XXVI
Ben and Beatrice went together back to the canoe, and in two trips they carried the supplies to the cave. By instinct a housekeeper, Beatrice showed him where to stow the various supplies, what part of the cave was to be used for provisions, where their cots would be laid, and where to erect the cooking rack. Shadows had fallen over the land before they finished the work.
Tired from the hard tramp, yet sustained by a vague excitement neither of them could name or trace, they began to prepare for the night. Ben cut boughs as before, placing Beatrice's bed within the portals of the cave and his own on the grass outside. He cut fuel and made his fire: Beatrice prepared the evening meal.
The flesh of the cub-bear they had procured that morning would have to serve them to-night; but more delicious meat could be procured to-morrow. Ben knew that the white-maned caribou fed in the high park lands. Beatrice made biscuits and brewed tea; and they ate the simple food in the firelight. Already the darkness was pressing close upon them, tremulous, vaguely sinister, inscrutably mysterious.
They had talked gayly at first; but they grew silent as the fire burned down to coals. A great preoccupation seemed to hold them both. When one spoke the other started, and word did not immediately come in answer. Beatrice's despair was not nearly so dominating to-night; and Ben harbored a secret excitement that was almost happiness.
Its source and origin Ben could not trace. Perhaps it was just relief that the perilous journey was over. The strain of his hours at the paddle had been severe; but now they were safe upon the sustaining earth. Yet this fact alone could hardly have given him such a sense of security,—an inner comfort new to his adventurous life.
The forest was oppressive to-night, tremulous with the passions of the Young World; yet he did not respond to it as before. The excitement that sparkled in the red wine of his veins was not of the chase and death, and he had difficulty in linking it up with the thoughts of his forthcoming vengeance. Rather it was a mood that sprang from their surroundings here, their shelter at the mouth of the cave. He felt deeply at peace.
The fire blazed warmly at the cavern maw; the wolf stood tense and still, by means of the secret wireless of the wild fully aware of the tragic drama, the curtain of which was the dark just fallen; yet Ben's wild, bitter thoughts of the preceding night did not come readily back to him. There was a quality here—in the firelight and the haven of the cave—that soothed him and comforted him. The powers of the wild were helpless against him now. The wind might hurl down the dead trees, but the rock of the cavern Wall would stand against them. Even the dreaded avalanche could roar and thunder on the steep above in vain.
There was no peril in the hushed, breathless forest for him to-night. This was his stronghold, and none could assail it. And it was a significant fact that his sense of intimate relationship with the wolf, Fenris, Was someway lessened. Fenris was a creature of the open forest, sleeping where he chose on the trail; but his master had found a cavern home. There was a strange and bridgeless chasm between such breeds as roamed abroad and those that slept, night after night, in the shelter of the same walls.
He watched the girl's face, ruddy in the firelight, and it was increasingly hard to remember that she was of the enemy camp,—the daughter of his arch foe. To-night she was just a comrade, a habitat of his own cave.
For the first time since he had found Ezram's body—so huddled and impotent in the dead leaves—he remembered the solace of tobacco. He hunted through his pockets, found his pipe and a single tin of the weed, and began to inhale the fragrant, peace-giving smoke. When he raised his eyes again he found the girl studying him with intent gaze.
She looked away, embarrassed, and he spoke to put her at ease. "You are perfectly comfortable, Beatrice?" he asked gently.
"As good as I could expect—considering everything. I'm awfully relieved that we're off the water."
"Of course." He paused, looking away into the tremulous shadows. "Is that all? Don't you feel something else, too—a kind of satisfaction?"
The coals threw their lurid glow on her lovely, deeply tanned face. "It's for you to feel satisfaction, not me. You couldn't expect me to feel very satisfied—taken from my home—as a hostage—in a feud with my father. But I think I know what you mean. You mean—the comfort of the fire, and a place to stay."
"That's it. Of course."
"I feel it—but every human being does who has a fire when this big, northern night comes down and takes charge of things. It's just an instinct, I suppose, a comfort and a feeling of safety—and likely only the wild beasts are exempt from it." Her voice changed and softened, as her girlish fancy reached ever farther. "I suppose the first men that you were telling me about on the way out, the hairy men of long ago, felt the same way when the cold drove them to their caves for the first time. A great comfort in the protecting walls and the fire."
"It's an interesting thought—that perhaps the love of home sprang from that hour."
"Quite possibly. Perhaps it came only when they had to fight for their homes—against beasts, and such other hairy men as tried to take their homes away from them. Perhaps, after all, that's one of the great differences between men and beasts. Men have a place to live in and a place to fight for—and the fire is the symbol of it all. And the beasts run in the forest and make a new lair every day."
Thoughts of the stone age were wholly fitting in this stone-age forest, and Ben's fancy caught on fire quickly. "And perhaps, when the hairy men came to the caves to live, they forgot their wild passions they knew on the open trails—their blood-lust and their wars among themselves—and began to be men instead of beasts." Ben's voice had dropped to an even, low murmur. "Perhaps they got gentle, and the Brute died in their bodies."
"Yes. Perhaps then they began to be tamed."
The silence dropped about them, settling slowly; and all except the largest heap of red coals burned down to gray ashes. The darkness pressed ever nearer. The girl stretched her slender, brown arms.
"I'm sleepy," she said. "I'm going in."
