"And you"ll be--awfully careful?" Her voice did not hold quite steadily. "So many--many things can happen in those awful woods--when you are alone. I never realized before how they"re always waiting, always holding a sword over your head, ready to cut you down.
I"m afraid to have you go----"
He laughed gently, but the deathless delight he felt at her words rippled through the laugh like flowing water. "There"s nothing to be afraid of, Virginia. You"ll see me back to-morrow night. I"ve wandered these woods by myself a thousand times----"
"And the thousandth and first time you might fall into their trap! But why can"t we take some of that grizzly meat----"
"Virginia, you"d break your pretty teeth on it. Of course we could in a pinch--but this is no march, to-day. Good-by."
"Good-by." Her voice sank almost to a whisper, and her tones were sober and earnest. "I"ll pray for you, Bill--the kind of prayers you told me about--entreating prayer to a G.o.d that can hear--and understand--and help. A real G.o.d, not just an Idea such as I used to believe in. Here"s my hand, Bill."
He groped for it as a plant gropes for sunlight, as the blind grope to find their way. He found it at last: it was swallowed in his own palm, and the heart of the man raced and thrilled and burned. She couldn"t see what he did with it in the darkness. It seemed to her she felt a warmth, a throbbing, a pressure that was someway significant and portentous above any experience of her life. Yet she didn"t know that he had dropped to his knees outside the curtain and pressed the hand to his lips. The door closed slowly behind him.
The last stars were fading, slipping away like ghosts into the further recesses of the sky, as he pushed away from the cabin door. He didn"t need the full light of morning to find his way the first few miles. He need only head toward the peak of a familiar mountain, now a shadow against the paling sky.
The night was not so cold as it had a right to be. He had expected a temperature far below zero: in reality it seemed not far below freezing.
Some weather change impended, and at first he felt vaguely uneasy. But he mushed on, the long miles gliding slowly, steadily beneath him. Only once he missed his course, but by back-tracking one hundred yards he found it again.
Morning came out, the trees emerged from the gloom, the shadows faded.
He kept his direction by the landmarks learned while following his trap lines. The day was surprisingly warm. His heavy woolens began to oppress him.
As always the wilderness was silent and vaguely sinister, but after a few hours it suddenly occurred to him that the air was preternaturally still. A few minutes later, when he struck a match to light his pipe, this impression was vividly confirmed. As is the habit with all woodsmen he watched the match-smoke to detect the direction of the wind.
The blue strands, with hardly a waver or tremor, streamed straight up.
He was somewhat rea.s.sured, however, when he remembered that he had not yet emerged from a great valley between low ranges that ordinarily prevented free pa.s.sage of the winds.
He mushed on, his snowshoes crunching on the white crust. The powers of the wilderness gave him good speed--almost to the noon hour. Then they began to show him what they could do.
He was suddenly aware that the fine edge of the wilderness silence had been dulled. There was a faint stir at his ear drums, to dim to name or identify or even to accept as a reality. He stopped, listening intently.
The stir grew to a faint and distant murmur, the murmur to a long swish like a million rustling garments. A tree fell, with a crash, far away.
Then the wind smote him.
In itself it was nothing to fear. It was not a hurricane, not even a particularly violent storm, but only a brisk gale that struck him from the side and more or less impeded his progress. Trees that were tottering and ready to fall went down with reverberating reports; the snowdust whirled through the forest, changing the contour of the drifts, and filling up the tracks of the wild creatures. But for Bill the wind held a real menace. It was from the southeast, and warm as a girl"s hand against his face.
No man of the Northwest Provinces is unacquainted with this wind. It is prayed for in the spring because its breath melts the drifts swiftly, but it is hated to death by the traveler caught far from his cabin on snowshoes. The wind was the far-famed Chinook, the southeast gale that softens the snow as a child"s breath melts the frost on a window pane.
It did not occur to Bill to turn back. Already he was nearly halfway to his destination. The food supplies had to be secured, sooner or later; and when the Chinook comes no man knows when it will go away. He mushed on through the softening snow.
