The addition of Harold to their number did not influence, for long, Virginia's old relations with Bill. They were comrades as ever; they talked and chatted around the little stove in the hushed nights; they played their favorite melodies on the battered phonograph, and they took the same joyous, exciting expeditions into the wild. These latter diversions were looked upon with no favor by Harold, but he couldn't see how he could reasonably interfere. Nor did he care, at first, to accompany them. He had no love for the snow-swept wastes.
The crust on the snow was steadily strengthening; most the days were clear and excessively cold. The journey could be undertaken soon. Only a few more days of the adventure remained.
Their excursions at first were a matter of pleasure only, but by one unexpected stroke from the sinister powers of the wild they were suddenly made necessary. Her first knowledge of the blow came when Bill entered her cabin to build the morning fire.
She had not yet risen. It had always been her practice to wait till the room was snug and warm before she dressed. She was asleep when Bill came in, and aroused by his footsteps, she was aware of the fleeting memory of unhappy dreams. She couldn't have told just what they were. It seemed to her that some unseen danger had been menacing her security,—that evil and dangerous forces were conspiring and making war against her. Hidden foes were in ambush, ready to pounce forth.
The danger seemed different and beyond that which she had faced every day: snow and cold and the other inanimate forces of the wild. And she was vastly relieved to hear Bill's voice calling her from sleep.
But the next instant her fears returned—not the ghastly fear of evil dreams but of actual and real disaster. It wasn't Bill's usual custom to waken her. He wanted her to spend as many as possible of the monotonous hours in sleep. There was a subdued quality in his voice, too, that once or twice she had heard before. She drew aside the curtain, far enough to see his face. There was no paleness, however, nor no fear, for all that his eyes were sober.
"You'd better get up as soon as you can, Virginia," he said. "We've got to take a real hunt to-day."
"Hunt? After meat?"
"Yes. We're face to face with a new problem. The pack came by last night—the wolf pack. As usual, when men are near, they didn't make a sound. I didn't hear them at all. And they got away with the big moose ham, hanging on the spruce. Stripped the bone clean."
"Then we're out of meat?"
"All except the little piece outside the door. We've been going through it pretty fast."
Bill spoke true. Their meat consumption had practically doubled since Harold had come. For all his lack of physical exercise, the latter was an unusually heavy eater.
"But we won't be able to find any now. The moose are gone——"
"We're not very likely to, that's certain; but it won't be a tragedy if we don't. It would only be an annoyance. It's true that we've got to have more supplies to start down—I don't believe we could make it through with what we have, considering the loss of this ham—but if it's necessary I can mush over to me Twenty-three Mile cabin and get the supplies I left over there. Harold tells me he hasn't a thing in his old place. However, I can do it, if we don't happen to pick up some meat to-day."
"We might track down the wolves, and get one of those——"
"Wolf meat hasn't a flavor you'd care for, I'm afraid. The Indians have been known to eat it, but they can but away beaver and tough old grizzly bear. Those things are starvation meats only. But if you care to, we can dash out and see if we can pick up a young caribou or a left-over moose. It's pleasant out to-day, anyway. It's rather warm—I believe there's going to be a change of weather."
"Good or bad?" the girl asked.
"Haven't had any government bulletins on that point, this morning. Probably bad. The weather in the North, Virginia, goes along the way it is a while, and then it gets worse."
She dressed, and at breakfast their exultation over their trip grew painful to Harold's ears. He announced his intention of going along.
Curiously, even Virginia did not receive this announcement with particular enthusiasm. It was not that her regard for Bill was any kin to that she held for Harold. Rather, it was a fear that Harold's presence might blunt the edge of the fine companionship she enjoyed with the woodsman. It would throw a personal element into an otherwise care-free and adventurous day. But she smiled at him, rather fondly.
"Just as you like, Harold."
They put on their snowshoes, their warmest wraps, and started gayly forth. Bill took rather a new course to-day. He bent his steps toward a stream that he called Creek Despair,—named for the fact that he had once held high hopes of finding his lost mine along its waters, only to meet an utter and hopeless failure. From the map he had judged that the lost claim lay somewhere along its course, but he had washed it from its mother springs clear to its mouth, finding scarcely the faintest traces in the pan. Because he had made such a tireless search in this particular section in previous years he had completely avoided it in the present adventure. Even on his pleasure trips with Virginia he had never forgotten his search: thus he had led her into more favorable regions where he might reasonably keep his eyes over for clews. Now that he had given up finding the claim—for this season, at least, and perhaps forever—one way was as good as another. And he remembered that an old caribou trail lay just beyond the stream on the steep hillside.
Bill led the way, mushing quietly an swiftly, and Virginia sped after him. The cold had brought a high color to her cheeks and a luster to her eyes; her nerves and muscles tingled with life. She was in wonderful spirits. Never she took a hundred paces without experiencing some sort of a little, heart-gladdening adventure.
Every manifestation of the forest life about her filled her with delight. The beauty of the winter woods, the absorbing record that the wild creatures had left in the snow, the long sweep of range and valley that she could glimpse from a still hilltop, all had their joy for her. With Bill she found something to delight her, something to make her laugh and quicken her blood, in every hundred yards of their course. Sometimes when the snow record was obscure, Bill stopped and explained, usually with a graphic story and unconscious humor that made the woods tingle and ring with her joyous, rippling laughter. More than often, however, she was able to piece our the mystery by herself.
