned.  She couldn't
see what he did with it in the darkness.  It seemed to her she felt a
warmth, a throbbing, a pressure that was someway significant and
portentous above any experience of her life.  Yet she didn't know that
he had dropped to his knees outside the curtain and pressed the hand to
his lips.  The door closed slowly behind him.

The last stars were fading, slipping away like ghosts into the further
recesses of the sky, as he pushed away from the cabin door.  He didn't
need the full light of morning to find his way the first few miles.  He
need only head toward the peak of a familiar mountain, now a shadow
against the paling sky.

The night was not so cold as it had a right to be.  He had expected a
temperature far below zero: in reality it seemed not far below freezing.
Some weather change impended, and at first he felt vaguely uneasy.  But
he mushed on, the long miles gliding slowly, steadily beneath him.  Only
once he missed his course, but by back-tracking one hundred yards he
found it again.

Morning came out, the trees emerged from the gloom, the shadows faded.
He kept his direction by the landmarks learned while following his trap
lines.  The day was surprisingly warm.  His heavy woolens began to
oppress him.

As always the wilderness was silent and vaguely sinister, but after a
few hours it suddenly occurred to him that the air was preternaturally
still.  A few minutes later, when he struck a match to light his pipe,
this impression was vividly confirmed.  As is the habit with all
woodsmen he watched the match-smoke to detect the direction of the wind.
The blue strands, with hardly a waver or tremor, streamed straight up.
He was somewhat reassured, however, when he remembered that he had not
yet emerged from a great valley between low ranges that ordinarily
prevented free passage of the winds.

He mushed on, his snowshoes crunching on the white crust.  The powers of
the wilderness gave him good speed--almost to the noon hour.  Then
they began to show him what they could do.

He was suddenly aware that the fine edge of the wilderness silence had
been dulled.  There was a faint stir at his ear drums, to dim to name or
identify or even to accept as a reality.  He stopped, listening
intently.

The stir grew to a faint and distant murmur, the murmur to a long swish
like a million rustling garments.  A tree fell, with a crash, far away.
Then the wind smote him.

In itself it was nothing to fear.  It was not a hurricane, not even a
particularly violent storm, but only a brisk gale that struck him from
the side and more or less impeded his progress.  Trees that were
tottering and ready to fall went down with reverberating reports; the
snowdust whirled through the forest, changing the contour of the drifts,
and filling up the tracks of the wild creatures.  But for Bill the wind
held a real menace.  It was from the southeast, and warm as a girl's
hand against his face.

No man of the Northwest Provinces is unacquainted with this wind.  It is
prayed for in the spring because its breath melts the drifts swiftly,
but it is hated to death by the traveler caught far from his cabin on
snowshoes.  The wind was the far-famed Chinook, the southeast gale that
softens the snow as a child's breath melts the frost on a window pane.

It did not occur to Bill to turn back.  Already he was nearly halfway to
his destination.  The food supplies had to be secured, sooner or later;
and when the Chinook comes no man knows when it will go away.  He mushed
on through the softening snow.

Within an hour the crust was noticeably softer.  One hour thereafter and
the snow was soft and yielding as when it had first fallen in early
winter.  Mushing was no longer a pleasant pursuit.  Henceforth it was
simply toil, rigorous and exhausting.  The snowshoe sank deep, the snow
itself clung to the webs and frame until it was almost impossible to
lift.

A musher in the soft wet snow can only go at a certain pace.  There is
no way to hurry the operation and get speedily over the difficulties.
Any attempt to quicken the pace results only in a fall.  The shoe cannot
be pushed ahead as when the snow is well-packed or crusted.  It has to
be deliberately lifted, putting the leg tendons to an unnatural strain.

It was too far to turn back.  As many miles of weary snow stretched
behind him as before him.  At Twenty-three Mile cabin he could pass a
night as comfortable as at home: there were food and blankets in plenty,
and the well-built hut contained a stove.  Once there, he could wait for
a hard freeze that would be certain to harden the half-thawed snow and
make it fit for travel.  His only course was to push on step by step.

The truth suddenly dawned upon him that he was face to face with one of
the most uncomfortable situations of all his years in the forest.  He
didn't believe he would be able to make the cabin before the fall of
night; if indeed he were able to complete the weary miles, it would only
be by dint of the most cruel and exhausting labor.  He carried no
blankets, and although with the aid of his camp ax he could keep some
sort of a fire, a night out in the snow and the cold was not an
experience to think of lightly.

Bill knew very well just what capabilities for effort the human body
holds.  It has certain definite limits.  After a few hours of such labor
as this the body is tired,--tired clear through and aching in its
muscles.  Despondency takes the place of hope, the step is somewhat
faltering, hunger assails and is forgotten, even the solace of tobacco
is denied because the hand is too tired to grope for and fill the pipe.
Thereafter comes a deeper stage of fatigue, one in which every separate
step requires a distinct and tragic effort of will.  The perceptions are
blunted, the uncertainty of footfall is more pronounced, the stark
reality of the winter woods partakes of a dreamlike quality.  Then comes
utter and complete exhaustion.

In its first stages there can still be a few dragging or staggering
steps, a last effort of a brave and commanding will.  Perhaps there is
even a distance of creeping.  But then the march is done!  There is no
comeback, no rallying.  The absolute limit has been reached.  But
fortunately, lying still in the snow, the wanderer no longer cares.  He
wonders why he did not yield to this tranquil comfort long since.

Bill began to realize that he was approaching his own limit.  The weary
miles crept by, but with a tragic languor that was like a nightmare.
But time flew; only a little space of daylight remained.

Bill's leg muscles were aching and burning now, and he had to force
himself on by sheer power of his will.  He would count twenty-five
painful steps, then halt.  The wind had taken a more westerly course by
now, and the snow was no longer melting.  The air was more crisp:
probably one night would serve to recrust the snow.  But the fact became
ever more evident that the darkness would overtake him before he could
reach the cabin.

But now, curiously, he dreaded the thought of pausing and making a fire.
Partly he feared--with the age-old fear that lay buried deep in every
cell--the long, bitter night without shelter, food or blankets; but
even the labor of fire-building appalled his spirit.  I would be a
mighty task, fatigued as he was: first to clear away the snow, cut down
trees, hew them into lengths and split them--all with a light camp ax
that only dealt a sparrow blow--then to kneel and stoop and nurse the
fire.

His woodsman's senses predicted a bitter night, in spite of the warmth
of the day.  It would harden the snow again, but it would also wage war
against his life.  All night long he would have to fight off sleep so
that he could mend the fire and cut fuel.  It mustn't be a feeble,
flickering fire.  The cold could get in then.  All night long the flame
must not be allowed to flag.  In his fatigue it would be so easy to dose
off,--just for a moment, and the fire would burn out.  In that case
the fire of his spirit would burn out too,--just as certain, just as
soon.

Late afternoon: already the shadows lay strange and heavy in the distant
tree aisles.  And all at once he paused, thrilled, in his tracks.

A little way to the east, on the bank of a small creek, his father and
his traitorous partner had once had a mining claim,--a mine they had
tried unsuccessfully to operate before Bronson had made his big strike.
They had built a small cabin, and for nearly thirty years it had stood
moldering and forgotten.  Twice in his life Bill had seen it,--once as
a boy, when his father had taken him there on some joyous, holiday
excursion, and once in his travels Bill had beheld it at a distance.
Its stove had rotted away years since; it contained neither food nor
blankets nor furniture, yet it was a shelter against the night and the
cold.  And even now it was within half a mile of where he stood.

Exultant and thankful, Bill turned in his tracks and mushed over toward
it.



XXI

There was plenty of heart-breaking work to do when Bill finally reached
the little cabin.  The snow had banked up to the depth of several feet
around it and had blown and packed against the door.  He took off one of
his snowshoes to use as a shovel and stolidly began the work of removing
the barricade.  There was no opening the door against the pressure of
the snow.  Besides, the bolt was solidly rusted.

But after a few weary strokes it occurred to him that the easiest way
would be to cut some sort of an opening in the top of the door, just
large enough for his body to crawl through.  As the cabin was abandoned
there would be no possible disadvantage to such an opening: and since
the fire had to be built outside the cabin, against the backlogs, the
door would have to be left open anyway, to admit the heat.  With a few
strokes of his sharp little camp ax he cut away the planks, leaving a
black hole in the door.  He lighted a match and peered in.

The interior was unchanged since his previous visit, years before.  The
cabin had no floor, not the least vestige of furniture, and rodents had
littered the ground with leaves.

He turned to his toil of making a fire.  First he cut down a spruce--a
heart-breaking task with his little ax--then laboriously hacked it
into lengths.  These he bore to the cabin, staggering with the load.  He
split the logs, cutting some of them into firewood for kindling.  Then
he made a pile of shavings.

He tested the wind and found it blowing straight west and away from the
cabin.  He felt oddly tired and dull, much too tired to strain and
listen for some whispered message of an inner voice that seemed to be
trying hard to get his attention, a few little, vague misgivings that
haunted him.  His comfort depended, he told himself, on the heat of the
fire beating in through the little opening of the cabin door, so he
placed the backlog just as close as he dared in front.  Then he laid
down split pieces for frame of his fire and erected his heap of
kindling.

He entered through the opening and stood on the ground below to light
the fire.  He didn't desire to crawl through the flames to enter the
cabin.  Reaching as far as he could, he was just able to insert the
candle.  The wind caught it, the kindling flames.  Then he stood
shivering, waiting for the room to warm.

He had a sweeping flood of thoughts as he watched the leaping flame.
Its cheerful crackle, its bright color in the gloom was almost too good
to be true.  In these dark forests he had learned to be wary and on
guard at too great fortune.  Quite often it was only a prank of perverse
forest gods, before they smote him with some black disaster.  It seemed
to him that there was a wild laughter, a Satanic mocking in the joyous
crackle that was vaguely but fearfully ominous.  The promise in the
rainbow, the siren's song to the mariners, the little dancing light in
the marsh--promising warmth and safety but only luring the weary
traveler to this death--had this same quality: the cheer, the hope,
the beauty only to be blasted by misfortune.

The warmth flooded in, and he looked about for something to sit on.  He
wished he had brought in one of the spruce logs he had cut.  But it was
too late to procure one now.  The flames leaped at the opening of the
cabin: he would be obliged to crawl laboriously through them to get into
the open.  Tired out, he lay down in the dry dirt, putting his arm under
his head.  He would soon go to sleep.

But his ragged, exhausted nerves would not find rest in sleep at once.
His thoughts were troubling and unpleasant.  The pale firelight filled
the cabin, dancing against the walls.  The glare reflected wanly on the
ground where he lay.

All at once he was aware that his eyes were fastened upon an old cigar
box on a shelf against the wall.  He seemed to have a remembered
interest in it,--as if long ago he had examined its contents with
boyish speculations.  But he couldn't remember what it contained.
Likely enough it was empty.

The hours were long, and the wind wailed and crept like a housebreaker
about the cabin; and at last--rather more to pass the time than for
any other reason--he climbed to his feet and stepped to the shelf on
which the box lay.

As he reached to seize it, he had a distinct premonition of misfortune.
It was as if some subtle consciousness within him, knowing and
remembering every detail of his past and its infinite and exact
relations with his present, was warning him that to open the box was to
receive knowledge that would be hateful to him.  Yet he would not be
cowed by such a visionary danger.  He was tired out, his nerves were
torn, and he was prey to his own dark imaginings.  Likely enough the box
was empty.

It was not, however.  It contained a single photograph.

His eye leaped over it.  He remembered now; he had looked at it during
his former visit to the cabin, years before.  It was a typical
old-fashioned photograph--two men standing in stiff and awkward poses
in an old-fashioned picture gallery--printed in the time-worn way.  No
modern photographer, however, could have caught a better likeness or
made a more distinct picture.  It had obviously been one of his father's
possessions and had been left in the cabin.

One of the men was his own father.  He had seen his photograph often
enough to recognize it; besides, he remembered the man in the flesh.
And he stared at the other face--a rather handsome, thin-lipped,
sardonic-eyed face--as if he were looking at a ghost.

"Great God," he cried.  "It's Harold Lounsbury!"

But instantly he knew it could not be Harold Lounsbury.  The picture was
fully twenty-five years old and the face was that of a mature man,
probably aged thirty.  Harold Lounsbury himself was only thirty.  And
now, looking closer, he saw that the features were not quite the same.
There was more breeding, more sensitiveness in Harold's face.  And there
was also, dim and haunting, some slight resemblance to Kenly Lounsbury,
whom he had brought up into Clearwater and who had gone back with
Vosper.

Yet already his inner consciousness was screaming in his ear the
identity of this man.  Already he knew.  It was no other than Rutheford,
the man who later, in the cavern darkness, had struck his father down.

His deductions followed with deadly and remorseless certainty.  He knew
now why Harold Lounsbury had come into Clearwater.  Virginia had told
Bill that her lover seemed to have some definite place in view for his
prospecting: he had simply come to search for the same lost mine that
Bill had discovered the previous day.  He knew now why Kenly Lounsbury
had been willing to finance Virginia's trip into the North,--not in
hopes of finding his lost nephew, but to find the mine of which he also
had some knowledge and thus repair the broken remnants of his fortune.
In the same sweep of realization he knew why Harold Lounsbury's face had
always haunted him and filled him with hazy, uncertain memories.  He had
never seen Harold before; but he had seen this photograph in his own
boyhood, and Harold's face had so resembled the one in the picture that
it had haunted and disturbed him.

Only too well he knew the truth.  Harold Lounsbury was Rutheford's
son,--the son of his father's murderer.  Kenly Lounsbury was Rutheford's
brother.  Both had come to Clearwater to repair their broken fortunes
from the mine of which they both had knowledge.  Whether it was guilty
knowledge or not no man could tell.

Such directions as Rutheford had given his son had been unavailing
because of the snowslide that had changed the contour of the little
valley where the mine lay.  He understood now Harold's disappointment
and emotion when Bill had discovered the mine.  Likely his own name was
Harold Rutheford, or else Rutheford's true name had been Lounsbury.
Bill stood shivering all over with rage and hate.

Now he knew the road of vengeance!  He had only to trace Harold
Lounsbury back to his city--there to find his father's murderer.  His
eyes were glittering and terrible to see at the potentialities of that
finding.  Yet in an instant he knew that death had likely already
claimed the elder Rutheford.  Otherwise he himself would have come
back, long since, to recover the mine.  He would be financing the
expedition, rather than his brother Kenly.

But by that stern old law, the law that goes down to the roots of the
earth and whose justice lies in mystic balances beyond the sight of men,
has it not been written that the sins of the father shall be visited
upon the son?  It wasn't too late yet to command some measure of
payment.  In Virginia's own city lived the Lounsburys,--a proud and
wealthy family, moving in the most haughty circles, patronizing the
humble, flattered and honored and exalted.  But oh, he could break them
down!  He could stamp their name with shame.  He could not pay eye for
eye and tooth for tooth, because Rutheford was likely already dead.  He
could not pay for his father's murder by striking down his murderer.
But he could make Harold pay for his own wrongs.  He could make him
atone for the bitter moments of his youth and manhood, that irremediable
loss of his boyhood.  If Rutheford had left a widow he could make her
pay for his own mother's sufferings.

As he stood in that bleak and lonely cabin, lost in the desolate wastes
of snow, he was simply the clansman--the feudist--the primitive
avenger.  Virginia too should know the crime, and the haunting sight of
those pitiful bones in the dark cavern would rise before her eyes
whenever she sought Harold's arms.  He would show her the picture; she
could see the murderer's face in her own lover's.  She could never yield
to him then----

Virginia!  Soft above the wail and complaint of the wind, he spoke her
name.  His star, his universe, the gracious, beautiful girl whose
happiness had been his one aim!  And could he change that aim now?

The wind wept, the snow was swept before it in great, unearthly clouds
of white, the fire crackled and leaped at the opening in the cabin door.
The northern winter night closed down, ever deeper, ever darker, ever
more fraught with those mighty passions of the human soul.  But he
responded no more to the wild music of the wind.  The wilderness
passions no longer found an echo in his own heart.  He had suddenly
remembered Virginia.

His face was like clay in the dancing light.  His eyes were sunken and
were dark as night.  He knew now where his course would lie.  All at
once he knew by a knowledge true as life that this dark cabin, in the
dark forest, must keep its secrets.

He could not wreak vengeance upon the man Virginia loved.  He could not
take payment from her.  The same law that had governed him before was
still the immutable voice of his being, the basic and irrevocable law of
his life.  He could not blast her happiness with such a revelation as
this.  His boyhood dream of vengeance would go the way of all his other
dreams,--like the smoke of a camp fire lost in the unmeasured spaces
of the forest.  The shadow that the dark woods had cast upon his spirit
seemed to grow and deepen.

But he must act now, while his strength was upon him.  To look again
into Harold's face might cost him his own resolve.  To think of Virginia
in his arms, her lips against his, the wicked blood of the man pulsing
so close that she could thrill at it and hear it, might set him on fire
again.  He must destroy the evidence.  The night might bring his own
death--he had a vague presentiment of disaster--and this photograph
must never be found beside his body.  She knew his father's story; her
quick mind would leap to the truth at once.  Besides, the destruction of
the photograph--so that he could never look at it again--might
lessen his own bitterness and give him a little peace.  He crumpled it
in his hand, and turning, gave it to the flames at the cabin mouth.

And from the savage powers of Nature there came a strange and incredible
response.  The wind shrieked, then seemed to ship about in the sky,
completely changing direction.  And all at once the smoke from the fire
began to pour in upon him, choking his lungs and filling his eyes with
tears.



