XXIV
Nedknew what fear was, well enough, as he lay in the darkened chasm, staring up at the white line of the crevice above him. The old love of life welled back, sweeping his spirit as in a flood, and with it all the hopes and fears of which life is made. He remembered Lenore, now. Her image was not just a lovely photograph of a past day,—a silvery daguerreotype of a happiness forgotten. He remembered again his debt of service to her, his dear companionship for Bess, his dreams of escape from the island. Rallying his scattered faculties, he tried to analyze his desperate position.
The shelf on which he had fallen was scarcely wider than his body, and only because it projected at an upward incline from the sheer wall had he come to rest upon it. It was perhaps fifty feet long, practically on a level all the way. The wall was sheer for ten feet above him; beyond the shelf was only the impenetrable darkness of the crevice, extending apparently into the bowels of the earth.
Could he climb the wall? There was no other conceivable possibility of rescue. No one knew where he was; no one would come to look for him. Moreover, his escape must be immediate,—within a few hours at most. There was no waiting for Doomsdorf to come to look for him in the morning light. He was dressed in the warmest clothes, but even these could not repel the frightful cold of the glaciers.
Cool-headed, with perfect self-mastery, he shifted himself on the ledge to determine if he had been injured in the fall. He was drawn and shuddering with pain, but that alone was not an index. Often the more serious injuries result in a temporary paralysis that precludes pain. If any bones were broken he was beaten at the start. But his arms and legs moved in obedience to his will, and there seemed nothing to fear from this.
Very cautiously, in imminent danger of pitching backward into the abyss, he climbed to his feet. He was a tall man, but his hands, reaching up, did not come within two feet of the ledge. And there was nothing whatever for his hands to cling to.
If only there were irregularities in the ice. With a surge of hope he thought of his axe.
This tool, however, had either fallen into the crevice or had dropped from his shoulder and lay on the ice above. But there remained his clasp knife. He drew it carefully from his pocket.
Already he felt the icy chill of the glacier stealing through him, the cold fingers of death itself. He must lose no time in going to work. He began to cut, two feet above the ledge, a sharp-edged hole in the ice.
Brittle ice is not easy to cut with a knife. It was a slow, painful process. He knew at once that he must work with care,—any irregular cut would not give him foothold. But Ned was working for his life; and his hand was facile as never before.
He finished the cut at last, then started on another a foot above. He hewed out a foothold with great care.
In spite of his warm gloves and the hard exercise of cutting, the numbing, biting frost was getting to his fingers. But he mustn’t let his hand grow stiff and awkward. He did not forget that the handholds, to which his fingers must cling, were yet to be made. They had to be finished with even greater skill than the footholds. Very wisely, he turned to them next.
He made the first of them as high as he could reach. Then he put one in about a foot below. Three more footholds were put in at about twelve-inch intervals between.
At that point he found it necessary to stop and spend a few of his precious moments in rest. He must not let fatigue dull him and take the cunning from his hand. But the first stage of the work was done;—deliverance looked already immeasurably nearer. If he could climb up, then cling on and cut a new hold! Placing the knife between his teeth, he put his moccasin into the first foothold and pulled himself up.
It did not take long, however, to convince him that the remaining work bordered practically on the impossible. These holes in the ice were not like irregularities in stone. The fingers slipped over them: it was almost impossible to cling on with both hands, much less one. But clinging with all his might, he tried to free his right hand to procure his knife.
He made it at last, and at a frightful cost of nervous energy succeeded in cutting some sort of a gash in the icy wall above his head. Standing so close he could not look up, it was impossible to do more than hack out a ragged hole. And because life lay this way and no other, he put the blade once more between his teeth, reached his right hand into the hole, and tried to pull himself up again.
But disaster, bitter and complete, followed that attempt. His numbing hands failed to hold under the strain, and he slipped all the way back to his shelf. Something rang sharply against the ice wall, far below him.
He did not hear it again; but the truth went home to him in one despairing instant. Try as hard as he could, his jaws had released their hold upon the knife, and it had fallen into the depths of the crevice below. He was not in the least aware of the vicious wound its blade had cut in his shoulder, of the warm blood that was trickling down under his furs. He only knew, with that cold fatalism with which the woodsman regards life, that he had fought a good fight,—and he had lost.
There was no use of trying any more. He had no other knife or axe, no tool that could hack a hole in the icy wall. What other things he carried about him—the furs on his back, his box of safety matches, and other minor implements of his trade—could not help him in the least. And soon it became increasingly difficult to think either upon the fight he had made or the fate that awaited him.
It was hard to remember anything but the growing cold.
It hurt worst in his hands. So he took to rubbing his hands together, hard as he could. He felt the blood surge back into them, and soon they were fairly warm in the great mittens of fur.
