The Sky Line of Spruce

IV

Night is always a time of mystery in Snowy Gulch—that little cluster of frame shacks lost and far in the northern reaches of the Caribou Range. Shadows lie deep, pale lights spring up here and there in windows, with gaping, cavernous darkness between; a wet mist is clammy on the face. At such times one forgets that here is a town, an enduring outpost of civilization, and can remember only the forests that stretch so heavy and dark on every side. Indeed the town seems simply swallowed up in these forests, immersed in their silence, overspread by their gloom, and the red gods themselves walk like sentries in the main street.

The breath that is so fragrant and strange between the fronting rows of shacks is simply that of the forest: inept the woodsman who would not recognize it at once. The silence is a forest silence, and if the air is tense and electric, it is because certain wilderness forces that no white man can name but which surely dwell in the darker thickets have risen and are in possession.

It is not a time when human beings are at their best and strongest. There is an instinctive, haunting feeling which, though not fear, wakens a feeling of inadequacy and meekness. Only a few—those who have given their love and their lives to the wild places—have any idea of sympathetic understanding with it. Among these was Beatrice Neilson, and she herself did not fully understand the dreams and longings that swept her ever at the fall of the mysterious wilderness night.

The forest had never grown old to her. Its mystery was undying. Born in its shadow, her love had gone out to it in her earliest years, and it held her just as fast to-day. All her dreams—the natural longings of an imaginative girl born to live in an uninhabited portion of the earth—were inextricably bound up in it; whatever plans she had for the future always included it. Not that she was blind to its more terrible qualities: its might and its utter remorselessness that all foresters, sooner or later, come to recognize. Her thews were strong, and she loved it all the more for the tests that it put to its children.

She was a daughter of the forests, and its mark was on her. To-night the same moon that, a thousand miles to the south, was lighting the way for Ben and Ezram on their northern journey, shone on her as she hastened down the long, shadowed street toward her father's shack, revealing her forest parentage for all to see. The quality could be discerned in her very carriage—swift and graceful and silent—vaguely suggesting that of the wild creatures themselves. But there was no coarseness or ruggedness about her face and form such as superficial observation might have expected. Physically she was like a deer, strong, straight-limbed, graceful, slender rather than buxom, dainty of hands and feet. A perfect constitution and healthful surroundings had done all this. And good fairies had worked further magic: as she passed beneath the light at the door of the rude hotel there was revealed an unquestioned and rather startling facial beauty.

It seemed hardly fitting in this stern, rough land—the soft contour and delicacy of the girl's features. It had come straight from her mother, a woman who, in gold-rush days, had been the acknowledged beauty of the province. Nor was it merely the attractive, animal beauty that is so often seen in healthy, rural girls. Rather its loveliness was of a mysterious, haunting kind that one associates with old legends and far distant lands.

Perhaps its particular appeal lay in her eyes. They seemed to be quite marvelously deep and clear, so darkly gray that they looked black in certain lights, and they were so shadowed and pensive that sometimes they gave the image of actual sadness. For all the isolation of her home she was no stranger to romance; but the romance that was to be seen, like a gentleness, in her face was that of the great, shadowed forest in which she dwelt.

Pensive, wistful, enthralled in a dreamy sadness,—what could be nearer the tone and pitch of the northern forest itself? There might have been also depths of latent passion such as is known to all who live the full, strong life of the woods. The lines were soft about her lips and eyes, indicating a marked sweetness and tenderness of nature; but these traits did not in the least deny her parentage. No one but the woodsman knows how gentle, how hospitably tender, the forest may be at times.

She had fine, dark straight brows that served to darken her eyes, dark brown hair waving enough to soften every line of her face, a girlish throat and a red mouth surprisingly tender and childish. As might have been expected her garb was neither rich nor smart, but it was pretty and well made and evidently fitted for her life: a loose "middy," blue skirt, woolen stockings and rather solid little boots.

As she passed the door of the hotel one of the younger men who had been lounging about the stove strode out and accosted her. She half-turned, recognized his face in the lamplight, and frankly recoiled.

She had been lost in dreams before, vaguely pensive, for Beatrice had been watching the darkness overspread and encompass the dark fringe of the spruce forest that enclosed the town. Now, because she recognized the man and knew his type—born of the wild places even as herself, but a bastard breed—the tender, wistful half-smile sped from her childish mouth and her eyes grew alert and widened as if with actual fear. She halted, evidently in doubt as to her course.

"Going home?" the man asked. "I'm going up to see your pop, and I'll see you there, if you don't mind."

Ray Brent's voice had an undeniable ring of power. It was deeply bass, evidently the voice of a passionate, reckless, brutal man. The covetous caress of his thick hand upon her arm indicated that he was wholly sure of himself in regard to her.

She stared with growing apprehension into his even-featured, not unhandsome face. Evidently she found it hard to meet his eyes,—eyes wholly lacking in humor and kindliness, but unquestionably vivid and compelling under his heavy, dark brows. "I'm going home," she told him at last. "I guess, if you're going up to see Pop, you can walk along too."

The man fell in beside her, his powerful frame overshadowing hers. It was plain at once that the manner of her consent did not in the least disturb him. "You're just letting me because I'm going up there anyway, eh?" he asked. "I'll walk along further than that with you before I'm done."