XXII

For a full moment Bill gave little attention to the deepening clouds of
pungent, biting wood smoke that the wind whipped in through the hole he
had cut in the door.  Likely it was just a momentary gust, a shifting in
the air currents, and the wind would soon resume its normal direction.
Besides, the discovery that he had just made seemed to hold and occupy
all the territory of his thought: he was scarcely aware of the burning
pain that the acrid, resinous green-wood smoke brought to his eyes.
This was the most bitter moment of his life, and he was lost and remote
in his dark broodings.  The smoke didn't matter.

He began really to wonder about it when the room grew so smoky that
it no longer received the firelight.  The hole in the door was like
a flue: the smoke--that deadly green-wood smoke known of old to the
woodsman--streamed through in great clouds.  He had shut his eyes at
first; now he found it impossible to keep them open.  The pungent
smoke crept into his lungs and throat, burning like fire.  He knew
that it could no longer be disregarded.

It had been part of his wilderness training to respond like lightning in
a crisis.  Many times on the forest trails life itself had depended upon
an instantaneous decision, then immediate effort to carry the decision
out.  The fawn that does not leap like a serpent's head at the first
crack of a twig as the wolf steals toward him in the thicket never lives
to grow antlers.  The power to act, to summon and focus the full might
of the muscles in the wink of an eye, then to hurl them into a breach
had been Bill's salvation many times.  But to-night the power seemed
gone.  For long seconds his muscles hung inert.  He didn't know what to
do.

The capacity for mighty and instantaneous effort seemed gone from his
body.  His mind was slow too,--blunted.  He could make no decisions.
He only seemed bewildered and impotent.

The truth was that Bill had been near the point of utter exhaustion from
his day's toil in the snow and his labor of building the fire.  The
vital nervous fluids no longer sprang forth to his muscles at the
command of his brain: they came tardily, if at all.  The fountain of his
nervous energy had simply run down as the battery runs down in a motor,
and it could only be recharged by a rest.  But there was a deeper reason
behind this strange apathy.  The last blow--the sight of the
photograph of his father's murderer and its new connection with his
life--had for the time being at least crushed the fighting spirit within
the man.  The fight for life no longer seemed worth while.  In his
bitterness he had lost the power to care.

The smoke deepened in the cabin.  It seemed to be affecting his power to
stand erect.  He tried to think of some way to save himself; his mind
was slow and dull.

He knew that he couldn't get out of the cabin.  There was only a little
hole in the door; to crawl through it, inch by inch as he had entered,
would subject him to the full fury of the flames.  Oh, they would sear
and destroy him quickly if he tried to creep through them!  All night
they had been mocking him with their cheerful crackle; they had only
been waiting for this chance to torture him.  He had to spring high to
enter the little hole at all; there was no way to dodge the flames
outside.  But he might knock the logs apart and put the fire out.

There was only a distance of two paces between him and the door, but he
seemed to have difficulty in making these.  He reeled against the wall.
But when he tried to thrust his arms through to reach the burning logs,
the cruel tongues stabbed at his hands.

But in spite of the pain, he reached again.  The skin blistered on his
hands, and for a long, horrible instant he groped impotently.  The flame
was raging by now, two or three pitch-laden spruce chunks blazing
fiercely at once, and it seemed wholly likely that the cabin itself
would catch fire.  But he couldn't reach the logs.

He remembered his gloves then and fumbled for them in his pocket.  The
smoke could only be endured a few seconds more.  He caught hold the edge
of the opening and tried to spring up.  But the flames beat into his
face and drove him down again.

For a moment he stood reeling, trying to think, trying to remember some
resource, some avenue of escape.  There was no furniture to stand on.
If he could cover his face he might be able to leap part way through the
opening and knock the burning logs apart.  He tried to open his smarting
eyes, but the lids were wracked with pain and would not at once respond.
He made it at last, but the dense smoke was impervious to his vision.
The firelight gave it a ghastly pallor.

His ax!  With his ax he could chop the door away.  His hand fumbled at
his belt.  But he remembered now; he lad left his ax outside the cabin,
its blade thrust into the spruce log that had supplied his fuel.

Suddenly he saw himself face to face with seemingly certain death.  It
was curious that he did not feel more fear, greater revulsion.  It was
almost as if it didn't matter.  While the steady sinking of the burning
logs lessened, in some degree, the danger of the cabin igniting--a few
inches of snow against the door remaining unmelted--the smoke clouds
were swiftly and surely strangling him.  Already his consciousness was
departing.  He leaped for the opening again and fell sprawling on the
dirt floor.  He started to spring up----

But he suddenly grew inert, breathing deeply.  There was still air close
to the ground.  Strange he hadn't thought of it before,--just to lie
still, face close to the dirt.  It pained him to breathe; his eyes
throbbed and burned, but at least it was life.  He pressed his face to
the cool earth.

Yet unconsciousness was sweeping him again.  He would feel himself
drifting, then with all the faltering power of his will he would
struggle back.  But perhaps this sweet oblivion was only sleep.  His
nerves were crying for rest.  Once more he floated, and the hours of
night crept by.

When Bill wakened again, the last pale glimmer of the lighted smoke was
gone.  He was bewildered at first, confusing reality with his dreams,
but soon the full memory of the night's events swept back to him.  His
faculties had rallied now, his thought was clearer.  The few hours that
he had rested had been his salvation.

Yet it was still night.  He raised his hands before his eyes but could
not see even their outline.  And the cabin was still full of smoke.  But
it seemed somewhat less dense now, less pungent.  But the smarting in
his eyes was more intense.

The fire had evidently burned down and out.  He struggled to open his
eyes, then gazed around the walls in search of the opening in the door.
But he could not see the reflection of an ember.  He fought his way to
his feet.

His fumbling hands encountered the log walls; he then groped about till
he found the plank door.  His gloved hands smarted, but their sense of
touch did no seem blunted.  He had never known a darker night!  Now that
he found the hole in the door, it was curious that he could not see one
star gleaming through.  But perhaps clouds had overspread.

A measure of heat against his face told him that coals were still
glowing under the ashes, yet he might be able to creep through.  It was
worth a trial: the smoke in the cabin was still almost unbearable.  His
muscles were more at his command now; with a great lurch he sprang up
and thrust head and shoulders through the opening.

The hot ashes punished his face, and his hand encountered hot coals as
he thrust them through.  Yet with a mighty effort he pushed on until his
wrists touched the icy snow.  He knew that he was safe.

He stood erect, scarcely believing in his deliverance.  And the snow had
crusted during the night; it would almost hold him up without snowshoes.
As soon as the light came, he could mush on toward his Twenty-three Mile
cabin.  It would be a cold and exhausting march, but he could make it.
The night was bitter now, assailing him like a scourge the moment he
left the warm cabin; and the temperature would continue to fall until
after dawn.  The wind still blew the snow dust--a stinging lash from
the north and west--and it had brought the cold from the Bering Sea.

It was curious that a cloudy night could be so cold.  Yet when he opened
his eyes he could not see the gleam of a star.  The red coals of the
fire, too, were smothered and obscured in ashes.  He stepped toward
them, intending to rake them up for such heat as they could yield.
Presently he halted, gazing with fascinated horror at the ground.

He was suddenly struck with a ghastly and terrible possibility.  He could
not give it credence, yet the thought seemed to seize and chill him like
a great cold.  But he would know the truth in a moment.  It was always
his creed: not to spare himself the truth.  Surely it would simply be an
interesting story--this of his great fear--when he returned with his
backload of supplies to Virginia.  Something to talk about, in the
painful and embarrassed moments that remained before Virginia and her
lover went out of his sight forever.

His hand groped for a match.  In his eagerness it broke off at his
fingers as he tried to strike it.  But soon he found another.

He heard it crack in the silence, but evidently it was a dud!  The
darkness before his eyes remained unbroken.

Filled with a sick fear, he removed his glove and passed his hand over
the upheld match.  There was no longer a possibility for doubt.  The
tiny flame smarted his flesh.

"Blind!" he cried.  "Out here in the snow and the forest--blind!"

It was true.  The pungent wood smoke had done a cruel work.  Until time
should heal the wounds of the tortured lenses, Bill was blind.



XXIII

Standing motionless in the dreadful gloom of blindness, insensible to
the growing cold, Bill made himself look his situation in the face.  His
mind was no longer blunt and dull.  It was cool, analytic; he balanced
one thing against another; he judged the per cent. of his chance.  At
present it did not occur to him to give up.  It is never the way of the
sons of the wilderness to yield without a fight.  They know life in all
its travail and pain, but also they know the Cold and Darkness and Fear
that is death.  No matter how long the odds are, the wilderness creature
fights to his last breath.  Bill had always fought; his life had been a
great war of which birth was the reveille and death would be retreat.

He was wholly self-contained, his mind under perfect discipline.  He
would figure it all out and seek the best way through.  Long, weary
miles of trackless forest stretched between him and safety.  There was
no food in this cabin, no blankets; and the fire was out.  His
Twenty-three Mile cabin was only slightly less distant than the one he
had left.  And through those endless drifts and interminable forests the
blind, unaided, could not find their way.

He could conceive of no circumstances whereby Virginia and Harold would
come to look for him short of another day and night.  They did not
expect him back until the end of the present day; they could not
possible start forth to seek him until another daylight.  And this man
knew what the forest and the cold would do to him in twenty-four hours.
Already the cold was getting to him.

For all that he had no food, he knew that if he could keep warm he could
survive until help came.  Yet men cannot fast in these winter woods as
they can in the South.  The simple matter of inner fuel is a desperate
and an essential thing.  But he had no blankets, and without a fire he
would die, speedily and surely.  He didn't deceive himself on this
point.  He knew the northern winter only too well.  A few hours of
suffering, then a slow warmth that stole through the veins and was the
herald of departure.  He had been warmed through in the cabin, but that
warmth would soon pass away.  He wondered if he could rebuild the fire.

He was suddenly shaken with terror at the thought that already he did
not know in what direction the fire and the cabin lay.  He had become
turned around when he strode out to light the match.  Instantly he began
to search for the cabin door.  He went down on his hands in the snow,
groping, then moved in a slow, careful circle.  Just one little second's
bewilderment, one variation from the circle, and he might lose the cabin
altogether.  That meant _death!_  It could mean no other thing.

But in a moment the smoke blew into his face, and he advanced into the
ashes.  The next moment, by circling again, he found the cabin door.  He
leaned against it, breathing hard.

"It won't do, Bill," he told himself.  "Hold steady--for one minute
more."

A spruce log, the last segment of the tree he had cut, lay somewhere a
few feet from his door.  But he remembered it had fallen into a thicket
of evergreen: could he find it now?  The log would not burn until it was
cut up with his ax: the ax would be hard to find in the pressing
darkness.  Even if he found it, even if he could cut kindling with his
knife, he couldn't maintain a blaze.  Building and mending a fire with
green timber is a cruel task even with vision; and he knew as well as he
knew the fact of his own life that it would be wholly impossible to the
blind.

Then what was left?  Only a deeper, colder darkness than this he knew
now.  Death was left--nothing else.  In an hour, perhaps in a
half-hour, possibly not until the night had gone and come again with its
wind and its chill, the end would be the same.  There was no light to
guide him home, no landmarks that he could see.

Then his thought seized upon an idea so fantastic, seemingly so
impossible of achievement, that at first he could not give it credence.
His mind had flashed to those unfortunates that had sometimes lost their
way in the dark chambers of an underground cavern and thence to that
method by which they guarded against this danger.  These men carried
strings, unwinding them as they entered the cavern and following them
out.  He had not carried a string-end here, but he had made a trail!
His snowshoe tracks probably were not yet obliterated under the
wind-blown snow.  Could he feel his way along them back to the cabin?

The miles were many and long, but he wouldn't have to creep on hands and
knees all the way.  Perhaps he could walk, stooped, touching the
depressions in the snow at every step.  In his own soul he did not
believe that he had one chance in a hundred of making it through to
safety.  Crawling, creeping, groping from track to track would wear him
out quickly.  But was there any other course for him?  If he didn't try
that, would he have any alternative other than to lie still and die?  He
wasn't sure that he could even find the tracks in the snow, but if he
were able to encircle the cabin at a radius of fifty feet he could not
miss them.  He groped about at the side of the cabin for his snowshoes.

He found them in a minute, then walked straight as he could fifty feet
out from the door.  Once more he went on hands and feet, groping in the
icy snow.  He started to make a great circle.

Fifteen feet farther he felt a break in the even surface.  The snow had
been so soft and his shoes had sunk so deep that the powdered flakes the
wind had strewn during the night had only half filled his tracks.  He
started to follow them down.

He walked stooped, groping with one hand, and after an endless time his
fingers dipped into dry, warm ashes.

Only for a fraction of a second did he fail to understand.  And in the
darkness and the silence the man's breath caught in what was almost a
sob.  He realized that he had followed the tracks in the wrong
direction, and had traced them straight to the cabin door that he had
just left.

It was only a matter of a hundred feet, but it was tragedy here.  Once
more he started on the out-trail.

He soon found that he could not walk in his present stooped position.
Human flesh is not build to stand such a strain as that.  Before he had
gone half a mile sharp pains began to attack him, viciously, in the back
and thighs.  For all his magnificent strength--largely returned to him
in his hours of rest--he could not progress in this position more than
half a mile farther.

He took another course.  He would walk ahead five paces, then drop down
and grope again for the tracks.  Sometimes he found them at once, often
he had to go on his hands and feet and start to circle.  Then, finding
the trail, he would mush on for five steps more.

Oh, the way was cruel!  He could not see to avoid the stinging lash of
the spruce needles, the cruel blows of the branches.  Already the
attempt began to partake of a quality of nightmare,--a blind and
stumbling advance over infinite difficulties through the infinity of
time.  It was like some torment of an evil Hereafter,--eternal,
remorseless, wholly without hope.  Many times he sprawled at full
length, and always it was harder to force himself to his feet.

Five steps on, halting and groping, then five steps more: thus the lone
figure journeyed through the winter forest.  The seconds dragged into
the minutes, the minutes into hours.  The cold deepened; likely it was
the bitter hour just after dawn.  The hand with which he groped for the
tracks had lost all power of feeling.

He could not judge distance or time.  Already it seemed to him that he
had been upon the journey endless hours.  Because of the faint grayness
before his eyes he judged it was broad daylight: perhaps already the day
was giving over to darkness.  He didn't know how far he had come.  The
only thought he had left was always to count his terrible five steps,
and count five more.

Nothing else mattered.  He had for the moment at least lost sight of all
other things.  His thought was not so clear now; it seemed to him that
the forest was no longer silent.  There were confused murmurings in his
ear, a curious confusion and perplexity in his brain.  It was hard to
remember who he was and where he was going.  Just to count his steps,
stoop, grope and find the snowshoe trail, then journey on again.

He tried to increase the number of steps between his gropings--first
six, then seven.  Above seven, however, the trail was so hard to find
that time was lost rather than gained.  Yes, he thought it was still
daylight.  Sometimes he seemed to feel the sunlight on his face.  He was
not cold now, and even the pain was gone from his hips and thighs.

He was mistaken in this, however.  The pain still sent its fearful
messages to his brain, but in his growing stupor he was no longer aware
of them.  Even his hand didn't hurt him now.  He wondered if it were
frozen; yet it was still sensitive to the depressions in the drifts.  It
could still grope through the snow and find the tracks.

"I can't go on!" his voice suddenly spoke aloud.  "I can't go--any
more."

The words seemed to come from an inner man, without volition on his
part.  He was a little amazed to hear them.  Yet the time had not yet
come to stop and rest.  The tracks still led him on.

Always, it seemed to him, he had to grope longer to find the
indentations in the snow.  The simple reason was that the motor centers
of his brain had begun to be impaired by cold and exhaustion, and he
could no longer walk in a straight line.  He found out, however, that
the trail usually lay to the right rather than to his left.  He was
taking a shorter step with his left than with his right--the same
tendency that often makes a tried woodsman walk in a great circle--and
he thus bore constantly to the left.  Soon it became necessary to drop
his formula down to six, then to the original five.

On and on, through the long hours.  But the fight was almost done.
Exhaustion and hunger, but cold most of all, were swiftly breaking him
down.  He advanced with staggering steps.

The indentations were more shallow now.  The point where he had begun to
break through the snow crust, because of the softening snow, was passed
long ago: only because he was in a valley sheltered from the wind were
the tracks manifest at all.

The time came at last when he could no longer get upon his feet.  And
now, like a Tithonus who could not die, he crawled along the snowshoe
trail on is hands and knees.  "I can't go on," he told himself.  "I'm
through!"  Yet always his muscles made one movement more.

Suddenly he missed the trail.  His hand groped in vain over the white
crust.  He crept on a few more feet, then as ever, began to circle.
Soon his hand found an indentation in the snow crust, and he started to
creep forward again.

But slowly the conviction grew upon him that he was crawling in a small
circle,--the very circle he had just made.  Some way, he had missed
the snowshoe trail.  He did not remember how on his journey out he had
once been obliged to backtrack a hundred yards and start on at a new
angle.  He had merely come to that point from which he had turned back.
He could not find the trail because he was at its end.

He could not remember that it was his own trail.  How he came here, his
purpose and his destination, were all lost and forgotten in the
intricate mazes of the past.  He had but one purpose, one theme,--to
keep to his trail an journey on.  He would make a bigger circle.  He
started to creep forward in the snow.