Directly he settled back on his icy shelf and drew the pelts he had taken that day over his shoulders. There was but one hope left; and such as it was, it was curiously allied with despair. He hoped that he had heard true that when frost steals into the veins it comes with gentleness and ease. Perhaps he would simply go to sleep.
It wouldn’t be a long time. In fact, a great drowsiness, not unpleasant but rather peaceful, was already settling upon him. The cold of the glacier was deadly. Not many moments remained of his time on earth. The death that dwells in the Arctic ice is mercifully swift.
He had counted on hours, at least. He had even anticipated lingering far into the night. But this was onlymoments! The cleft above him was still distinctly gray.
The ice was creeping again into his fingers. But he wouldn’t try to shake it out again. And now, little, stabbing blades of cold were beginning to pierce his heart.
But likely he would go to sleep before they really began to trouble him. The northern night deepened around him. The wind sprang up and moved softly over the pale ice above him. The day was done.
XXV
Besshad made good time along her line that day. She had not forgotten that this was the day of her rendezvous with Ned, and by walking swiftly, eschewing even short rests, carrying her larger trophies into the cabin to skin rather than halting and thawing them out over a fire, she arrived at the Forks hut at midafternoon. She began at once to make preparations for Ned’s coming.
She built a roaring fire in the little, rusted stove, knowing well the blessing it would be to the tired trapper, coming in with his load of furs. She started supper so that the hot meal would be ready upon his arrival. Then she began to watch the hillside for his coming.
It always gave her a pleasant glow to see the little, moving spot of black at the edge of the timber. Because of a vague depression that she had been unable all day to shake off, she anticipated it especially now. They always had such cheery times together, perched on opposite sides of the little stove. To Bess they redeemed the whole, weary week of toil. It was true that their relations were of companionship only; but this was dear enough. If, long ago, her dreams had gone out to him with deeper meaning, surely she had conquered them by now,—never to set her heart leaping at a friendly word, never to carry her, at the edge of slumber, into a warm, beloved realm of exquisite fancy. Bess had undergone training too. These days in the snow had strengthened her and steeled her to face the truth; and even, in a measure, to reconcile herself to the truth. She had tried to make her heart content with what she had, and surely she was beginning to succeed.
Ned was a little past his usual time to-night. Her depression deepened, and she couldn’t fight it off. This North was so remorseless and so cruel, laying so many pitfalls for the unsuspecting. It was strange what blind terror swept through her at just the thought of disaster befalling Ned. It made her doubt herself, her own mastery of her heart. She never considered the dangers that lay in her own path, only those in his. At the end of a miserable hour she straightened, scarcely able to believe her eyes.
On the glare ice of the glacier, a mile straight up the ridge from the cabin, she saw the figure of a man. Far as it was, one glance told her it was not merely a creature of the wild, a bear disturbed in his winter sleep or a caribou standing facing her. It was Ned, of course, taking the perilous path over the ice, instead of keeping to the blazed trail of his trap line. On the slight downward slope toward her, clearly outlined against the white ice, she could see every step he took.
He was walking boldly over the glassy surface. Didn’t he know its terrors, the danger of slipping on the icy shelves and falling to his death, the deep crevices shunned by the wild creatures? She watched every step with anxious gaze. When he was almost to safety she saw him stop, draw back a few paces, and then come forward at a leaping pace.
What happened thereafter came too fast for her eyes to follow. One instant she saw his form distinctly as he ran. The next, and the ice lay white and bare in the wan light, and Ned had disappeared as if by a magician’s magic.
For one moment she gazed in growing horror. There was no ice promontory behind which he was hidden, nor did he reappear again. And peering closely, she made out a faint, dark line, like a pencil mark on the ice, just where Ned had disappeared.
The truth went home in a flash. The dark line indicated a crevice, to the bottom of which no living thing may fall and live. Yet to such little wild creatures, red-eyed ermine and his fellows that might have been watching her from the snow in front, Bess gave no outward sign that she had seen or that she understood.
She stood almost motionless at first. Her eyes were toneless, lightless holes in her white face; the face itself seemed utterly blank. She seemed to be drawing within herself, into an eerie dream world of her own, as if seeking shelter from some dire, unthinkable thing that lay without. She was hardly conscious, as far as the usual outward consciousness is concerned; unaware of herself, unaware of the snow fields about her and the deepening cold; unaware of the onward march of time. She seemed like a child, hovering between life and death in the scourge of some dread, childhood malady.
Slowly her lips drew in a smile; a smile ineffably sweet, tender as the watch of angels. It was as if the dying child had smiled to reassure its sobbing mother, to tell her that all was well, that she must dry her tears. “It isn’t true,” she whispered, there in the stillness. “It couldn’t be true—not to Ned. There is some way out—some mistake.”