He got up, with good manners; and he smiled, quietly and gently, into her sober, wistful face. "Sleep good," he prayed. "You've got solid walls around you to-night—and some one on guard, too. Good night."
A like good wish was on her lips, but she pressed it back. She had almost forgotten, for the moment, that this man was her abductor and her father's enemy. She ventured into the darkness of the cave.
Scratching a match Ben followed her, so that she could see her way. For the instant the fireside was deserted. And then both of them grew breathless and alert as the brush cracked and rustled just beyond the glowing coals.
Some huge wilderness creature was venturing toward them, at the edge of the little glade.
XXVII
The match flared out in Ben's fingers, and the only light that was left was the pale moonlight, like a cobweb on the floor of the glade, and the faint glow from the dying fire. About the glade ranged the tall spruce, Watching breathlessly; and for a termless second or two a profound and portentous silence descended on the camp. No leaf rustled, not a tree limb cracked. The creature that had pushed through the thickets to the edge of the glade was evidently standing motionless, deciding on his course.
Only the wild things seem to know what complete absence of motion means. To stand like a form in rock, not a muscle quivering or a hair stirring, is never a feat for ragged, over stretched human nerves; and it requires a perfect muscle control that is generally only known to the beasts of the forest. Only a few times in a lifetime in human beings are the little, outward motions actually suspended; perhaps under the paralysis of great terror or, with painstaking effort, before a photographer's camera. But with the beasts it is an everyday accomplishment necessary to their survival. The fawn that can not stand absolutely motionless, his dappled skin blending perfectly with the background of shrubbery shot with sunlight, comes to an end quickly in the fangs of some great beast of prey. The panther that can not lurk, not a muscle quivering, in his ambush beside the deer trail, never knows full feeding. The creature on the opposite side of the glade seemed as bereft of motion as the spruce trees in the moonlight, or the cliff above the cave.
"What is it?" Beatrice whispered. The man's eyes strained into the gloom.
"I don't know. It may be just a moose, or maybe a caribou. But it may be—"
He tiptoed to the door of the cave, and his eye fell to the crouching form of Fenris. The creature outside was neither moose nor caribou. The great wolf of the North does not stand at bay to the antlered people. He was poised to spring, his fangs bared and his fierce eyes hot with fire, but he was not hunting. Whatever moved in the darkness without, the wolf had no desire to go forth and attack. Perhaps he would fight to the death to protect the occupants of the cave; but surely an ancient and devastating fear had hold of him. Evidently he recognized the intruder as an ancestral enemy that held sovereignty over the forest.
At that instant Ben leaped through the cavern maw to reach his gun. There was nothing to be gained by waiting further. This was a savage and an uninhabited land; and the great beasts of prey that ranged the forest had not yet learned the restraint born of the fear of man. And he knew one breathless instant of panic when his eye failed to locate the weapon in the faint light of the fire.
Holding hard, he tried to remember where he had left it. The form across the glade was no longer motionless. Straining, Ben saw the soft roll of a great shadow, almost imperceptible in the gloom—advancing slowly toward him. Then the faint glow of the fire caught and reflected in the creature's eyes.
They suddenly glowed out in the half-darkness, two rather small circles of dark red, close together and just alike. This night visitor was not moose or caribou, or was it one of the lesser hunters, lynx or wolverine, or a panther wandered far from his accustomed haunts. The twin circles were too far above the ground. And whatever it was, no doubt remained but that the creature was steadily stalking him across the soft grass.
At that instant Ben's muscles snapped into action. Only a second remained in which to make his defense—the creature had paused, setting his muscles for a death-dealing charge. "Go back into the cave—as far as you can," he said swiftly to Beatrice. His own eyes, squinted and straining for the last iota of vision in that darkened scene, made a last, frantic search for his rifle. Suddenly he saw the gleam of its barrel as it rested against the wall of the cliff, fifteen feet distant.
At once he knew that his only course was to spring for it in the instant that remained, and trust to its mighty shocking power to stop the charge that would in a moment ensue. Yet it seemed to tear the life fiber of the man to do it. His inmost instincts, urgent and loud in his ear, told him to remain on guard, not to leave that cavern maw for an instant but to protect with his own body the precious life that it sheltered. His mind worked with that incredible speed that is usually manifest in a crisis; and he knew that the creature might charge into the cavern entrance in the second that he left it. Yet only in the rifle lay the least chance or hope for either of them.
"At him, Fenris!" he shouted. The wolf leaped forward like a thrown spear,—almost too fast for the eye to follow. He was deathly afraid, with full knowledge of the power of the enemy he went to combat, but his fears were impotent to restrain him at the first sound of that masterful voice. These were the words he had waited for. He could never disobey such words as these—from the lips of his god. And Ben's mind had worked true; he knew that the wolf could likely hold the creature at bay until he could seize his rifle.
In an instant it was in his hands, and he had sprung back to his post in front of the cavern maw. And presently he remembered, heartsick, that the weapon was not loaded.
For his own safety he had kept it empty on the outward journey, partly to prevent accident, partly to be sure that his prisoner could not turn it against him. But he had shells in the pocket of his jacket. His hand groped, but his reaching fingers found but one shell, dropping it swiftly into the gun. And now he knew that no time remained to seek another. The beast in the darkness had launched into the charge.