But as he waited, on hands and knees in the drifts, the Spirit of Mercy
came down to him and gave him one moment of lucid thought.  All at once
full consciousness returned to him in a sweep as of a tide, and he
remembered all that had occurred.  He saw all things in their exact
relations.  And now he knew his course.

No longer would he struggle on, slave to the remorseless instinct of
self-preservation.  Was there any glory, any happiness at his journey's
end that would pay him for the agony of one more forward step?  He had
waged a mighty battle; but now--in a flash--he realized that the
spoil for which he had fought was not worth one moment of his hours of
pain.  He remembered Virginia, Harold, the mind and its revelation: he
recalled that his mission had been merely an expedition after provisions
so that the two could go out of his life.  Was there any reason why he
should fight for life, only to find death?

There was nothing in the distant cabin worth having now.  He was
suddenly crushed with bitterness at the thought that he had made this
mighty effort for a goal not worth attaining.  If he struggled on, even
to success, the only thing that waited him was a moment of farewell with
Virginia and the vision of her slipping away from him, into her lover's
arms.  When she departed only the forest and the darkness would be left,
and he had these here.

It would be different if he felt Virginia still needed him.  If he could
win her any happiness by fighting on, the struggle would still be worth
while.  But she had Harold to show her the way through the winter woods.
It was true that they would have to rely on the fallen grizzly for meat:
an uncomfortable experience, but nothing to compare with any further
movement through the cruel drifts.  Harold would come back and claim the
mine; perhaps he would even erect his own notice before his departure,
and the Rutheford family would know the full fruits of their crime of
long ago.  But it didn't matter.  The only thing that mattered now was
rest and sleep.

Slowly he sank down in the snow.



XXIV

When the Chinook wind, moving northwest at a faster pace than the
waterfowl move south, struck the home cabin, Virginia's first thought
was for Bill.  She heard it come, faint at first, then blustering, just
as Bill had heard it; she saw it rock down a few dead trees, and she
listened to its raging complaints at the window.

"I'll show you my might," it seemed to say.  "You have dared my silent
places, come into my fastness, but now I will have revenge.  I'll pay
you--in secret ways that you don't know."

It so happened that Harold's first thought was also of Bill.  It was a
curious fact that his heart seemed to leap as if the wind had smitten
it.  He knew what the Chinook could do to a snow crust.  He estimated
that Bill was about halfway between the two cabins, and he didn't know
about the little, deserted cabin where Bill could find refuge during the
night.  His eyes gleamed with high anticipations.

Harold's thought was curiously intertwined with the remembrance of the
dark cavern he had entered yesterday, the gravel laden with gold.  If
indeed all things went as it seemed likely that they would go, Bill
would never carry the word of his find down to the recorder's office.
It was something to think of, something to dream about.  Yellow
gold,--and no further trouble in seeking it.  Such a development would
also save the labor of further planning.  It was a friend of his, this
wind at the window.

"Won't this Chinook melt the snow crust?" Virginia asked him.

He started.  He hadn't realized that this newfound sweetheart of his
knew the ways of Chinook winds and snow crusts.  "Oh, no," he responded.
"Why should it?  Wind makes crusts, not softens them."

Virginia was satisfied for the moment.  Then her mind went back to
certain things Bill had told her on one of their little expeditions.
Strangely, she took Bill's word rather than Harold's.

"But this is a warm wind, Harold," she objected.  "If the crust is
melted Bill can't possibly get through to his Twenty-three Mile cabin
to-night.  What will he do?"

"He'll make it through.  The crust won't melt that fast, if it melts at
all.  He may have a long, hard tramp, though.  Don't worry, Virginia,
he'll be coming in to-morrow night--with his back loaded with food."

"I only wish I hadn't let him go."  The girl's tone was heavy and dull.

"But we have to have supplies----"

"We could have gone out on that grizzly meat.  It was so foolish to risk
his life, and I had a presentiment too."

He was glad that she had had a presentiment.  It tended to verify his
fondest dreams.  But he laughed at her, and falling into one of his most
brilliant moods, tried to entertain her.  Her interest was hard to hold
to-day.  Her mind kept dwelling on Bill, mushing on through the
softening snow, and her eyes kept seeking the window.

She cooked lunch and burned every dish.  Then, no longer able to deny
her own fears, she ventured out in the snow to test its crust.  She put
on her snowshoes, starting a little way down Bill's trail.  She was
white-faced and sick of heart when she returned.

"Harold, I'm worried," she cried.  "I tried to walk in this snow--and
you can talk about Bill making it through all you want, but I won't
believe you.  A hundred steps has tired me out."

He was beginning to be a little angry with her fears.  And he made the
mistake of answering rather impatiently.

"Well, what can you do about it?  he's gone, hasn't he, and we can't
call him back."

"I suppose not.  But if I--we--were out there in that soft snow, and
he was here, he'd find something to do about it!  He'd come racing out
there to us--bringing food an blankets----"

"Oh, he'd be a hero!" Harold scorned.  "Listen, Virginia--there's
nothing in the world to fear.  The Chinook sprang up at nine----"

"Oh, it was much later than that."

"I looked at my watch," the man lied.  "He was only well started then;
he's woodsman enough to turn around and come back if there's danger.
You may see him before dark."

"I pray that I will!  And if--if--anything has happened to him----"

All at once the tears leaped to her eyes.  She couldn't restrain them
any more than the earth can constrain the rain.  She turned into her own
curtained-off portion of the cabin so that Harold could not see.

The afternoon that followed was endlessly long, and lonely.  Her heart
sank at the every complaint of the wind, and she dreaded the fall of the
shadows.  Three times she thrilled with inexpressible joy at a sound on
the threshold, but always it was just the wind, mocking her distress.

She saw the sinister, northern night growing between the spruce trees,
and she dreaded it as never before.  She cooked a meager supper--the
supplies were almost gone--but she had no heart to sit up and talk
with Harold.  At last she went behind her curtain, hoping to forget her
fears in sleep.

All through the hours of early night she slept only at intervals:
dozing, coming to herself in starts and jerks, and dreaming miserably.
The hours passed, and still Bill did not return.

Her imagination was only too vivid.  In her thoughts she could see this
stalwart woodsman of hers camping somewhere in the snowdrifts,
blanketless, staying awake through the bitter night to mend the fire,
and perhaps in trouble.  She knew something of the northern cold that
was assailing him, hovering, waiting for the single instant when his
fire should go down or when he should drop off to sleep.  Oh, it was
patient, remorseless.  He was likely hungry, too, and despairing.

She wakened before dawn; and the icy, winter stars were peering through
the cabin window.  Surely Bill had returned by now: yet it would hardly
be like him to come in and not let her know of his safe return.  He had
always seemed so well to understand her fears, he was always so
thoughtful.  There was no use trying to go back to sleep until she knew
for certain.  She slipped from her bed onto the floor of the icy cabin.

She missed the cozy warmth of the fire; but, shivering, she slipped
quickly into her clothes.  Then she lighted a candle and put on her
snowshoes.  She mushed across the little space of snow to the men's
cabin.

The east was just beginning to pale: the stars seemed lucid as ever in
the sky.  There was a labyrinth of them, uncounted millions that gleamed
and twinkled in every little rift between the spruce trees.  Even the
stars of lesser magnitude that through the smoke of her native city had
never revealed themselves were out in full array to-night.  And the icy
air stabbed like knives the instant she left the cabin door.  It was the
coldest hour she had ever known.

She knocked on Harold's door, then waited for a reply.  But the cabin
was ominously silent.  Her fears increased: she knew that if Bill were
present he would have wakened at her slightest sound.  He would have
seemed to know instinctively that she was there.  She knocked again,
louder.

"Who's there?" a sleepy voice answered.  Virginia felt a world of
impatience at the dull, drowsy tones.  Harold had been able to sleep!
He wasn't worrying over Bill's safety.

"It's I--Virginia.  I'm up and dressed.  Did Bill come back?"

"Bill?  No--and what in God's earth are you up this early for?  Forget
about Bill and go back to bed."

"Listen, Harold," she pleaded.  "Don't tell me to go back to bed.  I
feel--I know something's happened to him.  He couldn't have gone on
clear to the cabin in that awful snow; he either started back or camped.
In either case, he's in trouble--freezing or exhausted.  And--and--I
want you to go out and look for him."

Harold was fully awake now, and he had some difficulty in controlling
his voice.  In the first place he had no desire to rescue Bill.  In the
second, he was angry and bitterly jealous at her concern for him.  "You
do, eh--you'd like to send me out on a bitter night like this on a
fool's errand such as that.  Where is there a cabin along the way--you'd
only kill me without helping him."

"Nonsense, Harold.  You could take that big caribou robe and some food,
and if you had to camp out it wouldn't kill you.  Please get up and go,
Harold."  Her tone now was one of pleading.  "Oh, I want you to----"

"Go back to bed!"  But Harold remembered, soon, that he wasn't talking
to his squaw, and his voice lost its impatient note.  "Don't worry about
Bill any more.  He'll come in all right.  I'm not going out on any
wild-goose chase like that--on a day such as to-day will be.  You'll
see I'm right when you think about it."

"Think!" she replied in scorn.  "If it were Bill he wouldn't stop to
think.  He'd just act.  You won't go, then?"

"Don't be foolish, Virginia."

Angry words rose in her throat, but she suppressed them.  A daring idea
had suddenly filled her with wonder.  It came full-grown: that she
herself should start forth into the snow deserts to find Bill herself.

Virginia had not been trained to self-reliance.  Except for her northern
adventure, she had never been obliged to face difficulties, to care for
and protect herself, to work with her hands and do everyday tasks.  To
build a fire, to repair a leaking tap, to take responsibility for
anything above such schoolday projects as amateur plays an social
gatherings would have seemed tasks impossible of achievement.  At first
it had never occurred to her that she might herself be of aid to Bill.
The old processes of her mind still ran true to form; she had gone to
ask a man to carry out her wish.  At first she had felt wholly helpless
at his refusal.  But why should she not go herself?

If indeed Bill had reached the Twenty-three Mile cabin, he would be
mushing home by now; she would meet him somewhere on his snowshoe trail.
No harm would be done.  It might even be a pleasant adventure to mush
with him in the snow.  The snow itself was perfect for travel; and she
had learned that her strong young body was capable of long distances in
a day.  And if he were in trouble she could help him.

It might mean building a fire in the snow and possibly camping out
through the day and night to come.  It would be a dreadful and dangerous
experience, yet she saw no reason why she couldn't endure it.  Bill had
showed her how to make the best of such a bad situation as this.  He
had taught her how to build a fire in the snow; her round, slender
arms--made muscular in her weeks in the North--could cut fuel to keep
it burning.  Besides, she would carry the caribou robe--one of the cot
coverings that Bill had stored in his cabin and which, though light as
down, was practically impervious to cold.  Besides, there was no one
else to go.

She went swiftly to her cabin, put on her warmest clothing, and, as Bill
had showed her, rolled a compact pack for her back.  She took a little
package of food--nourishing chocolate and dried meat--the whisky
flask that had been her salvation the night of the river experience, and
a stub of candle for fire-building, tying them firmly in the caribou
robe.  The entire package weight only about ten pounds.  She fastened it
on her shoulders, hung a camp ax at her belt; and as she waited for the
dawn, ate a hearty but cold breakfast.  Then, with never a backward
look, she started away, down the dim, wind-blown, snowshoe trail.



XXV

Now that the fight was done, Bill lay quite calm and peaceful in the
drifts.  The pain of the cold and the wrack of exhausted muscles were
quite gone.

He was face to face with the flaming truth, and he knew his fate.  The
North, defied so long, had conquered him a last.  It had been waiting
for him, lurking, watching its chance; and with its cruel agents, the
bitter cold and the unending snow, it had crushed and beaten him down.
He felt no resentment.  He was glad that the trial was over.  He knew a
deep, infinite peace.

Sleep was encroaching upon him now.  He felt himself drifting, and the
tide would never bring him back.  He stirred a little, putting his hands
in his armpits, his face resting on his elbow.  The wind swept by,
sobbing: there in the shadow of death he caught its tones and its
messages as never before.  He was being swept into space. ...

On the trail that he had made on the out-journey, and which he had tried
to vainly to follow back, Virginia came mushing toward him.  Never
before had her muscles responded so obediently to her will; she sped at
a pace that she had never traveled before.  It was as if some power
above herself was bearing her along, swiftly, easily, with never a
wasted motion.  She tilted the nose of her snowshoes just the right
angle, no more or less, and all her muscles seemed to work in perfect
unison.

The bitter cold of the early morning hours only made her blood flow
faster and gave her added energy.  She scarcely felt the pack on her
back.  The snowshoe trail, however, was so faint as to be almost
invisible.

Because the snow had been firm in this part of Bill's journey, his track
was not so deep and the drifting snow had almost completely filled it.
In a few places the track was entirely obscured; always there were
merely dim indentations.  If she had started an hour later she could not
have followed the trail at all.  For all the day was clear, the wind
still whirled flurries of dry snow across her path.

But she didn't permit herself to despair.  If need be, she told herself,
she would follow him clear to the Twenty-three Mile cabin.  The tracks
were ever more dim, but surely they would be deeper again where Bill had
encountered the soft snow.

It became increasingly probable, however, that the tracks would
completely fade away before that time.  Soon the difficulty of finding
the imprints in the snow began to slacken her gait.  To lose them
completely meant failure: she could not find her way in these snowy
stretches unguided.  As morning reached its full, the white wastes
seemed to stretch unbroken.

Was the wind-blown snow going to defeat her purpose, after all?  A great
weight of fear and disappointment began to assail her.  The truth of the
matter was she had come to an exposed slope, and the trail had faded out
under the snow dust.

At first there seemed nothing to do but turn back.  It might be
possible, however, to cross the ridge in front: the valley beyond was
more sheltered by the wind and she might pick up the trail again.  At
least she could follow her own tracks back, if she failed.  She sped
swiftly on.

She had guessed right.  Standing on the ridge top she could see, far off
through one of the treeless glades that are found so often in the spruce
forest, the long path of a snowshoe trail.  Instinctively she followed
it with her eyes.

Clear where the trail entered the spruce thicket, her keen eyes made out
a curious, black shadow against the snow.  For a single second she eyed
it calmly, wondering what manner of wild creature it might be.  Its
outline grew more distinct under her intense gaze, and she cried out.
It was only a little sound, half a gasp and half a sob, but it expressed
the depths of terror and distress never known to her before.

It seemed to her that she could not move at first.  She could only stand
and gaze.  The heart in her breast turned to ice, her blood seemed to go
still in her veins.  She recognized this figure now.  It was Bill, lying
still in the frozen drifts.

For endless hours, it seemed to her, she stood impotent with horror.  In
reality, the time was not an appreciable fraction of a breath.  Then,
sobbing, she mushed frantically down toward him.  She fairly raced,--with
never a misstep.  For all the ghastly sickness that swept over her,
she held her body in perfect discipline.  She had no doubt but that this
man was dead.  Likely he had lain there for hours, and really only a
very short time of such cold as this was needed to take life.  Already,
she thought, the life had gone from his dark, gentle eyes; the brave
heart was still; the brave heart was still; the mighty muscles lifeless
clay.

No moment of her life had ever been fraught with such overwhelming
bitterness as this.  She had never known such fear, even in the grip of
the wild waters or during the grizzly's charge.  This was something that
went deeper than mere life: it touched realms of her spirit undreamed
of, and the blow seemed more cruel and more dreadful than any that
the world could deal direct to her.  If she had paused for one second
of self-analysis, heaven knows what light might have burst upon her
spirit--what deep and wondrous realizations of her attitude toward Bill
might have come to her; but she did not pause.  She only knew that she
must reach his side.  Her only thought was that Bill was dead, gone
from her life as a flame goes from an extinguished candle.

She knelt beside him, and with no knowledge of effort turned him over
and lifted his head and shoulders into her arms.  His eyes were closed,
his face expressionless, his arms dropped limply to his side.  At first
she dared not dream but that the cold had already taken away his life.
The dread Spirit of the North had lain in ambush for him a long time,
but it had conquered him at last.

They made an unearthly picture,--these two so silent in the drifts.
Endless about them lay the snow; the winter forest was deep in its
eternal silence, the little spruce trees stood patient and inert and
queer, under their heavy loads of snow.  Never a voice in all the
wastes, never a tear of pity or a stretching hand of mercy,--only
the cold, only the silence, only the dread solitude of a land
untamed,--the unconquerable wild.  Yet her sorrow, her ineffable
despair left no room for resentment against this dreadful land.  It
was only a lost fight in an eternal war; only a little incident in
the vast and inscrutable schemes of a remorseless Nature.

She knew life now, this girl of cities.  She knew that in her past life
she had never really lived: she had only moved in a gentle dream that an
artificial civilization had made possible.  The gayeties, the culture,
the luxuries and the fashions that had seemed so real and so essential
before were revealed in their true light, only as dreams that would
pass: deep in them she had never heard the crash of armor in the
battlefields without her bower.  But she knew now.  She saw life as it
was, stark and cruel, remorseless, pitiless to the weak, treacherous to
the strong, ever waging war against all creatures that dwelt upon the
earth.

Yet so easily could it have been redeemed!  If this man were standing
strong beside her, life would be nothing to fear, nothing to appall her
spirit.  All the ancient persecutions of the elements, all the pitfalls
of life and the exigencies of fortune could never bow their heads.
Instead they would know high adventure and the exhilaration of battle;
even if at the day's end they should go down into death, it would be
with unbroken spirits and brave hearts.

