XXII
Beatrice Neilson was a mountain girl, with the strong thews of Jael, yet she hid her face as the canoe shot into the crest of the rapids. It seemed incredible to her that the light craft should buffet that wild cataract and yet live. She was young and she loved life; and death seemed very near.
The scene that her eyes beheld in that last little instant in which the boat seemed to hang, shuddering, at the crest of the descent was branded indelibly on her memory. She saw Ben's face, set like iron, the muscles bunching beneath his flannel sleeves as he set his paddle. He was leaning forward, aware of nothing in the world but the forthcoming crisis. And in that swift flash of vision she saw not only the steel determination and the brutal savagery of the avenger. A little glimpse of the truth went home to her, and she beheld something of the misdirected idealism of the man, the intensity and steadfastness that were the dominant traits of his nature. She could not doubt his belief in the reality of his cause. Whether fancied or real the injury, deep wells of emotion in his heart had broken their seals and flowed forth.
The wolf crouched on the heap of supplies, fearful to the depths of his wild heart of this mighty stream, yet still putting his faith in his master in the stern. Beatrice saw his wild, frightened eyes as he gazed down into the frightful whirlpools. The banks seemed to whip past.
Then the rushing waters caught the craft and seemed to fling it into the air. There was the swift sense of lightning and incredible movement, of such incalculable speed as that with which a meteor blazes through the sky, and then a mighty surging, struggle; an interminable instant of ineffable and stupendous conflict. The bow dipped, split the foam; then the raging waters seized the craft again, and with one great impulse hurled it through the clouds of spray, down between the narrow portals of rocks.
Beatrice came to herself with the realization that she had uttered a shrill cry. Part of the impulse behind it was simply terror; but it was also the expression of an intensity of sensation never before experienced. She could have understood, now, the lure of the rapids to experienced canoeists. She forced herself to look into the wild cataract.
The boat sped at an unbelievable pace. Ben held his paddle like iron, yet with a touch as delicate as that of a great musician upon piano keys, and he steered his craft to the last inch. His face was still like metal, but the eyes, steely, vivid, and magnetic, had a look of triumph. The first of the great tests had been passed.
Sudden confidence in Ben's ability to guide her through to safety began to warm the girl's frozen heart. There were no places more dangerous than that just past; and he had handled his craft like a master. He was a voyageur: as long as his iron control was sustained, as long as his nerve was strong and his eye true she had every chance of coming out alive. But they had irremediably cast their fortunes upon the river, now. They could not turn back. She was in his whole charge, an agent of vengeance against her own father and his confederates.
Hot, blinding tears suddenly filled her eyes. Her frantic fear of the river had held them back for a time; but they flowed freely enough now the first crisis was past. In utter misery and despair her head bowed in her hands; and her brown hair, disheveled, dropped down.
Ben gazed at her with a curious mingling of emotions. It had not been part of his plan to bring sorrow to this girl. After all, she was not in the least responsible for her father's crimes. He had sworn to have no regrets, no matter what innocent flesh was despoiled in order that he might strike the guilty; yet the sight of that bowed, lovely head went home to him very deeply indeed. She was the instrument of his vengeance, necessary to his cause, but there was nothing to be gained by afflicting her needlessly. At least, he could give her his pity. It would not weaken him, dampen his fiery resolution, to give her that.
As he guided his craft he felt growing compassion for her; yet it was a personal pity only and brought no regrets that he had acted as he did.
"I wish you wouldn't cry," he said, rather quietly.
Amazed beyond expression at the words, Beatrice looked up. For the instant her woe was forgotten in the astounding fact that she had won compassion from this cast-iron man in the stern.
"I'll try not to," she told him, her dark eyes ineffably beautiful with their luster of tears. "I don't see why I should try—why I should try to do anything you ask me to—but yet I will—"
Further words came to him, and he could not restrain them. "You're sort of—the goat, Beatrice," he told her soberly. "It was said, long ago, that the sins of the father must be visited upon the children; and maybe that's the way it is with you. I can't help but feel sorry—that you had to undergo this—so that I could reach your father and his men. If you had seen old Ezram lying there—the life gone from, his kind, gray old face—the man who brought me home and gave me my one chance—maybe you'd understand."
They were speechless a long time, Beatrice watching the swift leap of the shore line, Ben guiding, with steady hand, the canoe. Neither of them could guess at what speed they traveled this first wild half-hour; but he knew that the long miles—so heart-breaking with their ridges and brush thickets to men and horses—were whipping past them each in a few, little breaths. Ever they plunged deeper into the secret, hushed heart of the wild—a land unknown to the tread of white men, a region so still and changeless that it seemed excluded from the reign and law of, time. The spruce grew here, straight and dark and tall, a stalwart army whose measureless march no human eyes beheld. Already they had come farther than a pack train could travel, through the same region, in weary days.