Thereafter there was only a great confusion, event piled upon event with incredible rapidity, and a whole lifetime of stress and fear lived in a single instant. The creature's first lunge carried him into the brighter moonlight; and at once Ben recognized its breed. No woodsman could mistake the high, rocking shoulders, the burly form, the wicked ears laid back against the flat, massive head, the fangs gleaming white, the long, hooked claws slashing through the turf as he ran. It was a terrible thing to see and stand against, in the half-darkness. The shadows accentuated the towering outline; and forgotten terrors, lurking, since the world was young, in the labyrinth of the germ plasm wakened and spread like icy streams through the mortal body and seemed to threaten to extinguish the warm flame of the very soul.
The grizzly bawled as he came, an explosive, incredible storm of sound. Few indeed are the wilderness creatures that can charge in silence: muscular exertion can not alone relieve their gathered flood of madness and fury. And at once Ben sensed the impulse behind the attack. He and the girl had made their home in the grizzly's cave—perhaps the lair wherein he had hibernated through the winter and which he still slept in from time to time—and he had come to drive them out. Only death could pay for such insolence as this,—to make a night's lair in the den of his sovereignty, the grizzly.
It is not the accustomed thing for a grizzly to make an unprovoked attack. He has done it many times, in the history of the west, but usually he is glad enough to turn aside, only launching into his terrible death-charge when a mortal wound obliterates his fear of man, leaving only his fear of death. But this grizzly, native to these uninhabited wilds, had no fear of man to forget. He did not know what man was, and he had not learned the death that dwells in the shining weapon he carries in his arms. No trappers mushed through his snows of spring; no woodsman rode his winding trails. True, from the first instant that the human smell had reached him on the wind he had been disturbed and discomfited; yet it was not grizzly nature to yield his den without a fight. The sight of the wolf—known to him of old—only wakened an added rage in his fierce heart.
The wolf met him at his first leap, springing with noble courage at his grizzled throat; and the bear paused in his charge to strike him away. He lashed out with his great forepaw; and if that blow had gone straight home the ribs of the wolf would have been smashed flat on his heart and lungs. The tough trunk of a young spruce would have been broken as quickly under that terrible, blasting full-stroke of a grizzly. The largest grizzly weighs but a thousand pounds, but that weight is simple fiber and iron muscle, of a might incredible to any one but the woodsmen who know this mountain king in his native haunts. But Fenris whipped aside, and the paw missed him.
Immediately the wolf sprang in again, with a courage scarcely compatible with lupine characteristics, ready to wage this unequal battle to the death. But his brave fight was tragically hopeless. For all that his hundred and fifty pounds were, every ounce, lightning muscle and vibrant sinew, it was as if a gopher had waged war with a lynx. Yet by the law of his wild heart he could not turn and flee. His master—his stalwart god whose words thrilled him to the uttermost depths—had given his orders, and he must obey them to the end.
The second blow missed him also, but the third caught a small shrub that grew twenty feet beyond the dying fire. The shrub snapped off under the blow, and its branchy end smote the wolf across the head and neck. As if struck by a tornado he was hurled into the air, and curtailed and indirect though the blow was, he sprawled down stunned and insensible in the grass. The bear paused one instant; then lunged forth again.
But the breath in which the wolf had stayed the charge had given Ben his chance. With a swift motion of his arm he had projected the single rifle shell into the chamber of the weapon. The stock snapped to his shoulder; and his keen, glittering eyes sought the sights.
XXVIII
Few wilderness adventures offer a more stern test to human nerves than the frightful rush of a maddened grizzly. It typifies all that is primal and savage in the wild: the insane rage that can find relief only in the cruel rending of flesh; the thundering power that no mere mortal strength can withstand. But Ben was a woodsman. He had been tried in the fire. He knew that not only his life, but that of the girl in the cavern depended upon this one shot; and it was wholly characteristic of Wolf Darby that his eye held true and his arm was steady as a vice of iron.
He was aware that he must wait until the bear was almost upon him, in order to be sure to send the bullet home to a vital place. This alone was a test requiring no small measure of self-control. The instinct was to fire at once. In the moonlight it was difficult to see his sights: his only chance was to enlarge his target to the last, outer limit of safety. He aimed for the great throat, below the slavering jaw.
His finger pressed back steadily against the trigger. The slightest flinching, the smallest motion might yet throw off his aim. The rifle spoke with a roar.
But this wilderness battle was not yet done. The ball went straight home, down through the throat, mushrooming and plowing on into the neck, inflicting a wound that was bound to be mortal within a few seconds. The bear recoiled; but the mighty engine of its life was not yet destroyed. Its incalculable fonts of vitality had not yet run down.
The grizzly bounded forward again. The ball had evidently missed the vertebrae and spinal column. His crashing, thunderous roar of pain smothered instantly the reechoing report of the rifle and stifled the instinctive cry that had come to Ben's lips. He was a forester; and he had known of old what havoc a mortally wounded bear can wreak in a few seconds of life. In that strange, vivid instant Ben knew that his own and the girl's life still hung in the balance, with the beam inclining toward death.
The grizzly was in his death-agony, nothing more; yet in that final convulsion he could rip into shreds the powerful form that opposed him. Ben knew, with a cold, sure knowledge, that if he failed to slay the beast, it would naturally crawl into its lair for its last breath. As this dreadful thought flashed home he dropped the empty rifle and seized the axe that leaned against a log of spruce beside the fire.