Bill had a long and highly fanciful conversation with a little, black-tailed ermine that tried to run under his feet; he imitated—to Virginia's delight, the spectacle of a large and stiff cow moose pulling herself through the mud; he repeated for her the demented cries of the loons that they had sometimes heard from the still waters of Gray Lake. But he didn't forget that the main purpose of their expedition was to hunt. When at last they reached the caribou range he commanded silence.
Harold, silent in the others' gayety, immediately evinced a decided inclination to talk. He had not particularly enjoyed the excursion so far. In the first place he had no love either for the winter forest or the creatures that inhabited it; he would have been much more comfortable and at ease beside the cabin stove. He couldn't much with comfort at Bill's regular pace: he was rather out of breath and irritated after the first two hundred rods. Most of all, he was savagely conscious of the fact that Virginia was not giving him a rightful share of her attention. For the time being she seemed to have forgotten his presence. He was resentful, wishing disaster upon the hunt, eager to turn back.
"The rule is silence, from now on," Virginia answered his first remark. "Bill says we're in a game country."
The answer didn't satisfy him. But his heart suddenly leaped when Bill glanced back in warning and pointed to an entrancing wilderness picture, a hundred yards in front.
In a little glade and framed by the forest stood a large bull caribou, flashing and incredibly vivid against the snow. There is no animal in all North American fauna, even the bull elk, that presents a more splendid figure than that huge member of the deer family, Osburn's caribou. His mane is snow white, his back and sides a glossy brown, his eye flashes, and his antlers—in the season that he carries them—stream back like young trees. The bull did not stir out of his tracks, yet he gave the impression of infinite movement and pulsing, quivering vitality. He shook and threw his head, he lifted his fore foot nervously, and framed by the winter forest he was a sight never to forget. Incidentally he made a first-class target,—one that seemed impossible to miss.
"I'll take him," Harold shouted. "Let me take him."
In a flash Harold realized that here was his opportunity: in one stroke, one easy shot, he could turn the day's ignominy into triumph. He could focus Virginia's admiration upon himself. But the impulse had even deeper significances. It was not the way of sportsmen, wandering in file on mountain trails, to clamor for the first shot at game. Whatever is said is usually in solicitation to a companion to shoot; and Virginia felt oddly embarrassed. Harold's gun leaped to his shoulder.
But in the fields of sport there is always a penalty for extreme eagerness. There is a retributive justice for those that attempt to grasp opportunities. Harold was afraid that Bill might raise and shoot, thus rubbing him of his triumph, and he pressed back against the trigger just a fifth of a second too soon. The target looked too big to miss, but his bullet flung up the snow behind the animal.
The caribou's powerful limbs pushed out a mighty leap. Frenzied, Harold shot again; but his nerve was broken and his self-control blown to the four winds. The animal had gained the shelter of the thickets by now, and Harold's third and fourth shots went wild. Then he lowered his weapon with a curse.
It is part of the creed of a certain type of hunter to never admit a clean miss. "My sights are off," Harold shouted. "They didn't shoot within three feet of where I aimed. Damn such a gun—but I think I wounded him the third shot. You'll find him dead if you follow him long enough."
Bill answered nothing, but went to see. In the firing he hadn't even raised his own gun to his shoulder. There is a certain code among hunters in regard to shooting another's game: an unwritten law that, except in a case of life and death, one hunter does not interfere with another's shooting. It was through no desire to embarrass Harold that he didn't assist him in putting down his trophy. He was simply giving the man full play. Bill stared at the caribou tracks in the snow, followed them a hundred feet, and then came mushing back.
"You didn't seem to have put one in," he reported simply.
"I didn't, eh?" Harold answered angrily. "How could you tell, so soon? I suppose you're woodsman enough to know that a wounded animal doesn't always show blood. I'd be ready to bet that if we followed him far enough we'd find him dead."
"We'd have to follow him till he died naturally of old age," was the good-humored reply. "We can't always hit, Lounsbury. He began to trot when he got into the trees—a perfectly normal gait. I think we'd better look for something else."
"Then I want you to carry my gun awhile, and let me take yours. The sights are off a mile. It's all ready, and here's a handful of extra shells. You ought to be willing to do that, at least."
Harold had forgotten that this man was not his personal guide, subject to his every wish. He held out gun and shells; and, smiling, Bill received them, giving his own weapon in exchange. They mushed on down the trail.
But Harold's miss had not been his greater sin. To miss is human; no true sportsman holds it against his fellow. The omission that followed, however, was by all the codes of the hunting trails unpardonable. He supposed that he had refilled his rifle magazine with shells before he put it in Bill's hands. In his confusion and anger, he had forgotten to do so; and the only load that the gun contained was that in the barrel, thrown in automatically when the last empty shell was ejected.
Several seasons before there had been a fatality on the hillside above Creek Despair. An ancient spruce tree, one that had watched the forest drama for uncounted years, whose tall head lifted above all the surrounding forest and who had known the silence and the snow of a hundred winters, had languished, withered and died from sheer old age. For some seasons it had stood in its place, silent and grim and majestic in death. On the day that the three hunters emerged on their snowshoes in search of meat for their depleted larder, the wind pressed gently against it. Because its trunk was rotted away it swayed and fell heavily.
