In his days in prison he had given up all dream of this happiness; but now he could begin to dream again. Everything was changed now that he had come home. The girl"s regard for him was friendly, even somewhat admiring, and the speculations of ripening womanhood were in her eyes.
He returned her gaze with frankest interest and admiration. His senses had been made sharp in his wilderness life; and his respect for her grew apace. She was not only innocent and girlish; she had those traits, innate, that a strong man loves in women: such worth and depth of character as he wishes bequeathed to his children.
Ben drew a long breath. It was good to be home. He had not only found his forests, just as he had left them, but now again he was among the forest people. This girl was of his own breed, not a stranger; her standards were his; she was a woods girl no less than he was a woodsman.
It is good to be among one"s own people, those who can follow through and understand. She too knew the urge of unbridled vitality and spirit, common to all the woods children; and life"s vivid meaning was her inheritance, no less than his. Her arms and lips were warm from fast-flowing blood, her nerves were vibrant and singing like his own. A virgin still, her eyes were tender with the warmheartedness that is such a dominant trait of frontier peoples; but what fire, what pa.s.sion might burn in them to-morrow! They were dark, lovely eyes, rather somber now in their earnestness, seeming shadowed by the dark shadows of the spruce themselves.
No human face had ever given him such an image of beauty as that of this dark-eyed forest child before him. Yet she was not piquant, demure, like the girls he had met in France; not stylish and sophisticated like those of the great cities he had visited since his return. Her garb became her: simple, not holding the eye in itself but calling attention to the brunette beauty of her throat and face, the warm redness of her childish mouth, and the brown, warm color of her arms. She had dark, waving hair, lovely to touch, wistful red lips. Because he was the woodsman, now and always, he marked with pleasure that there was no indication of ill-health or physical weakness about her. Her body was lithe and strong, with the grace of the wild creatures.
It would be good to know her, and walk beside her in the tree aisles.
All manner of delectable possibilities occurred to him. But all at once he checked his dreams with an iron will.
There must be no thought of women in his life--for now. He still had his way to make. A few hours more would find him plunging deeper into the forest, perhaps never to see her again. He felt an all-pervading sense of regret.
"There"s nothing I can say--to thank you," the girl was murmuring. "I never saw anything like it; it was just as if the wolf understood every word you said."
"Old Hiram had him pretty well trained, I suspect." The man"s eyes fell to the s.h.a.ggy form at his feet. "I"m glad I happened along Miss--"
"Miss Neilson," the girl prompted him. "Beatrice Neilson. I live here."
Neilson! His mind seemed to leap and catch at the name. Just that day he had heard it from the lips of the merchant. And this was the house next door where dwelt his fellow traveler for the morrow.
"Then it"s your father--or brother--who"s going to the Yuga--"
"No," the girl answered doubtfully. "My father is already there. I"m here alone--"
Then the gray eyes lighted and a smile broke about Ben"s lips. Few times in his life had he smiled in quite this vivid way.
"Then it"s you," he exulted, "who is going to be my fellow traveler to-morrow!"
XI
Ben found, rather as he had expected, that the girl was not at all embarra.s.sed by the knowledge that they were to have a lonely all-day ride together. She looked at the matter from a perfectly natural and wholesome point of view, and she could see nothing in it amiss or improper. The girls of the frontier rarely feel the need of chaperones.
Their womanhood comes early, and the open places and the fresh-life-giving air they breathe give them a healthy confidence in their ability to take care of themselves. Beatrice had a pistol, and she could shoot it like a man. She loved the solitude of the forest, but she also knew it was good to hear the sound of a human voice when journeying the lonely trails.
The frontier had also taught her to judge men. Here foregathered many types, strong-thewed frontiersmen whose reverence for women surpa.s.sed, perhaps, that of any other cla.s.s of men on earth, as well as the most villainous renegades, brutish offspring of the wilds, but she knew them apart. She realized from the first that this tall woodsman would have only kindness and respect for her; and that he was to be trusted even in those lonely forest depths beyond Spruce Pa.s.s.
Ben knew the wild beasts of the field better than he knew women, so her actual reception of the plan was lost to him. He felt that she was not displeased: in reality the delight and antic.i.p.ation she felt were beyond any power of hers to tell. She had been tremendously thrilled and impressed by his dominance over the wolf. She liked his bright, steady, friendly eyes; because she was a woods girl her heart leaped at the sight of his upright, powerful body; but most of all she felt that he was very near indeed to an ideal come true, a man of terrific strength and prowess yet not without those traits that women love best in men,--courage and character and gentleness.