But she couldn't stand alone!  She needed the touch of his hand, his
shoulder against hers, the communion of his spirit and his strength.
Life was an appalling thing to face alone!  There was no joy now in the
punishing cold and the wastes of forest; only sadness and fear and
despair.  Sitting in the snow, his head and shoulders in her arms, she
knew a fear and a loneliness undreamed of before, a loss that could
never be atoned for or redeemed.

She too knew the lesson that Bill had learned in his hour of
bitterness,--that one moment of heaven may atone for a whole life of
struggle and sorrow.  One clasp of arms, one whispered message, one
mighty impulse of the soul in which eternity is seized and the stars
are gathered might glorify the whole bitter struggle of existence.
One little kiss might pay for it all.  Yet for all that Harold still
lived and waited for her in the cabin, she felt that this one little
instant of resurrection was irrevocably lost.

It seemed so strange to her that he should be lying here, impotent
in her arms.  Always he had been so strong, he had stood so
straight,--always coming to her aid in a second of need, always
strengthening her with his smile and his eyes.  She could hardly believe
that this was he,--never to cheer her again in their hard tramps, to
lend her his mighty strength in a moment of crisis, to laugh with her at
some little tragedy.  She sobbed softly, and her tears lay on his face.
"Bill, oh, Bill, won't you wake up and speak to me?" she cried.  She
pleaded softly, but he didn't seem to hear.

"Come back to me, Bill--I need you," she told him.  He had always been
so quick to come when she needed him before now.  "Are you _dead?_-- Oh,
you couldn't be _dead!_  It's so cold--and I'm afraid.  Oh, please
open your eyes----"

She kissed him over and over--on the lips, on his closed eyes.  She
pressed his head against her soft breast, as if her fluttering heart
would give some of its life to him.

_Dead?_  Was that it?  All at once she set to work to win back her
self-control.  It might not yet be too late to help.  She gripped
herself, dispelling at once all hysteria, all her vagrant thoughts.
He would have been hard at work long since.  His face was still
warm--perhaps life had not yet passed.

She put her head to his breast.  His heart was beating--slowly, but
steadily and strong.



XXVI

Bill had not been lying long inert in the snow.  Otherwise Virginia
would not have heard his heart thumping so steadily in his breast.  In
fact, she was almost on the top of the ridge when he had given up.  He
had just drifted off to sleep when she reached his side.

And now he thought he was in the midst of some wonderful, glorious
dream.  Death was being merciful, after all: in the moment of its
descent it was giving him the image of his fondest dream.  It seemed to
him that soft, warm arms were about him, that his head was pillowed
against a tenderness, a holiness passing understanding.  He didn't want
the dream to end.  It would in a moment, the darkness would drop over
him; but even for the breath that it endured it almost atoned for the
full travail of his life.

There were kisses, too.  They came so softly, so warm, just as he had
dreamed.  "Virginia," he whispered.  "Is it you, Virginia--come to
me----?"

Then, so clearly that he could no longer retain the delusion of dream,
he heard his answer.  "Yes--and I've come to save you."

It was true.  Her arms were about him; he was nestled against her
breast.  Yet the kisses must have been only a dream that was worth death
to gain.  She was at work on him now.  He felt her swift motions; now
she was putting a flask to his lips.  A burning liquid poured into his
throat.

There ensued a moment of indescribable peace, and then the flask was put
to his lips again.  The inner forces of his body, fighting still for his
life even after he had given up, seized quickly upon the warming liquor,
forced it into his blood, and drove away the frost that was beginning to
congeal his life fluids.  Already he felt a new stir in his veins.  He
struggled to speak.

"No yet," the girl whispered.  "Don't make any effort yet."

She gave him more of the liquor.  He felt strength returning to his
muscles.  He tried to open his eyes.  The sharp pain was a swift
reminder of his blindness.  "I'm blind----" he told her.

"No matter, I'll save you."  Even his blindness would not put a barrier
between them.  One glance at the inflamed lids, however, told her that
in all probability it was just a temporary blindness from some great
irritation, soon to be dispelled.  "Can you eat?" she asked.

The man nodded.

"It's better to, if you can.  The whisky is only a stimulant, and it
won't keep you alive."  She thrust a fragment of sweet chocolate into
his mouth, permitting it to melt.  "You'd better get to your feet as
soon as you can--and try to get the flood flowing right again.  We're
only a few miles from the cabin--if you'll just fight we can make it
in."

He shook his head.  "I can't--I can't go any farther.  I can't see the
way."

"But I'll lead you."  By her intuition she guessed his despair; and she
comforted him, his head against her breast.  "Don't you know I'll lead
you?" she cried, a world of pleading in her tone.  "Oh, Bill--you
can't give up.  You must try.  If you die, I'll die too--here beside
you.  Oh, Bill--don't you know I need you?"

The words stirred and wakened him more than all her first aid.  She
needed him; she was pleading to him to get up and go on.  Could he
refuse that appeal?  Could any wish of hers, as long as he lived and was
able to strive for her, go ungranted?  The blood mounted through his
veins, awakened.  A mysterious strength flowed back into his thews.

There could be no further question of giving up.  He struggled with
himself, and his voice was almost his own when he spoke.  "Give me more
food--and more whisky," he commanded.  "Take some yourself too--you'll
have to help me a lot going home.  And give me your hands."

He struggled to his feet.  He reeled, nearly fell; but her arms held him
up.  She gave him more chocolate and a swallow of the burning liquid.

"It's a race against time," she told him.  "If I can get you into the
cabin before the reaction comes, I can save you.  Try with every muscle
you've got, Bill--for me!"

She need make no other appeal.  She took his hand, and they started
mushing over the drifts.

* * * * *

The moose that stands at bay against the wolf pack, the ferocious little
ermine in the grasp of the climbing marten never made a harder, more
valiant fight than these two waged on the way to the cabin.  There was
no mercy for them in the biting cold.  Bill was frightfully worn and
spent from his experience of the day and the previous night, and
Virginia had lent her own young strength to him.  Often he reeled and
faltered, and at such times her arm in his kept him up.  The miles
seemed innumerable and long.

A might that has its seat higher and beyond the mere energy-giving
chemistry of their bodies came to their aid.  Virginia had never dreamed
that she possessed such power of endurance and unfaltering muscles: a
spirit born of an unconquerable will rose within her and bore her on.
She was aware of no physical pain; the magnificent exertion of her
muscles was almost unconscious.  Just as women fight for the lives of
their babes she fought for him, as if it were the deepest instinct of
her being.  The thought of giving up was intolerable, and such spirit is
the soul of victory!

They won at last.  Without the stimulant and the nutritious food defeat
would have been certain.  But all these factors would have been
unavailing except for the fighting spirit that her appeal to him had
awakened and which she had found, full-grown, in her own soul.

They mused up to the cabin, and Harold stared at them like a lifeless
thing as Bill reeled through the doorway.  Virginia led him to her own
cot, then drew the blankets over him.  And she was not so exhausted but
that she could continue the fight for his recovery.

"Build up the fire, and do it quickly," she ordered Harold.  Her tone
was terse, commanding, and curiously he leaped to obey her.  She removed
Bill's snow-covered garments, and as Harold went out to procure more
fuel she put water on the stove to heat.  Then, procuring snow, she
began to rub Bill's right hand, the hand that had been frozen in his
effort to grope for the trail.  Quick and hard work was needed to save
it.

Harold came to her aid, but she put him to other work.  She wanted to do
this task herself.  Then she aroused the woodsman from his half-sleep to
give him coffee, cup after cup of it that used up the last of their
meager supply.

It is one of the peculiar faculties of the human body to recover quickly
from the effects of severe cold.  Even coupled with exhaustion his
hardships had wrought no lasting organic injury, and the magnificent
recuperative powers of Bill's tough body came quickly to his aid.  About
midnight he wakened from a long sleep, wholly clear-headed and free from
pain.  Wet bandages were over his eyes.

He groped and in a moment found Virginia's hands.  But an instant he
held them only; it was enough to know that she was near.  He realized
that he was out of danger now: such tenderness as she had given him must
be forgotten.  She was still sitting beside his bed, wrapped in a
blanket.

He started to get up so that she could have her own cot; but she wakened
at his motions.  Gently she pushed him down.

"But I'm all right now," he told her.  "I'm sleepy--and sore--but
I'm strong as ever.  Let me go to my bed, and get some sleep."

"No.  I'm not sleepy yet."

But the dull tones of her voice--even thought Bill could not see the
white fatigue in her face--belied her words.  Bill laughed, the same
gay laugh that had cheered her so many times, and swung his feet to the
floor.  "It's my turn to be nurse--now," he told her.  "Get in quick."

"But I've had Harold bring some blankets here and spread them on the
floor," she objected.  "I can go to sleep there, when--I'm--tired."

"And I can go to sleep there right now."

With his strong arms he half-lifted her and laid her in his warm place.
She yielded to his strength, sleepily and gratefully, and he drew the
blankets about her shoulders.  The touch of his hand was in some way
wonderful,--so strong, so comforting.  Then, reeling only a little, he
groped his way to the bed she had made upon the floor.

"Good night," he called, when he had pulled his blankets up.  Guided by
a hope that flooded his heart with tremulous anticipations, he held out
his hand in the darkness toward her.

As if by a miracle, her own hand came stealing into his.  No man could
tell by what unity of longing they had acted: but neither seemed
surprised to find the other's, waiting in the darkness.  It was simply
the Mystery that all men see and no man understands.

He held the little hand in his for just a breath, as a man might hold a
holy thing that a prophet had blessed.  Then he let it go.

"Good night, Bill," she told him sleepily.

In the hours of refreshing slumber that lasted full into the next
morning there was but one curious circumstance.  In the full light of
morning it seemed to him that he heard the faint prick of a rifle, far
away.  The truth was that for all his heavy sleep, some of his guardian
senses were awake to receive impressions, and the sound was a reality.
It was curiously woven into the fabric of his dreams.

There were four shots, one swiftly upon another.  Four,--and the
figure four had a puzzling, yet sinister significance to his mind.  He
didn't know what it was: he had a confused sense of some sort of an
inner warning, an impression of impending danger and treachery.  Who was
it that had held up four fingers somewhere in his experience, and what
manner of signal had it been?  But Bill didn't fully waken.  His dreams
ran on, confused and troubled.



XXVII

The same rifle shots that brought bad dreams to Bill had a much more
lucid meaning for Joe Robinson and Pete the Breed, the two Indians that
were occupying Harold's cabin.  The wind bore toward them from Harold's
new abode, the rifle was of heavy caliber, and the sound came clear and
unmistakable through the stillness.  They looked from one to the other.

"Four shots," Pete said at last.  "Lounsbury's signal."

Pete stood very still, as if in thought.  "Didn't come heap too quick,"
he observed.  "One day more you and me been gone down to Yuga--after
supplies."

"Yes--but we can't go now."  Joe's face grew crafty.  The wolfish
character of his eyes was for the moment all the more pronounced.  There
was a hint of excitement in his swarthy, unclean face.

"That means--big doin's," he pronounced gravely.  "We go."

Pete agreed, and they made swift preparations for their departure.  Some
of these preparations would have been an amazement to the white woodsmen
of the region,--for instance, the slow cleaning and oiling of their
weapons.  The red race--at least such representatives of it as lived
in Clearwater--was not greatly given to cleanliness in any form.  It
was noticeable that Joe looked well to see if his pistol was loaded, and
Pete slapped once at the long, cruel blade that he wore in his belt.
Then they put on their snowshoes and mushed away.

There was no nervous waiting at the appointed meeting place,--a spring
a half-mile from Bill's cabin.  Harold Lounsbury was already there.  The
look on his face confirmed Joe's predictions very nicely.  There would,
it seemed, be big doings, and very soon.

A stranger to this land might have thought that Harold was drunk.
Unfamiliar little fires glittered and glowed in his eyes, his features
were drawn, his word of greeting was heavy and strained.  His hands,
however, were quite steady as he rolled his cigarette.

For all that the North had failed to teach him so many of its lessons
Harold knew how to deal with Indians.  It was never wise to appear too
eager; and he had learned that a certain nonchalance, an indifference,
gave prestige to his schemes.  The truth was, however, that Harold was
seared by inner and raging fires.  He had just spent the most black and
bitter night of his life.  The hatred that had been smoldering a long
time in his breast had at last burst into a searing flame.

There was one quality, at least, that he shared with the breeds; hatred
was an old lesson soon learned and never forgotten.  He had hated Bill
from the first moment, not only for what he was and what he stood
for--so opposite to Harold in everything--but also for that first
mortifying meeting in his own cabin.  He felt no gratitude to him for
rescuing him from his degenerate life.  The fact that Bill's agency, and
Bill's alone, had brought Virginia to his arms was no softening factor
in his malice.  Every day since, it seemed to him, he had further cause
for hatred, till now it stung and burned him like strong drink, like
live hot steam in his brain.  In his inner soul he knew that Bill had
endured tests in which he had failed, and he hated him the worse for it.
He had sensed Bill's contempt for him, and the absolute fairness with
which the woodsman had always treated him brought no remorse.  Bill had
found the mine for which he sought, to which, by the degenerate code by
which he lived, he felt he had an ancestral right.

Ever since he had gone down into that darkened treasure house he had
known in his own soul, late or soon, his future course.  The gold alone
was worth the crime he planned.  And as a crowning touch came the events
of the day and night just passed.

He had had no desire for Bill to return to the cabin alive.  It would
have been a simple way out of his difficulties for the woodsman to fall
and die in the snow wastes of Clearwater.  For him to lie so still and
impotent in the drifts would compensate for many things, and in such a
case he would never have opportunity to record the finding of his mine.
The only imperfection, in this event, was that it deprived Harold of his
personal vengeance, and magnanimously he was willing to forgo that.  It
wouldn't be his pleasure to see the final agony, the last shudder of the
frame,--but yet at least he might see much remnants as would be left
when the snow had melted in spring.

Every event of the day had pointed to a successful trip, from Harold's
point of view.  He had known that Bill couldn't make it through to his
Twenty-three Mile cabin after the Chinook wind had softened the snow.
The bitter night that followed would have likely claimed quickly any one
that tried to sleep, without blankets, unsheltered in the snow fields.
And when Virginia had gone out to save him and had brought back the
blind and reeling man, his first impulse had been to leap upon him, in
his helplessness, and drive his hunting knife through his heart!

It wouldn't, however, had been a wise course to pursue.  He didn't want
to lose Virginia.  He flattered himself that he had been cunning and
self-mastered.  He had watched Virginia's tender services to the
woodsman, and once he had seen a luster in her eyes that had seemed to
shatter his reason.  And he knew that the time had come to strike.

He felt no remorse.  The North had stripped him of all the masks with
which civilization had disguised him, and he was simply his father's
son.

This was a land of savage and primitive passions, and he felt no
self-amazement that he should be planning a murderous and an inhuman
crime.  He had learned certain lessons of cruelty from the wilderness;
the savage breeds with whom he had mingled had had their influence too.
Bill, born and living in a land of beasts, had kept the glory of
manhood; Harold, coming from a land of men, had fallen to the beasts'
own level.  And even the savage wolf does not slay the pack-brother that
frees him from a trap!  Besides, his father's wicked blood was prompting
his every step.

He threw the cigarette away and glanced critically at the rifles of his
two confederates.  The breeds waited patiently for him to speak.
"Where's Sindy?" he asked at last.

They began to wonder if he had called them here just to ask about Sindy,
and for an instant they were sullenly unresponsive.  But the heavy lines
on their master's face soon reassured them.  "Over Buckshot Dan's--just
where you said," Joe replied.

"Of course Buckshot took her back?"  The Indians nodded.  "Well, I'm
going to let him keep her.  I've got a white squaw now--and soon I'm
going out with her--to the Outside.  But there's things to do first.
Bill has found the mine."

The others nodded gravely.  They expected some such development.

"And Bill is as blind as a mole--got caught in a cabin full of
green-wood smoke.  He'll be able to see again in a day or two.  So I
sent for you right away."

The breeds nodded again, a trifle less phlegmatically.  Perhaps Pete's
eyes had begun to gleam,--such a gleam as the ptarmigan sees in the
eyes of the little weasel, leaping through the snow.

"The mine's worth millions--more money than you can dream of.  Each of
you get a sixth--one third divided between you.  You'll never get more
money for one night's work.  More than you can spend, if you live a
hundred winters.  But you agree first to these terms--or you won't
know where the mine is."

"Me--I want a fourth," Joe answered sullenly.

"All right.  Turn around and go home.  I don't want you."

It was a bluff, but it worked.  Joe came to terms at once.  Treacherous
himself and expecting treachery, Harold wisely decided that he wouldn't
divulge the location of the mine, however, until all needed work was
done.

"As soon as we've finished what I've planned, we'll tear down his claim
notices and put up our own, then go down to the recorder and record the
claim," Harold went on.  "Then it's ours.  No one will ever guess.  No
one'll make any trouble."

Joe's mind seemed to leap ahead of the story, and he made a very
pertinent question.  "The white squaw.  Maybe she'll tell?"

Harold glared at him.  The man inferred that he couldn't master his own
woman.  "Didn't you hear me say she was _my_ squaw?  I'll tend to her.
Besides--the way I've got it planned, she won't know--at least she
won't understand.  Now listen, you two, and don't make any mistake.
I've got to go back to the cabin now--try to be there before they wake
up.  They're both tired out from a hard experience yesterday--and, as
I told you, Bill's as blind as a gopher.