There was nothing particularly memorable in this. All trees die; all of them fall at last. Its particular significance lay in the fact that as it shattered down, sliding a distance on the steep hillside, it scraped the snow from the mouth of a winter lair of a scarcely less venerable forest inhabitant,—a savage, long-clawed, gray-furred grizzly bear.
The creature had gone into hibernation weeks before: he was deep in the cold-trance—that mysterious coma of which the wisest naturalists have no real knowledge—when the tree fell. He hadn't in the least counted on being disturbed until the leaves budded out in spring. He had filled his belly well, crawled into a long, narrow cavern in the rock, the snow had sifted down and sealed him in, his bodily heat had warmed to a sufficient degree the little alcove in the cavern that he occupied, his blood temperature had dropped down and his breathing had almost ceased, and he had lain in a deep, strange stupor, oblivious to the passage of time. And he felt the rage known to all sleepy men on being awakened.
The grizzly is a particularly crafty, intelligent animal—on the intellectual plane of the dog and elephant—and he had chosen his winter lair with special purpose in mind of a long and uninterrupted sleep. The cavern mouth was so well concealed that even the sharp eyes of the wild creatures, passing up and down the creek hardly a hundred feet away, never guessed its existence. The cavern maw had been large once, for all to see, but an avalanche had passed over it. Tons of snow, picking up a great cargo of rocks and dirt that no stream dredge in the world could lift, had roared and bellowed down the slope, narrowly missing the trunk of the great spruce, changing the contour of the creek bed and concealing its landmarks, and only a square yard of the original entrance was left. This opening was concealed by a little cluster of young spruce that had sprung up in the fallen earth. Yes, old Ephraim had had every reason to believe that no one would find him or break his sleep, and he was all the more angry at the interruption.
The falling tree had made a frightful crash just over his head, and even the deep coma in which the grizzly lay was abruptly dissolved. He sprang up, ready to fight. A little gleam of sunlight ventured through the spruce thicket, down into the mouth of the cavern, and lay like a patch of gold on the cavern floor. It served to waken some slight degree of interest in the snowy world without. It might be well to look around a moment, at least, before he lay down to sleep again. At least he had to scrape more snow over the cabin mouth. And in the meantime he might be lucky enough to find the dearest delight in his life,—a good, smashing, well-matched fight to cool the growing anger in his great veins.
Ephraim was an old bear, used to every hunting wile, and his disposition hadn't improved with years. He was the undisputed master of the forest, and he couldn't think of any particular enemy that he would not encounter with a roar of joy. As often, in the case of the old, his teeth were rotting away; and the pain was a darting, stabbing devil in his gums. His little, fierce eyes burned and smoldered with wrath, he grunted deep in his throat, and he pushed out savagely through the cavern maw. It was only a step farther through the spruce thicket into the sunlight. And at the first glance he knew that his wish was coming true.
Three figures, two abreast and one behind, came mushing through the little pass where the creek flowed. He knew them well enough. There were plenty of grizzly traditions concerned with them. He recognized them in an instant as his hereditary foes,—the one breed that had not yet learned to give him right-of-way on the trail. They were tall, fearful forms, and something in their eyes sent a shudder of cold clear to his heart, yet he was not in the humor to give ground. His nerves were jumpy and unstrung from the fall of the tree, his jaw wracked him; a turn of the hair might decide whether he would merely stand and let them pass, or whether he would launch into that terrible, death-dealing charge that most grizzly hunters, sooner or later, come to know. His mental processes did not go far enough to disassociate these enemies with the stabbing foe in his gums. For the same reason he blamed them for disruption of his sleep. His ears laid back, and he uttered a deep growl.
There was no more magnificent creature in all of the breadth of the forest than this, the grizzly of the Selkirks. He was old and savage and wise; but for all his years, in the highest pinnacle of his strength. No man need to glance twice at him to know his glory. No tenderfoot could look at him and again wonder why, in the talk round the camp fire, the tried woodsmen always spoke of the grizzly with respect.
It was true that in the far corners of the earth there were creatures that could master him. The elephant could crush the life from his mighty body with the power of his knees; Kobaoba the rhino, most surly of all game, could have pierced his heart with his horn; perhaps even the Cape buffalo—that savage explosive old gentleman of the African marshes, most famous for his deadly propensity to charge on sight—could have given him a fair battle. But woe to the lion that should be obliged to face that terrible strength! Even the tiger, sinuous and terrible—armed with fangs like cruel knives and dreadful, raking, rending claws—could not have faced him in a fair fight.
But these were folk of the tropics, and his superiority was unquestioned among the northern animals. Even the bull moose had no wish to engage in a stand-up-and-take, close-range, death fight with a grizzly. The bull caribou left his trail at the sound of his heavy body in the thicket; the wolf pack, most deadly of fighting organizations, were glad to avoid him in the snow. His first cousins, the Alaskan bears, were more mighty than he, but they were less agile and, probably, less cunning. Such lesser creatures as wished to continue to enjoy the winter sunlight stepped softly when they journeyed past his lair.