The girl paused, as if in appeal. "Ray, we've thrashed that out long ago," she responded. "I wish you wouldn't keep talking about it. If you want to walk with me—"

"All right, but you'll be changing your mind one of these days." Ray's voice rang in the silence, indicating utter indifference to the fact that many of the loungers on the street were listening to the little scene. "I've never seen anything I wanted yet that I didn't get—and I want you. Why don't you believe what your pop says about me? He thinks Ray Brent is the goods."

"I'm not going to talk about it any more. I've already given you my answer—twenty times."

The man talked on, but the girl walked with lifted chin, apparently not hearing. They followed the board sidewalk into the shadows, finally turning in at a ramshackle, three-room house that was perched on the hillside almost at the end of the street at the outer limits of the village.

The girl turned to go in, but the man held fast to her arm. "Wait just a minute, Bee," he urged. "I've got one thing more to say to you."

The girl looked into his face, now faintly illumined by the full moon that was rising, incredibly large and white, above the dark line of the spruce tops. For all the regularity of his rather handsome features, his was never an attractive face to her, even in first, susceptible girlhood; and in the moonlight it suddenly filled her with dread. Ray Brent was a dangerous type: imperious willed, slave to his most degenerate instincts, reckless, as free from moral restraint as the most savage creatures that roamed his native wilds. Now his facial lines appeared noticeably deep, dark like scars, and curious little flakes of iniquitous fire danced in his sunken eyes.

"Just one minute, Bee," he went on, wholly rapt in his own, devouring desires. The dark passions of the man, always just under the skin, seemed to be getting out of bounds. "When I want something, I don't know how to quit till I get it. It's part of my nature. Your pop knows that—and that's why he's made me his pardner in a big deal."

"If my father wants men like you—for his pardners, I can't speak for his judgment."

"Wait just a minute. He's told me—and I know he's told you too—that I'd suit him all right for a son-in-law. He and I agree on that. And this country ain't like the places you read about in your story books—it's a man's country. Oh, I know you well enough. It's time you got down to brass tacks. If you're going to be a northern woman, you've got to be content with the kind of men that grow up here. Up here, the best man wins, the hardest, strongest man. That's why I'm going to win you."

Because he was secretly attacking her dreams, the dearest part of her being, she felt the first surge of rising anger.

"You're not the best man here," she told him, straightening. "If you were, I'd move out. You may be the strongest in your body, and certainly the hardest, going further to get your own way—but a real man would break you in two in a minute. Some one more than a brute to beat horses to death and jump claims. I'm going in now. Please take away your hand."

"One thing more. This is the North. We do things in a man's way up here—not a story-book way. The strong man gets what he wants—and I want you. And I'll get you, too—just like I get this kiss."

He suddenly snatched her toward him. A powerful man; she was wholly helpless in his grasp. His arms went about her and he pressed his lips to hers—three times. Then he released her, his eyes glowing like red coals.

But she was a northern girl, trained to self-defense. As he freed her, her strong, slender arm swung out and up—with really startling force. Her half-closed hand struck with a sharp, drawing motion across his lips, a blow that extinguished his laughter as the wind extinguishes a match-blaze.

"You little—devil!"

The tempest of the forest was upon her, and her eyes blazed as she hastened around the house.

V

Jeffery Neilson and Chan Heminway were already in session when Ray Brent, his face flushed and his eyes still angry and red, joined them. Neilson was a tall, gaunt man, well past fifty—from his manner evidently the leader of the three. He had heavy, grizzled brows and rather quiet eyes, a man of deep passions and great resolve. Yet his lean face had nothing of the wickedness of Brent's. There had evidently been some gentling, redeeming influence in his life, and although it was not in the ascendancy, it had softened his smile and the hard lines about his lips. Notorious as he was through the northern provinces he was infinitely to be preferred to Chan Heminway, who sat at his left who, a weaker man than either Ray or Neilson, was simply a tool in the latter's hand,—a smashing sledge or a cruel blade as his master wished. He was vicious without strength, brutal without self-control. Locks of his blond hair, unkempt, dropped over his low forehead into his eyes.

"Where's Beatrice?" Neilson asked at once. "I thought I heard her voice."

Ray searched for a reply, and in the silence all three heard the girl's tread as she went around the house. "She's going in the back door. Likely she didn't want to disturb us."

Ray looked up to find Neilson's eyes firmly fixed upon his face. Try hard as he might he couldn't restrain a surge of color in his cheeks. "Yes, and what's the rest of it?" Neilson asked.

"Nothing—I know of."

"You've got some white marks on your cheeks—where it ain't red. The kid can slap, can't she—"

Ray flushed deeper, but the lines of Neilson's face began to deepen and draw. Then his voice broke in a great, hearty chuckle. He had evidently tried to restrain it—but it got away from him at last. No man could look at him, his twinkling eyes and his joyous face, and doubt but that this soft-eyed, strong-handed daughter of his was the joy and pride of his life. He had heard the ringing slap through the ramshackle walls of the house, and for all that he favored Ray as his daughter's suitor, the independence and spirit behind the action had delighted him to the core.