She turned into the cabin, bent, and added fresh fuel to the stove. Its heat scorched her face, and she put up her hand to shield it. The cabin should be warm, when she brought Ned home. She mustn’t let the cold creep in. She must not forget thecold, always watching for every little opening. Perhaps he would want food too: she glanced into the iron pot on the stove. Then, acting more by instinct than by conscious thought, she began to look about for such tools as she would need in the work to follow.
There was a piece of rope, used once on a hand sled, hanging on the wall; but it was only about eight feet in length. Surely it was not long enough to aid her, yet it was all she had. Next, she removed a blanket from her cot and threw it over her shoulder. There might be need of this too,—further protection against the cold.
Heretofore she had moved slowly, hardly aware of her own acts; but now she was beginning to master herself again. She mustn’t linger here. She must make her spirit waken to life, her muscles spring to action. Carrying her rope and her blanket, she went out the door, closed it behind her, and started up toward the glacier.
Only one thing was real in that long mile; and all things else were vague and shadowy as faces in a remembered dream. The one reality was the dark line, ever broader and more distinct, that lay across the ice where Ned had disappeared. The hope she had clung to all the way, that it was merely a shallow hollow in the ice and not one of the dread crevices that seem to go to the bowels of the earth, was evidently without the foundation of fact.
Weary lifetimes passed away before ever she reached the first, steep cliff of the glacier. She had to follow along its base, on to the high ground toward which Ned had been heading, finally crossing back to the smooth table of the glacier itself. There was no chance for a mistake now. The gash in the ice was all too plain.
At last she stood at the very edge of the yawning seam, staring down into the unutterable blackness below. Not evenlightcould exist in the murky depths of the crevice, much less fragile human life. The day was not yet dead, twilight was still gray about her; but the crevice itself seemed full of ink clear to its mouth. And Ned’s axe, lying just at the edge of the chasm, showed where he had fallen.
There was no use of seeking farther; of calling into the lightless depths. The story was all too plain. Very quietly, she lay down on the ice, trying to peer into the blackness below; but it was with no hope of bringing the fallen back to her again. Ned was lost to her, as a falling star is lost to the star clusters in the sky.
It never occurred to her that she would ever get upon her feet again. The game had been played and lost. There was no need of braving the snow again, of fighting her way down the trap line in the bitter dawns. The star she had followed had fallen; the flame of her altar had burned out.
She knew now why she had ever fought the fight at all. It was not through any love of life, or any hope of deliverance in the end. It had all been for Ned. She had denied it before, but the truth was plain enough now. It was her love for Ned that had kept her shoulders straight under the killing labor, had sheltered her spirit from the curse of cold and storm, that had borne her aloft out of the power of this savage land to harm. She knew now why she had not given up long since.
Was that the way of woman’s heart, to sustain her through a thousand unutterable miseries only that she might be crushed in the end? Was life no more than this? She had been content to live on, to endure all, just to be near him and watch over him to the end; but there was no need of lingering now. The fire in the cabin could burn down, and the fire of her spirit could flicker out in the ever-deepening cold.
She had tried to blind herself to the truth, yet always, in the secret places of her soul, she had known. It was not that she ever had hope of Ned’s love. Lenore would get that: Ned’s devotion to her had never faltered yet. But it was enough just to be near, to work beside him, to care for him to the full limit of her mortal power. She knew now that all the tears she had shed had been for him: not for the lash of cold on her own body, but on his; not for her own miseries, but those that had so often brought Ned clear into the shadow of death. And now the final blow had fallen. She could lie still on the ice and let the wind cry by in triumph above her.
She had loved every little moment with him, on the nights of their rendezvous. She had loved him even at first, before ever his manhood came upon him, but her love had been an infinite, an ineffable thing in these last few weeks of his greatness. She had watched his slow growth; every one of his victories had been a victory to her; and she had loved every fresh manifestation of his new strength. But oh, she had loved his boyishness too. His queer, crooked smile, his brown hair curling over his brow, his laugh and his eyes,—all had moved her and glorified her beyond any power of hers to tell.
She called his name into the chasm depths, and some measure of self-control returned to her when she heard the weird, rolling echo. Perhaps she shouldn’t give up yet. It wouldn’t be Ned’s way to yield to despair until the last, faint flame of hope had burned out. Perhaps the crevice was not of such vast depth as she had been taught to believe. Perhaps even now the man she loved was lying, shattered but not dead, only a few feet below her in the darkness. She had come swiftly; perhaps the deadly cold had not yet had time to claim him. She called again, loudly as she could.