"I"m surely glad I"m going to have a companion," he told her. "I won"t miss Ez--"
But just then remembrance came to him, cutting the word off short. The letter he carried in his pocket contained certain advice in regard to silence, and perhaps now was a good time to follow it. There was no need to tell the people of Snowy Gulch about Ezram and the claim. He remembered that he had been warned of the danger of claim jumpers.
For an instant his mind seemed to hover at the edge of a more elusive memory; but he could not quite seize upon it. He only knew that it concerned the matter in hand, and that it left him vaguely troubled.
"You were saying," the girl prompted him.
"Nothing very important--except how glad I am you are going my way. The woods are certainly lonesome by yourself. I suppose you"ll be willing to make an early start."
"The earlier the better. I"ve got a long way to go."
They made their plans, and soon they parted to complete preparations for the journey. The girl went into her house: Ben took the rifle, and followed by the wolf, struck down the main street of the village.
It can be said for Ben that he aroused no little conjecture and interest in the minds of the townspeople, striding through the street with the savage woods creature following abjectly at his heels. Evidently Ben"s conquest was complete: the animal obeyed his every command as quickly as an intelligent dog. It was noticeable, however, that even the hardiest citizens kept an apprehensive eye on the wolf during the course of any conversation with Ben.
He bought supplies--flour and salt and a few other essentials--simple tools and utensils such as are carried by prospectors, blankets, sh.e.l.ls for his rifle, and a few, simple, hard-wearing clothes. He went to bed dead tired, his funds materially reduced. But before dawn he was up, wholly refreshed; and after a hasty breakfast went to pack his horses for the trip.
Beatrice came stealing out of the shadows, more than ever suggestive of some timid creature of the forest, and the three of them saddled and packed the animals. As daylight broke they started out, down the shadowed street of the little town.
"The last we"ll see of civilization for a long, long time," the girl reminded him.
The man thrilled deeply. "And I"m glad of it," he answered. "Nothing ahead but the long trail!"
It was a long trail, that which they followed along Poor Man"s creek in the morning hours. The girl led, by right of having some previous acquaintance with the trail. The three pack horses walked in file between, heads low, tails whisking; and Ben, with Fenris at his horse"s hoofs, brought up the rear. Almost at once the spruce forest dropped over them, the silence and the gloom that Ben had known of old.
This was not like gliding in a boat down-river. The narrow, winding trail offered a chance for the most intimate study of the wilderness.
From the river the woodsfolk were but an occasional glimpse, the stir of a thicket on the bank: here they were living, breathing realities,--vivid pictures perfectly framed by the frosty green of the spruce.
From the first mile these two riders were the best of companions. They talked gaily, their voices carrying to each other with entire ease through the still glades. He found her spirited, warm-hearted, responding with an eager gladness to every fresh manifestation of the wild; and in spite of his gay laughter she read something of the dark moodiness and intensity that were his dominant traits. But he was kind, too. His att.i.tude toward the Little People met with on the trail--the little, scurrying folk--was particularly appealing: like that of a strong man toward children. She saw that he was sympathetic, instinctively chivalrous; and she got past his barrier of reserve as few living beings had ever done before.
She saw at once that he was an expert horseman. Riding a half-broken mustang over the winding, brush-grown moose trails of the North is not like cantering a thoroughbred along a park avenue, and a certain amount of difficulty is the rule rather than the exception; but he controlled his animal as no man of her acquaintance had ever done. He rode a bay mare that was not, by a long way, the most reliable piece of horseflesh McClurg owned, yet she gave him the best she had in her, scrambling with a burst of energy on the pitches, leaping the logs, battling the mires, and obeying his every wish. The joy of the Northern trails depends largely upon the service rendered by the horse between one"s knees, and Ben knew it to the full.