"Both of you are to come to the cabin, just about dark.  You'll tell me
you have been over Bald Peak way and are hitting back toward the Yuga
village.  Bring along a quart of booze--firewater--and maybe two
quarts would be better.  We'll have supper, and you'd better bring along
something in your pocket for yourselves.  It will put the girl in a
better mood.  And now--you see what you've got to do?"

Neither of them answered.  They could guess--but they didn't conceive
of the real brilliancy of the plan.

"If you can't, you're dummies.  It's just this"--and Harold's face
drew into an unlovely snarl--"sometime in the early evening give Bill
what's coming to him."

"Do him off----?" Joe asked stolidly.

"Stamp him out like I stamp this snow!"  He paused, and the two breeds
leaned toward him, waiting for the next word.  They were not phlegmatic
now.  They were imbued with Harold's own passion, and their dark, savage
faces told the story.  Their features were beginning to draw, even as
his; their eyes were lurid slits above the high cheek bones.

"Make it look like a fight," Harold went on.  "Insult him--better
still, get in a quarrel among yourselves.  He'll tell you to shut up,
and one of you flame up at him.  Then strike the life out of him before
he knows what he's about.  He's blind and he can't fight.  Then go back
to my cabin and hide out."

"No food in cabin," Joe objected.  "Get some from you?"

For a moment Harold was baffled.  This was a singularly unfortunate
circumstance.  But he soon saw the way out.  "So you've used up the
supplies, eh?  Got any booze----?"

"Still two bottles firewater----"

"Good.  The trouble is that there's no food at Bill's cabin,
either--not enough to last a day.  Bring what you have for your supper
to-night, or as much of it as you need--and after you're through with
Bill go back to your cabin and get what you have left----"

"There won't be none left----"

"Are you so low as that?  Then listen.  Do you know where Bill's
Twenty-three Mile cabin is?"

Pete nodded.  Joe made no response.

"Then you can find it, Pete.  I haven't any idea where it is myself.
It's only a day's march, and he's got it packed with grub.  You hide out
there, and the little food we have left in the cabin'll be enough to
take us down there too--the woman and I--we'll follow your snowshoes
tracks.  Then we'll make it through to the Yuga from there.  And if we
have to, we can go over to a grizzly carcass I know of and cut off a few
pounds of meat--but we won't have to.  We'll join you at the
Twenty-three Mile cabin to-morrow night."

Pete the breed looked doubtful.  "Bear over--east?" he asked.

"Somewhere over there," Harold replied.

"Don't guess any bear meat left.  Heard coyotes--hundred of
'em--over east.  Pack of wolves came through too--sang song over there."

Harold could agree with him.  If indeed the wolves and the coyotes had
gathered--starving gray skulkers of the forest--the great skeleton
would have been stripped clean by now.  However, it didn't complicate
his own problem.  The Indians could get down to the Twenty-three Mile
cabin with the morsel of food they had left--he and Virginia could
follow their trail with the fragment of supplies remaining in Bill's
cabin.

"You can go from there to the Yuga and hide out," Harold went on.  "I'll
go down to the recorder's office with the woman.  Don't worry about her,
I'll tell 'em that you were two Indians from the East Selkirks, give 'em
a couple of false names and send 'em on a goose chase.  It's simple as
day and doesn't need any nerve.  And if you've got it through your
heads, I'm going back to the cabin."

They had it through their heads.  The plan, as Harold said, was
exceedingly simple.  They digested it slowly, then nodded.  But Pete had
one more question--one that was wholly characteristic of his weasel
soul.

"What do you want us to use?" he asked.  "This?"  He indicated the thin
blade at his thigh.  "Maybe use rifle?"

Harold's eyes looked drowsy when he answered.  Something like a lust, a
desire swept over him; this question of Pete's moved him in dark and
evil ways.  "Oh, I don't know," he replied.  "It doesn't much
matter----"  He spoke in a strained, thick voice that was vaguely
exciting to the two breeds.  For a few seconds he seemed to stand
listening, rather than in thought, and he continued his reply as if he
were scarcely aware of his own words.  It was as if a voice from the
past was speaking through his lips.  The words came with no conscious
effort; rather were they the dread outpourings of an inherent fester in
his soul.  His father's blood was in the full ascendancy at last.

"There's an old pick on the table--Bill had it prospecting." he said.



XXVIII

Bill's eyes were considerably better when he wakened--full in the
daylight.  The warm wet cloths had taken part of the inflammation out of
them, and when he strained to open the lids, he was aware of a little,
dim gleam of light.  He couldn't make out objects, however, and except
for a fleeting shadow he could not discern the hand that he swept before
his face.  Several days and perhaps weeks would pass before the full
strength of his sight returned.

His greatest hope at present was that he could grope his way about the
cabin and build a fire for Virginia.  Whether she wished to get up or
not to-day, the growing chill in the room must be removed.  He got up,
fumbled on the floor for such of his outer garments as Virginia had
removed, and after a world of difficulty managed to get them on.  He was
amazingly refreshed by the night's sleep and Virginia's nursing.  His
eyes throbbed, of course; his muscles were lame and painful, his head
ached and his arms and legs seemed to be dismembered, yet he knew that
complete recovery was only a matter of hours.

Building the fire, however, was a grievous task.  He felt it incumbent
upon him to move with utmost caution so that Virginia would not waken.
By groping about the walls he encountered the stove.  It was pleasantly
warm to his hands, and when he opened the door he found that hot coals
were still glowing in the ashes.  Then he fumbled about the floor for
such fuel as Harold had provided.

He found a piece at last, and soon a cheery crackle told him that it had
ignited.  He grinned with delight at the thought that he, almost stone
blind, had been able to build a fire in a room with a sleeping girl and
not waken her.  But his joy was a trifle premature.  At that instant he
tripped over a piece of firewood and his hands crashed against the logs.

"Oh, blast my clumsiness!" he whispered; then stood still as death to
see what had befallen.  Virginia stirred behind her curtain.

"Is that you, Harold?" she asked.

She was wide awake, and further deception was unavailing.  "No.  It's
Bill."

"Well, what are you doing, up?  Did Harold--do you mean to say you
built the fire yourself?"

"That's me, lady----"

"Then you must have your sight again----"  The girl snatched aside the
curtain and peered into his face.

"No such luck.  Coals were still glowing; all I had to do was put in a
piece of firewood.  But I'm all well otherwise, as far as I can tell.
How about you?"

The girl stretched up her arms.  "A little stiff--Bill, I've certainly
gained recuperative powers since I came up here.  But, Heavens, I've had
bad dreams.  And now--I want you to tell me just how this blindness of
yours--is going to affect our getting out."

It was a serious question, one to which Bill had already given much
thought.  "I don't see how it can affect us a great deal," he answered
at last.  "I realize you don't know one step of the way down to
Bradleyburg, and I can't see the way; but Harold knows it perfectly.  Of
course if we had plenty of food the sensible thing to do would be to
wait--till I get back my sight.  But you know--we haven't scarcely
any food at all.  The last of the meat is gone, except one little piece
of jerky.  We've got a cup or two of flour and one or two cans.  Of
course there isn't enough to get down to the settlements on."

"Then we'll have to use the grizzly--after all?"

"Of course.  Thank God we had him to fall back on.  But even with him, I
don't think we ought to wait till I get back my sight.  We might have
other delays, and perhaps another softening of the crust.  It will be
pretty annoying--traveling on grizzly flesh--and pretty awkward to
have a blind man in the party, but--I'll be some good, anyway.  Maybe
I can cut fuel."

The girl was deeply touched.  It was so characteristic of this man that
even in his blindness he wished to make the difficulties of the journey
just as light as possible for her.

"I won't let you do a thing," she told him.  "Harold and I can do the
work of camp."

"There won't be much to do, unfortunately; our camping will have to be
exceedingly simple.  We'll take the sled full of blankets and grizzly
meat and what other little things we need.  I don't see why you can't
ride on it, too--most of the way; the going is largely downhill and
the crust is perfect.  We can skim along.  At night we'll have to sleep
out--and not get much sleep, either--but by going hard, even on
snowshoes, we can make it through in three days--sleeping out just two
nights.  Harold and I can build raging fires--he starting them and
helping me with the the fuel cutting.  Oh, I know, Virginia, I won't be
much good on this trip--and those two nights will be pretty terrible.
We'll have to take turns in watching the fire.  But with blankets around
our shoulders, acting as reflectors for the heat, we can get some rest."

"But you are sure Harold knows the way?  I couldn't even get as far as
the river, and you are blind----"

"Harold knows the way as well as I do.  I can mush all right, by hanging
on the gee-pole.  It will be comparatively easy going; the brush is
covered with snow.  The only thing that remains is to have Harold go
over and get a supply of the grizzly meat.  Or, better still, since
he'll have to take the sled, we can pick it up on the way out.  It's
frozen hard and won't take harm, and it's only a half mile out of our
way."

As if the invocation of his name were a magic summons, Harold opened the
door and entered.  He carried Bill's loud-mouthed rifle in the hollow of
his arm.

"You've been hunting?" Virginia cried.  She was pleased that this
sweetheart of hers should have risen so early in an attempt to secure
fresh meat for their depleted larder.  It was wholly the manly thing to
do.

"Of course.  I figured we needed meat.  I carried Bill's rifle because I
don't trust the sights of mine.  They were a yard off that day I shot at
the caribou."

"Did you see any game?"

Harold's eyes met hers an narrowed, ever so slightly.  But his answer
was apt.  "I saw a caribou--about two miles away.  There didn't seem a
chance in the world to hit it, but considering our scarcity of meat, I
took that chance.  Of course, I didn't hit within ten feet of him;
Bill's gun isn't built for such long ranges.  I shot--four times."

Bill did not reply.  He was thinking about those same four shots.  It
was incomprehensible that they should have made such an impression upon
him.

"And for all that Bill hasn't got his sight back yet, we're going to
start down to-morrow," Virginia went on in a gay voice.  She glanced
once at Bill, but she did not see the world of despair that came into
his face at the delight with which she spoke.  "You and I will take
turns pulling the sled; Bill will hang on to the gee-pole.  And Bill
says you know the way.  We're going to dash right through--camp out
only two nights."

"I know the way all right," Harold answered.  "What about food?"

"It's only a half-mile out of the way to Bill's mine.  There we're going
to load the sled with grizzly meat."

It was in Harold's mind that their journey would be far different--down
to the Twenty-three Mile cabin and to the Yuga rather than over Grizzly
River.  But for certain very good reasons he kept this knowledge to
himself.  His lips opened to tell them that the wolves and coyotes
had already devoured the carcass of the bear; but he caught himself in
time.  It would be somewhat hard to explain how he had learned that
fact, in the first place; and in the second, there was a real danger to
his plot if this revelation were made.  Likely they would suggest that,
to conserve what little food they had, they start at once.  The time had
not yet come to unfold this knowledge.

He nodded.  The day passed like those preceding,--simple meals, a few
hours of talk around the fire, such fuel cutting as was necessary to
keep the cabin snug and to provide a supply for the night.  This was
their last day in Clearwater,--and Virginia could hardly accept the
truth.

How untrue had been her gayety!  In all the white lies of her past, all
the little pretenses that are as much a part of life in civilization as
buildings and streets, she had never been as false to herself as now.
She had never had to act a part more cruel,--that she could feel joy
at the prospect of her departure.

She could deceive herself no longer.  The events of the previous day had
opened her eyes--in a small measure at least--and her thoughts
groped in vain for a single anticipation, a single prospect that could
lighten the overpowering weight of her sadness.  And the one hope that
came to her was that strange sister of despair,--that back in her old
life, in her own city, full forgetfulness might come to her.

Wasn't it true that she would say good-by to the bitter cold and the
snow wastes?  Was there no joy in this?  Yet these same solitudes had
brought her happiness that, though now to be blasted, had been a
revelation and a wonder that no words could name or no triumphs of the
future could equal.  The end of her adventure,--and she felt it might
as well be the end of her life.  Three little days of bitter hardship,
Bill tramping at her side,--and then a long, dark road leading nowhere
except to barren old age and death.

Never again would she know the winter forest, the silence and the
mystery, and the wolf pack chanting with infinite sadness from the hill.
The North Wind, a reality now, would be a forgotten myth: she would
forget that she had seen the woodland caribou, quivering with
irrepressible vigor against the snowfields.  The thrill, the
exhilaration of battle, the heat of red blood in her veins would be
strangers soon: the whole adventure would seem like some happy,
impossible dream.  Never to hear a friendly voice wishing her good
morning, never a returning step on the threshold, the touch of a strong
hand in a moment of fear!  She was aghast and crushed at the realization
that this man was going out of her life forever.  She would leave him to
his forests,--their shadows hiding him forever from her gaze.

She found it hard to believe that she could fit into her old niche.
Some way, this northern adventure had changed the very fiber of her
soul.  She could find no joy at the thought of the old gayeties she had
once loved, the beauty and the warmth.  Was it not true that Harold
would go out beside her, the lover of her girlhood?  His uncle would
start him in business; her course with him would be smooth.  But her
hands were cold and her heart sick at the thought.

As the hours passed, the realization of her impending departure seemed
to grow, like a horror, in her thoughts.  She still made her pathetic
effort to be gay.  It would not do for these men to know the truth, so
she laughed often and her words were joyous.  She fought back the tears
that burned in her eyelids.  She could only play the game; there was no
way out.

She could conceive of no circumstances whereby her fate would be
altered.  She knew now, as well as she knew the fact of her own life,
that she had been trapped and snared and cheated by a sardonic destiny.
For the moment she wished she had never fought her way back to the cabin
with Bill after yesterday's adventure, but that side by side in the
drifts, they had yielded to the Shadow and the cold.

Through the dragging hours of afternoon, Harold seemed restless and
uneasy.  He smoked impatiently and was nervous and abstracted in the
hours of talk.  But the afternoon died at last.  Once more the shadows
lengthened over the snow; the dusk grew; the first, bright stars thrust
through the gray canopy above them.  Virginia went to the work of
cooking supper,--the last supper in this little, unforgettable cabin
in the snow.

Both Bill and Virginia started with amazement at the sound of tapping
knuckles on the door.  Harold's eyes were gleaming.



XXIX

Harold saw fit to answer the door himself.  He threw it wide open;
Virginia's startled glance could just make out two swarthy faces,
singularly dark and unprepossessing, in the candlelight.  She
experienced a swift flood of fear that she couldn't understand: then
forced it away as an absurdity.

"We--we mushin' over to Yuga--been over Bald Peak way," Joe said
stumblingly.  "Didn't know no one was here.  Want a bunk here to-night."

"You've got your own blankets?"

"Yes.  We got blankets."

"On your way home, eh?  Well, I'll have to ask this lady."

Harold seemed strangely nervous as he turned to Virginia.  He wondered
if this courteous reference to her was a mistake; could it be that she
would object to their staying?  It would make, at best, an awkward
situation.  However, he knew this girl and he felt sure.  He half-closed
the door.

"A couple of Indians, going home toward the settlement on the Yuga," he
explained quickly.  "They've come from over toward Bald Peak and were
counting on putting up here to-night.  That's the woods custom, you
know--to stay at anybody's cabin.  They didn't know we were here and
want to stay, anyway.  Do you think we can put 'em up?"

"Good Heavens, we can't send them on, on a night like this.  It is
awkward, though--about food----"

"They've likely got their own food."

"Of course they can stay.  Bill can sleep on the floor in here--you
can take the two of them with you into the little cabin.  It will be
pretty tight work, but we can't do anything else.  Bring them in."

Harold turned again to the door, and in a moment the Indians strode,
blinking, into the candlelight.  The brighter light did not reveal them
at greater advantage.  Virginia shot them a swift glance and was
instinctively repelled: but at once she ascribed the evil savagery of
their faces to racial traits.  She went back to her work.

Bill, sitting against the cabin wall, tried to make sense out of a
confused jumble of thoughts and impressions and memories that flooded in
one wave to his mind.  His few hours of blindness had seemingly
sharpened his other senses: and there was a quality of the half-breed's
voice that was distinctly familiar.  He had assumed at once that the two
breeds were Joe and Pete whom he had encountered when he first found
Harold.  Why, then, had the latter made no sign of recognition?  Why
should he repeat a manifest lie,--that they had been over toward Bald
Peak and were traveling toward the Yuga, and that they thought the cabin
was unoccupied?  He remembered that he had given these particular
Indians definite orders to stay away from the district.  Outwardly he
was cool and at ease, his face impassive and grave; in his inner self he
was deeply perturbed and suspicious.

Of course, there was a possibility that he was mistaken in the voice.
He resolved to know the truth.

"It's Joe and Pete, isn't it?" he asked abruptly in the silence.

There was no reply at first.  Virginia did not glance around in time to
see the lightning signal of warning from Harold to the Indians; yet she
had an inner sense of drama and suspense.

She had never heard quite this tone in Bill's voice before.  It was
hard, uncompromising, some way menacing.  "I say," he repeated slowly,
"are you Pete and Joe, or aren't you?"

"Pete--Joe?" Joe answered at last, in a bewildered tune.  Harold
himself could not have given a better simulation of amazement.  "Don't
know 'em.  I'm Wolfpaw Black--he's Jimmy--Jimmy DuBois."

The names were convincing,--typical breed names, the latter with a
touch of French.  But Harold's admiration for the resourcefulness of his
confederate really was not justified.  Joe hadn't originated the two
names.  He had spoken the first two that had come to his mind,--the
names of a pair of worthy breeds from a distant encampment.

