The minutes seemed interminable. Time had never moved so slowly before.
She tried to lie still, to relax; then to direct her thought in other channels; but all of these meandering streams flowed back into the main current which was Ben. Yet it was folly to worry about him; any moment she would hear his step at the edge of the forest. But the night was so dark, and the storm so wild. A half-hour dragged its interminable length away.
Her uneasiness was swiftly developing into panic. Just to-day she was willing to risk his life for her freedom: it was certainly folly now to goad herself to despair by dwelling on his mysterious absence. It might speed the pa.s.sing minutes if she got up and found some work to do about the cave; but she simply had no heart for it. Once she sat up, only to lie down again.
The moments dragged by. Surely he would have had time to reach camp by now. The storm neither increased nor decreased; only played its mournful melodies in the forest. The song of the rain was despairing,--low mournful notes rising to a sharp crescendo as the fiercer gusts swept it into the tree tops. The limbs murmured unhappily as they smote together; and a tall tree, swaying in the wind, creaked with a maddening regularity. She was never so lonely before, so darkly miserable.
"I want him to come," her voice suddenly spoke aloud. It rang strangely in the gloomy cave. "I want him to come back to me."
She felt no impulse for the words. They seemed to speak themselves.
Presently she sat erect, her heart leaping with inexpressible relief, at the sound of a heavy tread at the edge of the glade.
The steps came nearer, and then paused. She sprang to her feet and went to the mouth of the cave. A silence that lived between the beating rain and the complaining wind settled down about her. Her eyes could not pierce the darkness.
"Is that you, Ben?" she called.
She strained into the silence for his reply. The cold drops splashed into her face.
"Ben?" she called again. "Is that you?"
Then something leaped with an explosive sound, and running feet splashed in the wet gra.s.s in flight. The little spruce trees at the edge of the glade whipped and rustled as a heavy body crashed through. The steps had been only those of some forest beast--a caribou, perhaps, or a moose--come to mock her despair.
She remembered that Ben had been wishing for just such a visitation these past few days; of course in the daylight hours when he could see to shoot. Their meat supply was almost gone.
She did not go to her cot again. She stood peering into the gloom. All further effort to repel her fears came to nothing. The storm was already of two hours" duration, and Ben would have certainly returned to the cave unless disaster had befallen him. Was he lost somewhere in the intertwining trails, seeking shelter in a heavy thicket until the dawn should show him his way? There were so many pitfalls for the unsuspecting in these trackless wilds.
Yet she could be of no aid to him. The dark woods stretched interminably; she would not even know which way to start. It would just mean to be lost herself, should she attempt to seek him. The trails that wound through the glades and over the ridges had no end.
"Ben!" she called again. Then with increasing volume. "Ben!"
But no echo returned. The darkness swallowed the sound at once.
The night was chill: she longed for the comfort of the fire. The actual labor of building it might take her mind from her fears for a while at least; and its warm glow might dispel the growing cold of fear and loneliness in her breast. Besides, it might be a beacon light for Ben.
She turned at once to the pile of kindling Ben had prepared.
But before she could build a really satisfactory fire, one that would endure the rain, she must cut fuel from some of the logs Ben had hewn down and dragged to the cave. She lighted a short piece of pitchy wood, intending to locate the heavy camp axe. Then, putting on her heavy coat--the same garment of l.u.s.trous fur which Ben had sent her back for the day of her abduction--she ventured into the storm.
The rain splashed in vain at her torch. The pitch burned with a fierce flame. But her eyes sought in vain for the axe.
This was a strange thing: Ben always left it leaning against one of the chunks of spruce. Presently she halted, startled, gazing into the black depths of the forest.
Ben had taken it; he had plainly gone forth after fuel. Trees stood all about the little glade: he couldn"t have gone far. The inference was obvious: whatever disaster had befallen him must have occurred within a few hundred yards of the cave.
Holding her torch high she went to the edge of the glade and again called into the gloom. There was no repression in her voice now. She called as loudly as she could. She started to push on into the fringe of timber.
But at once she paused, holding hard on her self-control. It was folly to make a blind search. To penetrate the dark mystery of the forest with only this little light--already flickering out--would probably result in becoming lost herself. Such a course would not help Ben"s cause.
Evidently he was lying within a few hundred feet of her, unconscious--perhaps dead--or he would have replied to her call.
Dead! The thought sped an icy current throughout the hydraulic system of her veins.
She was a mountain girl, and she made no further false motions. She turned at once to the cave, and piling up her kindling, built a fire just at the mouth of the cave. It was protected here in some degree from the rain, and the wind was right to carry the smoke away. This fire would serve to keep her direction and lead her back to the cavern.
Once more she ventured into the storm, and gathering all the cut fuel she could find, piled it on her fire. The two spruce chunks that Ben had cut for their fireside seats were placed as back logs. Then she hunted for pine knots taken from the scrub pines that grew in scattering clumps among the spruce, and which were laden with pitch.
One of these knots she put in the iron pan they used for frying, then lighted it. Then she pushed into the timber.