He was a peculiar gray in color,—like brown hair that has silvered in many winters. His huge head was lowered between his high, rocking shoulders, his forelegs were simply great, knotty, cast-iron bunches of fiber and tendons; his long claws—worn down by digging in the rocks for marmots—were like great, curved fingers. As he stepped, his forefeet swung out, giving to his carriage an arrogance and a swagger that would have been amusing if it hadn't been terrible. His wicked teeth gleamed white in foam, and the hair stood stiff at his shoulders.
There is no forest crisis that presents such a test to human nerves as the charge of a grizzly. There is no forest voice more fraught with ferocity and savagery of the beasts of prey than his low, deep, reverberating growl. Human beings have not yet reached such perfection of self-mastery that they can hear such a sound, leaping suddenly like a thing of substance through the bush, and disregard it. It was to be that these three foes, journeying toward him along Creek Despair, did not disregard it now. For all the depth of the snow, he pushed through the spruce thicket into the sunlight.
Thus the three hunters met him—in all his strength and glory—not fifty feet distant at the base of the hill. He seemed to be poised to charge.
Bill's keen eyes saw the bear first. All at once its huge outline against the snow leaped to his vision. At the same instant the bear growled, a sound that halted halted Virginia and Harold in their tracks. For an instant all four figures stood in indescribable tableau: the bear poised, the three staring, the snowy wastes silent and changeless and unreal.
It was the last sight in the world that Bill had expected. He had supposed that the grizzlies were all in hibernation now; he hadn't conceived of the possibilities whereby the great creature had been called from his sleep. And he knew in one glance the full peril of the situation.
Often in his forest travels Bill had met grizzlies, and nearly always he had passed them by. Usually the latter were glad to make their escape; and Bill would hasten their departure with shouts of glee. Yet this man knew the grizzly, his power and his wrath, and most of all he knew his utter unreliability. It is not the grizzly way to stand impassive when he is at bay, and neither does he like to flee up hill. If the animal did think his escape was cut off—a delusion to which the bear family seem particularly subject—he would charge them with a fury and might that had no equal in the North American animal world. And a grizzly charge is a difficult thing to stop in a distance of fifty feet.
The presence of Virginia in their party had its influence in Bill's decision. In times past he had been willing enough to take a small measure of risk to his own life, but the life of every grizzly in the North could not pay for one jot of risk to hers. Lastly he realized at the first sight of those glowing, angry eyes, the ears back, and the stiff hairs on the shoulder that the grizzly was in a fighting mood.
For all the complexity of his thought, his decision did not take an instant. There was no waiting to offer the sporting opportunity to Harold. Virginia was not aware of a lapse in time between the instant that Bill caught sight of the bear and that in which his gun came leaping to his shoulder. He had full confidence in the hard-hitting vicious bullet in Harold's thirty-five, and most of all he relied on the four reserve shots that he supposed lay in the rifle magazine. The grizzly dies hard: he felt that all four of them would be needed to arrest the charge that would likely follow his first shot.
He didn't wait for those great muscles to get into action. The animal was standing broadside to him, his head turned and red eyes watching; if Bill had his own gun, he would have aimed straight for the space between the eyes. This is never a sportsman's shot; but for an absolute marksman, in a moment of crisis, it is the surest shot of all. But he did not know Harold's gun well enough to trust such a shot. Indeed, he aimed for the great shoulder, the region of the lungs and heart. The gun cracked in the silence.
The bullet went straight home, ripping through the lungs, tearing the great arteries about the heart, shivering even a portion of the heart itself. And yet the grizzly sprang like a demon through the deep snow, straight towards him.
It is no easy thing to face a grizzly's charge. The teeth gleam in red foam, the eyes flash, the great shoulders rock. For all the deep snow that he bounded through, the beast approached at an unbelievable pace. He bawled as he came—awful, reverberating sounds that froze the blood in the veins. If the course had been open, likely he would have been upon him before Bill could send home another shot. There could only be one result to such a meeting as this. One blow would strike the life from Bill's body as the lightning strikes it from a tree. But the snow impeded the bear, and it seemed to Virginia's horrified eyes that Bill would have time to empty the magazine. She saw his fingers race as he worked the lever action of the gun: she saw his eyes lower again to the sights. The bear seemed almost upon him. And she screamed when she heard the impotent click of the hammer against the breech. Bill had fires the single shot that was in the gun.
Before ever he heard the sound Harold remembered. In one wave of horror he recalled that he had forgotten to refill the magazine with shells. Yet leaping fast—red and deadly and terrible upon the heels of his remorse—there came an emotion that seared him like a wall of fire. He saw Bill's fate. By no circumstance of which he could conceive could the man escape. A shudder passed over his frame, but it was not of revulsion. Rather it was an emotion known well to the beasts of prey, though to human beings it comes but rarely. Here was his enemy, the man he hated above all living creatures, and the blood lust surged through him like a madness. In one wave of ecstasy he felt that he was about to see the gratification of his hatred.
