It is doubtful that a white man--even a resident of the forest such as Bill--could ever have heard as much. He was a woodsman, but he did not inherit, straight from a thousand woodsman ancestors, perceptions almost as keen as those of the animals themselves. As it was, he hadn"t had a chance to guess their presence. The wind always carried the sound of their rifles away from him rather than toward him; besides, their guns were of smaller caliber and had a less violent report.
Last of all, they had been careful about shooting. For a certain very good reason they had no desire for Bill to discover their presence.
There are certain laws, among the northern men, as to trapping rights.
Nothing can be learned in the provincial statute books concerning these laws. Mostly they are unwritten; but their influence is felt clear beyond the Arctic Circle. They state quite clearly that when a man lays down a line of traps, for a certain distance on each side of him the district is his, and no one shall poach on his preserves. And these Indians had lately been partners in an undertaking to clear the whole region of its furs.
They had no idea but that Bill had discovered their trap lines and had come to make trouble. For all that they sat so still and aloof, Joe"s mind had flashed to his rifle in the corner of the lean-to, six feet away. He rather wished it was nearer. His friend Pete the Breed was considerably rea.s.sured by the feel of his long, keen-bladed knife against his thigh. Knives, after all, were very effective at close work. The two of them could really afford to be insolent.
And they were considerably amazed at Bill"s first question. He had left the snowshoe trail that evidently pa.s.sed in front of the shelter and had crossed the snow crust to the mouth of the lean-to. "Did one of you make those tracks out there?" he asked. He felt certain that one of them had. He only asked to make sure.
There was a quality in Bill"s voice that usually, even from such gentry as this, won him a quick response. Joe"s mind gave over the insolence it had planned. But for all that Bill"s inner triumph was doomed to be short-lived.
"No," Joe grunted. "Our partner made it. Follow it down--pretty soon find another cabin."
XIV
Bill only had to turn to see the snowy roof of the cabin, two hundred yards away down the glade. Ordinarily his sharp eyes would have discerned it long before: perhaps the same inner spirit, encountered before this eventful day, was trying to protect him still. He turned without a word, and no man could have read the expression on his wind-tanned face. He mushed slowly on to his journey"s end.
It was a new cabin, just erected, and smoke drifted faintly from its chimney. Bill rapped on the door.
"Come along in," some one answered gruffly. Bill removed his snowshoes, and the door opened before his hand.
He did not have to glance twice at the bearded face to know in whose presence he stood. His inner senses told him all too plainly. Changed as he was, there was no chance in heaven or earth for a mistake. This was Harold Lounsbury, the same man who had pa.s.sed his camp years before, the same lost lover that Virginia had come to find.
Even now, Bill thought, it was not too late to withdraw. He could pretend that he had came to quarrel in regard to his trapping rights.
After one glance he knew that, from the standard of good sense, there was a full reason for withdrawal. In the years he might even reconcile his own conscience to the act. Harold leaned forward, but he didn"t get up to meet him.
Bill scarcely noticed the man"s furtive preparations for self-defense.
His rifle lay across his knees, and ostensibly he was in the act of cleaning it, but in reality he was holding it ready for Bill"s first offensive move. He had known of Bill of old; in the circle in which he moved--lost utterly to the sight of the men of Bradleyburg--there were stories in plenty about this stalwart woodsman. For days--ever since he had come here with his Indians and laid down his trap line--he had dreaded just such a visit. The real reason for Bill"s coming did not even occur to him.
Bill saw that the man was frightened. His lips were loose, his eyes nervous and bright, his hands did not hold quite steady. But all these observations were at once obliterated and forgotten in the face of a greater, more profound discovery. In one scrutinizing glance the truth swept him like a flood. Here was one that the wilderness had crushed in its brutal grasp. As far as Bill"s standards were concerned, it had broken and destroyed him.
This did not mean that his health was wasted. His body was strong and trim: except for a suspicious network of red lines in his cheeks and a yellow tinge to the whites of his eyes, he would have seemed in superb physical condition. The evidence lay rather in the expression of his face, and most of all in the surroundings in which he lived.
He had been, to some extent at least, a man of refinement and culture when he had pa.s.sed through Bill"s camp so long ago. He had been clean-shaven except for a small mustache; courteous, rather patronizing but still friendly. Now he was like a surly beast. His eyes were narrow and greedy,--weasel eyes that at once Bill mistrusted and disliked. A scowl was at his lips, no more were they in a firm, straight line. The light and glory of upright manhood, if indeed he had ever possessed it, had gone from him now. He was a friend and a companion of Joe and Pete: in a measure at least he was of their own kind.
When the white man chooses to descend, even the savages of the forest cannot keep pace with him. Bill knew now why Harold had never written home. The wilderness had seized him body and soul, but not in the embrace of love with which it held Bill. Obviously he had taken the line of least resistance to perdition. He had forgotten the world of men; in reality he was no longer of it. Bill read the truth--a familiar truth in the North--in his crafty, stealthy, yet savage face.
He was utterly unkempt and slovenly. His coa.r.s.e beard covered his lips, his matted hair was dull with dirt, his skin was scarcely less dark than that of the Indians themselves. The nails on his hands were foul; the floor of the house was cluttered with rubbish and filth. It was a worthy place, this new-built cabin! Even the desolate wastes outside were not comparable with this.
Yet leering through his degeneracy, his ident.i.ty could not be mistaken.