But Ray's sense of humor did not run along these lines. The first danger signal of rising anger leaped like a little, hot spark into his eyes. Many times before Ray had been obliged to curb his wrath against Neilson: to-night he found it more difficult than ever. The time would come, he felt, when he would no longer be obliged to submit to Neilson's dictation. Sometime the situation would be reversed; he would be leader instead of underling, taking the lion's share of the profit of their enterprises instead of the left-overs, and when that time came he would not be obliged to endure Neilson's jests in silence. Neilson himself, as he eyed the stiffening figure, had no realization of Ray's true attitude toward him. He thought him a willing helper, a loyal partner, and he would not have sat with such content in his chair if he could have beheld the smoldering fires of jealousy and ambition in the other's breasts The time would come when Ray would assert himself, he thought—when Beatrice was safe in his hands.

"It may seem like a joke to you, but it doesn't to me," he answered shortly. Nor was he able to keep his anger entirely from his voice. "Everything that girl does you think is perfect. Instead of encouraging her in her meanness you ought to help me out." His tones harshened, and he lost the fine edge of his self-control. "I've stood enough nonsense from that little—"

Seemingly, Neilson made no perceptible movement in his chair. What change there was showed merely in the lines of his face, and particularly in the light that dwelt in the gray, straightforward eyes. "Don't finish it," he ordered simply.

For an instant eyes met eyes in bitter hatred—and Chan Heminway began to wonder just where he would seek cover in case matters got to a shooting stage. But Ray's gaze broke before that of his leader. "I'm not going to say anything I shouldn't," he protested sullenly. "But this doesn't look like you're helping out my case any. You told me you'd do everything you could for me. You even went so far as to say you'd take matters in your own hands—"

"And I will, in reason. I'm keeping away the rest of the boys so you can have a chance. But if you think I'm going to tie her up to anybody against her will, you're barking up the wrong tree. She's my daughter, and her happiness happens to be my first object." Then his voice changed, good-humored again. "But cool down, boy—wait till you hear everything I've got to tell you, and you'll feel better. Of course, you know what it's about—"

"I suppose—Hiram Melville's claim."

"That's it. Of course we don't know that he had a claim—but he had a pocket full of the most beautiful nuggets you ever want to see. No one knows that fact but me—I saw 'em by accident—and I got 'em now. You know he's always had an idea that the Yuga country was worth prospecting, but we always laughed at him. Of course it is a pocket country; but it's my opinion he found a pocket that would make many a placer look sick, before he died."

"But he might have got the nuggets somewheres else—"

"Hold your horses. Where would he get 'em? There's something else suspicious too. He wrote a letter, the day before he died, and addressed it to Ezra Melville, somewhere in Oregon. He must just about got it by now—maybe a few days ago. He had the clerk mail it for him, and got him to witness it, saying it was his will—and what did that old hound have to will except a mine? Next day he wrote another letter somewhere too—but I didn't find out who it was to. If I'd had any gumption I'd got ahold of 'em both. The point is—I'm convinced it's worth a trip, at least."

"I should say it was worth a trip," Ray agreed. "And a fast one, too. There might be some competition—"

"There won't be a rush, if that's what you mean. Everybody knows it's a pocket country, and the men in this town wouldn't any more get excited about the Yuga River—"

"True enough—but that Ezra Melville will be showin' up one of these days. We want to be settin' pretty when he comes."

"You've got the idea. It ought to be the easiest job we ever did. It's my idea he had his claim all laid out, monuments up and everything, and was on his way down to Bradleyburg to record it when he died. He just went out before he could make the rest of the trip. All we'll have to do is go up there, locate in his cabin, and sit tight."

"Wait just a second." Ray was lost in thought. "There's an old cabin up that way somewhere—along that still place—on the river. It was a trapping cabin belonging to old Bill Foulks."

"That's true enough—but it likely ain't near his mine. Boys, it's a clean, open-and-shut job—with absolutely nothing to interfere. If his brother does come up, he'll find us in possession—and nothing to do but go back. So to-morrow we'll load up and pack horses and light out."

"Up Poor Man creek, through Spruce Pass—"

"Sure. Then over to the Yuga. Old Hiram was hunting down some kind of a scent in the vicinity of that old cabin you speak of, last heard of him. And I wouldn't be surprised, on second thought, if it wasn't his base of operations."

"All easy enough," Ray agreed. He paused, and a queer, speculative look came into his wild-beast's eyes. "But what I don't see—how you can figure all this is going to help me out with Beatrice."

Jeffery Neilson turned in his chair. "You can't, eh? You need spectacles. Just think a minute—say you had fifty or sixty thousand all your own—to spend on a wife and buy her clothes and automobiles. Don't you think that would make you more attractive to the feminine eye?"

At first Ray made no apparent answer. He merely sat staring ahead. But plainly the words had wakened riot in his imagination. Such a sum meant wealth, the power his ambitious nature had always craved, idleness and the gratification of all his lusts. He was no stranger to greed, this degenerate son of the North. "It'd help some," he admitted in a low voice. "But what makes you think it would be worth that much?"