Already they were at the border of Back There. They had cut the last ties with the world of men. There were no trails here, leading slowly but immutably to the busy centers of civilization; not a blaze on a tree for the eyes of a woodsman riding on some forest venture, not the ashes of a dead camp fire or a charred cooking rack, where an Indian had broiled his caribou flesh. Except by the slow process of exploration with pack horses, traveling a few miles each day, fording unknown rivers and encircling impassable ranges, or by waiting patiently until the fall rains swelled the river, they might never leave this land they had so boldly entered. They could not go out the way they had come—over those seething waters—and the river, falling swiftly, would soon be too low to permit them to push down to its lower waters where they might find Indian encampments.
Nothing was left but the wilderness, ancient and unchanged. The spruce forest had a depth and a darkness that even Ben had never seen; the wild creatures that they sometimes glimpsed on the bank stared at them wholly without knowledge as to what they were, and likely amazed at the strength whereby they had braved this seething torrent that swept through their sylvan home. Here was a land where the grizzly had not yet learned of a might greater than his, where he had not yet surrendered his sovereignty to man. Here the moose—mightiest of the antlered herd—reached full maturity and old age without ever mistaking the call of a birch-bark horn for that of his rutting cow. Young bulls with only a fifty-inch spread of horns and ten points on each did not lead the herds, as in the more accessible provinces of the North. All things were in their proper balance, since the forest had gone unchanged for time immemorial; and as the head-hunters had not yet come the bull moose did not rank as a full-grown warrior until he wore thirty points and had five feet of spread, and he wasn't a patriarch until he could no longer walk free between two tree trunks seventy inches apart. Certain of the lesser forest people were not in unwonted numbers because that fierce little hunter, the marten, had been exterminated by trappers; the otter, yet to know the feel of cold iron, fished to his heart's content in rivers where an artificial fly had never fallen and the trout swarmed in uncounted numbers in the pools.
Darting down the rapids Ben felt the beginnings of an exquisite exhilaration. Part of it arose from the very thrill and excitement of their headlong pace; but partly it had a deeper, more portentous origin. Here was his own country—this Back There. While all the spruce forest in which he had lived had been his natural range and district—his own kind of land with which he felt close and intimate relations—this was even more his home than his own birthplace. By light of a secret quality, hard to recognize, he was of it, and it was of him. He felt the joy of one who sees the gleam of his own hearth through a distant window.
He knew this land; it was as if he had simply been away, through the centuries, and had come home. The shadows and the stillness had the exact depth and tone that was true and right; the forest fragance was undefiled; the dark sky line was like something he had dreamed come true. He felt a strange and growing excitement, as if magnificent adventure were opening out before him. His gaze fell, with a queer sense of understanding, to Fenris.
The wolf had recovered from his fear of the river, by now, and he was crouched, alert and still, in his place. His gaze was fast upon the shore line; and the green and yellow fires that mark the beast were ablaze again in his eyes. Fenris too made instinctive response to those breathless forests; and Ben knew that the bond between them was never so close as now.
Fenris also knew that here was his own realm, the land in which the great Fear had not yet laid its curse. The forest still thronged with game, the wood trails would be his own. Here was the motherland, not only to him but to his master, too. They were its fierce children: one by breed, the other because he answered, to the full, the call of the wild from which no man is wholly immune.
Ben could have understood the wolf's growing exultation. The war he was about to wage with Neilson. would be on his own ground, in a land that enhanced and developed his innate, natural powers, and where he had every advantage. The wolf does not run into the heart of busy cities in pursuit of his prey. He tries to decoy it into his own fastnesses.
A sudden movement on the part of Beatrice, in the bow of the canoe, caught his eye. She had leaned forward and was reaching among the supplies. His mind at once leaped to the box of shells for her pistol that he had thrown among the duffle, but evidently this was not the object of her search. She lifted into her hands a paper parcel, the same she had brought from her cabin early that morning.
He tried to analyze the curious mingling of emotions in her face. It was neither white with disdain nor dark with wrath; and the tears were gone from her eyes. Rather her expression was speculative, pensive. Presently her eyes met his.
His heart leaped; why he did not know. "What is, it?" he asked.
"Ben—I called you that yesterday and there's no use going back to last names now—I've made an important decision."