Except for a little lingering uneasiness, Bill was satisfied.  It would
be easy to mistake the voice.  He had heard it only a few times in his
life.  Virginia went on with her supper preparations, and at last the
three of them drew chairs around their crude little table.  The two
breeds took their lunch from their packs and munched it, sitting beside
the stove.

The night had fallen now, impenetrably dark, and the Northern Lights
were flashing like aerial searchlights in the sky.  The five of them
were singularly quiet, deep in their own thoughts.  Bill heard his watch
ticking loudly in his pocket.

All at once Joe grunted in the stillness, and all except Bill whirled to
look at him.  He went to his pack and fumbled among the blankets.  Then,
a greedy light in his eyes, he put two dark bottles upon the table.

Bill, unseeing, did not understand.  His finer senses, however, told him
that the air was suddenly electric, charged with suspense.  Virginia was
frankly alarmed.

In her past life she had had intimate acquaintance with strong drink.
While it was true that she had never partaken of it beyond an occasional
cocktail before dinner, it was common enough in the circle in which she
had moved.  She was used to seeing the men of her acquaintance drink
whisky-and-sodas, and many of her intimate girl friends drank enough to
harden their eyes and injure their complexions.  She herself had always
regarded it tolerantly, thinking that much of the hue and cry that had
been raised about it was sheer sentimentality and absurdity.  She didn't
know that evil genii dwelt in the dark waters that could change men into
brutes: such mild exhilaration as she had received from an unusually
potent cocktail had only seemed harmless and amusing.

But she was not tolerant now.  She was suddenly deeply afraid.  She
looked at Bill, forgetting for the moment that in his blindness he could
not see what was occurring and that in his helplessness she could not
depend upon him in a crisis.  She turned to Harold, hoping that he would
refuse this offering at a word.  And her fear increased when she saw the
craving on his face.

Harold had gone a long time without strong drink.  The sight of the dark
bottles woke his old passion for it in a flash.  His blood leaped, a
strange and dreadful eagerness transcended him.  Virginia was horrified
at the sudden, insane light in his eyes, the drawing of his features.

"Have a drink?" Joe invited.

Bill started then, but he made no response.  Harold moved toward the
table.

"You're a real life-saver, Wolfpaw," he replied genially.  "It's a cold
night, and I don't care if I do.  Virginia, pass down the cups."

Of course there were not enough cups to go around.  There were three of
tin, however, counting one that Bill made from an empty can.  "You'll
drink?" Joe asked Bill.

The woodsman's face was grave.  "Wolfpaw, it's against the law of this
province to give or receive liquor from Indians," he replied gravely.
"I won't drink to-night."

Pete turned with a scowl.  His thought had already flashed to the white
blade at his belt.  "You're damn particular----" he began.

But Joe shook his head, restraining him.  The hour to strike had not yet
come.  They must enjoy their liquor first and engender fresh courage
from its fire.  He saw fit, however, to glance about the room and locate
the weapon of which Harold had spoken,--the deadly miner's pick that
leaned against the wall back of the stove.

Curiously, Virginia's thought had flung to the weapons, too.  She had
taken off her pistol when she had been nursing Bill and hadn't put it
on since.  Quietly, so as not to attract attention, she glanced about
to locate it.  It was hanging on a nail at the opposite end of the
table,--and Joe stood just beside it.  She had no desire to waken his
suspicions of her fear.  She knew she must put up a bold front, at
least.  Nevertheless her fingers longed for the comforting feel of its
butt.  She resolved to watch for a chance to procure it.

"Have a drink?" Joe asked Virginia.

She didn't like the tone of his voice.  He was speaking with entire
familiarity, and again she expected interference from Harold.  Her
fiance, however, was fingering the bottle.  She saw Bill straighten,
ever so little, and beheld the first signs of rising anger in the set of
his lips.  But she didn't know the full fierceness of his inward
struggle,--an almost resistless desire to spring at once and smite
those impertinent tones from the breed's lips.  But he knew that he must
take care--for Virginia's sake--and avoid a fight as long as it was
humanly possible to do so.

"No," the girl responded coldly.

"Then there's enough cups after all," Harold observed.  "I was going to
take the pitcher, if either Virginia or this conscientious teetotaler
cared for a shot."  He chuckled unpleasantly.  "I thought I could get
more that way."

They poured themselves mighty drinks,--staggering portions that more
than half-emptied the first of the quarts.  Then they threw back their
heads and drained the cups.

The liquor was cheap and new, such as reaches the Indian encampments
after passing through many hands.  It burned like fire in their throats,
and almost at once it began to distill its poison into their veins.

Harold and Pete immediately resumed their chairs; Joe still stood at the
table end.  He, too, had seen the little pistol of blue steel hanging on
the nail.  At first the three men were sullen and silent, enjoying the
first warmth of the liquor.  Then the barriers of self-restraint began
to break down.

Harold began to grow talkative, launching forth on an amusing anecdote.
But there was no laughter at the end of it.  The Indians were never
given to mirth in their debauches; both Bill and Virginia were far
indeed from a receptive humor.

"What's the matter with this crowd--can't you see a joke?" Harold
demanded.  "Say, Bill, over there--you who wouldn't take a gentleman's
drink--what you sitting there like an old marmot for on a rock pile?
Why don't you join in the festivities?"

For all the rudeness of Harold's speech, Bill answered quietly.  "Not
feeling very festive to-night.  And if I were you--I'd go easy on too
much of that.  You're out of practice, you know."

"Yes--thanks to you.  At least, before I came here I lived where I
could get a drink when I wanted it, not in a Sunday-school."

Virginia suddenly leaned forward.  "Where did you live before you came
here, Harold?" she asked.

There was a sudden, unmistakable contempt in her voice.



XXX

Harold caught the note of scorn in Virginia's voice, and he had an
instant of sobriety.  He looked at her with eager eyes.  The poison in
his veins had enhanced her beauty to him; his eyes leapt quickly over her
slender form.  It would pay to be careful, he thought.  He didn't want
to lose her now.  But in an instant his reckless mood returned.

"Where I lived?  What do you care, as long as I'm here?  I suppose Bill
has already told you, the dirty----"

"Don't say it," Virginia cautioned quickly.  "I wouldn't answer for the
consequences."

But for all her brave words, terror swept her.  She remembered that Bill
was helpless and blind.  "Bill has told me nothing.  It wouldn't be like
him to tell me things--that might make me unhappy."

"Sing another little song about him, why don't you?"  Harold scorned.
"I haven't heard you talk anything else for a month.  But what do I
care?"  He tried to steady himself, to control his erring tongue.  "But,
Virginia--that's all right, if he's one of your friends.  He's good
enough according to his lights--but you can't expect much from some
one who's never been outside these tall woods!  No wonder he couldn't
see a joke, or take a drink with a gentleman.  He hasn't the chances,
the environment--that's it, environment--that you and I have had.
And speaking of drinks----"

He went to the table again and poured his cup half full.  Then with
unsteady hand he poured an equal portion for the two Indians.  They took
their cups with burning eyes, and Harold raised his own drink aloft.

"A little toast--and everybody stand up," he cried.  "We're going to
drink to Virginia!  To my future wife, gentleman--the lady who's
promised me her hand!  Look at her there, you breeds--the most
beautiful woman that ever came to the North!  Drink her down!"

The burning poison poured into their throats.  Virginia glanced again at
her pistol, but Joe still stood, half-covering it with his arm.  Her
face was no longer merely anxious.  All color had swept from it; her
eyes were wide and pleading.  But there was no one to give aid to-night.
Bill sat, helpless and blind, against the wall.

She had not dared to resent aloud the bandying of her name, the insult
of their searching eyes upon her beauty.  It seemed to her that she
heard a half-muttered exclamation from Bill, but his face belied it.
And in reality the man's thoughts were as busy as never before.

He opened his eyes, struggling for vision.  But he could not make out
the forms of the men at all, except when they crossed in front of the
candles.  The candles themselves were mere points of yellow between his
lids.  One of the candles was sitting just beside him, on a shelf; the
other was on the table.  He tried to locate the position of all four of
his fellow-occupants of the cabin,--Virginia at one end of the table,
Joe at the other, Pete opposite him on the other side of the stove,
Harold standing in the middle of the room, babbling in his drunkenness.

But the first exhilaration of the drink was dying now, giving way to a
more dangerous mood.  Even Harold was less talkative: the tones of his
voice had harshened.  The two Indians, when they spoke at all, were
surly and threatening.

The moments passed.  For a breath the cabin was still.  Only too well
Bill knew that matters were approaching the explosive stage.  A single
word might invoke murderous passions that would turn the cabin into
shambles.  The men drank the third time, emptying the first quart and
beginning upon the second.

"You're a pretty little witch," Harold addressed Virginia.  "You're hard
to kiss, but your kisses are worth having.  What you think about that,
Joe?  Aren't I tellin' you the truth?"

Joe!  Bill's first impression had been right, after all.  His face made
no sign, but he shifted in his chair.  For all the ease and almost
inertness with which he sat, his muscles were wholly ready for such
command as his mind might give them,--to spring instantly to their
full power for a fight to the death.  Virginia heard the name too, and
her fears increased.

"Joe?" she repeated.  "You know him, then?"

"Of course I know Joe.  He's an old friend.  He's one that Bill told
never to show his face in this part of Clearwater again--but you don't
see anything happening to him, do you?"

He waited, hoping Bill would make response.  But the latter was holding
hard, waiting for the moment of crisis, hoping yet that it might be
avoided.  There was time enough when Virginia was safe and his sight had
returned him to answer such speeches as this.

"You see he hasn't anything to say," Harold gloated.  "I asked you a
question, Joe--about Virginia.  Didn't I tell the truth?"

The girl flinched, then caught herself with a half-sob.  She resolved to
make one more appeal.  "Oh Harold--please--please be careful what
you say," she pleaded.  "You're drunk now--but don't forget you were a
gentleman--once.  Don't drink any more.  Don't let these Indians drink
any more, either."

"A gentleman once, eh?  So you don't think I'm one any more.  But Bill,
there--he's one, ain't he?  It seems to me you've been getting kind of
bossy around here, lately--and the women of we northern men don't
behave that way."

"I'm not your woman, thank God--and I ask you to be careful."

"And I repeat that warning."  Bill spoke gravely, quietly from his
chair.  "You're acting like a rotter, Harold, and you know it.  Shut up
the bottle and try to hold yourself--and then remember what you've
been saying.  Remember that I'm still here--and if I'm not able to
avenge an insult now, the time is coming when I will.  And I've got one
weapon _now_ that I won't hesitate to use.  I mean--an answer to a
question of a while ago.  If you want to keep her love, be careful."

The Indians turned to him, the murder-madness darkening their faces.
Pete's hand began to steal toward his hip.  He had no ancestral
precedent for the use of a miner's pick for such work as faced him now.
And he held high regard for the thin, cruel blade.

"Do you think I care?" Harold answered.  "Tell her if you want to--all
about Sindy and everything else.  Do you think I'm ashamed of it?  I've
heard all I want to from you too--and I'll say and drink what I
please."

Bill had no answer at first.  He had thought that this threat might
bring Harold to time; he had supposed that the man valued Virginia's
love as much as he, in a similar position, would have valued it.  Harold
turned to the girl.  "So you're _not_ my woman, eh?"

"No, no, no!  I never will be!"  The girl's eyes were blazing, and she
had forgotten her fear in her magnificent wrath.  "I suppose--you were
a squaw man.  These Indians are your own friends."

Harold smiled cruelly.  "Yes, a squaw man.  And these are my friends.
Don't you suppose I've known--for the last week--you were just
fooling me along, all the time fondling Bill?  Sindy at least was
faithful--and her form wouldn't take anything from yours."

Pete, watching Joe, was somewhat amazed at the curious start the man
made.  His searching gaze had leaped over the girl's form; his dark,
smoldering eyes suddenly blazed red.  There was no other word than red.
They were like two coals of fire.

There ensued a moment of strange and menacing silence.  Pete chuckled,
already receptive to Joe's thought.  Harold turned to stare at him.

Joe put his pipe to his lips, then fumbled at his pocket.  He seemed to
search in vain.  "Will you give me a match, please, lady?" he asked.

The tone was strange, thick and strained, yet Virginia's heart thrilled
with hope.  The request was a welcome interlude in a quarrel that was
already rapidly approaching the fighting stage.  Perhaps if these men
started to smoke, their blood would cool; she had known of old that
tobacco was a wonderful bromide to overstretched nerves.  He turned
quickly to the shelf above Bill's head and procured half a dozen matches
from the box.

As her back was turned she heard Pete laugh again,--one evil syllable
that filled her with instinctive horror.  Her wide eyes turned to him;
he was watching her intently.  Then she stepped back to give Joe the
matches.

Instinctively her eyes turned to the wall for a reassuring sight of her
pistol.  It was gone from its place.

For an instant she stared in horrified amazement.  The matches dropped
idly from her hand.  A sob caught in her throat, a sob of hopeless and
utter terror, but she fought a brave little fight to suppress it.  She
knew she must appear to be brave; at least she must do this much.  She
looked at Joe; his evil, leering face told her only too plainly that his
eager hand had seized and secreted her pistol.  Pete's face was drawn
too; Harold only looked bewildered.

He was her last hope, but in one instant's scrutiny she saw that this
had vanished, too.  Some terrible thought had sobered and engrossed him.
Now he was eyeing her like a witless thing, his features drawn, his eyes
burning.  The moment was charged with ineffable suspense.

"What is it, Virginia?" Bill asked.

"One of these men--" she answered brokenly--"has taken my pistol.  I
want him to give it back----"

The circle laughed then,--a harsh and sinister sound that filled her
with inexpressible horror.  For a moment she stood motionless in the
center of that leering circle, her eyes wide, her face white as
death,--a slight figure, trying to hard to stand straight, crushed and
defenseless, only her eyes pleading in last appeal.  Instinctively her
lips whispered a prayer.

Joe spoke then, a single sentence in the vernacular for Harold's ears.
With one gesture he indicated Harold, himself, and Pete in turn, then
pointed to the girl.  His face was hideous with eagerness.

Harold started at the words, but at first made no answer.  He had lost
her anyway; there was no need of further restraint.  The silence, the
stress, most of all the burning liquor flung a wild and devastating
flame through his veins, a dreadful madness seized his brain.  There was
no saving grace, no impulse of manhood, no memory of virtue to hold him
back.

His degeneracy was complete.  He could not go lower.  His father's
wicked blood pulsed in his veins; the final brutality that the North
bestows upon those it conquers was upon him.  He answered with a curse.

"Why not?" he said.  "The slut's thrown me over.  When I'm through you
can do what you want.  And crack the skull of that mole with the pick
and throw him out in the snow."

The two Indians lurched forward at his words.  Bill left his chair in a
mighty leap.



XXXI

When Bill sprang forward to intercept the attack upon the girl he came
with amazing accuracy and power.  There was nothing of blindness or
misdirection about that leap.  It was as if his sight had already
returned to him.  The real truth was that by means of his acute ear he
had located the exact position of every actor in the impending drama.

What was more important, he knew the location of both candles.  For all
his almost total blindness, he could discern through his watering eyes
the faint, yellow gleam of each.  The one that burned beside him, on the
little shelf, he brushed off with one sweep of his hand as he leaped.
He knocked the second from the table; it fell, flickered, filled the
room an instant with dancing light, and then went out.  The utter
darkness dropped down.

The act had been so swift and unexpected that neither Joe, standing
nearest to the girl, or Harold across the room could draw their pistols
and fire.  Seemingly in a flash the darkness was upon them.  No more was
Bill the blind and helpless mole, to strike down with one careless blow.
He was face to face with his enemies in his own dark lair.  He had
turned the tables; the advantage of vision on which they had presumed
had been in an instant removed.  They could see no more than he could
now.  Besides, in the hours since his rescue, he had already learned to
find his way around the cabin.

And this was no half-darkness--that which descended as the candles
were struck down.  It was the infinite, smothering gloom of an
underground cave in which no shadow could live, nor the sharpest outline
remain visible.  Harold cursed in the blackness; as if in a continuation
of the leap he had made to upset the candles, Bill seized Virginia in
his strong arms.  He thrust her to the floor and into the angle between
her bunk and the wall, the point that he instinctively realized would be
easiest to defend and safest from stray bullets.  Then, widening his
arms, almost to the width of the little space between the table and the
wall, he lunged forward again.

Virginia's pistol was in Joe's hand by now, and he shot in Bill's
direction.  Two spurts of yellow fire broke for an instant the utter
gloom.  But there was no time for a third shot.  He was the nearest of
the three attackers, and Bill's outstretched arms seized him.  The
woodsman's muscles gave a mighty wrench.

His grasp was about Joe's chest at first, but with a great lurch he
slung the man's body out far enough so that he could loop his sinewy
arms about the man's knees.  Joe was shifted in his arms as workmen are
sometimes snatched up by a mighty belt in a machine shop; he seemed
simply to snap in the remorseless grasp.  Bill himself had no sensation
of his enemy's weight.  He had him about the knees by now, Joe's body
thrust out almost straight from centrifugal force, and with a terrific
wrench of his mighty shoulders Bill hurled him against the wall.

It was well for his enemies that none of them were in the road of that
human missile.  They would have taken no further part in the ensuing
battle.  Joe's body crushed against the logs with a sound that was
strange and horrible in the utter darkness; the pistol spun from his
hand and rattled down'; then he fell with a crash to the floor.  There
was no further movement from him thereafter.  His neck had been broken
like a match.  The odds were but two to one.