Here was the man Virginia had pierced the North to seek.
Harold removed his pipe. "What do you want?" he asked.
For a moment Bill did not answer. His thoughts were wandering afar. He remembered, when Harold had pa.s.sed his camp, there had been something vaguely familiar, a haunting resemblance to a face seen long before.
The same familiarity recurred to him now. But he pushed it away and bent his mind to the subject in hand. "You"re Lounsbury, of course," he said.
"Sure." This man had not forgotten his name, in the years that he was lost to men. "I ask you again--what do you want?"
"You"ve been living on the Yuga. You came up here to trap in my territory."
The man"s hands stirred, ever so little, and the rifle moved on his knees. "You don"t own this whole country." Then he seemed to take courage from Bill"s impa.s.sive face. He remembered his stanch allies--Pete and Joe. "And what if I did?"
"You knew I trapped here. You brought up Joe Robinson and a breed with you. You meant to clean up this winter--all the furs in the country."
Harold"s face drew in a scowl. "And what are you goin" to do about it?"
"The queer thing is----" and Bill spoke quietly, slowly, "I"m not going to do anything about it--now."
Harold"s crafty eyes searched his face. He wondered if Bill was afraid--some way it didn"t fit into the stories that he had heard of him that this woodsman should be afraid. But he might as well go on that supposition as any other. "Maybe it"s a good thing," he said. And for an instant, something of his lost suavity of speech came back to him.
"Then to what--do I owe the honor of this visit?"
Bill sighed and straightened. The struggle within himself had, an instant before, waged more furiously than ever. Why should he not leave this man to his filthy cabin and his degeneracy and never let Virginia know of their meeting? He wondered if such had been his secret plan, concealed in the further recesses of his mind, when he had told her to-day"s expedition concerned his mine,--so that he could withdraw if he wished. In this course most likely lay the girl"s ultimate happiness, certainly his own. He could steal back; no one would ever know the truth. The man had sunk beneath her; even he, Bill, was more worthy of her than this degenerate son of cities and culture.
Yet who was he to dare to take into his own hands the question of Virginia"s destiny? He had promised to bring her lost lover back to her; the fact that he was no longer the man she had known could be only a subterfuge to quiet his own conscience. Besides, the last sentence that the man had spoken had been singularly portentous. For the instant he had fallen into his own native speech, and the fact offered tremendous possibilities. Could it be that the old days were not entirely forgotten, that some of the virtues that Virginia had loved in him still dwelt in his degenerate hulk, ready to be wakened again? He had heard of men being redeemed. And all at once he knew his course.
So intent was he upon his thoughts that he scarcely heard the sound of steps in the snow outside the cabin door, then the noise of some one on the threshold in the act of removing snowshoes.
The task that confronted him now was that, no more and no less, to which he had consecrated his life,--to bring happiness to the girl he loved.
There was work to do with this man. But even yet he might be redeemed; with Bill"s aid his manhood might return to him. His own love for the girl tore at his heart, the image of his life stretched lonely and drear before him, yet he could not turn aside.
"I didn"t come to see you about trapping. I came--about Virginia Tremont."
His eyes were on Harold"s face, and he saw the man start. He had not forgotten the name. Just for an instant his face was stark pale and devoid of expression. "Virginia!" he cried. "My G.o.d, what do you know about her?"
But he didn"t wait the answer. All at once he looked, with an annoyance and anxiety that at first Bill could not understand, toward the door of the cabin. The door k.n.o.b slightly turned.
Bill wheeled, with a sense of vast and impending drama. Harold swore, a single brutal oath, then laughed nervously. An Indian squaw--for all her filth an untidiness a fair representative of her breed--pushed through the door and came stolidly inside. She walked to the back of the cabin and began upon some household task.
Bill"s face was stern as the gray cliffs of the Selkirks when he turned again to Harold. "Is that your woman?" he asked simply.
Harold did not reply. He had not wished this man, emissary from his old acquaintances of his native city, to know about Sindy. He retained that much pride, at least. But the answer to Bill"s question was too self-evident for him to attempt denial. He nodded, shrugging his shoulders.
Bill waited an instant; and his voice when he spoke again was singularly low and flat. "Did you marry her?"
Harold shrugged again. "One doesn"t marry squaws," he replied.
Once more the silence was poignant in the wretched cabin. "I came to find Harold Lounsbury, a gentleman," Bill went on in the same strange, flat voice, "and I find--a squaw man."
Bill realized at once that this new development did not in the least affect his own duty. His job had been to find Harold and return him to Virginia"s arms. It was not for him to settle the girl"s destiny. For all he had spent his days in the great solitudes of nature he knew enough of life to know that women do not give their love to angels.
Rather they love their men as much for their weaknesses as for their virtues. This smirch in Harold"s life was a question for the two of them to settle between them.
It did, however, complicate the work of regeneration. Bill had known squaw men before, and few of them had ever regenerated. Usually they were men that could not stand the test of existence by their own toil: either from failure or weakness they took this sordid line of least resistance. From thence on they did not struggle down the trap line in the bitter winter days. They laid comfortably in their cabins and their squaws tended to such small matters. It was true that the squaws wore out quickly; sometimes they needed beating, and at about forty they withered and died, or else the blizzard caught them unprotected in the forest,--and then it became necessary to select another. This was an annoyance, but not a tragedy. One was usually as faithful and as industrious as another.
It was perfectly evident that Sindy had been at work setting out traps.