"I hope it's a happy one," he ventured.
"It's as happy as it can be, under the circumstances. Ben, I came of a line of frontiersmen—the forest people—and if the woods teach one thing it is to make the best of any bad situation."
Ben nodded. For all his long training he had not entirely mastered this lesson himself, but he knew she spoke true.
"We've found out how hard Fate can hit—if I can make it plain," she went on. "We've found out there are certain powers—or devils—or something else, and what I don't know—that are always lying in wait for people, ready to strike them down. Maybe you would call it Destiny. But the Destiny city men know isn't the Destiny we know out here—I don't have to tell you that. We see Nature just as she is, without any gay clothes, and we know the cruelty behind her smile, and the evil plans behind her gentle words."
The man was amazed. Evidently the stress and excitement of the morning had brought out the fanciful and poetic side of the girl's nature.
"We don't look for good luck," she told him. "We don't expect to live forever. We know what death is, and that it is sure to come, and that misfortune comes always—in the snow and the cold and the falling tree—and when we have good luck we're glad—we don't take it for granted. Living up here, where life is real, we've learned that we have to make the best of things in order to be happy at all."
"And you mean—you're going to try to make the best of this?" His voice throbbed ever so slightly, because he could not hold it even.
"There's nothing else I can do," she replied. "You've taken me here and as yet I don't see how I can get away. This doesn't mean I've gone over to your side."
He nodded. He understood that very well.
"I'm just admitting that at present I'm in your hands—helpless—and many long weeks in before us," she went on. "I'm on my father's side, last and always, and I'll strike back at you if the chance comes. Expect no mercy from me, in case I ever see my way to strike."
The man's eyes suddenly gleamed. "Don't you know—that you'd have a better chance of fighting me—if you didn't put me on guard?"
"I don't think so. I don't believe you'd be fooled that easy. Besides—I can't pretend to be a friend—when I'm really an enemy."
For one significant instant the man looked down. This was what he had done—pretended friendship when he was a foe. But his was a high cause!
"I'm warning you that I'm against you to the last—and will beat you if I see my way," the girl went on. "But at the same time I'm going to make the best of a bad situation, and try to get all the comfort I can. I'm in your hands at present, and we're foes, but just the same we can talk, and try to make each other comfortable so that we can be comfortable ourselves, and try not to be any more miserable than we can help. I'm not going to cry any more."
As she talked she was slowly unwrapping the little parcel she had brought. Presently she held it out to him.
It was just a box of homemade candy—fudge made with sugar and canned milk—that she had brought for their day's picnic. But it was a peace offering not to be despised. A heavy load lifted from Ben's heart.
He waited his chance, guiding the boat with care, and then reached a brown hand. He crushed a piece of the soft, delicious confection between his lips. "Thanks, Beatrice," he said. "I'll remember all you've told me."
XXIII
It is a peculiar fact that no one is more deeply moved by the great works and phenomena of nature than those who live among them. It is the visitor from distant cities, or the callow youth with tawdry clothes and tawdry thoughts who disturbs the great silences and austerity of majestic scenes with half-felt effusive words or cheap impertinences. Oddly enough, the awe that the wilderness dweller knows at the sight of some great, mysterious canyon or towering peak seems to increase, rather than decrease, with familiarity. His native scenes never grow old to him. Their beauty and majesty is eternal.
Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that the native woodsman knows nature as she really is: living ever close to her he knows her power over his life. Perhaps there is a religious side to the matter, too. In the solitudes the religious instincts receive an impulse that is impossible to those who know only the works of man. The religion that this gives is true and deep, and the eye instinctively lifts in reverence to the manifestations of divine might.
When the swirling waters carried the canoe down into the gorge of the Yuga both Ben and Beatrice were instinctively awed and stilled. Ever the walls of the gorge grew more steep, until the sunlight was cut off and they rode as if in twilight. The stone of the precipices presented a marvellous array of color; and the spruce, almost black in the subdued light, stood in startling contrast. Ben saw at once that even were they able to land they could not—until they had emerged from the gorge—climb to the highlands. A mountain goat, most hardy of all mountaineers, could scarcely scale the abrupt wall.
During this time of half-light they saw none of the larger forest creatures that at first had gazed at them with such wonder from the banks. The reason was simply that they could not descend and ascend the steep walls.
Mostly Ben had time only for an occasional glimpse at the colossus above him. His work was to guide the craft between the perilous boulders. Occasionally the river slackened its wild pace, and at such times he stretched his arms and rested his straining eyes.