In the hands of a brave and loyal man, the rifle Harold carried might yet have been Bill's salvation. It was a large-caliber, close-range gun of stupendous striking power. Yet Harold didn't lift it to his shoulder. Part of it was willful omission, mostly it was the paralysis of terror. Yet he would have need enough for the gun if the bear turned on him. He saw that Bill's had was groping, hopeless though the effort was, for one of the shells that Harold had given him and which he carried in his pocket.
But there was no time to find it, to open his gun and insert it, and to fire before the ravening enemy would be upon him. He made the effort simply because it was his creed: to struggle as long as his life blood pulsed in his veins. He knew there was no chance to run or dodge. The bear could go at thrice his own pace in the deep snow. His last hope had been that Harold would come to his aid: that the man would stop the bear's charge with Bill's own heavy rifle; but now he knew that Harold's enmity of cowardice had betrayed him.
But at that instant aid came from an unexpected quarter. Virginia was not one to stand helpless or to turn and flee. She remembered the pistol at her belt, and she drew it in a flash of blue steel. True and straight she aimed toward the glowing eyes of the grizzly.
At the angle that they struck, her bullets did not penetrate the brain, but they did give Bill an instant's reprieve. The bear struck at the wounds they made, then halted, bawling, in the snow. His roving eye caught sight of Virginia's form. With a roar he bounded toward her.
The next instant was one of drama, of incredible stress and movement. For all his mortal wounds, the short distance between the bear and the girl seemed to recede with tragic swiftness. The animal's cries rang through the silent forest: near and far the wild creatures paused in their occupations to listen. Virginia also stood her ground. There was no use to flee; she merely stood straight, her eyes gazing along her pistol barrel, firing shot after shot into the animal's head. Because it was an automatic, she was able to send home the loads in rapid succession.
But they were little, futile things, with never the shocking power to stop that blasting charge. Her safety still lay in that in which she had always trusted, the same that had been her fort and her stronghold in all their past adventures. Bill saw the grizzly change in direction; his response was instinctive and instantaneous. He came leaping through the snow as if a great hand had hurled him, all of his muscles contracting in response to the swift, immutable command of his will. For all the burden of his snowshoes and the depths of the drifts, his leap was almost as fast as the grizzly's own. He had but one realization: that the girl's tender flesh must never know those rending claws and fangs. He leaped to intercept the rending charge with his own body.
But his hand had found the shell by now, dropped it into the gun, and as a last instinctive effort, pulled back the lever that slid the cartridge into the barrel. There was no time to raise the gun to his shoulder. He pointed it instinctively toward the gray throat. And the end of the barrel was against the bear's flesh as he pressed the trigger.
No human eye could follow the lightning events of the next fraction of a second. All that occurred was over and done in the duration of one heart-beat,—before the shudder and explosion in the air from the rifle's report had passed away. One instant, and the three figures seemed all together; Bill crouched with rifle held pointed in his arms, Virginia behind him, the grizzly full upon them both. The next, and Harold stood alone in the snow and the silence,—awed, terrified, and estranged as if in a dream.
Except for the three forms that lay still, half-buried and concealed in the drifts, it was as if the adventure never occurred. The spruce trees stood straight and aloof as ever. The silence stretched unbroken; its immensity had swallowed and smothered the last echo of the rifle report and the grizzly's roar. There was no movement, seemingly no life,—only the drifts and the winter forest and the futile sun, shining down between the snow-laden trees.
Yet he knew vaguely what had occurred. The bullet had gone true. It had pierced the animal's neck, breaking the vertebrae of the spinal column, and life had gone out of him as a flame goes out in the wind. But it had come too late to destroy the full force of the charge. Bill had been struck with some portion of the bear's body as he fell and had been hurled like a lifeless doll into the drifts. Virginia, too, had received some echo of that shock, probably from Bill's body as he shattered down. Now all three lay half-hidden in the snow. Which of them lived and which were dead Harold dared not guess.
But he had no time to go forward and investigate before Bill had sprung to his feet. He had received only a glancing blow; the drifts into which he had fallen were soft as pillows. In reality he had never even lost consciousness. Still subject to the one thought that guided and shaped his actions throughout the adventure, he crawled over to Virginia's side.
No living man had ever seen his face as white as it was now. His eyes were wide with the image of horror; he didn't know what wounds the dying bear might have inflicted on the girl. There was no rend in her white flesh, however; and his eye kindled and his face blazed when he saw that she yet lived.
He didn't waste even a small part of his energies by futile pleadings for her to waken. He seized her shoulders and shook her gently.
Instantly her eyes opened. Her full consciousness returned to her with a rush. She was not scratched, not even shocked by the fall, and she reached up for Bill's hands. And instantly, with a laugh on her lips, she sprang to her feet.
"You killed him?" she asked.
It was the first breath she had wasted, and no man might hold it against her. She had only to look at the huge gray form in the drifts to know her answer. Bill, because he was a woodsman first, last, and always, slipped additional shells into Harold's rifle; then walked over to the bear. He gazed down at its filming eyes.
"Bear's all dead," he answered cheerfully. And Virginia's heart raced and thrilled, and a delicious exaltation swept through her, when she glanced down at this woodsman's hands. Big and strong and brown, there was not a tremor in their fingers.
The both of them whirled in real and superlative astonishment. Some one was speaking to them. Some one was asking them if they were both all right. It was a strange voice,—one that they scarcely remembered ever hearing before.