Holding her light high she began to encircle the glade clear to the barrier of the cliffs. To the eyes of the wild creatures this might have been a never-to-be-forgotten picture: the slight form of the girl, her face blanched and her eyes wide and dark in the flaring light, her grotesque torch and its weird shadows, and then rain sweeping down between. She reached the cliff, then started back, making a wider circle.
Adding fresh fuel to the torch, she peered into every covert and examined with minute care any human-shaped shadow in that eerie world of shadows; but the long half-circle brought her back to the cliff wall without results. She was already wet to the skin, and her pine knots were nearly spent. Ever the load of dread was heavier at her heart. In the hour or more she had searched--she had no way of estimating time--she had already gone farther than Ben usually went for his fuel.
As yet no tears came; only the raindrops lay on her face and curled her dark hair in ringlets. But she must not give up yet. It was hard to hold her shoulders straight; but she must make the long circle once more.
With courage and strength such as she had not dreamed she possessed, she launched forward again. But fatigue was breaking her now. The tree roots tripped her faltering feet, the branches clutched at her as she pa.s.sed. It was hard to tell what territory she had searched, or how far she had gone. But when she was halfway around, she suddenly halted, motionless as an image, at the edge of the stream.
The flickering light revealed a tree, freshly cut, its, naked stump gleaming and its tall form lying p.r.o.ne. Yet beneath it the shadows were of strange, unearthly shape, and something showed stark white through the green foliage. Great branches stretched over it, like bars over a prison window.
Just one curious deep sob wracked her whole body. The life-heat, the mystery that is being, seemed to steal away from her. Her strength wilted; and for an instant she could only stand and gaze with fixed, unbelieving eyes. But almost at once the unquenchable fires of her spirit blazed up anew. She saw her task, and with a faith and steadfastness conformable more to the sun and the earth than to human frailty, her muscles made instant and incredible response.
Instantly she was beside the form of her comrade and enemy, struggling with the cruel limbs that pinned him to the earth.
x.x.xV
Beatrice knew one thing and one alone: that she must not give way to the devastating terror in her heart. There was mighty work to do, and she must keep strong. Her only wish was to kneel beside him, to lift the bleeding head into her arms and let the storm and the darkness smother her existence; but her stern woods training came to her aid. She began the stupendous task of freeing him from the imprisoning tree limbs.
The pine knots flickered feebly; and by their light she looked about for Ben"s axe. Her eyes rested on the broken gun first: then she saw the blade, shining in the rain, protruding from beneath a broken bough. She drew it out and swung it down.
Some of the lesser limbs she broke off, with a strength in her hands she did not dream she possessed. The larger ones were cut away with blows incredibly strong and accurate. How and by what might she did not know, but almost at once the man"s body was free except for the tree trunk that wedged him against a dead log toward which he had leaped for shelter.
She seemed powerless to move it. Her shoulders surged against it in vain. A desperate frenzy seized her, but she fought it remorselessly down. Her self-discipline must not break yet. Seeing that she could not move the tree itself, she thrust with all her power against the dead log beside which Ben lay. In a moment she had rolled it aside.
Then for the first time she went to her knees beside the p.r.o.ne form.
Ben was free of the imprisoning limbs, but was his soul already free of the stalwart body broken among the broken boughs? She had to know this first; further effort was unavailing until she knew this. Her hand stole over his face.
She found no rea.s.suring warmth. It was wet with the rain, cold to the touch. His hair was wet too, and matted from some dreadful wound in the scalp. Very softly she felt along the skull for some dreadful fracture that might have caused instant death; but the descending trunk had missed his head, at least. Very gently she shook him by the shoulders.
Her stern self-control gave way a little now. The strain had been too much for human nerves to bear. She gathered him into her arms, still without sobbing, but the hot tears dropped on to his face.
"Speak to me, Ben," she said quietly. The wind caught her words and whisked them away; and the rain played its unhappy music in the tree foliage; but Ben made no answer. "Speak to me," she repeated, her tone lifting. "My man, my baby--tell me you"re not dead!"
Dead! Was that it--struck to the earth like the caribou that fell before his rifle? And in that weird, dark instant a light far more bright than that the flickering pine knots cast so dim and strange over the scene beamed forth from the altar flame of her own soul. It was only the light of knowledge, not of hope, but it transfigured her none the less.
All at once she knew why she had hurled the poisoned cup from his hand, even though her father"s life might be the price of her weakness. She understood, now, why these long weeks had been a delight rather than a torment; why her fears for him had gone so straight to her heart. She pressed his battered head tight against her breast.
"My love, my love," she crooned in his ear, pressing her warm cheek close to his. "I do love you, I do, I do," she told him confidingly, as if this message would call him back to life. Her lips sought his, trying to give them warmth, and her voice was low and broken when she spoke again. "Can"t you hear me, Ben--won"t you try to come back to me? If you"re dead I"ll die too--"
But the man did not open his eyes. Would not even this appeal arouse him from this deep, strange sleep in which he lay? He had always been so watchful of her--since that first day--so zealous for her safety. She held him closer, her lips trembling against his.