There was no time at all to search out another shell and load his rifle. If the shock of the heavy bullet had not slackened the bear's pace he would not even have had time to seize the axe. Finally, if the bear had not been all but dead, in his last, threshing agony, Ben's mortal strength could not have sent home one blow. As it was they found themselves facing each other over the embers of the fire, well-matched contestants whose stake was life and whose penalty was death. The grizzly turned his head, caught sight of Ben, identified him as the agent of his agony, and lurched forward.
Just in time Ben sprang aside, out of the reach of those terrible forearms; and his axe swung mightly in the air. Its blade gleamed and descended—a blow that might have easily broken the bear's back if it had gone true but which now seemed only to infuriate him the more. The bear reared up, reeled, and lashed down; and dying though he was, he struck with incredible power. One slashing stroke of that vast forepaw, one slow closing of those cruel fangs upon skull or breast, and life would have gone out like a light. But Ben leaped aside again, and again swung down his axe.
These were but the first blows of a terrific battle that carried like a storm through the still reaches of the forest. Far in the distant tree aisles the woods people paused in their night's occupation to listen, stirred and terrified by the throb and thrill in the air; the grazing caribou lifted his growing horns and snorted in terror; the beasts of prey paused in the chase, growling uneasily, gazing with fierce, luminous eyes in the direction of the battle.
It is beyond the ken of man whether or not, in their wild hearts, these forest folk sensed what was taking place,—that their gray monarch, the sovereign grizzly, was at the death-fight with some dreadful invader from the South. They heard the bear's fierce bawls, unimitatable by any other voice as he lashed down blow after blow; and they heard the thud and crunch of the axe against his body. Had this monarch of the trails found his master at last?
Gazing out through the aperture of the cave Beatrice beheld the whole picture: the ring of spruce trees, the glade so strange and ensilvered in the moonlight, and these two fighting beasts, magnificent in fury over the embers of the dying fire. And Ben's powers increased, rather than lessened. Ever he swung his terrible axe with greater power.
He fought like the wolf that was his blood brother,—lunging, striking down, recoiling out of harm's way, and springing forward to strike again. This man was Wolf Darby, a forester known in many provinces for his woods prowess, but even those who had seen his most spectacular feats, in past days, had not appreciated the real extent of his powers. There was a fury and a might in his blows that was hard to associate with the world of human beings,—such ferociousness and wolf-like savagery, welling strength and prowess of battle that mostly men have forgotten in their centuries of civilization, but which still mark the death-fight between beasts.
Ben had always recalled the earlier types of man—his great-thewed ancestors, wild hunters in the forests of ancient Germany—but never so much as to-night. He was in his natural surroundings—at the mouth of his cave in which the Woman watched and exulted in his blows, enclosed by the primeval forest and beside the ashes of his fire. There could be nothing strange or unreal about this scene to Beatrice. It was more true than any soft vista of a far-away city could possibly be. It was life itself,—man battling for his home and his woman against the raw forces of the wild.
All superficialities and superfluities were gone, and only the basic stuff of life remained,—the cave, the fire, the man who fought the beast in the light of the ancient moon. At that moment Ben was no more of the twentieth century than he was of the first, or of the first more than of some dark, unnumbered century of the world's young days. He was simply the male of his species, the man-child of all time, forgetting for the moment all the little lessons civilization had taught, and fighting his fight in the basic way for the basic things.
This was no new war which Ben and the grizzly fought in the pale light of the moon. It had begun when the race began, and it would continue, in varied fields, until men perished from the earth. Ben fought for life—not only his own but the girl's—that old, beloved privilege to breathe the air and see and know and be. He represented, by a strange symbolism, the whole race that has always fought in merciless and never-ending battle with the cruel and oppressive powers of nature. In the grizzly were typified all those ancient enemies that have always opposed, with claw and fang, this stalwart, self-knowing breed that has risen among the primates: he symbolized not only the Beast of the forest, but the merciless elements, storm and flood and cold and all the legions of death. And had they but known their ultimate fate if this intruder survived the battle and brought his fellows into this, their last stronghold, the watching forest creatures would have prayed to see the grizzly strike him to the earth.
Ben knew, too, that he was fighting for his home; and this also lent him strength. Home! His shelter from the storm and the cold, the thing that marked him a man instead of a beast. The grizzly had come to drive him forth; and they had met beside the ashes of his fire.
The old exhilaration and rapture of battle flashed through him as he swung his axe, sending home blow after blow. Sometimes he cried out, involuntarily, in his fury and hatred; and as the bear weakened he waged the fight at closer quarters. His muscles made marvelous response, flinging him out of danger in the instant of necessity and giving terrific power to his blows.
He danced about the shaggy, bleeding form of the bear, swinging his axe, howling in his rage, and escaping the smashing blows of the bear with miraculous agility,—a weird and savage picture in the moonlight. But at last the grizzly lunged too far. Ben sprang aside, just in time, and he saw his chance as the great, reeling form sprawled past. He aimed a terrific blow just at the base of the skull.
The silence descended quickly thereafter. The blow had gone straight home, and the last flicker of waning life fled from the titanic form. He went down sprawling; Ben stood waiting to see if another blow was needed. Then the axe fell from his hands.