"Because old Hiram talked a little, half-delirious, before he died. 'A quarter of a million,' he kept saying. 'Right there in sight—a quarter of a million.' If he really found that much stowed away in the rocks, that's fifty or sixty apiece for you and Chan."

Ray's mind worked swiftly. Sixty thousand apiece—and that left one hundred and thirty thousand for their leader's portion. The old rage and jealousy that had preyed upon his mind so long swept over him, more compelling than ever. "Go on," he urged. "What's the rest of it?"

"The second thing is—we'll need some one to cook, and look after us, when we get up there. Who should it be but Beatrice? She wouldn't want to stay here; you know how she loves the woods. And if you know anything about girls, you know that nothing counts like having 'em alone. There wouldn't be any of the other boys up there to trouble you. You'd have a clear field."

Ray's dark eyes shone. "It'd help some," he admitted. "That means—hunt up an extra horse for her to-morrow."

"No. I don't intend she should come up now. Not till we're settled."

"Why not?"

"Think a minute, and you'll see why not. You know how she regards this business of jumping claims. She's dead against it if any one could be—bless her heart!"

"Don't go getting sentimental, Neilson."

"And don't let that mouth of yours get you into trouble, either." Once more their eyes locked: once more Ray looked away. "I hope she'll always stay that way, too. As I say, she's dead against it, and she's been a little suspicious ever since that Jenkins deal. Besides, it wouldn't be any pleasure for her until we find a claim and get settled. When she comes up we'll be established in a couple of cabins—one for her and me and one for you two—and she won't know but that we made the original find."

"How will she know just where to find us?"

"We're bound to be somewhere near that old cabin on the Yuga. We'll set a date for her to come, and I can meet her there."

It was, Ray was forced to admit, a highly commendable scheme. He sat back, contemplating all its phases. "It's slick enough," he agreed. "It ought to do the trick."

But if he had known the girl's thoughts, as she sat alone in the back part of the house, he wouldn't have felt so confident. She was watching the moon over the spruce forest, and she was thinking, with repugnance in her heart, of the indignity to which she had been subjected at her father's door. Yet the kisses Ray had forced on her were no worse than his blasphemy of her dreams. The spirit of romance was abroad to-night—in the enchantment of the moon—and she was wistful and imaginative as never before. This was just the normal expression of her starved girlhood—the same childlike wistfulness with which a Cinderella might long for her prince—just as natural and as wholesome and as much a part of youth as laughter and happiness.

"I won't believe him, I won't believe him," she told herself. Her thought turned to other channels, and her heart spoke its wish. "Wherever he is—sometime he'll come to me."

VI

At a little town at the end of steel Ben and Ezram ended the first lap of their journey. They had had good traveling these past days. Steadily they had gone north, through the tilled lands of Northern Washington, through the fertile valleys of lower British Columbia, traversing great mountain ranges and penetrating gloomy forests, and now had come to the bank of a north-flowing river,—a veritable flood and one of the monarch rivers of the North. Every hour their companionship had been more close and their hopes higher. Every waking moment Ben had been swept with thankfulness for the chance that had come to him.

They had worked for their meals and passage—hard, manual toil—but it had seemed only play to them both. Sometimes they mended fence, sometimes helped at farm labor, and one gala morning, with entire good will and cheer, they beat into cleanliness every carpet in a widow's cottage. And the sign of the outcast was fading from Ben's flesh.

The change was marked in his face. His eye seemed more clear and steadfast, his lips more firm, the lines of his face were not so hard and deep. His fellows of the underworld would have scarcely known him now,—his lips and chin darkening with beard and this new air of self-respect upon him. Perhaps they had forgotten him, but it was no less than he had done to them. The prison walls seemed already as if they hadn't been true. He loved every minute of the journey, freshness instead of filth, freedom instead of confinement, fragrant fields and blossoming flowers. Ever the stars and the moon, remembered of old, yielded him a peace and happiness beyond his power to tell. And his gratitude to Ezram grew apace.

Besides self-confidence and the constant, slow unraveling of his memory problems, each day yielded rich gifts: no less than added trust in each other. Always they found each other steadfast, utterly to be relied upon. Ezram never regretted for a moment his offer to Ben. The young man had seemingly developed under his eye and was a real aid to him in all the problems of the journey.

As the days passed, the whole tone and key of the land had seemed to change. They were full in the mountains now, snow gleaming on the heights, forests blue-black on the slopes; and Ben's response was a growing excitement that at first he could not analyze. The air was sweeter, more bracing, and sometimes he discerned a fleeting, delicate odor that drew him up short in his talk and held him entranced. There was a sparkle and stir in the air, unknown in the cities he had left; and to breathe it deeply thrilled him with an unexplainable happiness.

Some way it was all familiar, all dear to him as if it had once been close to his life. The sparkle in the air was not new, only recalled: long and long ago he had wakened to find just such a delicate fragrance in his nostrils. But the key hadn't come to him yet. His memory pictures were ever stronger of outline, clearer in his mind's eye, yet they were still too dim for him to interpret them. In these days Ezram watched him closely, with a curious, intense interest.

It was no longer pleasant to sleep out in the hay. For the sake of warmth alone they were obliged to hire their night's lodging at cheap hotels. Spring was full in the land they had left: it was just beginning here. The mountains, visible from the village of Saltsville where they left the railroad, were still swept with snow.