But they saw at once that the speaker was Harold. He had come with them to-day, quite true. Both of them had almost forgotten his existence.
In the weeks they had been together, Bill had always been careful never to try to show Harold in a bad light. It was simply an expression of the inherent decency of the man: he knew that Virginia loved him, that she had plighted her troth to him, and as long as that love endured and the engagement stood, he would never try to shatter her ideals in regard to him. He knew it meant only heartbreak for her to love and wed a man she couldn't respect. He knew enough of human nature to realize that love often lives when respect is dead, and no possible good could come of showing up the unworthiness that he beheld in Harold. He had never tried to embarrass him or smirch his name. For all his indignation now, his voice was wholly cheerful and friendly when he answered.
"We're quite all right, thanks," he said. "The only casualty was the bear. A little snow on our clothes, but it will brush off. And by the way——"
He paused, and for all his even tones, Harold had a sickening and ghastly fear of the sober query in Bill's eyes. "Why did you give me an unloaded gun and tell me it was full?" he went on. "Except for a good deal of luck there'd been a smile on the face of the grizzly—but no Bill!"
He thought it only just that, in spite of Virginia's presence, Harold explain this grave omission. He felt that Virginia was entitled to an explanation too, and Harold knew, from her earnest eyes, that she was waiting his answer. He might have been arrogant and insulting to Bill, but he cared enough for Virginia's respect to wish to justify himself. He studied their faces; it was plain that they did not accuse him, even in their most secret thoughts, of evil intent in handing Bill an almost empty gun. But by the stern code of the North sins of carelessness are no less damning than intentional ones and Harold knew that he had a great deal to answer for.
"And by the way," Bill went on, as he waited for his reply, "I don't remember hearing my gun off during the fray. You might explain that, too."
"I didn't shoot because I couldn't," Harold replied earnestly. "At first you were between me and the bear—and then Virginia was. It all happened so quickly that there was nothing I could do. I can't imagine why I forgot to reload the rifle. A man can't always remember—everything. I thought I had. Thank God that it didn't turn out any worse than it did."
Bill nodded; the girl's face showed unspeakable relief. She was glad that this lover of hers had logical and acceptable reasons for his omissions. The incident was past, the issue dead. They gathered about the gray grizzled form in the snow.
"Does this—help our food problem any?" Virginia asked.
"Except in an emergency—no. Virginia, you ought to try to cut that foreleg muscle." He lifted one of the front feet of the bear in his hands. "You'd see what it would be like to try to bite it. He's an old, tough brute—worse eating than a wolf. Strong as mink and hard as rock. If we were starving, we'd cut off one of those hams in a minute; but we can wait a while at least. If we don't pick up some more game during the day, I'll hike over to my Twenty-three Mile cabin and get the supplies I've left over there. There's a smoked caribou ham, among other things. I'll bring back a backload, anyway." Then his voice changed, and he looked earnestly into Virginia's eyes. "But you won't want to hunt any more to-day. I forgot—what a shock this experience would be to you."
She smiled, and the paleness about her lips was almost gone. "I'm getting used to shocks. I feel a little shaky—but it doesn't amount to anything. I want to climb up and look at the caribou trail, at least."
"Sure enough—if you feel you can stand it. It's only a hundred yards or so up the hill. I'd like to take old Bruin's hide, but I don't see how we could handle it. I believe we'd better leave him with all his clothes on, in the snow. And Heaven knows I'd like to find out what the old boy was doing out—at a time when all the other bears are hibernating."
They continued on up the creek until the grade of the hill was less, then clambered slowly up. Fifty yards up the slope they encountered the old caribou trail, but none of these wilderness creatures had been along in recent days. They followed it a short distance, however, back in the direction they had come and above the scene of their battle with the bear.
"No profit here," Bill said at last. "We might as well go down to the creek bed and find better walking."
They turned, and in an instant more came back to their own tracks. And suddenly Bill stopped and stared at them in dumb amazement.
He looked so astonished, so inexpressibly baffled, that for a moment his two companions were stricken silent. Virginia's heart leaped in her throat. Yet the tracks contained no message for her.
"What's the matter?" Harold asked. "What do you see?"
Bill caught himself and looked up. "Nothing very important—but mighty astonishing at that. We've just walked in a two-hundred-yard circle, up the creek to where we climbed the hill, back along the hill in this direction, and then down. And we haven't crossed that grizzly's tracks anywhere."
"Well, what of it?"
"Man, this snow has been here for weeks, with very little change. Do you mean to tell me that a lively, hungry bear is going to stay that long in one place unless he's asleep? Virginia, as sure as you live we—or somethin'—wakened that bear out of hibernation. And his den is somewhere in that two-hundred-yard circle."
"There's probably a cave in the rock," Harold suggested. "And I'm more interested in the cabin and dinner than I am in it."
"Nevertheless, I've never looked into a den of hibernation, and I've always wanted to know what they're like. It will only take a minute. Come on—it will be worth seeing."
But Harold had very special and particular reasons why such a course appealed to him not at all. "Yes—and maybe find a couple of other bears in there, in the dark and no chance to fight. I'm not interested, anyway. Go and look, if you like."