And that cry did not go unheard. Ned had given up but a few moments before Bess had come, and her full voice carried clearly into the strange, misty realm of semi-consciousness into which he had drifted. And this manhood that had lately grown upon him would not let him shut his ears to this sobbing appeal. His own voice, sounding weird and hollow as the voice of the dead in that immeasurable abyss, came back in answer.
“Here I am, Bess,” he said. “You’ll have to work quick.”
XXVI
Itwas bitter hard for Ned to fight his way back through death’s twilight. The cold had hold of him, its triumph was near, and it would not let him go without a savage battle that seemed to wrack the man in twain. So far as his own wishes went, he only wanted to drift on, farther and farther into the twilight ocean, and never return to the cursed island again. But Bess was calling him, and he couldn’t deny her. Perhaps in a distant cabin Lenore called him too.
Indeed, the call upon him was more urgent than ever before. Before, his thought had always been for Lenore, but Bess too was a factor now. In that utter darkness Ned saw more clearly than ever before in his life, and while his eyes searched only for Lenore, he kept seeing Bess too. Bess with her never-failing smile of encouragement, her soft beauty that had held him, in spite of himself, on their nights at Forks cabin. Her need of him was real, threatened by Doomsdorf as she was, and he mustn’t leave her sobbing so forlornly on the ice above. Lenore was first, of course,—his duty to her reason enough for making a mighty fight. But Bess’s pleading moved him deeply.
He summoned every ounce of courage and determination that he had and tried to shake the frost from his brain. “You’ll have to work quick,” he warned again. His voice was stronger now, but softened with a tenderness beyond her most reckless dreams. “Don’t be too hopeful—I haven’t much left in me. What can you do?”
The girl who answered him was in no way the lost and hopeless mortal that had lain sobbing on the ice. Her scattered, weakened faculties had swept back to her in all their strength, at the first sound of his voice.He was alive, and it is the code of the North, learned in these dreadful months, that so long as a spark still glows the battle must not be given over. There was something to fight for now. The fighting side of her that Ned had seen so often swept swiftly into dominance. At once she was a cold blade, true and sure; brain and body in perfect discipline.
“How far are you?” she asked. “I can’t see——”
“About ten feet—but I can’t get up without help.”
“Can you stand up?”
“Yes.” Forcing himself to the last ounce of his nerve and courage, he drew himself erect. Reaching upward, his hands were less than a yard from the top of the crevice.
Bess did not make the mistake of trying to reach down to him. She conquered the impulse at once, realizing that any weight at all, unsupported as she was, would draw her into the ravine. Even the rope would be of no use until she had something firm to which to attach it.
“I’ve dug holes most of the way up,” he told her. “I might try to climb ’em, with a little help——”
“Are you at the bottom of the crevice?”
“The bottom is hundreds of feet below me. I’m on a ledge about three feet wide.”
“Then stand still till I can really help you. I can’t pull you now without being pulled in myself, and if you’d fall back you’d probably roll off the ledge. The ice is like glass. Ned, are you good for ten minutes more——”
“I don’t know——”
“It’s the only chance.” Again her tone was pleading. “Keep the blood moving for ten minutes more, Ned. Oh, tell me you’ll try——”
Deep in the gloom she thought she heard him laugh—only a few, little syllables, wan and strange in the silence—and it was all the answer she needed. He would fight on for ten minutes more. He would struggle against the cold until she could rescue him.
“Here’s a blanket,” she told him swiftly. “Put it around you, if you can, without danger of rolling off.”
She dropped him the great covering she had brought; then in a single, deerlike motion, she leaped the narrow crevice. On the opposite side she procured Ned’s axe; then she turned, and half running, half gliding on the ice, sped toward the nearest timber,—a number of stunted spruce two hundred yards distant at the far edge of the glacier.
Bess had need of her woodsman’s knowledge now. Never before had her blows been so true, so telling on the tough wood. Before, in the fuel cutting of months before, she had wielded the axe in fear of the lash, but to-day she worked for Ned’s life, for the one dream that mattered yet. Almost at once she had done her work and was started back with a tough pole, eight feet long and four inches in diameter, balanced on her sturdy shoulder.
Ned was still strong enough to answer her call when she returned, and the dim light still permitted him to see her lay the pole she had cut as a bridge across the crevice, cutting notches in the ice to hold it firm. Swiftly she tied one end of her rope to the pole and dropped the other to him.
“Can you climb up?” she asked him. Everything had centered down to this—whether he still had strength to climb the rope.
“Just watch me,” was the answer.
From that instant, she knew that she had won. The spirit behind his words would never falter, with victory so near. He dug his moccasins into the holes he had hacked in the ice, meanwhile working upward, hand over hand. To fall meant to die,—but Ned didn’t fall.