Harold had taken out his own revolver now and was shooting blindly in
the darkness.  Ducking low, Bill leaped for him.  In that leap there was
none of the gentle mercy with which he had dealt with him first, so long
ago in Harold's cabin.  But a quick movement by Harold saved him from
the full force of the leap; in a moment they were grappling in each
other's arms.

Bill wrenched him back and forth, and in an instant would have crushed
the life out of him if it hadn't been for the interference of Pete.  The
latter breed leaped on his back, and Bill had to neglect Harold an
instant to stretch up his arms and hurl Pete to the floor.  Harold still
clung to him, trying to seize his throat, but Bill wrenched him down.
He flung his own body down on top of him, then seized him by the throat
with the deadly intention of hammering his head on the floor; but before
he could accomplish his purpose Pete was upon him again.

It was the end of the preliminaries.  In that second the fight began in
earnest.  They were both powerful men, the breed and Harold; and Bill
was like a wild beast--quick as a cougar, resistless as a grizzly--a
fighting fury that in the darkness was terrible as death.  Mighty
muscles, stinging blows, striking fists and grasping arms; the rage and
glory of battle was upon him as never before.

It was the death fight--in the darkness--and that meant it was a
savage, nightmare thing that called forth those most deep and terrible
instincts that in the first days of the earth were stored and implanted
in the germ plasm.  These were no longer men of the twentieth century.
They were simply beasts, fighting to the death in a cave.  It was a
familiar thing to be warring thus in the darkness: Neither Harold nor
Pete missed the light now.  They were carried back to no less furious
battles, fought in dark caverns under the sea; murder flamed in their
hearts and fire ran riot in their blood.

They were no longer conscious of time; already it was as if they had
struggled thus through the long roll of the centuries.  It was hard to
remember what had been the cause of the fight.  It didn't matter now,
anyway; the only issue left was the life of their adversary.  To kill,
to tear their enemies' hearts from their warm breasts and their arteries
from their throats,--this was all that any of the three could remember
now.  It was true that Bill kept his adversaries away from Virginia's
corner as well as he could, but he did it by instinct rather than by
conscious planning.  He had not hated Harold in these months past, but
had only regarded him with contempt; but hate came to him fast enough in
those first moments of battle.

Once, reeling across the cabin, they encountered soft flesh that tried
to escape from beneath their feet; at first Bill thought it was Joe,
returned to consciousness.  But in an instant he knew the truth.  "Go
back to your corner. Virginia," he commanded.

For some reason that he could not guess, she had seen fit to crawl forth
from her shelter; whether or not she returned to it he couldn't tell.
There was no chance to warn her again.  His foes were upon him.

This was not a silent fight, at first.  So that they would not attack
each other, Harold and Pete cried out often, to reveal their location
and to signal a combined attack against Bill.  In the instants that he
was free from Bill's arms and he knew that his confederate was out of
range, Harold fired blindly with his pistol.  Their bodies crashed
against the wall, broke the furniture into kindling at their feet; they
snarled their hatred and their curses.

Bill fought like a giant, a might of battle upon him never known before.
He would hurl away one, then whirl to face the other; his fists would
lash out, his mighty shoulders would wrench.  More than once their
combined attack hurled him to the floor, but always he was able to
regain his feet.  Once he seized Harold's wrist, and twisting it back
forced him to drop the pistol.  But Pete's interference prevented him
from breaking his arm.

Steadily Harold and Pete were learning to work together.  They were used
to the darkness now; Pete obeyed the white man's shouts.  Two against one
was never a fair fight, and they knew that by concerted action they
could break him down.

One lucky blow sent Pete spinning to the floor, and Bill's strong arms
hurled Harold after him.  Just for a fraction of an instant he stood
braced and alone in the center of the cabin.  For the instant a silence,
deep and appalling past all words, fell over the room.  But Harold's
voice quickly shattered it.

"Up and at him Pete!" he cried, hoarse with fury.  They both sprang upon
him again.

Both were fortunate in securing good holds, and as they came from
opposite sides, Bill found it impossible to hurl them off.  Both of his
foes recognized their great chance; if they could retain their hold only
for a moment they could break him and beat him down.  Harold also knew
that this was the moment of crisis.  All three contestants seemed to
sweep to the fray with added fury.  Bill was drawing on his reserve
strength--the battle could only last a few minutes longer.

They fought in silence now.  They did not waste precious breath on
shouts or curses.  There were no pistol shots, no warnings; only the
sound of troubled breathing against the shock of their bodies as they
reeled against the walls.  Bill was fighting with all his might to keep
his feet.

But the tower that was his body fell at last.  All three staggered,
reeled, then crashed to the floor.  Pete had managed to wiggle from
underneath and, his hold yet unbroken, struggled at Bill's left side;
Harold was on top. But for all that he lay prone, Bill was not conquered
yet.  With his flailing arms he knocked aside the vicious blows that
Harold aimed at his face; he tore Pete's grasp from his throat.  He
fought with a final, incredible might.  And now he was breaking their
holds to climb once more upon his feet.

Then--above the sound of their writhing bodies--Virginia heard Pete
exclaim.  It was a savage, a murderous sound, and anew degree of terror
swept through her.  But she didn't cry out.  She had her own plans.

"Hold him--just one instant!" Pete cried.  The breed had remembered
his knife.  It was curious that he hadn't thought of it before.

He took it rather carefully from his holster.  The two men were
threshing on the floor by now, Harold in a desperate effort to keep his
enemy down, and there was plenty of time.  Pete's hand fumbled in his
pocket.  In his cunning and his savagery he realized that the supreme
opportunity for victory was at hand; but he must take infinite pains.

He didn't want to run the risk of slaying his own confederate.  His hand
found a match; he raised his knife high.  The match cracked, then flamed
in the darkness.

But it was not to be that that murderous blow should go home.  He had
forgotten Bill's lone ally,--the girl that had seemed so crushed and
helpless a few minutes before.  She had not remained in the safe corner
where Bill had thrust her, and she had had good reasons.  The price that
she paid was high, but it didn't matter now.  She had crawled out to
find her pistol that Joe's hand had let fall, and just before Pete had
lighted his match her hand had encountered it on the floor.

It seemed to leap in her hand as the match flamed.  It described a blue
arc; then rested, utterly motionless, for a fraction of an instant.  For
that same little time all her nervous forces rallied to her aid; her
eyes were remorseless and true over the sights.

The pistol shot rang in the silence.  The knife dropped from Pete's
hand.  She had shot with amazing accuracy, straight for the little
hollow in his back that his raised arm had made.  He turned with a look
of ghastly surprise.

Then he went on his face, creeping like a legless thing toward the door.
With a mighty effort Bill rolled Harold beneath him.

The battle was short thereafter.  Harold had never been a match for
Bill, unaided.  The latter's hard fists lashed into his face, blow after
blow with grim reports in the silence.  Harold's resistance ceased; his
body quivered and lay still.  Remembering Virginia Bill leaped to his
feet.

But Harold was not quite unconscious.  But one impulse was left,--to
escape; and dumbly he crawled to the door.  Pete had managed to open it;
but he crawled past Pete's body, strangely huddled and still, just
beyond the threshold.  Then he paused in the snow for a last, savage
expression of his hate.

But it was just words.  No weapon remained in his hands.  "I'll get you
yet, you devil!" he screamed, almost incoherently.  "I'll lay in wait
and kill you--you can't get away!  The wolves have got your grizzly
meat--you can't go without food."

His voice was shrill and terrible in the silence of the winter night.
Even in the stress and inward tumult that was the reaction of the
battle, Bill could not help but hear.  He didn't doubt that the words
were true: he realized in an instant what the loss of the grizzly
flesh would mean.  But his only wish was that he had killed the
man when he had him helpless in his hands.

He remembered Joe then, and listened for any sound from him.  He heard
none, and like a man in a dream he felt his way to the lifeless form
beside the wall.  He seized the shoulders of the breed's coat, dragged
him like a sack of straw, and as easily hurled his body through the
doorway into the drifts.  Two bodies lay there now.  But only the
coyotes, seekers of the dead, had interest in them.

He turned, then stood swaying slightly, in the doorway.  No wind stirred
over the desolate wastes without.  The cabin was ominously silent.  He
could hear his own troubled breathing; but where there was no stir, no
murmur from the corner where he had left Virginia.  A ghastly terror,
unknown in the whole stress of the battle, swept over him.

"Virginia," he called.  "Where are you?"

From the dark, far end of the cabin he heard the answer,--a voice low
and tremulous such as sometimes heard from the lips of a sick child.
"Here I am, Bill," she replied.  "I'm hit with a stray shot--and I
believe--they've killed me."



XXXII

Was this their destiny,--utter and hopeless defeat in the moment of
victory?  Was this the way of justice that, after all they had endured,
they should yet go down to death?  They had fought a mighty fight, they
had waged a cruel war against cold and hardship, they had known the full
terror and punishment of the snow wastes in their dreadful adventure of
the past two days; and had it all come to nothing, after all?  Was life
no more than this,--a cruel master that tortured his slaves only to
give them death?  These thoughts brought their full bitterness in the
instant that Bill groped his way to Virginia's side.

His hands told him she was lying huddled against the wall, a slight,
pathetic figure that broke the heart within the man.  "Here I am," she
said again, her voice not racked with pain but only soft and tender.  He
knelt beside her, then groped for a match.  But whether the injury was
small or great he felt that the issue would be the same.

But before he struck the match he remembered his foe without; he would
be quick to fire through the window if a light showed him his target.
Even now he might be crouched in the snow, his rifle in his arms,
waiting for just this chance.  Bill snatched a blanket from the cot,
shielded them with it, and lighted the match behind it.  "He can't see
the light through this," he told her.  "If he does--I guess it doesn't
much matter."

He groped for the fallen candle, lighted it, and held it close.
"You'll have to look and see yourself, Virginia," he told her.  "You
remember--of course----"

Yes, she remembered his blindness.  She looked down at the little stain
of red on her left shoulder.  "I can't tell," she told him.  "It went in
right here--give me your hand."

She took his warm hand and rested it against the wound.  Someway, it
comforted her.  "Close to the top of the shoulder, then," he commented.
Then he groped till his sensitive fingers told him he had found the
egress of the bullet--on her arm just down from her shoulder.  "But
there's nothing I can do--it's not a wound I can dress.  It's cleaner
now than anything we've got to clean it with.  The only thing is to lie
still--so it won't bleed."

"Do you think I'll die?" she asked him quietly.  There was no
fear--only sorrow--in her tones.  "Tell me frankly, Bill."

"I don't think the wound is serious in itself--if we could get you
down to a doctor," he told her.  "It isn't bleeding much now, because
you are lying still, but it has been bleeding pretty freely.  It's just
a flesh wound, really.  But you see----"

Her mind leaped at once to his thought.  "You mean--it's the same,
either way?" she questioned.

"It doesn't make much difference."  The man spoke quietly, just as she
might have expected him to speak in such a moment as this.  "Oh,
Virginia--we've fought so hard--it's bitter to lose now.  You see,
don't you--you couldn't walk with that wound--you don't know the
way, so I could walk and pull you on the sled--and Harold is gone.  He
won't show us the way or help us now.  We haven't any food here--the
grizzly has been eaten by wolves.  One of us blind and one of us
wounded--you see--what chance we've got against the North.  If we had
the grizzly flesh, we could stay here till my sight returned--and still,
perhaps, get you out in time to save you from the injury.  If you knew
the way to the settlements, I might haul you on the sled--you guiding
me--and take a chance of running into some meat on the way down.  But
none of those things are true."

"Then what"--the girl spoke breathlessly--"does it mean?"

"It means death--that's all it means."  There was no sentimentality,
no tremor in his voice now.  He was looking his fate in the face; he
knew he could not spare the girl by keeping the truth from her.  "Death
as sure as we're here--from hunger and your wound--if Harold or the
cold doesn't get us first.  We've been cheated, Virginia.  We've played
with a crooked dealer.  I don't care on my own account----"

"Then don't care on mine, either."  All at once her hand went up and
caressed his face.  "Hold me, Bill, won't you?" she asked.  "Hold me in
your arms."

She asked it simply, like a little child.  He shifted his position, then
lifted her so that her breast was against his, his arms around her, her
soft hair against his shoulder.  The candle, dropped from his hand, was
extinguished.  The cold deepened outside the cabin.  The white, icy moon
rode in the sky.

The man's arms tightened around her.  He lowered his lips close to hers.
There in the shadow of death her breast pressed to his, the locks of
iron that held his heart's secret were shattered, the veil of his temple
was rent.  "Virginia," he asked his voice throbbing, "do you want me to
tell you something--the truest thing in all my life?  I thought I
could keep it from you, but I can't.  I can't keep it any more----"

Her arm went up and encircled his neck, and she drew his head down to
hers.  "Yes, Bill," she told him, "I want you to tell me.  I think I
know what it is."

"I love you.  That's it; it never was and it never can be anything
else."  The words, long pent-up, poured from his lips in a flood.
"Virginia, I love you, love you, love you--my little girl, my little,
little girl----"

She drew his head down and down until her own lips halted the flow of
his words.  "And I love you, Bill," she told him.  "No one but you."

All the sweetness and tenderness of her glorious and newly wakened love
was in the kiss that she gave him.  Yet the man could not believe.  The
human soul, condemned to darkness, can never believe at first when the
light breaks through.  His heart seemed to halt in his breast in this
instant of infinite suspense.

"You do?" he whispered at last, in inexpressible wonder.  "Did you say
that you loved _me_--you so beautiful, so glorious--Don't tell me
that in pity----"

"I love you, Bill," she told him earnestly, then laughed softly at his
disbelief.  She kissed him again and again, softly as moonlight falls
upon meadows.  The man's heart leaped and flooded, but no more words
would come to his lips.  He could only sit with his strong arms ever
holding her closer to his breast, kissing the lips that responded so
tenderly and lingeringly, swept with a rapture undreamed of before.
Ever her soft, warm arm held his lips to hers, as if she could not let
him go.

The seconds, thrilled with a wonder ineffable, passed into minutes.
Virginia had no sensation of pain from her wound.  The fear of death
oppressed her no more.  She knew that she had come to her appointed
place at last, a haven and shelter no less than that to which the white
ship comes in from the tempestuous sea.  This was her fate,--happiness
and peace at last in her woodsman's arms.

* * * * *

They were no different from other lovers such as cling and kiss in the
glory of a summer moon, in gardens far away.  Their vows were the same,
the mystery and the wonder no less.  The savage realm into which they
were cast could not oppress them now.  They forgot the drifts unending,
the winter forests stretching interminably from range to range about
them, the pitiless cold, ever waiting just without the cabin door.  Even
impending death itself, in the glory of this night, could cast no shadow
upon their spirit.

In the moment of their victory the North had defeated them, but in the
instant of defeat they had found infinite and eternal victory.  No blow
that life could deal, no weapon that this North should wield against
them, could crush them now.  They were borne high above the reach of
these.  They had discovered the great Secret, the eternal Talisman
against which no curse can blast or no disaster break the spirit.

They had their secret, whispered exultations, like all lovers the length
and breadth of the world.  Virginia told him that in her own heart she
had loved him almost from the first day but how she had not realized it,
in all its completeness, until now.  Bill told her of the wakening of
his own love, and how he had confessed it to himself the night they had
played "Souvenir" in the complaint of the wind.

He tried to explain to her his doubts and fears,--how he had looked at
her as a being from another world.  "I could imagine my loving you, from
the first," he told her, "but never you giving your love to me."

"And who is more worthy of it--of anybody's love--than you?" she
replied, utilizing a sweetheart's way, much more effective than words,
to stop his lips.  Then she told him of his bravery, his tenderness and
steadfastness; how there was no feeling of descent in giving her love to
him.  She told him that in fact his education was as good as hers if not
superior, that his natural breeding and gentleness were the equal of
that of any man that moved in her own circle.  She could find protection
and shelter in his strong arms, and in these months in the North she had
learned that this was the most important thing of all.  He could provide
for her, too, with the wealth of his mine,--a point not to be
forgotten.  Her standards were true and sensible, she was down to the
simple, primitive basis of things, and she did not forget that provision
for his wife was man's first responsibility and the first duty of love.

Only once did Bill leave her,--to cover the crack of the door and
build up the fire.  When he returned, her warm little flood of kisses
was as if he had been absent for weary hours.

But her thoughts had been busy, even in this moment.  All at once she
drew his ear close to her lips.

"Bill, will you listen to me a minute?" she asked.

"Listen!  I'll listen to every word----"

"Some way--I've taken fresh heart since we--since we found out we
loved each other.  It seems to me that this love wasn't given to us,
only to have us die in a few days--from this awful wound and you from
hunger.  We're only three days' journey--and there must be some way
out."

"God knows I wish you could find one.  But I can't see--and you don't
know the way--and we have no food."

"But listen--this wound isn't very bad.  I know I can't walk--it
will start bleeding if I do--but if I can get any attention at all
soon, I know it won't be serious.  Bill, have you found out--you can
trust me, in a pinch?"

Remembering that instant when the match had flared and her pistol had
shot so remorselessly and so true, he didn't hesitate over his answer.
"Sweetheart, I'd trust you to the last second."

"Then trust me now.  Listen to every word I say and do what I tell you.
I think I know the way--at least a fighting chance--to life and
safety."



XXXIII

Whispering eagerly, Virginia told Bill the plan that would give them
their fighting chance.  His mind, working clear and true, absorbed every
detail.  "It depends first," she said, "whether or not you can crawl
through the little window of the cabin."