Ben felt that he would have liked to take a day off at this point and venture with his companion into the high, wooded hills that fronted the town, but he agreed with Ezram that they could not spare the time. They swiftly made preparations for their journey down-river. A canoe was bought for a reasonable sum—they were told they had a good chance of selling it again when they left the river near Snowy Gulch—and at the general store they bought an axe, rudimentary fishing tackle, tobacco, blankets, and all manner of simpler provisions, such as flour, rice, bacon, coffee, canned milk, and sugar. And for a ridiculously small sum which he mysteriously produced from the pocket of his faded jeans Ezram bought a second-hand rifle—an ancient gun of large caliber but of enduring quality—and a box of shells to match.

"Old Hiram left me a gun, but we'll each need one," Ezram explained. "And they tell me there's a chance to pick up game, like as not, goin' down the river."

They would have need of good canoe-craft before the journey's end, the villagers told them. Ezram had not boasted of any such ability, and at first Ben regarded the plan with considerable misgivings. And it was with the most profound amazement that, when they pushed off, he saw Ezram deliberately seat himself in the bow, leaving the more important place to his young companion.

"Good heavens, I'll capsize you in a minute," Ben said. "How do you dare risk it----"

"Push off and stop botherin' me," Ezram answered. "There's a paddle—go ahead and shoot 'er."

The waters caught the canoe, speeding it downstream; and in apprehension of immediate disaster Ben seized the paddle. Swiftly he thrust it into the streaming water at his side.

He was not further aware of Ezram's searching gaze. He did not know of the old man's delight at the entire incident—first the anxious, hurried stroke of the paddle, then the movement of Ben's long fingers as he caught a new hold, finally the white flame of exultation that came into his face. For himself, Ben instantly knew that this was his own sphere. He suddenly found himself an absolute master of his craft: at the touch of the paddle controlling it as a master mechanic controls a delicate machine.

The white waters were no more to be feared. He found that he knew, as if by instinct, every trick of the riverman's trade,—the slow stroke, the fast stroke, the best stroke for a long day's sail, the little half-turn in his hands that put the blade on edge in the water and gave him the finest control. It was all so familiar, so unspeakably dear to him. Clear, bright memories hovered close to him, almost within his grasp.

"Do you remember when you shot the Athabaska Rapids?" Ezram had asked. It was all clear enough. In that life that was forgotten he had evidently lived much in a canoe, knowing every detail of river life. Perhaps he had been a master canoeist; at least he felt a strange, surging sense of self-confidence and power. He understood, now, why the image of rushing waters had come so often into his dreams. Dim pictures of river scenes—cataracts white with foam, rapids with thunderous voices, perilous eddies, and then, just beyond, glassy waters where the shadow of the canoe was unbroken in the blue depths—streamed through his mind, but they were not yet bright enough for him to seize and hold.

He enjoyed the first few hours of paddling, but in the long, warm afternoon came indolence, and they were both willing to glide with the current and watch the ever-changing vista of the shore. For the first time since they had come into the real North, Ben found opportunity to observe and study the country.

Already they were out of sight of the last vestige of a habitation; and the evergreen forests pushed down to the water's edge. From the middle of the stream the woods appeared only as a dark wall, but this was immeasurably fascinating to Ben. It suggested mystery, adventure; yet its deeper appeal, the thing that stirred him and thrilled him to the quick, he could neither understand nor analyze.

Sometimes a little clump of trees stood apart, and from their shape he identified them as the incomparable spruce, perhaps the most distinguished and beautiful of all the evergreens. He marked their great height, their slender forms, their dark foliage that ever seemed to be silvered with frost; and they seemed to him to answer, to the fullest extent, some vague expectation of which he had scarcely been aware.

The wild life of the river filled him with speechless delight. Sometimes he saw the waters break and gleam at the leap of a mighty salmon—the king fish of the North on his spring rush to the headwaters where he would spawn and die—and often the canoe sent flocks of waterfowl into flight. Ben dimly felt that on the tree-clad shores larger, more glorious living creatures were standing, hiding, watching the canoe glide past. The thought thrilled him.

Late afternoon, and they worked closer to the shore. They were watching for a place to land. But because the shadows of twilight were already falling, the forest itself was hardly more vivid to their eyes. Once it seemed to Ben that he saw the underbrush move and waver at the water's edge, and his heart leaped; but whatever stirred kept itself concealed. And now, in the gray of twilight, Ezram saw the place to land.

It was a small lagoon into which a creek emptied, and beyond was an open meadow, found so often and so unexpectedly in the North woods. Swiftly Ben turned the canoe into shore.

Ezram climbed out and made fast, and so busy was he with his work that he did not glance at Ben, otherwise he might have beheld a phenomenon that would have been of keen interest to the alienist, Forest. His young charge had suddenly grown quite pale. Ben himself was neither aware of this nor of the fact that his heart was hammering wildly in his breast and his blood racing, like wild rivers, through his veins: he was only thrilled and held by a sense of vast, impending developments. Every nerve tingled and thrilled, and why he did not know.