It was a hard fight, weakened as he was, but soon the girl’s reaching hands caught his sleeve, then his coat; finally they were fastened firmly, lifting with all the girl’s strength, under the great arms. His hand seized the pole, and he gave a great upward lunge. And then he was lying on the ice beside her, fighting for breath, not daring to believe that he was safe.
But the usual cool, half-mirthful remark that, in many little crises, Ned had learned to expect from Bess was not forthcoming to-night. Nor were the sounds in the twilight merely those of heavy breathing. The strain was over, and Bess had given way to the urge of her heart at last. Her tears flowed unchecked, whether of sorrow or happiness even she did not know.
The man crawled toward her, moved by an urge beyond him, and for a single moment his strong arms pressed her close. “Don’t cry, little pal,” he told her. He smiled, a strangely boyish, happy smile, into her eyes. Very softly, reverently he kissed her wet eyelids, then stilled her trembling lips with his own. He smiled again, a great good-humor taking hold of him. “You’re too big a girl to cry!”
It was he, to-night, who had to relieve with humor a situation that would have soon been out of bounds. Yet all at once he saw that the little sentence had meaning far beyond what he had intended. Shehadshown bigness to-night,—a greatness of spirit and strength that left him wondering and reverent. The battle she had fought to save his life was no less than his own waged with the white wolf, weeks before.
Here was another who had stood the gaff! She too knew what it was to take the fighting chance. Presently he knew, by light of this adventure on the ice, that Bess was more than mere companion in toil and hardship, some one to shelter and protect. She was acomrade-at-arms,—such a fortress of strength as the best of women have always been to the men they loved.
He did not know whether or not she loved him. It didn’t affect the point that, in a crisis, she had shown the temper of her steel! He did not stand alone henceforth. In the struggle for freedom that was to come here was an ally on whom, to the very gates of death, he could implicitly rely.
XXVII
Whenfood and warmth had brought complete recovery, Ned took up with Bess the problem of deliverance from the island. He found that for weeks she had been thinking along the same line, and like him, she had as yet failed to hit upon any plan that offered the least chance for success. The subject held them late into the night.
There was no need of a formal pact between them. Each of them realized that if ever the matter came to the crisis, the other could be relied upon to the last ditch. They stood together on that. Whatever the one attempted, the other would carry through. And because of their mutual trust, both felt more certain than ever of their ultimate triumph.
They took different trails in the dawn, following the long circle of their trap lines. All the way they pondered on this same problem, conceiving a plan only to reject it because of some unsurmountable obstacle to its success; dwelling upon the project every hour and dreaming about it at night. But Ned was far as ever from a conclusion when, three days later, he followed the beach on the way to the home cabin.
He had watched with deadened interest the drama of the wild things about him these last days; but when he was less than a mile from home he had cause to remember it again. To his great amazement he found at the edge of the ice the fresh track of one of the large island bears.
There was nothing to tell for sure what had awakened the great creature prematurely from its winter sleep. The expected date of awakening was still many weeks off. But the grizzly is notoriously irregular in his habits; and experienced naturalists have long since ceased to be surprised at whatever he may do. Ned reasoned at once that the present mild weather had merely beguiled the old veteran from his lair (the size of the track indicated a patriarch among the bears) and he was simply enjoying the late winter sunlight until a cold spell should drive him in again.
The sight of the great imprint was a welcome one to Ned, not alone because the wakening forecasted, perhaps, an early spring, but because he was in immediate need of bear fur. His own coat was worn; besides, he was planning a suit of cold-proof garments for Lenore, to be used perhaps in their final flight across the ice. And he saw at once that conditions were favorable for trapping the great creature.
Scarcely a quarter of a mile ahead, in a little pass that led through the shore crags down to the beach, Doomsdorf had left one of his most powerful bear traps. Ned had seen it many times as he had clambered through on a short cut to the cabin. Because it lay in a natural runway for game—one of the few spots where the shore crags could be easily surmounted—it was at least possible that the huge bear might fall into it, on his return to his lair in the hills.
Ned hurried on, and in a few moments had dug out the great trap from its covering of snow. For a moment he actually doubted his power to set it. It was of obsolete type, mighty-springed, and its jaws were of a width forbidden by all laws of trapping in civilized lands, yet Ned did not doubt its efficiency. Its mighty irons had rusted; but not even a bear’s incalculable might could shatter them.
This was not to be a bait set, so his success depended upon the skill with which he concealed the trap. First he carefully refilled the excavation he had made in digging out the trap; then he dug a shallow hole in the snow in the narrowest part of the pass. Here he set the trap, utilizing all the power of his mighty muscles, and spread a light covering of snow above.