Both had largely forgotten the danger of the ride. Because she was trying bravely to make the best of a tragic situation Beatrice had resolved to keep danger from her thoughts. Ben had known from the first that danger was an inevitable element in his venture, and he accepted it just as he had considered it,—with entire coldness. Yet both of them knew, in their secret thoughts, that the balance of life and death was so fine that the least minor incident might cast them into darkness. It would not have to be a great disaster, a wide departure from the commonplace. They were traveling at a terrific rate of speed, and a sharp rock too close to the surface would rip the bottom from their craft. Any instant might bring the shock and shudder of the end.
There would scarcely be time to be afraid. Both would be hurled into the stream; and the wild waters, pounding against the rocks, would close the matter swiftly. It awed them and humbled them to realize with what dispatch and ease this wilderness power could snuff out their mortal lives. There would be no chance to fight back, no element of uncertainty in the outcome. Here was a destiny against which the strength of man was as thistledown in the wind! The thought was good spiritual medicine for Ben, just as it would have been for most other men, and his egoism died a swift and natural death.
One crash, one shock, and then the darkness and silence of the end! The river would rage on, unsatiated by their few pounds of flesh, storming by in noble fury; but no man would know whither they had gone and how they had died. The walls of the gorge would not tremble one whit, or notice; and the spruce against the sky would not bow their heads to show that they had seen.
But the canyon broke at last, and the craft emerged into the sunlight. It was good to see the easy slope of the hills again, the spruce forests, and the forms of the wild creatures on the river bank, startled by their passing. Noon came and passed, and for lunch they ate the last of the fudge. And now a significant change was manifest in both of them.
Psychologists are ever astounded at the ability of mortals, men and animals, to become adjusted to any set of circumstances. The wax of habit sets almost in a day. The truth was, that in a certain measure with very definite and restricted limits, both Ben and Beatrice were becoming adjusted even to this amazing situation in which they found themselves. This did not mean that Beatrice was in the least degree reconciled to it. She had simply accepted it with the intention of making the best of it. She had been abducted by an enemy of her father and was being carried down an unknown and dangerous river; but the element of surprise, the life of which is never but a moment, was already passing away. Sometimes she caught herself with a distinct start, remembering everything with a rage and a bitter load on her heart; but the mood would pass quickly.
It is impossible, through any ordinary change of fortune, for a normal person to lose his sense of self-identity. As long as that remains exterior conditions can make no vital change, or make him feel greatly different than he felt before. The change from a peasant to a millionaire brings only a moment's surprise, and then readjustment. Beatrice was still herself; the man in the stern remained Ben Darby and no one else. Very naturally she began to talk to him, and he to answer her.
The fact that they were bitter foes, one the victim of the other, did not decree they could not have friendly conversation, isolated as they were. From time to time Ben pointed out objects of interest on the shore; and she found herself remarking, in a casual voice, about them. And before the afternoon he had made her laugh, in spite of herself,—a gay sound in which fear and distress had little echo.
"We're bound to see a great deal of each other in the next few weeks," he had said; and this fact could not be denied. The sooner both became adjusted to it the better. Actual fear of him she had none; she remembered only too well the steel in his eyes and the white flame on his cheeks as he had assured her of her safety.
In mid-afternoon Ben began to think of making his night's camp. From time to time the bank became an upright precipice where not even a tree could find foothold; and it had occurred to him, with sudden vividness, that he did not wish the darkness to overtake him in such a place. The river rocks would make short work of him, in that case. It was better to pick out a camp site in plenty of time lest they could not find one at the day's end.
In one of the more quiet stretches of water he saw the place—a small cove and a green, tree-clad bank, with the gorge rising behind. Handling his canoe with greatest care he slanted toward it. A moment later he had caught the brush at the water's edge, stepped off into shallow water, and was drawing the canoe up onto the bank.
"We're through for the day," he said happily, as he helped Beatrice out of the boat. "I'll confess I'm ready to rest."
Beatrice made no answer because her eyes were busy. Coolly and quietly she took stock of the situation, trying to get an idea of the geographical features of the camp site. She saw in a glance, however, that there was no path to freedom up the gorge behind her. The rocks were precipitate: besides, she remembered that over a hundred miles of impassable wilderness lay between her and her father's cabin. Without food and supplies she could not hope to make the journey.
The racing river, however, wakened a curious, inviting train of thought. The torrent continued largely unabated for at least one hundred miles more, she knew, and the hours that it would be passable in a canoe were numbered. The river had fallen steadily all day; driftwood was left on the shore; rocks dried swiftly in the sun, cropping out like fangs above the foam of the stream. Was there still time to drift on down the Yuga a hundred or more miles to the distant Indian encampment? She shut the thought from her mind, at present, and turned her attention to the work of making camp.
