She was wide awake, and further deception was unavailing. "No. It"s Bill."
"Well, what are you doing, up? Did Harold--do you mean to say you built the fire yourself?"
"That"s me, lady----"
"Then you must have your sight again----" The girl s.n.a.t.c.hed aside the curtain and peered into his face.
"No such luck. Coals were still glowing; all I had to do was put in a piece of firewood. But I"m all well otherwise, as far as I can tell.
How about you?"
The girl stretched up her arms. "A little stiff--Bill, I"ve certainly gained recuperative powers since I came up here. But, Heavens, I"ve had bad dreams. And now--I want you to tell me just how this blindness of yours--is going to affect our getting out."
It was a serious question, one to which Bill had already given much thought. "I don"t see how it can affect us a great deal," he answered at last. "I realize you don"t know one step of the way down to Bradleyburg, and I can"t see the way; but Harold knows it perfectly. Of course if we had plenty of food the sensible thing to do would be to wait--till I get back my sight. But you know--we haven"t scarcely any food at all. The last of the meat is gone, except one little piece of jerky. We"ve got a cup or two of flour and one or two cans. Of course there isn"t enough to get down to the settlements on."
"Then we"ll have to use the grizzly--after all?"
"Of course. Thank G.o.d we had him to fall back on. But even with him, I don"t think we ought to wait till I get back my sight. We might have other delays, and perhaps another softening of the crust. It will be pretty annoying--traveling on grizzly flesh--and pretty awkward to have a blind man in the party, but--I"ll be some good, anyway. Maybe I can cut fuel."
The girl was deeply touched. It was so characteristic of this man that even in his blindness he wished to make the difficulties of the journey just as light as possible for her.
"I won"t let you do a thing," she told him. "Harold and I can do the work of camp."
"There won"t be much to do, unfortunately; our camping will have to be exceedingly simple. We"ll take the sled full of blankets and grizzly meat and what other little things we need. I don"t see why you can"t ride on it, too--most of the way; the going is largely downhill and the crust is perfect. We can skim along. At night we"ll have to sleep out--and not get much sleep, either--but by going hard, even on snowshoes, we can make it through in three days--sleeping out just two nights. Harold and I can build raging fires--he starting them and helping me with the the fuel cutting. Oh, I know, Virginia, I won"t be much good on this trip--and those two nights will be pretty terrible.
We"ll have to take turns in watching the fire. But with blankets around our shoulders, acting as reflectors for the heat, we can get some rest."
"But you are sure Harold knows the way? I couldn"t even get as far as the river, and you are blind----"
"Harold knows the way as well as I do. I can mush all right, by hanging on the gee-pole. It will be comparatively easy going; the brush is covered with snow. The only thing that remains is to have Harold go over and get a supply of the grizzly meat. Or, better still, since he"ll have to take the sled, we can pick it up on the way out. It"s frozen hard and won"t take harm, and it"s only a half mile out of our way."
As if the invocation of his name were a magic summons, Harold opened the door and entered. He carried Bill"s loud-mouthed rifle in the hollow of his arm.
"You"ve been hunting?" Virginia cried. She was pleased that this sweetheart of hers should have risen so early in an attempt to secure fresh meat for their depleted larder. It was wholly the manly thing to do.
"Of course. I figured we needed meat. I carried Bill"s rifle because I don"t trust the sights of mine. They were a yard off that day I shot at the caribou."
"Did you see any game?"
Harold"s eyes met hers an narrowed, ever so slightly. But his answer was apt. "I saw a caribou--about two miles away. There didn"t seem a chance in the world to hit it, but considering our scarcity of meat, I took that chance. Of course, I didn"t hit within ten feet of him; Bill"s gun isn"t built for such long ranges. I shot--four times."
Bill did not reply. He was thinking about those same four shots. It was incomprehensible that they should have made such an impression upon him.
"And for all that Bill hasn"t got his sight back yet, we"re going to start down to-morrow," Virginia went on in a gay voice. She glanced once at Bill, but she did not see the world of despair that came into his face at the delight with which she spoke. "You and I will take turns pulling the sled; Bill will hang on to the gee-pole. And Bill says you know the way. We"re going to dash right through--camp out only two nights."
"I know the way all right," Harold answered. "What about food?"
"It"s only a half-mile out of the way to Bill"s mine. There we"re going to load the sled with grizzly meat."
It was in Harold"s mind that their journey would be far different--down to the Twenty-three Mile cabin and to the Yuga rather than over Grizzly River. But for certain very good reasons he kept this knowledge to himself. His lips opened to tell them that the wolves and coyotes had already devoured the carca.s.s of the bear; but he caught himself in time. It would be somewhat hard to explain how he had learned that fact, in the first place; and in the second, there was a real danger to his plot if this revelation were made. Likely they would suggest that, to conserve what little food they had, they start at once. The time had not yet come to unfold this knowledge.