It was a delicate piece of work. Ned had no wish for the cruel jaws to snap shut as he was working above them. But his heart was in the venture, for all his hatred of the cruelty of the device; and he covered up his tracks with veteran’s skill. Then he quietly withdrew, retracing his steps and following the shore line toward the home cabin.
Surely the mighty strength that had set the powerful spring and the skill that covered up all traces of his work could succeed at last in freeing him from slavery.
Bess had reached the shelter first, and she was particularly relieved to see Ned’s tall form swinging toward her along the shore. Doomsdorf was in a particularly ominous mood to-night. The curious glitter in his magnetic eyes was more pronounced than she had ever seen it,—catlike in the shadows, steely in the lantern light; and his cruel savagery was just at the surface, ready to be wakened. Worst of all, the gaze he bent toward her was especially eager to-night, horrible to her as the cold touch of a reptile.
Every time she glanced up she found him regarding her, and he followed her with his eyes when she moved. Yet she dared not seek shelter in the new cabin, for the simple reason that she was afraid Doomsdorf would follow her there. Until Ned came, her defense was solely the presence of Lenore and the squaw.
There was no particular warmth in her meeting with Ned. Doomsdorf’s eyes were still upon her, and she was careful to keep any hint of the new understanding out of her face and eyes. Ned’s weather-beaten countenance was as expressionless as Sindy’s own.
He refused to be depressed, at once, by the air of suspense and impending disaster that hung over the cabin. Thus was the day of his home-coming—looked forward to throughout the bitter days of his trap line—and was not Lenore waiting, beautiful in the lantern light, for him to speak to her? Yet the old exultation was somehow missing to-night. His thoughts kept turning back to the pact he had made with Bess—to their dream of deliverance. What was more curious, Lenore’s lack of warmth that had come to be a matter of course in their weekly meetings almost failed to hurt. His mind was so busy with the problem of their freedom that he escaped the usual despondency that had crept upon him so many times before.
It was a peculiar paradox that while this was his day of days, the one day in five that seemed to justify his continued life, it was always the most hopeless and miserable, simply because of Lenore’s attitude toward him. It wasn’t entirely her failure to respond to his own ardor. The inevitable disappointment lay as much in his own attitude toward her. It was as much the things she did as those she failed to do that depressed him; the questions she asked, her patronage of Bess, her self-pitying complaints. Always he experienced a sense of some great omission,—perhaps only his failure to feel the old delight and exultation that the mere fact of her presence used to impart to him. He found it increasingly hard to give full attention to her; to let his eyes dwell always on her beauty and his ears give heed to her wrongs.
She found him preoccupied, and as a result increased her complaints. But they left him cold to-night. Her lot was happiness itself compared to that of Bess, and yet Bess’s spirit of good sportsmanship and courage was entirely absent in her. But he must not keep comparing her with Bess. Destruction lay that way! He must continue to adore her for her beauty, the charm that used to hold him entranced.
She was all he had asked for in his old life. If they ever gained freedom, he would, in all probability, find in her all that he could desire in the future. They could take up their old love anew, and doubtless she would give him all the happiness he had a right to expect—more than he deserved. Likely enough, if the test ever came, she would show that her metal too was the finest, tempered steel! At least he could continue to believe in her until he had cause to lose faith.
And the test was not far distant now. He was not blind to the gathering storm; at any moment there might ensue a crisis that would embroil all three of them in a struggle to the death. Not one of them could escape, Lenore no more than himself or Bess. She was one of the triumvirate,—and surely she would stand with them to the last.
If the crisis could only be postponed until they had made full preparations for it! Yet in one glance, in which he traced down Doomsdorf’s fiery gaze and found it centered upon Bess, he knew that any instant might bring the storm!
He felt his own anger rising. A dark fury, scarcely controllable, swept over him at the insult of that creeping, serpent gaze upon Bess’s beauty. But he mustn’t give way to it yet. He must hold himself for the last, dread instant of need.
The four of them gathered about the little, rough table, and again the squaw served them, from the shadows. It was a strange picture, there in the lantern light,—the imperturbable face of the squaw, always half in shadow; the lurid wild-beast eyes of Doomsdorf gleaming under his shaggy brows; Lenore’s beauty a thing to hold the eyes; and Bess horrified and fearful at what the next moment might bring. Hardly a word was exchanged from the meal’s beginning to its end. Bess tried to talk, so as to divert Doomsdorf’s sinister thoughts, but the words would not come to her lips. The man seemed eager to finish the meal.
As soon as they had moved from the table toward the little stove, and the squaw had begun the work of clearing away the dishes, Doomsdorf halted at Bess’s side. For a moment he gazed down at her, a great hand resting on her chair.