With entire good humor she began to gather such pieces of dead wood as she could find for their fire.
"Your prisoner might as well make herself useful," she said.
Ben's face lighted as she had not seen it since their outward journey from Snowy Gulch. "Thank God you're taking it that way, Beatrice," he told her fervently. "It was a proposition I couldn't help—"
But the girl's eyes flashed, and her lips set in a hard line. "I'm doing it to make my own time go faster," she told him softly, rather slowly. "I want you to remember that."
But instantly both forgot their words to listen to a familiar clucking sound from a near-by shrub. Peering closely they made out the plump, genial form of Franklin's grouse,—a bird known far and wide in the north for her ample breast and her tender flesh.
"Good Lord, there's supper!" Ben whispered. "Beatrice, get your pistol—"
Her eyes smiled as she looked him in the face. "You remember—my pistol isn't loaded!"
"Excuse me. I forgot. Give it to me."
She handed him the little gun, and he slipped in the shells he had taken from it. Then—for the simple and sensible reason that he didn't want to take any chance on the loss of their dinner—he stole within twenty feet of the bird. Very carefully he drew down on the plump neck.
"Dinner all safe," he remarked rather gayly, as the grouse came tumbling through the branches.
XXIV
Quietly Beatrice retrieved the bird and began to remove its feathers. Ben built the fire, chopped sturdily at a half-grown spruce until it shattered to the earth, and then chopped it into lengths for fuel. When the fire was blazing bright, he cut away the green branches and laid them, stems overlapping, into a fragrant bed.
"Here's where you sleep to-night, Beatrice," he informed her.
She stopped in her work long enough to try the springy boughs with her arms; then she gave him an answering smile. Even a tenderfoot can make some sort of a comfortable pallet out of evergreen boughs—ends overlapping and plumes bent—but a master woodsman can fashion a veritable cradle, soft as silk with never a hard limb to irritate the flesh, and yielding as a hair mattress. Such softness, with the fragrance of the balsam like a sleeping potion, can not help but bring sweet dreams.
Ben had been wholly deliberate in the care with which he had built the pallet. He had simply come to the conclusion that she was paying a high price for her father's sins; and from now on he intended to make all things as easy as he could for her. Moreover, she had been a sportswoman of the rarest breed and merited every kindness he could do for her.
He was not half so careful with his own bed, built sixty feet on the opposite side of the fire. He threw it together rather hastily. And when he walked back to the fire he found an amazing change.
Already Beatrice had established sovereignty over the little patch of ground they had chosen for the camp,—and the wilderness had drawn back. This spot was no longer mere part of the far-spreading, trackless wilds. It had been set off and marked so that the wilderness creatures could no longer mistake it for part of their domain. Over the fire she had erected a cooking rack; and water was already boiling in a small bucket suspended from it. In another container a fragrant mixture was in the process of cooking. She had spread one of the blankets on the grass for a tablecloth.
As twilight lowered they sat down to their simple meal,—tea, sweetened with sugar, and vegetables and meat happily mingled in a stew. It was true that the vegetable end was held up by white grains of rice alone, but the meat was the white, tender flesh of grouse, permeating the entire dish with its tempting flavor. As a whole, the stew was greatly satisfying to the inner man.
"I wish I'd brought more tea," Ben complained, as he sipped that most delightful of all drinks, the black tea beloved of the northern men.
"You a woodsman, and don't know how to remedy that!" the girl responded. "I know of a native substitute that's almost as good as the real article."
About the embers of the fire they sat and watched the tremulous wings of night close round them. The copse grew breathless. The distant trees blended into shadow, the nearer trunks dimmed and finally faded; the large, white northern stars emerged in infinite troops and companies, peering down through the rifts in the trees. Here about their fire they had established the domain of man. For a few short hours they had routed the forces of the wilderness; but the foe pressed close upon them. Just at the fluctuating ring of firelight he waited, clothed in darkness and mystery,—the infinite, brooding spirit of the ancient forest.