For a moment he stood as if dazed. It was hard to remember all that occurred in the countless life times he had lived since the grizzly had stolen out of the spruce forest. But soon he remembered Fenris and walked unsteadily to his side.
The wolf, however, was already recovering from the blow. He had been merely stunned; seemingly no bones were broken. Once more Ben turned to the mouth of the cavern.
Sobbing and white as the moonlight itself Beatrice met him in the doorway. She too had been uninjured; his arm had saved her from the rending fangs. She was closer to him now, filling a bigger part of his life. He didn't know just why. He had fought for her; and some way—they were more to each other.
And this was his cavern,—his stronghold of rock where he might lay his head, his haven and his hearth, and the symbol of his dominance over the beasts of the field. He had fought for this, too. And he suddenly knew a great and inner peace and a love for the sheltering walls that would dwell forever in the warp and woof of his being.
PART THREE
THE TAMING
XXIX
Ben rose at daybreak, wonderfully refreshed by the night's sleep, and built the fire at the cavern mouth. Beatrice was still asleep, and he was careful not to waken her. The days would be long and monotonous for her, he knew, and the more time she could spend in sleep the better.
He did, however, steal to the opening of the cavern and peer into her face. The soft, morning light fell gently upon it, bringing out its springtime freshness and the elusive shades of gold in her hair. She looked more a child than a woman, some one to shelter and comfort rather than to harry as a foe. "Poor little girl," he murmured under his breath. "I'm going to make it as easy for you as I can."
He meant what he said. He could do that much, at least—extend to her every courtesy and comfort that was in his power, and place his own great strength at her service.
His first work was to remove the skin of last night's invader,—the huge grizzly that lay dead just outside the cavern opening. They would have use for this warm, furry hide before their adventure was done. It would supplement their supply of blankets; and if necessary it could be cut and sewed with threads of sinew into clothes. Because the animal had but recently emerged from hibernation his fur, except for a few rubbed places, was long and rich,—a beautiful, tawny-gray that shimmered like cloth-of-gold in the light.
It taxed his strength to the utmost to roll over the huge body and skin it. When the heavy skin was removed he laid it out, intending to stretch it as soon as he could build a rack. He cut off some of the fat; then quartering the huge body, he dragged it away into the thickets.
The hour was already past ten; but Beatrice—worn out by the stress of the night before—did not waken until she heard the crack of her pistol. She lay a while, resting, watching through the cavern opening Ben's efforts to prepare breakfast. A young grouse had fallen before the pistol, and her companion was busy preparing it for the skillet.
The girl watched with some pleasure his rather awkward efforts to go about his work in silence,—evidently still believing her asleep. She laughed secretly at his distress as he tripped clumsily over a piece of firewood; then watched him with real interest as he mixed batter for griddle cakes and fried the white breast of the grouse in bear fat. Filling one of the two tin plates he stole into the cavern.
Falling into his mood the girl pretended to be asleep. She couldn't have understood why her pulse quickened as he knelt beside her, looking so earnestly and soberly into her face. Then she felt the touch of his fingers on her shoulder.
"Wake up, Beatrice," he commanded, with pretended gruffness. "It's after ten, and you've got to cook my breakfast."
She stirred, pretending difficulty in opening her eyes.
"Get right up," he commanded again. "D'ye think I'm going to wait all morning?"
She opened her eyes to find him regarding her with boyish glee. Then—as a surprise—he proffered the filled plate, meanwhile raising his arm in feigned fear of a blow.
She laughed; then began upon her breakfast with genuine relish. Then he brought her hot water and the meager toilet articles; and left the cave to prepare his own breakfast.
"I'm going on a little hunt," he said, when this rite was over. "We can't depend on grouse and bear forever. I hate to ask you to go—"
His tone was hopeful; and she could not doubt but that the lonely spirit of these solitudes had hold of him. They were two human beings in a vast and uninhabited wilderness, and although they were foes, they felt the primitive need of each other's companionship. "I don't mind going," she told him. "I'd rather, than stay in the cave."
"It's a fine morning. And what's your favorite meat—moose or caribou?"
"Caribou—although I like both."
He might have expected this answer. There are few meats in this imperfect earth to compare in flavor with that of the great, woodland caribou, monarch of the high park-lands.
"That means we do some climbing, instead of watching in the beaver meadows. I'm ready—any time."
They took the game trail up the ridge, venturing at once into the heavy spruce; but curiously enough, the mysterious hush, the dusky shadows did not appall Beatrice greatly to-day. The miles sped swiftly under her feet. Always there were creatures to notice or laugh at,—a squirrel performing on a branch, a squawking Canada Jay surprised and utterly baffled by their tall forms, a porcupine hunched into a spiny ball and pretending a ferociousness that deceived not even such hairbrained folk as the chipmunks in the tree roots, or those queens of stupidity, the fool hens on the branch. In the way of more serious things sometimes they paused to gaze down on some particularly beautiful glen—watered, perhaps, by a gleaming stream—or a long, dark valley steeped deeply in the ancient mysticism of the trackless wilds.
He helped her over the steeps, waited for her at bad crossings; and meanwhile his thoughts found easy expression in words. He had to stop and remind himself that she was his foe. Beatrice herself attempted no such remembrance; she was simply carrying out her resolve to make the best of a deplorable situation.