Bill remembered his experience in the smoke-filled hut and he kissed
her, smiling.  "I've got into smaller places than that, in my time," he
told her.  "I can take the little window right out.  I put it in
myself."

They were not so awed by their dilemma that they couldn't have gay
words.  "You got into my heart, too, Bill--a great dealer smaller place
than the window," she whispered.  "The next thing--are Harold's
snowshoes in this room?"

"So it depends on Harold, does it?  I believe his snowshoes are here.
Harold left rather hurriedly--and I don't think he took them."

"What everything depends on--is getting out.  Getting out quickly.
The longer we stay here, without food, the more certain death is.  I
know I can't walk and you can't see.  We have no food--except enough
for one meal, perhaps--but we've got to take a chance on that.  Bill,
Harold is waiting, right now--probably in the little cabin where he
sleeps--for a chance to get those shoes.  He's helpless without them.
When he gets them, he can go to the Yuga--enlist more of his breed
friends--and wait in ambush for us, just as he said.  He's hoping
we've forgotten about them.  I am sure he didn't take the shoes.  They
were behind the stove last night."

To make sure, Bill groped his way across the cabin and found not only
Harold's shoes, but his own and Virginia's, bringing them all back to
her side.

"What's now, Little Corporal?" he asked.

"As soon as it gets light enough for him to see, I want you to go out
the cabin door.  Turn at once into the brush at your right, so he can't
shoot you with the rifle.  Then come around to the side of the cabin and
re-enter through the window.  You can feel your way, and I can guide you
by my voice, but you mustn't go more than a few feet or you'll get
bewildered.  The moment he thinks you are gone, he'll come--not only
to get his snowshoes but to gloat over me.  I know him now!  I can't
understand why I didn't know him before.  And then--we've got to take
him by surprise."

"And then----?"

Quickly, with few words, she told him the rest of her plot.  It was
wholly simple, and at least it held a fighting chance.  He was not blind
to the deadly three-day battle that they would have to wage against
starvation and cold, in case this immediate part of their plot was a
success.  But the slightest chance when death was the only alternative
was worth the trial.

Very carefully and softly Bill went to work to loosen the window so that
he could take it out.  It was secured by nails, but with such tools as
he had in the cabin, he soon had it free.  Then he lifted out the
window, putting it back loosely so that he could remove it in a second's
time.  There was no wisdom in leaving it open until morning.  The bitter
cold without was waiting for just that chance.

He secured certain thongs of rawhide--left over from the moose skin
that he had used for snowshoe webs--and put them in his coat pocket.
Then he made a little bed for the girl, on the floor and against the
wall, exactly in front and opposite the doorway.  It was noticeable,
too, that he restored her pistol to her hand.

"I don't think you'll need it," he told her, "but I want you to have it
anyway--in case of an emergency."

There was nothing to do thereafter but to build up the fire and wait for
dawn.

In reality, Virginia had guessed the situation just right.  In the
adjoining cabin, scarcely one hundred yards away, Harold waited and
watched his chance to recover his snowshoes.  He was wise enough to care
to wait for daylight.  He wanted no further meeting with Bill in the
darkness.  But in the light he would have every advantage; he could see
to shoot and his blind foe could not return his fire.

After all, he had only to be patient.  Vengeance would be swift and
sure.  When the morning broke he would come into his own again, with
never a chance for failure.  One little glance along his rifle sights,
one quarter-ounce of pressure on the trigger,--and then he could
journey down to the Yuga and his squaw in happiness and safety.  It
would be a hard march, but once there he could get supplies and return
to jump Bill's claim.  Everything would turn out right for him after
all.

The fact that his confederates were slain mattered not one way or
another.  Pete had gone out with a bullet through his lungs; Virginia
had dealt him that.  Joe's neck had been broken when Bill had hurled him
against the cabin wall.  But in a way, these things were an advantage.
There was sufficient food in the cabin for one meal for the three of
them, and that meant it was three meals for one.  A day's rations,
carefully spent, would carry him the two day's march to the Yuga.
Besides, the breeds would not be present to claim their third of the
mine.  He wondered why he hadn't handled the whole matter himself, in
the first place.  He would have been fully capable, he thought.  As to
Virginia,--he hadn't decided about Virginia yet.  He didn't know of
her wound, or his security would have seemed all the more complete.
Virginia might yet listen to reason and accompany him down to the Yuga.
He had only to wait till dawn.

But Harold's thought was not entirely clear.  The fury in his brain and
the madness in his blood distorted it,--just a little.  Otherwise he
might have conceived of some error in his plans.  He would have been a
little more careful, a little less sure.  His insane and devastating
longing for vengeance, as well as his late drunkenness, cost him the
fine but essential edge of his self-mastery.

Slowly the stars faded, the first ghostly light came stealing from the
east.  The blood began to leap once more in his veins.  Already it was
almost light enough to shoot.  Then his straining eyes saw Bill emerge
from the cabin.

Every nerve in his body seemed to jerk and thrill with renewed
excitement.  Yet there wasn't a chance to shoot.  The light was dim; the
shadows of the spruce trees hid the woodsman's figure swiftly.  He was
gone; the cabin was left unoccupied except for Virginia.  And for all
that she had shot so straight to save Bill's life, there was nothing to
fear from her.  Her fury was passed by now; he thought he knew her well
enough to know that she wouldn't shoot him in cold blood.  And perhaps
some of her love for him yet lingered.

He did not try to guess the mission on which Bill had gone.  If his
thought had been more clear and his fury less, he would have paused and
wondered about it; perhaps he would have been somewhat suspicious.  Bill
was blind; except to procure fuel there was no conceivable reason for an
excursion into the snow.  But Harold only shivered with hatred and rage,
drunk with the realization that his chance had come.

He would go quickly to the cabin, procure his snowshoes, and be ready to
meet Bill with loaded rifle when he returned.  There was no chance for
failure.  He plunged and fought his way, floundering in the deep snow,
toward Bill's cabin.

He found to his great delight that the door was open,--nothing to do
but walk through.  At first he was a little amazed at the sight of
Virginia lying so still against the opposite wall; it occurred to him
for the first time that perhaps she had been wounded in the fight.  If
so, it made his work all the safer.  Yet she opened her eyes and gazed
at him as he neared the threshold.  He could see her but dimly; mostly
the cabin was still dusky with shadows.

"I'm coming for my snowshoes, Virginia," he told her.  "Then I'm going
to go away."  He tried to draw his battered, bloody lips into a smile.

"Come in and get them," she replied.  Her voice was low and lifeless.
Harold stepped through the door.  And then she uttered a curious cry.

"Now!" she called sharply.  There was no time for Harold to dart back,
even to be alarmed.  A mighty force descended upon his body.

Even in that first instant Harold knew only too well what had occurred.
Instead of lying in wait himself he had been lured into ambush.  Bill
had re-entered the window and had stood waiting in the shadow, just
beside the open door.  Virginia had given him the signal when to leap
down.

He leaped with crushing force,--as the grizzly leaps, or the cougar
pounces from a tree.  There was nothing of human limitations about that
attack.  Harold tried to struggle, but his attempt was futile as that of
a sparrow in the jaws of the little ermine.  Only too well he knew the
strength of these pitiless arms that clasped him now.  He had learned it
the night before, and his lust for vengeance gave way to ghastly and
blood-curdling terror.  What would these two avengers do to him; what
justice would they wreak on him, now that they had him in their power?
The resistless shoulders hurled him to the floor.  Virginia left her bed
and came creeping to be of such aid as was needed.

She wholly disregarded her own injury.  Her own countrymen, in wars
agone, had fought all day with wounds much worse.  She crept with her
pistol ready in her hands.

Bill's strong fingers were at Harold's throat by now; the man's
resistance was swiftly crushed out of him.  With his knee Bill held down
one of Harold's arms; with his free arm he struck blow after blow into
his face.  Then as unconsciousness descended upon him, Harold felt his
wrists being drawn back and tied.

He struggled for consciousness.  Opening his eyes, he saw their sardonic
faces.  The worst terror of his life descended upon him.

"My god, what are you going to do to me?" he asked.

"Why, Harold, you are going to be our little truck horse," Virginia
replied gayly, as she handed Bill more thongs.  "You are going to pull
the sled and show the way down into Bradleyburg."



XXXIV

When the dawn came full and bright over Clearwater, Bill and his party
were ready to start.  When Harold had been thoroughly cowed and his full
instructions were given him, the thongs had been put about his ankles
and removed from his wrists, and he was permitted to do the packing.
That procedure was exceedingly simple; all available blankets were piled
on the sled and made into a bed for Virginia, and the ax, candles, and
such cooking utensils as were needed were packed in front.  And then
they had a short but decisive interview with Harold.

"I won't go--I'll die first," he cried to Virginia.  "Besides, you
don't dare to use force on me; you don't know the way and Bill can't
see.  You know if you kill me you'll die yourself."

"Fair enough," Virginia replied sweetly.  "But take this little word of
advice.  Bill and I were all reconciled to dying when we thought of
you--and we don't mind it now if we're sure you are going along.  Don't
get any false ideas about that point, Harold.  We're not going to spare
you on any chance of saving ourselves.  We are going to give you a
little more foot room, and fix up your hands a little, and then you are
going to pull the sled.  When we camp at night you're going to cut the
wood.  Don't think for a minute I'm going to be afraid to shoot if you
disobey one order--if you take one step against us.  You are at our
mercy; we are not at yours.  And Bill will tell you I can shoot
straight.  Perhaps you learned that fact last night."

Yes, Harold had learned.  He had learned it very well.

"If I think you're trying to cheat us--to lead us out of the way
toward your breed friends--you're going to have a chance to learn it
better," she went on, never a quaver in her voice.  "I won't wait to
make sure--I'll shoot you through the neck as easy and as quick as I'd
shoot a grouse.  I haven't forgotten what you did last night; I'm just
eager for a chance to pay you for it."  Her voice grew more sober.
"This is a warning--the only one and the last one that you will get.
I'm going to watch you every minute and tie you up at night.  And the
fact that we can't go on without you won't have a jot of influence if
you take a step against us.  We may die ourselves, but you know that
you'll also die."

This was not the sheltered, incapable girl of society that addressed him
now.  These words were those of the woodswoman; the eyes that gazed into
his were unwavering and hard.  He knew that she was speaking true.  The
courage for retaliation oozed out of him as mud oozes into a river.

They lengthened the thong that tied his ankles together, giving him room
for a full walking step but not enough to leap or run.  They put on his
hands a pair of awkward mittens that had been stiffened by mud and
water, and lashed them to his wrists.  Then they slipped the thong of
the sled across his shoulders and under his arms like loops of a kyack.
They were ready to go.

The forest was laden with the early-morning silence; the trees stood
draped in snow.  It was cold, too,--the frost gathered quickly on the
mufflers that they wore about  their lips.  All too well they knew what
lay before them.  Without food to keep their bodies nourished and warm,
they could scarcely hope to make the town; their one chance was that
somewhere on the trail they would encounter game.  How long a chance it
was, this late in winter, they knew all too surely.  But for all this
knowledge Bill and Virginia were cheerful.

"I haven't much hope," Bill told her when she was tucked into the bed on
the sled.  "But it's the only chance we have."

She smiled at him.  "At least, Bill, we'll have done everything we
could.  Good-by, little cabin--where I found happiness.  Sometime
perhaps we'll come back to you!"

The man bent and kissed her, and she gave the word for Harold to start.

Slowly they headed toward the river.  The crust was perfect; Harold
could hardly feel the weight of the sled.  Bill mushed behind, guided by
the gee-pole.  The white-draped trees they had known so well spoke no
word of farewell.

Could they win through?  Were they to know the hardship of the journey,
starvation and bitter cold, only to find death in some still, enchanted
glen of the forest that stretched in front?  Was fate still jesting with
them, whispering hope only to shatter them with defeat?  Were they to
know hunger and exhaustion, pain and travail, until finally their bodies
dropped down and yielded to the cold?  They could not keep up long
without the inner fuel of food.

Their chance of finding game seemed hopelessly small, even at first.
Before they reached the frozen river it seemed beyond the possibilities
of miracle.  Even the tracks of the little people--such ferocious
hunters as marten and ermine--were gone from the snow.  There were no
tracks of caribou or moose; the grouse had seemingly buried in the
drifts.  The only creatures that had not hidden away from the winter
cold were the wolves and the coyotes, furtive people that could not be
coaxed into the range of Virginia's pistol.  For all her outward
optimism her heart grew heavy with despair.

They crossed the river, coming out where the old moose trail had gone
down the ford.  Here they had seen the last of Kenly Lounsbury and
Vosper, almost forgotten now.  Virginia told Harold to stop an instant
as she recalled those vents of months before.

"So much has happened since then," she said,  "If only they had
left----"

Her words died away in the middle of the sentence, and for a moment she
sat gazing with wide and startled eyes.  For all that sight was just
beginning to return to him, Bill was strangely and unexplainably
startled, too, probably sensing the suspense indicated in the girl's
tones.  Harold turned, staring.

He could not see what Virginia saw, at first.  She pointed, unable to
speak.  In a little thicket of young spruce there was a curiously shaped
heap of snow, capped by a done of snow that extended under the
sheltering branches of a young tree.  Instantly Harold understood.  Some
long bundle had been left there before the snow came; when it had been
thrown down its end had caught in the branches of a young tree where
only a small amount of snow could reach it.  "See what it is," Virginia
ordered.

The man drew the sled nearer and with desperate energy began to knock
away the snow.  His first discovery was a linen tent,--one that would
have been familiar indeed to Bill.  But digging further he found a heavy
bundle, tied with a rope and rattling curiously in his arms.

At Virginia's directions he laid it in the snow and pulled the sled up
where she could open it.  Bill stood beside her, not daring to guess the
truth.

"Oh, my darling!" she cried at last, drawing his head down to hers.  She
couldn't say more.  She could only laugh and sob, alternately, as might
one whose dearest prayers had been granted.

The bundle was full of food,--dried meat and canned goods and a small
sack of flour.  They were some of the supplies that to save himself the
work of caring for, the faithless Vosper had discarded when, with Kenly,
he had turned back from the river.

* * * * *

At the end of three bitter days, Bill Bronson stood once more on the
hill that looked down upon the old mining camp.  The twilight was
growing in the glen beneath; already it had cast shadows in Virginia's
eyes.  She sat beside him on the sled.

It had been cruel hardship, the three days' journey, but they had made
it without mishap.  At night they had built great fires at the mouth of
their tent, but they had not escaped the curse of the cold.  The days
had been arduous and long.  But they had conquered; even now they were
emerging from the dark fringe of the spruce.

Virginia was on the rapid road toward recovery from her wound.  It had
not been severe; while she was lying still on the sled it had had every
chance to heal.  A few stitches by the doctor in Bradleyburg, a thorough
cleansing and bandaging, and a few more days in bed would avert all
serious consequences.  Bill's sight had grown steadily better as the
days had passed; already the Spirits of Mercy had permitted him, at
close range, to behold Virginia's face.

A half-mile back, just before they approached the first fringe of the
spruce forest, they had met a trapper just starting out on his line; and
he had gladly consented to take Harold the rest of the way into town.
It is one of the duties of citizenship in the North, where the
population is so scant and the officers so few, to take an active part
in law enforcement,--and this trapper was glad of the opportunity to
assist them in the care of the prisoner.  He was to be lodged in prison
at the little mining camp to face a charge of attempted murder,--a
crime that in the northwest provinces is never regarded lightly.

"And you weren't drowned!" the trapper marveled, when he had got his
breath.  "We've been mournin' you for dead--for months."

"Drowned--not a bit of it," Virginia answered gayly.  "And don't mourn
any more."

The trapper said he wouldn't and hastened off with his prisoner,
delighted indeed to be the first to pass the good word of their
deliverance through Bradleyburg.  Bill was well known and liked through
all that portion of the North, and his supposed death had been a real
blow to the townspeople.

Bill felt wholly able to follow the broad snowshoe track the half-mile
farther into town.  The footsteps of the men had grown faint and died
away,--and Virginia and he were left together on the hill.

They had nothing to say at first.  They simply watched the slow
encroachment of the twilight.  Lights sprang up one and one over the
town.  Bill bent, and the girl raised her lips to his.

"We might as well go on," he said.  "You're cold--and tired."

"Yes.  I can't believe--I'm saying good-by to the spruce."

"And you're not, Virginia!"  The man's voice was vibrant and joyful.
"We'll have to come back often, to oversee the running of the
mine--half of every year at least--and we can stay at the old cabin
just the same.  The woods are beautiful in summer."

"They're beautiful now."

And they were.  She told the truth.  For all their savagery, their
fearful strength, their beauty could not be denied.

They saw the church spire, tall and ghostly in the twilight, and Bill's
strong arms pressed the girl close.  She understood and smiled happily.
"Of course, Bill," she told him.  "There is no need to wait.  In a few
days I'll be strong enough to stand beside you--at the altar."

So it was decided.  They would be married in the quaint, old town of
Bradleyburg, in the shadow of the spruce.

They would return, these two.  The North had claimed them--but had not
mastered them--and they would come back to see again the caribou
feeding in the forest, the whirling snows, and the spruce trees lifting
their tall heads to the winter stars.  They would know the old
exultation, the joy of conflict; but no blustering storm or wilderness
voice could appall them now.  In the security and harbor of their love,
no wind was keen enough to chill them, no darkness appall their spirits.

The Northern Lights were beginning their mysterious display in the
twilight sky.  Far away a coyote howled disconsolately,--a cry that
was the voice of the North itself.  And the two kissed once more and
pushed on down to Bradleyburg.









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