They had never known such silence, broken only by the prolonged chord of the river, as descended upon them now. It was new and strange to the conscious life of Ben, himself, the veritable offspring of the woods; although infinitely old and familiar to a still, watching, secret self within him. It was as if he had searched forever for this place and had just found it, and it answered, to the full, a queer mood of silence in his own heart. The wind had died down now. The last wail of a coyote—disconsolate on a far-away ridge—had trembled away into nothingness; the voices of the Little People who had chirped and rustled in the tree aisles during the daylight hours were stilled with a breathless, dramatic stillness. Such sound as remained over the interminable breadth of that dark forest was only the faint stirrings and rustlings of the beasts of prey going to their hunting; and this was only a moving tone in the great chord of silence.
To Ben the falling night brought a return of his most terrible moods. Beatrice sensed them in his pale, set face and his cold, wolfish eyes. The wolf sat beside him, swept by his master's mood, gazing with deadly speculations into the darkness. Beatrice saw them as one breed to-night. The wild had wholly claimed this repatriated son. The paw of the Beast was heavy upon him; the softening influences of civilization seemed wholly dispelled. There was little here to remind her that this was the twentieth century. The primitive that lies just under the skin in all men was in the ascendancy; and there was little indeed to distinguish him from the hunter of long ago, a grizzled savage at the edge of the ice who chased the mammoth and wild pony, knowing no home but the forest and no gentleness unknown to the wolf that ran at his heels.... The tenderness and sympathy he had had for her earlier that day seemed quite gone now. She searched for it in vain in the dark and savage lines of his pale face.
Because it has always been that the happiness of women must depend upon the mood of men, her own spirits fell. The despair that descended upon her brought also resentment and rage; and soon she slipped away quietly to her bed. She drew the blankets over her face; but no tears wet her cheeks to-night. She was dry-eyed, thoughtful—full of vague plans.
She lay awake a long time, until at last a little, faint ray of hope beamed bright and clear. More than a hundred miles farther down the Yuga, past the mouth of Grizzly River, not far from the great, north-flowing stream of which the Yuga was a tributary, lay an Indian village—and if only she could reach it she might enlist the aid of the natives and make a safe return, by a long, roundabout route, to her father's arms. The plan meant deliverance from Ben and the defeat of all his schemes of vengeance,—perhaps the salvation of her father and his subordinates.
She realized perfectly the reality of her father's danger. She had read the iron resolve in Ben's face. She knew that if she failed to make an immediate escape from him, all his dreadful plans were likely to succeed: his enemies would follow him into the unexplored mazes of Back There to effect her rescue and fall helpless in his trap. What quality of mercy he would extend to them then she could readily guess.
Just to get down to the Indian village: this was her whole problem. But it was Ben's plan to land and enter the interior somewhere in the vast wilderness between, from which escape could not be made until the flood waters of fall. The way would remain open but a few hours more, due to the simple fact that the waters were steadily falling and the river-bottom crags, forming impassable barriers at some points, would be exposed. If she made her escape at all it must be soon.
Yet she could not attempt it at night. She could not see to guide the canoe while the darkness lay over the river. Just one further chance remained—to depart in the first gray of dawn.
She fell into troubled sleep, but true to her resolution, wakened when the first ribbon of light stretched along the eastern horizon. She sat up, laying the blankets back with infinite care. This was her chance: Ben still lay asleep.
Just to steal down to the water's edge, push off the canoe, and trust her life to the doubtful mercy of the river. The morning soon would break; if she could avoid the first few crags, she had every chance to guide her craft through to deliverance and safety. By no conceivable chance could Ben follow her. He would be left in the shadow of the gorge, a prisoner without hope or prayer of deliverance. There was no crossing the cliffs that lifted so stern and gray just behind. Before he could build any kind of a craft with axe and fire, the waters would fall to a death level, beyond any hope of carrying him to safety. The tables would be turned; he would be left as helpless to follow her as Neilson had been to follow him.
The plan meant deliverance for her; but surely it meant death to him. Starvation would drive him to the river and destruction, before men could ever come the long way to rescue him. But this was not her concern. She was a forest girl and he her enemy: he must pay the price for his own deeds.
She got to her feet, stalking with absolute silence. She must not waken him now. Softly she pressed her unshod foot into the grass. He stirred in his sleep; and she paused, scarcely breathing.
She looked toward him. Dimly she could see his face, tranquil in sleep and gray in the soft light; and an instantaneous surge of remorse sped through her. There was a sweetness, a hint of kindly boyishness in his face now, so changed since she had left him beside the glowing coals. Yet he was her deadly enemy; and she must not let her woman's heart cost her her victory in its moment of fulfillment. She crept on down to the water.
She could discern the black shadow of the canoe. One swift surge of her shoulders, one leap, the splash of the stern in the water and the swift stroke of the paddle, and she would be safe. She stepped nearer.