She could see, however, that he kept close watch of her. He intended to give her no opportunity to strike back at him. He carried his rifle unloaded, so that if she were able, in an unguarded moment, to wrest it from him she could not turn it against him. But there was no joy for her in noticing these small precautions. They only reminded her of her imprisonment; and she wisely resolved to ignore them.
They climbed to the ridge top, following it on to the plateau where patches of snow still gleamed white and the spruce grew in dark clumps, leaving open, lovely parks between. Here they encountered their first caribou.
This animal, however, was not to their liking in the way of meat for the table. A turn in the trail suddenly revealed him at the edge of the glade, his white mane gleaming and his graceful form aquiver with that unquenchable vitality that seems to be the particular property of northern wild animals; but Ben let him go his way. He was an old bull, the monarch of his herd; he had ranged and mated and fought his rivals for nearly a score of years in the wild heart of Back There,—and his flesh would be mostly sinew.
Ten minutes later, however, the girl touched his arm. She pointed to a far glade, fully three hundred yards across the canyon. Her quick eyes made out a tawny form against the thicket.
It was a young caribou—a yearling buck—and his flesh would be tender as a spring fowl.
"It's just what we want, but there's not much chance of getting him at that range," he said.
"Try, anyway. You've got a long-range rifle. If you can hold true, he's yours."
This was one thing that Ben was skilled at,—holding true. He raised the weapon to his shoulder, drawing down finely on that little speck of brown across the gulch. Few times in his life had he been more anxious to make a successful shot. Yet he would never have admitted the true explanation: that he simply desired to make good in the girl's eyes.
He held his breath and pressed the trigger back.
Beatrice could not restrain a low, happy cry of triumph. She had forgotten all things, for the moment, but her joy at his success. And truly, Ben had made a remarkable shot. Most hunters who boast of long-range hits do not step off the distance shot; fifty yards is called a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards three hundred; and to kill true at this range is not the accustomed thing on the trails of sport. The bullet had gone true as a light-shaft, striking the animal through the shoulders, and he had never stirred out of his tracks. With that joy of conquest known to all owners of rod and gun—related darkly to the blood-lust of the beasts—they raced across the gully toward the fallen.
Ben quartered the animal, and again he saw fit to save the hide. It is the best material of all for the parka, the long, full winter garment of the North.
Ben carried the meat in four trips back to the camp. By the time this work was done, and one of the quarters was drying over a fire of quivering aspen chips, the day was done. Again they saw the twilight shadows grow, and the first sable cloak of night was drawn over the shoulders of the forest. Beatrice prepared a wonderful roast of caribou for their evening meal; and thereafter they sat a short time at the mouth of the cavern, looking quietly into the red coals of the dying fire. Again Ben knew the beneficence and peace of the sheltering walls of home. Again he felt a sweet security,—a taming, gentling influence through the innermost fiber of his being.
But Fenris the wolf gazed only into the darkened woods, and the hair stood stiff at his shoulders, and his eyes glowed and shone with the ancient hunting madness induced by the rising moon.
XXX
June passed away in the wilds of Back There, leaving warmer, longer days, a more potent sun, and a greener, fresher loveliness to the land. The spring calves no longer tottered on wabbly legs, but could follow their swift mothers over the most steep and difficult trails. Fledglings learned to fly, the wolf cubs had their first lessons in hunting on the ridges. The wild Yuga had fallen to such an extent that navigation—down to the Indian villages on the lower waters—was wholly impossible.
The days passed quickly for Ben and Beatrice. They found plenty of work and even of play to pass the time. Partly to fill her lonely moments, but more because it was an instinct with her, Beatrice took an ever-increasing interest in her cave home. She kept it clean and cooked the meals, performing her tasks with goodwill, even at times a gaiety that was as incomprehensible to herself as to Ben.
Their diet was not so simple now. Of course their flour and sugar and rice, and the meat that they took in the chase furnished the body of their meals, and without these things they could not live; but Beatrice was a woods child, and she knew how to find manna in the wilderness. Almost every morning she ventured out into the still, dew-wet forest, and nearly always she came in with some dainty for their table. She gathered watercress in the still pools and she knew a dozen ways to serve it. Sometimes she made a dressing out of animal oil, beaten to a cream; and it was better than lettuce salad. Other tender plant tops were used as a garnish and as greens, and many and varied were the edible roots that supplied their increasing desire for fresh vegetables.
Sometimes she found wocus in the marsh—the plant formerly in such demand by the Indians—and by patient experiment she learned how to prepare it for the table. Washing the plant carefully she would pound it into paste that could be used as the base for a nutty and delicious bread. Other roots were baked in ashes or served fried in animal fat, and once or twice she found patches of wild strawberries, ripening on the slopes.
This was living! They plucked the sweet, juicy berries from the vines; they served as dessert and were also used in the fashioning of delicious puddings with rice and sugar. Several times she found certain treasures laid by for winter use by the squirrels or the digging people—and perfectly preserved nuts and acorns, The latter, parched over coals, became one of the staples of their diet.
She gathered leaves of the red weed and dried them for tea. She searched out the nests of the grouse and robbed them of their eggs; and always high celebration in the cave followed such a find as this. Fried eggs, boiled eggs, poached eggs tickled their palates for mornings to come. And she traced down, one memorable day when their sugar was all but gone, a tree that the wild bees had stored with honey.