"I will, if you don't mind. Do you want to come too, Virginia? There's no danger—really there isn't. If this had been an old she-bear we might have found some cubs, but these old males travel around by themselves."
"I certainly wouldn't stay away," the girl replied. And her interest was real: the study of the forest life about her had been an ever increasing delight. She felt that she would greatly like to peer into one of those dark, mysterious dens where that most mysterious American animal, the grizzly, lies in deep coma through the long, winter months.
"It will only take a minute. We haven't got to back-track him more than a hundred yards at most. We'll be back in a minute, Harold. And if you don't mind—I'll take my own gun."
They exchanged rifles, and Virginia and Bill started back toward the fallen grizzly. But the exploration of the winter lair had not been the only thing Bill had in view. He also had certain words to say to Virginia,—words that he could scarcely longer repress, and which he couldn't have spoken with ease in Harold's presence. But now that they were alone, the sentences wouldn't shape on his lips.
He mushed a while in silence. "I suppose I haven't got to tell you, Virginia," he said at last. "That you—your own courage—saved my life."
She looked up to him with lustrous eyes. The man thrilled to the last little nerve. In her comradeship for him their luster was almost like that of which he had dreamed so often. "I know it's true," she answered frankly. "And I'm glad that—that it was mine, and not somebody else's." She too seemed to be having difficulty in shaping her thoughts. "I've never been happier about any other thing. To pay—just a little bit of debt. But in paying it, I incurred another—so the obligation is just as big as ever. You know—you saved my life, too."
He nodded. This was no time for deception, for pretty lies.
"I saw you throw yourself in front of me," she went on. "I can never forget it. I'll see that picture, over and over again, till I die—how you plunged through the snow and got in front. So since we each did for the other—the only thing we could do—there's nothing more to be said about it. Isn't that so, Bill?"
The man agreed, but his lips trembled as they never did during the charge of the grizzly.
"I've learned a lesson up here—that words aren't much good and don't seem to get anywhere." The girl spoke softly. "Only deeds count. After they're done, there is nothing much—that one can say."
So they did not speak of the matter again. They came to the bear's body and back-tracked him through the snow. They pushed through the young spruce from whose limbs the grizzly had knocked the snow. They they came out upon the cavern mouth.
Instantly Bill understood how the fall of the tree had knocked away the snow from the maw. "There's been a landslide here too, or a snowslide," he said. "You see—only the top of the cave mouth is left open. The dirt's piled around the bottom."
He crawled up over the pile of rocks and dirt and, stooping, stepped within the cavern. The girl was immediately behind him. Back five feet from the opening the interior was dark as night: the cavern walls, gray at the mouth, slowly paled and faded and were obliterated in the gloom. But there was no stir of life in the darkness, no sign of any other habitant. But the walls themselves, where the light from without revealed them, held Bill's fascinated gaze.
The girl stood behind him, silent, wondering what was in his mind. "This cave—I've never seen a cave just like this. Virginia——"
The man stepped forward and scratched a match on the stone. It flared; the shadows raced away. Then Bill's breath caught in a half-sob.
Instantly he smothered the match. The darkness dropped around them like a curtain. But in that instant of light Bill beheld a scene that tore at his heart. Against the cavern wall, lost in the irremediable darkness, he had seen a strange, white shape—a ghostly thing that lay still and caught the match's gleam—a grim relic of dead years.
He turned to the girl, and his voice was almost steady when he spoke. "You'd better go out, Virginia—into the light," he advised.
"Why? Is it—danger?"
"Not danger." His voice in the silence thrilled her and moved her. "Only wickedness. But it isn't anything you'd like to see."
The single match-flare had revealed him the truth. For one little fraction of an instant he had thought that the white form, so grim and silent against the stone, revealed some forest tragedy of years ago,—a human prey dragged to a wild beast's lair. But the shape of the cavern, the character of its walls, and a thousand other clews told the story plainly. The thing he had seen was a naked skeleton, flesh and garments having dropped away in the years; and the grizzly had simply made his lair in the old shaft of his father's mine. Bill had found his father's sepulcher at last!
For a moment he stood dreaming in the gloom. He understood, now, why his previous search had never revealed the mine. He had supposed that his father had operated along some stream, washing the gold from its gravel: it had never occurred to him that he had dug a shaft. In all probability, considering the richness of their content, they had burrowed into the hill and had found an old bed of the stream, had carried the gravel to the water's edge in buckets, and washed it out. He had never looked for tunnels and shafts: if he had done so, it was doubtful if he could have found the hidden cavern. The snowslide of some years before had covered up all outward signs of their work, struck down the trees they had blazed, and covered the ashes of their own camp fires. The girl's voice in the darkness called him from his musings.
"I believe I understand," she said. "You've found your mine—and your father's body."
"Yes. Just a skeleton."
"I'm not afraid. Do you want me to stay?"
"I'd love to have you, if you will. Some way—it takes away a lot of my bitterness—to have you here."
It was true. It seemed wholly fitting that she should be with him as he explored the cavern. It was almost as if the tragedy of his father's death concerned her, too.
"I can hold matches," she told him. She came up close, and for a moment her hand, groping, closed on his,—a soft, dear pressure that spoke more than any words. When it was released he lighted another match.
