The Snowshoe Trail Part 25

It would be different if he felt Virginia still needed him. If he could win her any happiness by fighting on, the struggle would still be worth while. But she had Harold to show her the way through the winter woods.

It was true that they would have to rely on the fallen grizzly for meat: an uncomfortable experience, but nothing to compare with any further movement through the cruel drifts. Harold would come back and claim the mine; perhaps he would even erect his own notice before his departure, and the Rutheford family would know the full fruits of their crime of long ago. But it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered now was rest and sleep.

Slowly he sank down in the snow.

XXIV

When the Chinook wind, moving northwest at a faster pace than the waterfowl move south, struck the home cabin, Virginia's first thought was for Bill. She heard it come, faint at first, then bl.u.s.tering, just as Bill had heard it; she saw it rock down a few dead trees, and she listened to its raging complaints at the window.

"I'll show you my might," it seemed to say. "You have dared my silent places, come into my fastness, but now I will have revenge. I'll pay you--in secret ways that you don't know."

It so happened that Harold's first thought was also of Bill. It was a curious fact that his heart seemed to leap as if the wind had smitten it. He knew what the Chinook could do to a snow crust. He estimated that Bill was about halfway between the two cabins, and he didn't know about the little, deserted cabin where Bill could find refuge during the night. His eyes gleamed with high antic.i.p.ations.

Harold's thought was curiously intertwined with the remembrance of the dark cavern he had entered yesterday, the gravel laden with gold. If indeed all things went as it seemed likely that they would go, Bill would never carry the word of his find down to the recorder's office.

It was something to think of, something to dream about. Yellow gold,--and no further trouble in seeking it. Such a development would also save the labor of further planning. It was a friend of his, this wind at the window.

"Won't this Chinook melt the snow crust?" Virginia asked him.

He started. He hadn't realized that this newfound sweetheart of his knew the ways of Chinook winds and snow crusts. "Oh, no," he responded.

"Why should it? Wind makes crusts, not softens them."

Virginia was satisfied for the moment. Then her mind went back to certain things Bill had told her on one of their little expeditions.

Strangely, she took Bill's word rather than Harold's.

"But this is a warm wind, Harold," she objected. "If the crust is melted Bill can't possibly get through to his Twenty-three Mile cabin to-night. What will he do?"

"He'll make it through. The crust won't melt that fast, if it melts at all. He may have a long, hard tramp, though. Don't worry, Virginia, he'll be coming in to-morrow night--with his back loaded with food."

"I only wish I hadn't let him go." The girl's tone was heavy and dull.

"But we have to have supplies----"

"We could have gone out on that grizzly meat. It was so foolish to risk his life, and I had a presentiment too."

He was glad that she had had a presentiment. It tended to verify his fondest dreams. But he laughed at her, and falling into one of his most brilliant moods, tried to entertain her. Her interest was hard to hold to-day. Her mind kept dwelling on Bill, mus.h.i.+ng on through the softening snow, and her eyes kept seeking the window.

She cooked lunch and burned every dish. Then, no longer able to deny her own fears, she ventured out in the snow to test its crust. She put on her snowshoes, starting a little way down Bill's trail. She was white-faced and sick of heart when she returned.

"Harold, I'm worried," she cried. "I tried to walk in this snow--and you can talk about Bill making it through all you want, but I won't believe you. A hundred steps has tired me out."

He was beginning to be a little angry with her fears. And he made the mistake of answering rather impatiently.

"Well, what can you do about it? he's gone, hasn't he, and we can't call him back."

"I suppose not. But if I--we--were out there in that soft snow, and he was here, he'd find something to do about it! He'd come racing out there to us--bringing food an blankets----"

"Oh, he'd be a hero!" Harold scorned. "Listen, Virginia--there's nothing in the world to fear. The Chinook sprang up at nine----"

"Oh, it was much later than that."

"I looked at my watch," the man lied. "He was only well started then; he's woodsman enough to turn around and come back if there's danger.

You may see him before dark."

"I pray that I will! And if--if--anything has happened to him----"

All at once the tears leaped to her eyes. She couldn't restrain them any more than the earth can constrain the rain. She turned into her own curtained-off portion of the cabin so that Harold could not see.