Within an hour the crust was noticeably softer. One hour thereafter and the snow was soft and yielding as when it had first fallen in early winter. Mushing was no longer a pleasant pursuit. Henceforth it was simply toil, rigorous and exhausting. The snowshoe sank deep, the snow itself clung to the webs and frame until it was almost impossible to lift.
A musher in the soft wet snow can only go at a certain pace. There is no way to hurry the operation and get speedily over the difficulties.
Any attempt to quicken the pace results only in a fall. The shoe cannot be pushed ahead as when the snow is well-packed or crusted. It has to be deliberately lifted, putting the leg tendons to an unnatural strain.
It was too far to turn back. As many miles of weary snow stretched behind him as before him. At Twenty-three Mile cabin he could pa.s.s a night as comfortable as at home: there were food and blankets in plenty, and the well-built hut contained a stove. Once there, he could wait for a hard freeze that would be certain to harden the half-thawed snow and make it fit for travel. His only course was to push on step by step.
The truth suddenly dawned upon him that he was face to face with one of the most uncomfortable situations of all his years in the forest. He didn"t believe he would be able to make the cabin before the fall of night; if indeed he were able to complete the weary miles, it would only be by dint of the most cruel and exhausting labor. He carried no blankets, and although with the aid of his camp ax he could keep some sort of a fire, a night out in the snow and the cold was not an experience to think of lightly.
Bill knew very well just what capabilities for effort the human body holds. It has certain definite limits. After a few hours of such labor as this the body is tired,--tired clear through and aching in its muscles. Despondency takes the place of hope, the step is somewhat faltering, hunger a.s.sails and is forgotten, even the solace of tobacco is denied because the hand is too tired to grope for and fill the pipe.
Thereafter comes a deeper stage of fatigue, one in which every separate step requires a distinct and tragic effort of will. The perceptions are blunted, the uncertainty of footfall is more p.r.o.nounced, the stark reality of the winter woods partakes of a dreamlike quality. Then comes utter and complete exhaustion.
In its first stages there can still be a few dragging or staggering steps, a last effort of a brave and commanding will. Perhaps there is even a distance of creeping. But then the march is done! There is no comeback, no rallying. The absolute limit has been reached. But fortunately, lying still in the snow, the wanderer no longer cares. He wonders why he did not yield to this tranquil comfort long since.
Bill began to realize that he was approaching his own limit. The weary miles crept by, but with a tragic languor that was like a nightmare.
But time flew; only a little s.p.a.ce of daylight remained.
Bill"s leg muscles were aching and burning now, and he had to force himself on by sheer power of his will. He would count twenty-five painful steps, then halt. The wind had taken a more westerly course by now, and the snow was no longer melting. The air was more crisp: probably one night would serve to recrust the snow. But the fact became ever more evident that the darkness would overtake him before he could reach the cabin.
But now, curiously, he dreaded the thought of pausing and making a fire.
Partly he feared--with the age-old fear that lay buried deep in every cell--the long, bitter night without shelter, food or blankets; but even the labor of fire-building appalled his spirit. I would be a mighty task, fatigued as he was: first to clear away the snow, cut down trees, hew them into lengths and split them--all with a light camp ax that only dealt a sparrow blow--then to kneel and stoop and nurse the fire.
His woodsman"s senses predicted a bitter night, in spite of the warmth of the day. It would harden the snow again, but it would also wage war against his life. All night long he would have to fight off sleep so that he could mend the fire and cut fuel. It mustn"t be a feeble, flickering fire. The cold could get in then. All night long the flame must not be allowed to flag. In his fatigue it would be so easy to dose off,--just for a moment, and the fire would burn out. In that case the fire of his spirit would burn out too,--just as certain, just as soon.
Late afternoon: already the shadows lay strange and heavy in the distant tree aisles. And all at once he paused, thrilled, in his tracks.