He nodded. The day pa.s.sed like those preceding,--simple meals, a few hours of talk around the fire, such fuel cutting as was necessary to keep the cabin snug and to provide a supply for the night. This was their last day in Clearwater,--and Virginia could hardly accept the truth.
How untrue had been her gayety! In all the white lies of her past, all the little pretenses that are as much a part of life in civilization as buildings and streets, she had never been as false to herself as now.
She had never had to act a part more cruel,--that she could feel joy at the prospect of her departure.
She could deceive herself no longer. The events of the previous day had opened her eyes--in a small measure at least--and her thoughts groped in vain for a single antic.i.p.ation, a single prospect that could lighten the overpowering weight of her sadness. And the one hope that came to her was that strange sister of despair,--that back in her old life, in her own city, full forgetfulness might come to her.
Wasn"t it true that she would say good-by to the bitter cold and the snow wastes? Was there no joy in this? Yet these same solitudes had brought her happiness that, though now to be blasted, had been a revelation and a wonder that no words could name or no triumphs of the future could equal. The end of her adventure,--and she felt it might as well be the end of her life. Three little days of bitter hardship, Bill tramping at her side,--and then a long, dark road leading nowhere except to barren old age and death.
Never again would she know the winter forest, the silence and the mystery, and the wolf pack chanting with infinite sadness from the hill.
The North Wind, a reality now, would be a forgotten myth: she would forget that she had seen the woodland caribou, quivering with irrepressible vigor against the snowfields. The thrill, the exhilaration of battle, the heat of red blood in her veins would be strangers soon: the whole adventure would seem like some happy, impossible dream. Never to hear a friendly voice wishing her good morning, never a returning step on the threshold, the touch of a strong hand in a moment of fear! She was aghast and crushed at the realization that this man was going out of her life forever. She would leave him to his forests,--their shadows hiding him forever from her gaze.
She found it hard to believe that she could fit into her old niche.
Some way, this northern adventure had changed the very fiber of her soul. She could find no joy at the thought of the old gayeties she had once loved, the beauty and the warmth. Was it not true that Harold would go out beside her, the lover of her girlhood? His uncle would start him in business; her course with him would be smooth. But her hands were cold and her heart sick at the thought.
As the hours pa.s.sed, the realization of her impending departure seemed to grow, like a horror, in her thoughts. She still made her pathetic effort to be gay. It would not do for these men to know the truth, so she laughed often and her words were joyous. She fought back the tears that burned in her eyelids. She could only play the game; there was no way out.
She could conceive of no circ.u.mstances whereby her fate would be altered. She knew now, as well as she knew the fact of her own life, that she had been trapped and snared and cheated by a sardonic destiny.
For the moment she wished she had never fought her way back to the cabin with Bill after yesterday"s adventure, but that side by side in the drifts, they had yielded to the Shadow and the cold.
Through the dragging hours of afternoon, Harold seemed restless and uneasy. He smoked impatiently and was nervous and abstracted in the hours of talk. But the afternoon died at last. Once more the shadows lengthened over the snow; the dusk grew; the first, bright stars thrust through the gray canopy above them. Virginia went to the work of cooking supper,--the last supper in this little, unforgettable cabin in the snow.
Both Bill and Virginia started with amazement at the sound of tapping knuckles on the door. Harold"s eyes were gleaming.
XXIX
Harold saw fit to answer the door himself. He threw it wide open; Virginia"s startled glance could just make out two swarthy faces, singularly dark and unprepossessing, in the candlelight. She experienced a swift flood of fear that she couldn"t understand: then forced it away as an absurdity.
"We--we mushin" over to Yuga--been over Bald Peak way," Joe said stumblingly. "Didn"t know no one was here. Want a bunk here to-night."
"You"ve got your own blankets?"
"Yes. We got blankets."
"On your way home, eh? Well, I"ll have to ask this lady."
Harold seemed strangely nervous as he turned to Virginia. He wondered if this courteous reference to her was a mistake; could it be that she would object to their staying? It would make, at best, an awkward situation. However, he knew this girl and he felt sure. He half-closed the door.
"A couple of Indians, going home toward the settlement on the Yuga," he explained quickly. "They"ve come from over toward Bald Peak and were counting on putting up here to-night. That"s the woods custom, you know--to stay at anybody"s cabin. They didn"t know we were here and want to stay, anyway. Do you think we can put "em up?"
"Good Heavens, we can"t send them on, on a night like this. It is awkward, though--about food----"
"They"ve likely got their own food."
"Of course they can stay. Bill can sleep on the floor in here--you can take the two of them with you into the little cabin. It will be pretty tight work, but we can"t do anything else. Bring them in."
Harold turned again to the door, and in a moment the Indians strode, blinking, into the candlelight. The brighter light did not reveal them at greater advantage. Virginia shot them a swift glance and was instinctively repelled: but at once she ascribed the evil savagery of their faces to racial traits. She went back to her work.