Before the first two hours were past Beatrice found herself thrilling with admiration at Ben"s woodcraft. Not only by experience but by instinct and character he was wholly fitted for life in the waste places. Just as some artists are born with the soul of music, he had come to the earth with the Red G.o.ds at his beck and call; the spirit of the wild things seemed to move in his being. She didn"t wholly understand. She only knew that this man, newly come from "The States,"
riding so straight and talking so gaily behind her, had qualities native to the forest that were lacking not only in her, but in such men as her father and Ray Brent. Seemingly he had inherited straight from the youngest days of the earth those traits by which aboriginal man conquered the wild.
The first real manifestation of this truth occurred soon after they reached the bank of Poor Man"s creek. All at once he had shouted at her and told her to stop her horse. She drew up and turned in her saddle, questioning.
"There"s something stirring in the thicket beside you. Don"t you hear him?"
Beatrice had sharp ears, but she strained in vain for the sound that, forty feet farther distant, Ben heard easily. She shook her head, firmly believing his imagination had led him astray. But an instant later a coyote--one of those gray skulkers whose waging cries at twilight every woodfarer knows--sprang out of his covert and darted away.
Beatrice was amazed. The significance of the incident went further than the fact of mere good hearing. The coyote, except when he chooses to wail out his wrongs at the fall of night, is one of the forest shadows for silence--yet Ben had heard him. It meant nothing less than that strange quickening of the senses found in but few--master woodsmen--that is the especial trait and property of the beasts themselves.
Now that they climbed toward Spruce Pa.s.s their talk died away, and more and more they yielded themselves to the hushed mood of the forest. Their trail was no longer clearly p.r.o.nounced. It was a wilderness thoroughfare in the true sense,--a winding path made by the feet of the great moose journeying from valley to valley.
Wild life became ever more manifest. They saw the grouse, Franklin"s fowl so well beloved by tenderfeet because of their propensity to sit still under fire and give an unsteady marksman a second shot. Fool hens, the woodsman called them, and the motley and mark of their weak mentality were a red badge near the eye. The fat birds perched on the tree limbs over the trail, relying on their mottled plumage, blending perfectly with the dull grays and browns of the foliage, to keep them out of sight. But such wiles did not deceive Ben. And once, in provision for their noon lunch, a fat c.o.c.k tumbled through the branches at Beatrice"s pistol shot.
The pine squirrels seemed to be having some sort of a compet.i.tive field meet, and the tricks they did in the trees above the trail filled the two riders with delight. They sped up and down the trunks; they sprang from limb to limb; they flicked their tails and turned their heads around backward and stood on their haunches, all the time chattering in the greatest excitement. Once a porcupine--stupid, inoffensive old Urson who carries his fort around on his back--rattled his quills in a near-by thicket; and once they caught a glimpse of a mule deer on the hillside.
This was rather too cold and hard a country, however, to be beloved by deer. Mostly they dwelt farther upriver.
All manner of wild creatures, great and small, had left signs on the trails. There were tracks of otter and mink, those two river hunters whose skins, on ladies" shoulders, are better known than the animals themselves. They might be only patches of fur in cities, but they were living, breathing personages here. Particularly they were personages to the trout. Ben knew perfectly how the silver fish had learned to dart with such rapidity in the water. They learned it keeping out of the way of the otter and the mink.
They saw the tracks of marten--the mink that has gone into the tree tops to live; the doglike imprints of a coyote at which Fenris whimpered and scratched in excitement (doubtless wishing to run him down and bite him, as is the usual reception to the detested coyote by the more important woods creatures) and once the fresh mud showed that an old grizzly--the forest monarch, the ancient, savage despot of the woods of which all foresters, near and far, speak with deep respect--had pa.s.sed that way but a few minutes before. Foresters both, the two riders had every reason to believe that the old gray tyrant was lurking somewhere in the thickets beside the trail, half in anger, half in curiosity watching them ride past. And of course the tracks of moose, and of their fellows of mighty antlers, the caribou, were in profusion.
To all these things Beatrice responded with the joy of a true nature lover. Her heart thrilled and her eyes were bright; and every new track was a fresh surprise and delight. But Ben was affected more deeply still. The response he made had its origin and font in deeply hidden centers of his spirit; mysterious realms that no introspection could reveal or words lay bare.
He knew nothing of Beatrice"s sense of constant surprise. In his own heart he had known that all these woodspeople would be waiting for him--just as they were--and he would have known far greater amazement to have found some of them gone. And instead of sprightly delight he knew only an all-pervading sense of comfort, as a man feels upon returning to his home country, among the people whom he knows and understands.