In the way of meat they had not only caribou, but the tender veal of moose and all manner of northern small game. Ben did not, however, spend rifle cartridges in reckless shooting. When at last his enemies came filing down through the beaver meadow he had no desire to be left with a half-empty gun. He had never fired this more powerful weapon since he had felled their first caribou. The moose calves and all the small game were taken with Beatrice's pistol.
Sometimes he took ptarmigan—those whistling, sprightly grouse of the high steeps—and Beatrice served uncounted numbers of them, like the famous blackbirds, baked in a pie. Fried ptarmigan was a dish never to forget; roast ptarmigan had a distinctive flavor all its own, and the memory of ptarmigan fricassee often called Ben home to the cavern an hour before the established mealtime. Indeed, they partook of all the northern species of that full-bosomed clan, the upland game birds; little, brown quail, willow grouse, fool hens, and the incomparable blue grouse, half of the breast of which was a meal. It was true that their little store of pistol cartridges was all but gone, but worlds of big game remained to fall back upon.
Ben never ceased regretting that he had not brought a single fishhook and a piece of line. He had long since carried the canoe from the river bank and hid it in the tall reeds of the lake shore, not only for pleasure's sake, but to preserve it for the autumn floods when they might want to float on down to the Indian villages; and surely it would have afforded the finest sport in the way of trolling for lake trout. But with utter callousness he made his pistol serve as a hook and line. Often he would crawl down, cautiously as a stalking wolf, to the edge of a trout pool, then fire mercilessly at a great, spotted beauty below. The bullet itself did not penetrate the water, but the shock carried through and the fish usually turned a white belly to the surface. A fat brook or lake trout, dipped in flour and fried to a chestnut brown, was a delight that never grew old.
At every fresh find Beatrice would come triumphant into Ben's presence; and at such times they scarcely conducted themselves like enemies. An unguessed boyishness and charm had come to Ben in these ripe, full summer days: the hard lines softened in his face and mostly the hard shine left his eyes. Beatrice found herself curiously eager to please him, taking the utmost care and pains with every dish she prepared for the table; and it was true that he made the most joyful, exultant response to her efforts. The searing heat back of his eyes was quite gone, now. Even the scarlet fluid of his veins seemed to flow more quietly, with less fire, with less madness. A gentling influence had come to bear upon him; a great kindness, a new forbearance had brightened his outlook toward all the world. A great redemption was even now hovering close to him,—some unspeakable and ultimate blessing that he could not name.
Their days were not without pleasure. Often they ventured far into the heavy forest, and always fresh delight and thrilling adventure awaited them. Ever they learned more of the wild things that were their only neighbors,—creatures all the way down the scale from the lordly moose, proud of his growing antlers and monarch of the marshes, to the small pika, squeaking on the slide-rock of the high peaks. They knew and loved them all; they found ever-increasing enjoyment in the study of their shy ways and furtive occupations; they observed with delight the droll awkwardness of the moose calves, the impertinence and saucy speech of the jays, the humor of the black bear and the surly arrogance of the grizzly. They knew that superlative cunning of his wickedness, the wolverine; the stealth of the red fox; the ferociousness of the ermine whose brown skin, soon to be white, suggested only something silken and soft and tender instead of a fiendish cutthroat, terror of the Little People; the skulking cowardice of the coyote; and the incredible savagery and agility of the fisher,—that middle-sized hunter that catches and kills everything he can master except fish. They climbed high hills and descended into still, mysterious valleys; they paddled long, dreamy twilight hours on the lake; they traversed marshes where the moose wallowed; and they walked through ancient forests where the decayed vegetation was a mossy pulp under their feet. Sometimes they forgot the poignancy of their strange lives, romping sometimes, gossiping like jays in the tree-limbs, and sometimes, forgetting enmity, they told each other their secret beliefs and philosophies. They had picnics in the woods; and long, comfortable evenings before their dancing fire. But there was one enduring joy that always surpassed all the rest, a happiness that seemed to have its origin in the silent places of their hearts. It was just the return, after a fatiguing day in forest and marsh, to the sheltering walls of the cave.
With his axe and hunting knife Ben prepared a complete set of furniture for their little abode. His first Work was a surpassing-marvelous dining-room suite of a table and two chairs. Then he put up shelves for their rapidly dwindling supplies of provisions and cut chunks of spruce log, with a bit of bark remaining, for fireside seats. And for more than a week, Beatrice was forbidden to enter a certain covert just beyond the glade lest she should prematurely discover an even greater wonder that Ben, in off hours, was preparing for a surprise.
From time to time she heard him busily at work, the ring of his axe and his gay whistling as he whittled bolts of wood; but other than that it concerned the grizzly skin she had not the least idea of his task. But the work was completed at last, and then came two days of rather significant silence,—quite incomprehensible to the girl. She was at a loss why Ben did not reveal his treasure.
But one morning she missed the familiar sounds of his fire-building, usually his first work on wakening. The very fact of their absence startled her wide-awake, while otherwise she would have perhaps slept late into the morning. Ben had seemingly vanished into the heavy timber across the glade.
Presently she heard him muttering and grunting as he moved some heavy object to the door of the cave. Boyishly, he could not wait for the usual late hour when she wakened. He made a wholly unnecessary amount of noise as he built the fire. Then he thrust his lean head into the cavern opening.