A little way to the east, on the bank of a small creek, his father and his traitorous partner had once had a mining claim,--a mine they had tried unsuccessfully to operate before Bronson had made his big strike.
They had built a small cabin, and for nearly thirty years it had stood moldering and forgotten. Twice in his life Bill had seen it,--once as a boy, when his father had taken him there on some joyous, holiday excursion, and once in his travels Bill had beheld it at a distance.
Its stove had rotted away years since; it contained neither food nor blankets nor furniture, yet it was a shelter against the night and the cold. And even now it was within half a mile of where he stood.
Exultant and thankful, Bill turned in his tracks and mushed over toward it.
XXI
There was plenty of heart-breaking work to do when Bill finally reached the little cabin. The snow had banked up to the depth of several feet around it and had blown and packed against the door. He took off one of his snowshoes to use as a shovel and stolidly began the work of removing the barricade. There was no opening the door against the pressure of the snow. Besides, the bolt was solidly rusted.
But after a few weary strokes it occurred to him that the easiest way would be to cut some sort of an opening in the top of the door, just large enough for his body to crawl through. As the cabin was abandoned there would be no possible disadvantage to such an opening: and since the fire had to be built outside the cabin, against the backlogs, the door would have to be left open anyway, to admit the heat. With a few strokes of his sharp little camp ax he cut away the planks, leaving a black hole in the door. He lighted a match and peered in.
The interior was unchanged since his previous visit, years before. The cabin had no floor, not the least vestige of furniture, and rodents had littered the ground with leaves.
He turned to his toil of making a fire. First he cut down a spruce--a heart-breaking task with his little ax--then laboriously hacked it into lengths. These he bore to the cabin, staggering with the load. He split the logs, cutting some of them into firewood for kindling. Then he made a pile of shavings.
He tested the wind and found it blowing straight west and away from the cabin. He felt oddly tired and dull, much too tired to strain and listen for some whispered message of an inner voice that seemed to be trying hard to get his attention, a few little, vague misgivings that haunted him. His comfort depended, he told himself, on the heat of the fire beating in through the little opening of the cabin door, so he placed the backlog just as close as he dared in front. Then he laid down split pieces for frame of his fire and erected his heap of kindling.
He entered through the opening and stood on the ground below to light the fire. He didn"t desire to crawl through the flames to enter the cabin. Reaching as far as he could, he was just able to insert the candle. The wind caught it, the kindling flames. Then he stood shivering, waiting for the room to warm.
He had a sweeping flood of thoughts as he watched the leaping flame.
Its cheerful crackle, its bright color in the gloom was almost too good to be true. In these dark forests he had learned to be wary and on guard at too great fortune. Quite often it was only a prank of perverse forest G.o.ds, before they smote him with some black disaster. It seemed to him that there was a wild laughter, a Satanic mocking in the joyous crackle that was vaguely but fearfully ominous. The promise in the rainbow, the siren"s song to the mariners, the little dancing light in the marsh--promising warmth and safety but only luring the weary traveler to this death--had this same quality: the cheer, the hope, the beauty only to be blasted by misfortune.
The warmth flooded in, and he looked about for something to sit on. He wished he had brought in one of the spruce logs he had cut. But it was too late to procure one now. The flames leaped at the opening of the cabin: he would be obliged to crawl laboriously through them to get into the open. Tired out, he lay down in the dry dirt, putting his arm under his head. He would soon go to sleep.
But his ragged, exhausted nerves would not find rest in sleep at once.
His thoughts were troubling and unpleasant. The pale firelight filled the cabin, dancing against the walls. The glare reflected wanly on the ground where he lay.
All at once he was aware that his eyes were fastened upon an old cigar box on a shelf against the wall. He seemed to have a remembered interest in it,--as if long ago he had examined its contents with boyish speculations. But he couldn"t remember what it contained.
Likely enough it was empty.
The hours were long, and the wind wailed and crept like a housebreaker about the cabin; and at last--rather more to pa.s.s the time than for any other reason--he climbed to his feet and stepped to the shelf on which the box lay.