They stood together, looking down at the skeleton. But she wasn't quite prepared for what she saw. A little cry of horror rang strangely in the dark shaft.
This had been no natural death. Undoubtedly the elder Bronson had been struck down from behind, as he worked, and he lay just as he fell. There was one wound in the skull, round and ghastly, and in a moment they saw the weapon that made it. A rusted pick, such as miners use, lay beside the body.
"I won't try to do much to-day," the man told her, "except to see up one of my cornerposts and erect a claim notice. My father's notice has of course rotted away in the years and the monument that probably stood out there beyond the creek bed was covered in snowslide. You see, a claim is made by putting up four stone monuments—one at each corner of the area claimed. We'll be starting down in a day or two, and I'll register the claim. Then I'll come back—and give these poor bones decent burial."
From there he walked back to the end of the shaft, scratching another match. It was wholly evident that the mine was only scratched. He held the light close, studying the rear wall of the cave. It was simply a gravel bed, verifying his guess that here lay an old bed of the creek. In the first handful of stone he scraped out he found a half-ounce nugget.
"It's rich?" she asked.
"Beyond what I ever dreamed. But there's nothing more we can do now. I've made my find at least—but it doesn't seem to make me—as happy as it ought to. Of course that man—there against the wall—would naturally keep a man from being very happy. Of, if I could only find and kill the devil who did it!"
His voice in the gloom was charged with immeasurable feeling. She had never seen this side of him before. Here was primeval emotion, the desired for vengeance, filial obligation, hate that knew no mercy and could never be forgotten. She understood, now, the savage feuds that sometimes spring up among the mountain people, unable to forget a blow or an injury. She had the first inkling of how deeply his father's murder had influenced him.
But his face was calm when they emerged into the light. They walked over to the creek, and beneath its overhanging banks there were the snow had not swept, he found enough rocks for his monument. He gathered them, carried them in armfuls to a place fifty yards beyond the creek and down it, level with such a turn in the hillside above, beyond which the old creek bed obviously could not lie; then heaped them into a moment. Then he drew an old letter from his coat pocket, and searching farther, found a stub of a pencil. Virginia looked over his shoulders as he wrote.
One hundred yards up the stream Harold watched them, dumbfounded as to what they were doing. He saw Bill finish the writing, then place the larger on the monument, fastening it down with a large stone. Then he came mushing toward them.
So intent were they upon their work that they didn't notice him until he was almost up to them. But both of them would have paused in wonder if they had observed the curious mixture of emotions upon his lips. His lips hung loose, his eyes protruded, and something that might have been greed, or might have been jealousy or some other unguessed emotion drew and harshened his features.
"You've found a mine?" he asked.
Virginia looked up, joyful at Bill's good fortune. "We've found his father's mine—the old shaft where the bear was been sleeping. But there's a dreadful side of it too."
"Show me where it is. I want to see it. Take me into it, Virginia—right away——"
Bill had a distinct sensation of revulsion at the thought of this man going into his father's sepulcher, and he didn't know why. It was an instinct too deeply buried for him to trace. But he tried to force it down. There was no reason why Virginia's fiance shouldn't view his mine. Already, Virginia was pointing out the way.
"You can claim half to it," he was whispering into her ear. "You were the one with him when he found it."
"I can—but I won't," she replied coldly. "He asked me to go with him. The thought's unworthy of you, Harold."
But he was in no mood to be humbled by her disapproval. Curiously, he was intensely excited. He mushed away toward the cavern mouth.
Two minutes later he stood in the darkness of the funnel, fumbling for a match. "Gold, gold, gold," he whispered. "Heaps and heaps of it—what I've always hunted. And Bill had to find it. That devil had to walk right into it."
He was sickened by the thought that except for his own cowardice he would have accompanied them into the den. At least he should have done that much, he told himself, to atone for his conduct during the bear's charge. Then he would have been in a position to claim half the mine—and get it too. Dark thoughts, curiously engrossing and lustful, thronged his mind.
He found a match at least and it flared in the darkness. And the white skeleton lay just at his feet.
He drew back, startled, but instantly recognized his poise. He knelt with unexplicable intentness. He too saw the ghastly wound and its grim connection with the rusted pick. And he bent, slowly, like a man who is trying to control an unwonted eagerness, lifted the pick in his arms.
His fingers seemed to curl around it, like those of a miser around his gold. Some way, his grasp seemed caressing. Oh, it was easy to handle and lift! How naturally it swung in his arms! What a deadly blow the cruel point could inflict! Just one little tap had been needed. Bronson had rocked and fallen, no longer to hold his share in the mine's gold. If there were an enemy before him now, one tap, and one alone was all that would be needed.
He could picture the scene of some twenty years before; the flickering candles, the gray walls covered with dancing shadows, the yellow gold,—beautiful in the light. He could see Bronson working,—always the plodder, always the fool! Behind him Rutheford, his partner, the pick in his arms and his brave intent in his brain. Then one swift stroke——
Harold did not know that at the thought his muscles made involuntary response. He swung the pick down, imagining the blow, with a ferocity and viciousness that would have been terrible to see.
In the darkness his face was drawn and savage, and ugly fires glowed and smoldered and flamed in his eyes.