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.
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.
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.