The afternoon that followed was endlessly long, and lonely. Her heart sank at the every complaint of the wind, and she dreaded the fall of the shadows. Three times she thrilled with inexpressible joy at a sound on the threshold, but always it was just the wind, mocking her distress.

She saw the sinister, northern night growing between the spruce trees, and she dreaded it as never before. She cooked a meager supper--the supplies were almost gone--but she had no heart to sit up and talk with Harold. At last she went behind her curtain, hoping to forget her fears in sleep.

All through the hours of early night she slept only at intervals: dozing, coming to herself in starts and jerks, and dreaming miserably.

The hours pa.s.sed, and still Bill did not return.

Her imagination was only too vivid. In her thoughts she could see this stalwart woodsman of hers camping somewhere in the snowdrifts, blanketless, staying awake through the bitter night to mend the fire, and perhaps in trouble. She knew something of the northern cold that was a.s.sailing him, hovering, waiting for the single instant when his fire should go down or when he should drop off to sleep. Oh, it was patient, remorseless. He was likely hungry, too, and despairing.

She wakened before dawn; and the icy, winter stars were peering through the cabin window. Surely Bill had returned by now: yet it would hardly be like him to come in and not let her know of his safe return. He had always seemed so well to understand her fears, he was always so thoughtful. There was no use trying to go back to sleep until she knew for certain. She slipped from her bed onto the floor of the icy cabin.

She missed the cozy warmth of the fire; but, s.h.i.+vering, she slipped quickly into her clothes. Then she lighted a candle and put on her snowshoes. She mushed across the little s.p.a.ce of snow to the men's cabin.

The east was just beginning to pale: the stars seemed lucid as ever in the sky. There was a labyrinth of them, uncounted millions that gleamed and twinkled in every little rift between the spruce trees. Even the stars of lesser magnitude that through the smoke of her native city had never revealed themselves were out in full array to-night. And the icy air stabbed like knives the instant she left the cabin door. It was the coldest hour she had ever known.

She knocked on Harold's door, then waited for a reply. But the cabin was ominously silent. Her fears increased: she knew that if Bill were present he would have wakened at her slightest sound. He would have seemed to know instinctively that she was there. She knocked again, louder.

"Who's there?" a sleepy voice answered. Virginia felt a world of impatience at the dull, drowsy tones. Harold had been able to sleep!

He wasn't worrying over Bill's safety.

"It's I--Virginia. I'm up and dressed. Did Bill come back?"

"Bill? No--and what in G.o.d's earth are you up this early for? Forget about Bill and go back to bed."

"Listen, Harold," she pleaded. "Don't tell me to go back to bed. I feel--I know something's happened to him. He couldn't have gone on clear to the cabin in that awful snow; he either started back or camped.

In either case, he's in trouble--freezing or exhausted. And--and--I want you to go out and look for him."

Harold was fully awake now, and he had some difficulty in controlling his voice. In the first place he had no desire to rescue Bill. In the second, he was angry and bitterly jealous at her concern for him. "You do, eh--you'd like to send me out on a bitter night like this on a fool's errand such as that. Where is there a cabin along the way--you'd only kill me without helping him."

"Nonsense, Harold. You could take that big caribou robe and some food, and if you had to camp out it wouldn't kill you. Please get up and go, Harold." Her tone now was one of pleading. "Oh, I want you to----"

"Go back to bed!" But Harold remembered, soon, that he wasn't talking to his squaw, and his voice lost its impatient note. "Don't worry about Bill any more. He'll come in all right. I'm not going out on any wild-goose chase like that--on a day such as to-day will be. You'll see I'm right when you think about it."

"Think!" she replied in scorn. "If it were Bill he wouldn't stop to think. He'd just act. You won't go, then?"

"Don't be foolish, Virginia."

Angry words rose in her throat, but she suppressed them. A daring idea had suddenly filled her with wonder. It came full-grown: that she herself should start forth into the snow deserts to find Bill herself.

Virginia had not been trained to self-reliance. Except for her northern adventure, she had never been obliged to face difficulties, to care for and protect herself, to work with her hands and do everyday tasks. To build a fire, to repair a leaking tap, to take responsibility for anything above such schoolday projects as amateur plays an social gatherings would have seemed tasks impossible of achievement. At first it had never occurred to her that she might herself be of aid to Bill.