But at that instant a subdued note of warning froze her in her tracks. It was only a small sound, hushed and hardly sharp enough to arouse Ben from his sleep; but it was deadly, savage, unutterably sinister. She had forgotten that Ben did not wage war alone. For the moment she had given no thought to his terrible ally,—a pack brother faithful to the death.
A great, gaunt form raised up from the pile of duffle in the canoe; and his fangs showed ivory white in the wan light. It was Fenris, and he guarded the canoe. He crouched, ready to spring if she drew near.
The girl sobbed once, then stole back to her blankets.
XXV
Ben wakened refreshed, at peace with the world as far as he could ever be until his ends were attained; and immediately built a roaring fire. Beatrice still slept, exhausted from the stress and suspense of her attempt to escape. When the leaping flames had dispelled the frost from the grass about the fire Ben stepped to her side and touched her shoulder.
"It's time to get up and go on," he said. "We have only a few hours more of travel."
It was true. The river had fallen appreciably during the night. Not many hours remained in which to make their permanent landing. Although the river was somewhat less violent from this point on, the lower water line would make traveling practically as perilous as on the preceding day.
The girl opened her eyes. "I'd rather hoped—I had dreamed it all," she told him miserably.
The words touched him. He looked into her face, moved by the girlishness and appeal about the red, wistful mouth and the dark, brimming eyes. "It's pretty tough, but I'm afraid it's true," he said, more kindly than he had spoken since they had left the landing. "Do you want me to cook breakfast and bring it to you here?"
"No, I want to do that part myself. It makes the time pass faster to have something to do."
He went to look for fresh meat, and she slipped into her outer garments. She found water already hot in a bucket suspended from the cooking rack, permitting a simple but refreshing toilet. With Ben's comb she straightened out the snarls in her dark tresses, parted them, and braided them into two dusky ropes to be worn Indian fashion in front of her shoulders. Then she prepared the meal.
It was a problem to tax the ingenuity of any housekeeper,—to prepare an appetizing breakfast out of such limited supplies. But in this art, particularly, the forest girls are trained. A quantity of rice had been left from the stew of the preceding night, and mixing it with flour and water and salt, she made a batter. Sooner or later fresh fat could be obtained from game to use in frying: to-day she saw no course other than to melt a piece of candle. The reverberating roar of the rifle a hundred yards down the river bank, however, suggested another alternative.
A moment later Ben appeared—and the breakfast problem was solved. It was another of the woods people that his rifle had brought down,—one that wore fur rather than feathers and which had just come in from night explorations along the river bank. It was a yearling black bear—really no larger than a cub—and he had an inch of fat under his furry hide.
The fat he yielded was not greatly different from lard; and the pancakes—or fritters, as Ben termed them—were soon frying merrily. Served with hot tea they constituted a filling and satisfactory breakfast for both travelers.
After breakfast they took to the river, yielding themselves once more to the whims of the current. Once more the steep banks whipped past them in ever-changing vista; and Ben had to strain at his paddle to guide the craft between the perilous crags. The previous day the high waters had carried them safely above the boulders of the river bed: to-day some of the larger crags all but scraped the bottom of the canoe. It did not tend toward peace of mind to know that any instant they might encounter a submerged crag that would rip their craft in twain. Ben felt a growing eagerness to land.
But within an hour they came out once more upon the open forest. The river broadened, sped less swiftly, the bank sloped gradually to the distant hills. This was the heart of Back There,—a virgin and primeval forest unchanged since the piling-up of the untrodden ranges. The wild pace of the craft was checked, and they kept watch for a suitable place to land.
There was no need to push on through the seething cataracts that lay still farther below. Shortly before the noon hour Ben's quick eye saw a break in the heavy brushwood that lined the bank and quickly paddled toward it. In a moment it was revealed as the mouth, of a small, clear stream, flowing out of a beaver meadow where the grass was rank and high. In a moment more he pushed the canoe into the mud of the creek bank.
They both got out, rather sober of mien, and she helped him haul the canoe out upon the bank. They unloaded it quickly, carrying the supplies in easy loads fifty yards up into the edge of the forest, on well-drained dry ground.
The entire forest world was hushed and breathless, as if startled by this intrusion. Neither of the two travelers felt inclined to speak. And the silence was finally broken by the splashing feet of a moose, running through a little arm of the marsh that the forest hid from view.
"Is this our permanent camp?" the girl asked at last.
"Surely not," was the reply. "It's too near the river for one thing—too easily found. It's too low, too—there'll be mosquitoes in plenty in that marsh two months from now. The first thing is—to look around and find a better site."