Ezram began to unload; but now, his blue eyes shining, he began a covert watch of his young companion. He saw the man from prison suddenly catch his breath in inexpressible awe and his eye kindle with a light of unknown source. A great question was shaping itself in Ben's mind, but as yet he could not find the answer.

All at once Ben knew this place. Here was nothing strange or new: it was all as he had known it would be in his inmost heart. All of it spoke to him with familiar voice, seemingly to welcome him as a son is welcomed after long absence. There was nothing here that had not been known and beloved of old. Vivid memories, bright as lightning, swept through him.

He had always known this wholesome, sweet breath that swept into his face. It was merely that of the outdoors, the open places that were his own haunts. It was wholly fitting and true that the silence should lie over the dark spruce that ringed about him, a silence that, in its infinite harmony with some queer mood of silence in his own heart, was more moving than any voice. All was as he had secretly known: the hushed tree aisles, the gray radiance—soft as a hand upon the brow—of the afterglow; the all-pervading health and peace of the wilderness. Except for an old and trusted companion, he was alone with it all, and that too was as it should be. Just he and the forest, his companion and the gliding river.

He didn't try to understand, at first, the joy and the wonder that thrilled him, nor could he speak aloud the thoughts that came to him. Ravished and mystified, he walked softly to the dark, still edge of the forest, penetrated it a distance, then sat down to wait.

For the first time in years, it seemed to him, he was at peace. A strange sense of self-realization—lost to him in his years of exile—climbed like fire through him; and with it the return of a lost virility, a supreme vigor tingling each little nerve; a sense of strength and power that was almost blinding.

He sat still. He saw the twilight descending, ever heavier, over the forest. The sharp edges of the individual trees faded and blended, the trunks blurred. He turned one fleeting glance of infinite, inexpressible gratitude toward Ezram—the man who had brought him here and who now was busily engaged in unpacking the canoe and making camp—then looked back to his forests. The wind brought the wood smells,—spruce and moldering earth and a thousand more no man could name. The great, watchful, brooding spirit of the forest went in to him.

All at once his heart seemed to pause in his breast. He was listening,—for what he did not know. His eyes strained into the shadows. Brush wavered, a twig cracked with a miniature explosion. And then two figures emerged into the beaver meadow opposite him.

They were only creatures of the wild, an old cow moose, black and ungainly, and her long-legged, awkward calf. Yet they supplied the detail that was missing. They were the one thing needed to complete the picture—the crowning touch that revealed this land as it was—the virgin wilderness where the creatures of the wild still held full sway.

But it did more. All at once a great clarity seemed to take possession of his mind. Here, in these dark forests, were the stimuli of which Forest, the alienist, had spoken; and his brain seemed to leap, as in one impulse, to the truth. Suddenly he knew the answer to all the questions and problems that had troubled him so long.

Many times, in the past years, he had seen logs jammed in the water, a veritable labyrinth that defied dissolution. Suddenly, as if by magic, the key log would be ejected, and the whole jam would break, shatter down in one stupendous crash, settle and dissolve, leaving at last only drift logs floating quietly in the river. Thus it was with the confusion in his brain. All at once it seemed to dissolve, the tangled skeins straightened out, the association areas of his mind stirred full into life once more. As he sat there, pale as the twilight sky, the mists of amnesia lifted from him. He was cured as if by the touch of a holy man.

No wonder these forests depths were familiar. His boyhood and early manhood, clear until the vortex of war had engulfed him, had been spent amid just such surroundings, in just such silences, on the banks of just such wilderness rivers. The same sky line of dark, heaven-reaching spruce had fronted him of old. He sprang up, his eyes blazing. "I remember everything," an inaudible voice spoke within him. Then he whispered, fervently, to his familiar wilds. "And I have come home."

VII

Everything was as it should be, as he and Ezram made the camp. He himself cut the boughs for their beds, laid them with his remembered skill, spread the blankets, and kept the fire blazing while Ezram cooked; afterwards he knew the indescribable peace of a pipe smoke beside the glowing coals. He saw the moon come up at last, translating the spruce forest into a fairy land.

Of course he had remembered the moon. How many times had he watched for its argent gleam on the sky line, the vivid, detailed silhouette of the spruce against it; and then its slow-spreading glory through the still, dark forests! The spires of the trees grew ensilvered, as always; immense nebulous patches lay between the trunks, shadows stole mysteriously, phantoms met, lingered, and vanished.

This was his own North! The stir and vigor in the very air told him that. This was the land he had dreamed of, under the moon; the primeval forests that had tried him, tested him, staked their cruel might against him, but yet had blessed him with their infinite beneficence and hospitality. It was ever somber, yet its dusky beauty stirred him more than any richness he had seen in bright cities. He knew its every mood: ecstasy in spring; gentleness in summer; brooding melancholy in the gray days of fall; remorseless, savage, but unspeakably beautiful in the winter. He felt his old pity for the spring flowers, blossoming so hopefully in this gentle season. How soon they would be covered with many feet of snow!