“You’re a pretty little hell-cat,” he told her, in curiously muffled tones. “What makes you such a fighter?”
She tried to meet his eyes. “I have to be, in this climate,” she answered. “Where would you get your furs——”
He uttered one great hoarse syllable, as if in the beginning of laughter. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. You’d sooner walk ten miles through the snow than give an inch, wouldn’t you?” His hand reached, closing gently upon her arm, and a shiver of repulsion passed over her. “That’s a fine little muscle—but you don’t want to work it off. Why don’t you show a little friendship?”
The girl looked with difficulty into his great, drawn face. Ned stiffened, wondering if the moment of crisis were at hand at last. Lenore watched appalled, but the native went on about her tasks as if she hadn’t heard.
“You can’t expect—much friendship—from a prisoner,” Bess told him brokenly. Her face, so white in the yellow lantern light, her trembling lips, most of all the appeal for mercy in her child’s eyes—raised to this beast compared with whom even the North was merciful—wakened surging, desperate anger in Ned. The room turned red before his eyes, his muscles quivered, and he was rapidly reaching that point wherein his self-control, on which life itself depended, was jeopardized. Yet he must hold himself with an iron hand. He must wait to the last instant of need. Everything depended on that, in avoiding the crisis until he had made some measure of preparation.
The loss of his long-bladed skinning knife increased the odds against him. He had put considerable reliance in its hair-splitting blade; and since he had perfected the sheath of caribou leather whereby he could keep it open in his pocket, he had hoped that it might be the means of freedom. In the three days since its loss he had been obliged to carry one of the butcher knives from the supplies at Forks cabin,—a sharp enough implement, but without the dagger point that would be so deadly in close work. However, he moved his arm so that he could reach the hilt of the knife in one motion.
But with the uncanny watchfulness of a cat Doomsdorf saw the movement. For one breath Ned’s life was suspended by a hair: Doomsdorf’s first impulse was to seize his pistol and bore the younger man through and through with lead. It was a mere madman’s whim that he refrained: he had a more entertaining fate in store for Ned when affairs finally reached a crisis. He leered down in contempt.
“Your little friend seems to be getting nervous,” he remarked easily to Bess. “So not to disturb him further, let’s you and I go to the new cabin. I’ve taken some fine pelts lately—I want you to see them. You need a new coat.”
He seemed to be aware of the gathering suspense, and it thrilled his diseased nerves with exultation. But there was, from his listeners, but one significant response at first to the evil suggestion that he made with such iniquitous fires in his wild eyes and such a strange, suppressed tone in his voice. Bess’s expression did not change. It had already revealed the uttermost depths of dread. Ned still held himself, cold, now, as a serpent, waiting for his chance. But the squaw paused a single instant in her work. For one breath they failed to hear the clatter of her pans. But seemingly indifferent, she immediately went back to her toil.
Bess shook her head in desperate appeal. “Wait till morning,” she pleaded. “I’m tired now——”
Ned saw by the gathering fury of their master’s face that her refusal would only bring on the crisis, so he leaped swiftly into the breach. “Sure, Bess, let’s go to look at them,” he said. “I’m anxious to see ’em too——”
Doomsdorf whirled to him, and his gaze was as a trial of fire to Ned. Yet the latter did not flinch. For a long second they regarded each other in implacable hatred, and then Doomsdorf’s sudden start told that he had been visited by inspiration. His leering look of contempt was almost a smile. “Sure, come along,” he said. “I’ve got something to say to you too. To spare Lenore’s feelings—we’ll go to the other cabin.”
Ned was not in the least deceived by this reference to Lenore. Doomsdorf had further cause, other than regard for Lenore’s sensibilities, for continuing their conversation in the other cabin. What it was Ned did not know, and he dared not think. And he had a vague impression that while he and Doomsdorf had waged their battle of eyes, Bess had mysteriously moved from her position. He had left her just at Doomsdorf’s right; when he saw her again she was fully ten feet distant, within a few feet of the cupboards where the squaw kept many of the food supplies, and now was busy with her parka of caribou skin.
She led the way out into the clear, icy night. It was one of those still, clear, late winter evenings, not so cold as it had been, when the frozen, snow-swept world gave no image of reality to the senses. The snow wastes and the velvet depths of the sky were lurid, flashing with a thousand ever-changing hues from the giant kaleidoscope of the Northern Lights. Moved and held by this wonder that never grows old to the northern man, Doomsdorf halted them just without the cabin door.
As they watched, the procession of colors suddenly ceased, leaving world and sky an incredible monochrome in red. It was wanly red at first, but the warm hue slowly deepened until one could imagine that the spirits of all the dead, aroused for some cosmic holiday, were lighting flares of red fire. It was a strange sight even for these latitudes; but this lambent mystery is ever beyond the ken of man. The name that Doomsdorf had given his island had never seemed so fitting as now. In the carmine glow the bearded face of the master of the isle was suddenly the red-hued visage of Satan.