"I hope I haven't waked you up?" he said.
The girl smiled secretly. "I wanted to wake up, anyway—to-day."
"I wish you'd get up and come and look at something ugly I've got just outside the door."
She hurried into her outer garments, and in a moment appeared. It was ugly, certainly, the object that he had fashioned with such tireless toil: not fitted at all for a stylish city home; yet the girl, for one short instant, stopped breathing. It was a hammock, suspended on a stout frame, to take the place of her tree-bough bed on the cave floor. He had used the grizzly skin, hanging it with unbreakable sinew, and fashioning it in such a manner that folds of the hide could be turned over her on cold nights. For a moment she gazed, very earnestly, into the rugged, homely, raw-boned face of her companion.
Beatrice was deeply and inexplicably sobered, yet a curious happiness took swift possession of her heart. Reading the gratitude in her eyes, Ben's lips broke into a radiant smile.
"I guess you've forgotten what day it is," he said.
"Of course. I hardly know the month."
"I've notched each day, you know. And maybe you've forgotten—on the ride out from Snowy Gulch—we talked of birthdays. To-day is yours."
She stared at him in genuine astonishment. She had not dreamed that this little confidence, given in a careless moment of long weeks before, had lingered in the man's memory. She had supposed that the fury and savagery of his war with her father and the latter's followers had effaced all such things as this.
And it was true that had this birthday come a few weeks before, on the river journey and previous to their occupation of the cave, Ben would have let it pass unnoticed. The smoldering fire in his brain would have seared to ashes any such kindly thought as this. But when the wild hunter leaves his leafy lair and goes to dwell, a man rather than a beast, in a permanent abode, he has thought for other subjects than his tribal wars and the blood-lust of his hates. The hearth, and the care and friendship of the girl had tamed Ben to this degree, at least.
But wonders were not done. The look in the girl's eyes suddenly melted, as the warm sun melts ice, some of the frozen bitterness of his spirit. "It's your birthday—and I hope you have many of 'em," he went on. "No more like this—but all of 'em happy,—as you deserve."
He walked toward her, and her eyes could not leave his. He bent soberly, and brushed her lips with his own.
There were always worlds to talk about in the warm gleam of their fire. When the day's work was done, and the hush of early night gathered the land to its arms, they would sit on their fireside seats and settle all problems, now and hereafter, to the perfect satisfaction of them both.
From Ben, Beatrice gained a certain strength of outlook as well as depth of insight, but she gave him in return more than she received. He felt that her influence, in his early years, would have worked wonders for him. She straightened out his moral problems for him, taught him lessons in simple faith; and her own childish sweetness and absolute purity showed his whole world in a new light.
Sometimes they talked of religion and ethics, sometimes of science and economics, and particularly they talked of what was nearest to them,—the mysteries and works of nature. She had been a close observer of the forest. She had received some glimpse of its secret laws that were, when all was said and done, the basic laws of life. But for all her love of science she was not a mere biologist. She had a full and devout faith in Law and Judgment beyond any earthly sphere.
"No one can live in this boundless wilderness and not believe," she told him earnestly, her dark eyes brimming with her fervor. "Perhaps I can't tell you why—maybe it's just a feeling of need, of insufficiency of self. Besides, God is close, like He was to the Israelites when they were in the wilderness; but you will remember that He never came close again.—This forest is so big and so awful, He knows he must stay close to keep you from dying of fear.—God may not be a reality to the people of the cities, where they see only buildings and streets, but Ben, He is to me. You can't forget Him up here. He stands on every mountain, just as the sons of Aaron saw Him."
He found, to his surprise, that she was not ill-read, particularly in the old-time classics. But her environment had also influenced her choice of reading. She loved the old legends in the minor,—far-off and plaintive things that reflected the mood of the dusky forest in which she lived.
One night, when the moon was in the sky, he told her of his war record, of the shell-shock and the strange, criminal mania that followed it; and then of his swift recovery. With an over-powering need of self-justification he told her of his further adventures with Ezram, of the old man's murder and the theft of the claim. She heard him out, listening attentively; but in loyalty to her father she did not let herself believe him entirely. The answer she gave him was the same as she had always given at his every reference to his side of the case.
"If you were in the right, you'd take me back and let the law take its course," she told him. "You'd not be out here laying an ambush for them, to kill them when they try to rescue me."
He could never make her understand how, by the intricacies of law, it would be a rare chance that he would be able to fasten the crime on the murderers: that he had taken the only sure way open to make them pay for Ezram's death. He told her of the old man's, final request; how that his war with her father and his men was a debt that, by secret, inscrutable laws of his being, could never be written off or disavowed. But he could never fully find words to uphold his position. The thing went back to his instincts, traced at last to the remorseless spirit of the wolf that was his heritage.
Yet these hours of talk were immensely good for him. While they never met on common grounds, the girl's true outlook and nobility of character were ever more manifest to him; and were not without a gentling, healing influence upon him. He could not blind himself to them. And sometimes when he sat alone by his dying fire, as the dark menaced him, and the girl that was his charge slept within the portals of stone, he had the unescapable feeling that the very structure of his life was falling and shattering down; but even now he could see, an enchanted vista in the distance, a mightier, more glorious tower, builded and shaped by this woman's hand.