"It's all come clear again," he told Ezram. And the two men talked over, quietly and happily, old days at Thunder Lake. He remembered now that Ezram had always been the most intimate friend of his own family: a spry old godfather to himself and young sister, a boon companion to his once successful rival, Ben's father. Ben did not wonder, now, at his own perplexity when Forest had spoken of "Wolf" Darby. That was his own name known throughout hundreds of square miles of forest and in dozens of little river hamlets in an Eastern province. Partly the name was in token of his skill as a woodsman and frontiersman, partly in recognition of certain traits that his fellow woodsmen had seen and wondered at in him. It was not an empty nickname, in his case. It was simply that the name suited him.

"The boys had reason a-plenty for callin' you that," Ezram told him. "Up here, as you know, men don't get no complimentary epithets unless they deserve 'em. Some men, Ben, are like weasels. You've seen 'em. You've seen human rats, too. As if the souls they carried around with 'em was the souls of rats. Of course you remember 'Grizzly' Silverdale? Did you ever see any one who in disposition and looks and walk and everything reminded you so much of a grizzly bear? I've known men like sheep, and men with the faithful souls of dogs. You remember when you got in the big fight in the Le Perray bar?"

"I don't think I'll ever forget it again."

"That's the night the name came on you, to stay. You remember how you'd drive into one of them, leap away, then tear into another. Like a wolf for all the world! You was always hard to get into a fight, but you know as well as I do, and I ain't salvin' you when I say it, that you're the most terrible, ferocious fighter, forgettin' everything but blood, that ever paddled a canoe on the Athabaska. Some men, Ben, seem to have the spirit of the wolf right under their skins, a sort of a wild instinct that might have come straight down from the stone age, for all I know. You happen to be one of 'em, the worst I ever saw. Maybe you don't remember, but you took your bull moose before you was thirteen years old."

Ben sat dreaming. The Athabaska Rapids was not an empty name to him now. He remembered the day he had won the canoe race at Lodge Pole. Other exploits occurred to him,—of brutal, savage brawls in river taverns, of adventures on the trail, of struggling with wild rivers when his canoe capsized, of running the great logs down through white waters. It was his world, these far-stretching wildernesses. And he blessed, with all the fervency of his heart, the man who had brought him home.

He went to his bed, but sleep did not at once come to him. He lay with hushed breathing, listening to the little, secret noises, known so well, of the wilderness night. He heard the wild creatures start forth on their midnight journeys. Once a lynx mewed at the edge of the forest; and he laughed aloud when some large creature—probably a moose—grunted and splashed water in the near-by beaver meadow.

Thus ended the first of a brilliant succession of joyous days, descending the stream in the daylight hours and camping on the bank at night. Every day they plunged deeper into the heart of the wilderness, and every hour Ben felt more at home.

It was only play for him,—to meet and shoot successfully the rapids of the river. In the long stillnesses he paddled hour upon hour, not only to make time but to find an outlet for his surging energy. His old-time woodsman's pleasures were recalled again: shooting waterfowl for their mess in the still dawns, racing the swimming moose when they ran on him in the water. One day, fish hungry, he rigged up the elementary fishing tackle that they had brought from Saltsville and tried for a salmon.

To a long, tough rod cut on the river bank he attached thirty feet of cheap, white cord, and to the cord he fastened a bright spoon hook—the spinner that salmon fishers know. He had no leader, no reel, no delicately balanced salmon rod—and Ezram was full of scorn for the whole proceeding. And it was certainly true that, by all the rules of angling, Ben had no chance whatever to get a bite.

The cord was visible in the clear water, and the spoon itself was scarcely more than twenty feet from the rear of the boat. But this northern stream was not at all like the famous salmon rivers known to sportsmen. In years to come, when the lines of communication are better and tourist hotels are established on its banks, the river may then begin to conform to the qualifications of a conventional fishing stream, and then Ben's crude tackle will be unavailing. But at present the salmon were not so particular. As fishermen came but rarely, the fish were in countless numbers; and in such a galaxy there were bound to be few misguided fish that did not know a sportsman's tackle from a dub's.

The joy of angling, once known, dwells in the body until death, and Ben was a born fisherman. The old delight that can never die crept back to him the instant he felt the clumsy rod in his hands and the faint throb of the line through the delicate mechanism of his nerves. And apparently for no other reason than that the river hordes wished to welcome him home, almost at once a gigantic bull salmon took his spoon.

Ezram's first knowledge of it was a wild yell that almost startled him over the side—the same violent outcry that old anglers still can not restrain when the fish takes hold, even after a lifetime of angling. When he recovered himself he looked to see Ben kneeling frantically in the stern, hanging for dear life to his rod and seemingly in grave danger of being pulled overboard.

No man who has felt that first, overpowering jolt of a striking salmon can question the rapture of that first moment. The jolt carried through all the intricacies of the nerves, jarred the soul within the man, and seemingly registered in the germ plasm itself an impression that could be recalled, in dreams, ten generations hence. Fortunately the pole withstood that first, frantic rush, and then things began to happen in earnest.

The great trout seemed to dance on the surface of the water. He tugged, he swam in frantic circles, he flopped and darted and sulked and rushed and leaped. If he hadn't been securely hooked, and if it had not been for a skill earned in a hundred such battles, Ben would not have held him a moment.