But the light died away at last, and the falling darkness called them back to themselves. The lust that fired Doomsdorf’s blood, the fear like the Arctic cold in the veins of Ned and Bess was all worldly enough. For a moment he studied their pale, tense faces.
“There’s no need of going farther,” he said in his deep, rumbling voice. “There was no need of even coming here. You seem to be forgetting, you two, where you are—all the things I told you at first.”
He paused, and his voice had dropped, and the tone was strange and even, dreadful to hear, when he spoke again. “I’ve evidently been too easy with you,” he went on. “I’ll see that I correct that fault in the future. You, Ned, made a serious mistake when you interfered in this matter to-night. I’ll see if I can’t teach you to keep your place. And Bess—long ago I told you that your body and your soul were mine—to do with what I liked. You seemed to have forgotten—but I intend that you will call it to mind—again.”
But Ned still faced him when he paused, eyes steadfast, his face an iron gray in the wan light. His training had been hard and true, and he still found strength to stand erect.
“I want to tell you this—in reply,” he answered in the clear, firm voice of one who has mastered fear. “We know well enough what you can do to us. But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to yield to you—to every one of your evil wishes. Life isn’t so pleasant to either of us that we’ll submit to everything in order to live. No matter what you do to me—I know what I’ll do to you if you try to carry out your wicked designs by force.”
Doomsdorf eyed him calmly, but the smile of contempt was wholly gone from his lips. “You’ll show fight?” he asked.
“With every ounce I’ve got! You may master me—with every advantage of weapons and physical strength—but you’ll have to kill me first. Bess will kill herself before she’ll yield to you. You won’t be better off—you’ll simply have no one to do your trapping for you. It isn’t worth it, Doomsdorf.”
He eyed them a moment, coolly and casually. “When I want anything, Ned, I want it bad enough to pay all I’ve got for it,” he said in a remarkably even tone. “Don’t presume that I value your lives so much that I’ll turn one step from my course. Besides, Ned—you won’t be here!”
Ned’s eyes widened, as he tried to read his meaning. Doomsdorf laughed softly in the silence. “You won’t be here!” he repeated. “You fool—do you think I’d let you get in my way? It will rest as it is to-night. To-morrow morning you start out to tend your traps—and you will tend Bess’s lines as well as your own. She will stay here—with me—from now on.”
Ned felt his muscles hardening to steel. “I won’t leave her to you——”
“You won’t? Don’t make any mistake on that point. If you are not on your way by sun-up, you get a hundred—from theknout. You won’t be able to leave for some time after that—but neither will you be able to interfere with what doesn’t concern you. I’ll give you a few in the dawn—just as a sample to show what they’re like. Nor am I afraid of Bess killing herself. It’s cold and dark here, but it’s colder and darker—There. She’ll stand a lot before she’ll do that.”
“That’s definite?” Ned asked.
“The truest words I ever spoke. I’ve never gone back on a promise yet.”
“And believe me, I won’t go back on mine. If that’s all you have to say——”
“That’s quite all. Think it over—you’ll find it isn’t so bad. And now—good night.”
He bowed to them, in mock politeness. Then he turned back into his cabin.
For a moment his two prisoners stood inert, utterly motionless in the wan light. Ned started to turn to her, still held by his own dark thoughts, but at the first glance of her white, set face he whirled in the most breathless amazement. It was in no way the stricken, terrified countenance that he had seen a few moments before. The lips were firm, the eyes deep and strange; even in the half-light he could see her look of inexorable purpose.
Some great resolve had come to her,—some sweeping emotion that might even be akin to hope. Was she planning suicide? Wasthatthe meaning of this new look of iron resolution in her face? He could conceive of no other explanation; in self-inflicted death alone lay deliverance from Doomsdorf’s lust. He dared not hope for any happier freedom.
He reached groping hands to hers. “You don’t mean”—he gasped, hardly able to make his lips move in speech—“you don’t intend——?”
“To kill myself? Not yet, by a long way.” The girl’s hand slipped cautiously out from the pocket of her jacket, showing him what seemed to be a small, square box of tin. But the light was too dim for him to make out the words on the paper label. “I got this from the shelf—just as we left the cabin.”
The hopeful tones in her voice was the happiest sound Ned had heard since he had come to the island.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Nothing very much—but yet—a chance for freedom. Come into the cabin where we can scratch a match.”
They moved into the newer hut of logs, and there Bess showed him the humble article in which lay her hopes. It was merely a tin of fine snuff from among Doomsdorf’s personal supplies.