"You want me to come?"
"I'd rather, if you don't mind."
She understood perfectly. He did not intend to give her complete freedom until the river fell so low that the rapids farther down would be wholly impassable.
"I'll come." Beatrice smiled grimly. "We can have that picnic we planned, after all."
They found a moose trail leading into the forest, and leaving the wolf on guard over the supplies, they filed swiftly along it in that peculiar, shuffling, mile-speeding gait that all foresters learn. At once both were aware of a subdued excitement. In the first place, this was unknown country and they experienced the incomparable thrill of exploration. Besides they were seeking a permanent camp where their fortunes would be cast, the drama of their lives be enacted, for weeks to come.
Almost at once they began to catch glimpses of wild life,—a squirrel romping on a limb; or a long line of grouse, like children in school, perched on a fallen log. The trapper had not yet laid his lines in this land, and the tracks of the little fur-bearers weaved a marvelous and intricate pattern on the moose trail. Once a marten with orange throat peered at them from a covert, and once a caribou raced away, too fast for a shot.
Mostly the wild things showed little fear or understanding of the two humans. The grouse relied on their protective coloration, just as when menaced by the beasts of prey. An otter, rarely indeed seen in daylight, hovered a moment beside a little stream to consider them; and a coyote, greatest of all cowards, lingered in their trail until they were within fifty feet of his grey form, then trotted shyly away.
"We won't starve for meat, that's certain," Ben informed her. His voice was subdued; he had fallen naturally into the mood of quietness that dwells ever in the primeval forest.
Because the trail seemed to be leading them too far from the waterways, they took a side trail circling about a wooded hill. Ever Ben studied the landmarks, looked carefully down the draws and tried to learn as much as possible of the geography of the country; and Beatrice understood his purpose with entire clearness. He wished to locate his camp so that it would have every natural advantage and insurance against surprise attack. He desired that every advantage of warfare be in his favor when finally he came to grips with Neilson and his men.
They crossed a low ridge, following down another of the thousand creeks that water the northern lands. In a moment it led them to a long, narrow lake, blue as a sapphire in its frame of dusky spruce.
For a moment both of them halted on its bank, held by its virgin beauty. Lost in the solitudes as it was, perhaps never before gazed upon by the eyes of men, still it gave no impression of bleakness and stagnation. Rather it was a scene of scintillating life, vivid past all expression. Far out of range on the opposite shore a huge bull moose stood like a statue in black marble, gazing out over the shimmering expanse. Trout leaped, flashing silver, anywhere they might look; and a flock of loon shrieked demented cries from its center. The burnished wings of a flock of mallard flashed in the air, startled by some creeping hunter.
Slowly, delighted in spite of themselves by the lovely spot, they followed along its shore. They climbed the bank; and now Ben began to examine his surroundings with great care.
He had suddenly realized that he was in a region wonderfully fitted for his permanent camp. The low ridge between the lake and the creek gave a clear view of a large part of the surrounding country, affording him every chance of seeing his enemies before they saw him. If they came along the river—the course they would naturally follow—they would be obliged to cross the beaver marsh—a half-mile of open grassland with no protecting coverts. Beatrice saw, dismayed, that his gray eyes were kindling with unholy fire under his heavy, dark brows.
What if he should see them, deep in the wet grass, filing across the open marsh! How many shots would be needed to bring his war to a triumphant end? There were no thickets in which they might find shelter: hidden himself, they could not return his fire. Before they could break and run to cover he could destroy them all!
Should they cross the narrow neck of the marsh, higher up, he would have every chance to see them on the lake shore. The site was good from the point of health and comfort—high enough to escape the worst of the insect pests, close to fresh water, plenty of fuel, and within a few hundred yards of a lake that simply swarmed with fish and waterfowl.
Still following a narrow, racing trout stream that flowed into the lake they advanced a short distance farther, clear to the base of a rock wall. And all at once Beatrice, walking in front, drew up with a gasp.
She stood at the edge of a little glade, perhaps thirty yards across, laying at the base of the cliff. The creek flowed through it, the grass was green and rich, beloved by the antlered herds that came to graze, the tall spruce shaded it on three sides. But it was not these things that caught the girl's eye. Just at the edge of a glade a dark hole yawned in the face of the cliff.
In an instant more they were beside it, gazing into its depths. It was a natural cavern with rock walls and a clean floor of sand—a roomy place, and yet a perfect stronghold against either mortal enemies or the powers of wind and rain.
"It's home," the man said simply.