But the time came at last, after a sublime half-hour, when his steam began to die. His rushes were less powerful, and often he hung like a dead weight on the line. Slowly Ben worked him in, not daring to believe that he was conquering, willing to sell his soul for the privilege of seeing the great fish safe in the boat. His eyes protruded, perspiration gleamed on his brow, he talked foolishly and incessantly to Ezram, the fish, the river-gods, and himself. Ezram, something of an old Isaac Walton himself, managed the canoe with unusual dexterity and chuckled in the contagion of Ben's delight. And lo—in a moment more the thing was done.

"You'd think you never had a rod in your hand before," Ezram commented in mock disgust. "Such hollerin' and whoopin' I never heard."

Ben grinned widely. "That's fishing—the sport that keeps a man an amateur all his days—with an amateur's delight." His vivid smile quivered at his lips and was still. "That's why I love the North; it can never, never grow old. You're just as excited at the close as at the beginning. Ezram, old man, it's life!"

Ezram nodded. Perhaps, in the moment's fire, Ben had touched at the truth. Perhaps life, in its fullest sense, is something more than being born, breathing air, consuming food, and moving the lips in speech. Life is a thing that wilderness creatures know, realized only when the blood, leaping red, sweeps away lifeless and palsied tissue and builds a more sentient structure in its place; invoked by such forces as adventure and danger and battle and triumph. For the past half-hour Ben had lived in the fullest sense, and Ezram was a little touched by the look of unspeakable gratitude with which his young companion regarded him.

But the journey ended at last. They saw the white peak they had been told to watch for, and soon after they came to a green bank from which the forest had been cut away. Softly, rather regretfully, they pushed up and made landing on the banks of a small stream, tributary to the great river, that marked the end of the water route.

This stream, Ezram knew, was Poor Man's Creek, the stream of which his brother had written and which they must ascend to reach Spruce Pass. Only five miles distant, in a quartering direction from the river, was Snowy Gulch, the village where they were to secure supplies and, from Steve Morris, the late Hiram's gun and his pet, Fenris.

For a time, at least, they had left the utter solitudes of the wild. Men had cut away the forest and had built a crude wagon road to Snowy Gulch. And before they were fully unpacked they made out the figure of a middle-aged frontiersman, his back loaded, advancing up the road toward them.

Both men knew something of the ways of the frontier and turned in greeting. "Howdy," Ezram began pleasantly.

"Howdy," the stranger replied. "How was goin'?"

"Oh, good enough."

"Come all the way from Saltsville?"

"Yes. Goin' to Snowy Gulch."

"It's only five miles, up this road," the stranger ventured. "I'm goin' up Saltsville way myself, but I won't have no river to tow me. I've got to do my own paddlin'. Thank the lord I'm only goin' a small part of the way."

"You ain't goin' to swim, are you? Where's your boat."

"My pard's got an old craft, and he and I are goin' to pack it out next trip." The stranger paused, blinking his eyes. "Say, partners—you don't want to sell your boat, do you?"

Ben started to speak, but the doubtful look on Ezram's face checked him. "Oh, I don't know," the old man replied, in the discouraging tones of a born tradesman. In reality the old Shylock's heart was leaping gayly in his breast. This was almost too good to be true: a purchaser for the boat in the first hour. "Yet we might," he went on. "We was countin' on goin' back in it soon."

"I'd just as leave buy it, if you want to sell it. In this jerked-off town there ain't a fit canoe to be had. Our boat is the worst tub you ever seen. How much you want for it?"

Ezram stated his figure, and Ben was prone to believe that he had adopted a highwayman for a buddy. The amount named was nearly twice that which they had paid. And to his vast amazement the stranger accepted the offer in his next breath.

"It's worth something to bring it up here, you dub," Ezram informed his young partner, when the latter accused him of profiteering.

After the sale was made Ezram and the stranger soon got on the intimate terms that almost invariably follow a mutually satisfactory business deal, and in the talk that ensued the old man learned a fact of the most vital importance to their venture. And it came like a bolt from the blue.

"So you don't know any folks in Snowy Gulch, then?" the stranger had asked politely. "But you'll get acquainted soon enough—"

"I've got a letter to a feller named Morris," Ezram replied. "And I've heard of one or two more men too—Jeffery Neilson was one of 'em—"

"You'll find Morris in town all right," the stranger ventured to assure him. "He lives right next to Neilson's. And—say—what do you know about this man Neilson?"

"Oh, nothin' at all. Why?"

"If you fellows is prospectin', Jeffery Neilson is a first-class man to stay away from—and his understrapers, too—Ray Brent and Chan Heminway. But they're out of town right now. They skinned out all in a bunch a few weeks ago—and I can't tell you what kind of a scent they got."

Ezram felt cold to the marrow of his bones. He glanced covertly at Ben; fortunately his partner was busy among the supplies and was not listening to this conversation. Yet likely enough it was a false alarm! Doubtless the ugly possibility that occurred to him had no justification whatever in fact. Nevertheless, he couldn't restrain the question that was at his lips.

"You don't know where they went, do you?" he asked.

"Not exactly. They took up this creek here a ways, through Spruce Pass, and over to Yuga River—the country that kind of a crazy old chap named Hiram Melville, who died here a few weeks ago, has always prospected."

The stranger marvelled that his old listener should have suddenly gone quite pale.