The Snowshoe Trail Part 27

He shook his head. "I can't--I can't go any farther. I can't see the way."

"But I'll lead you." By her intuition she guessed his despair; and she comforted him, his head against her breast. "Don't you know I'll lead you?" she cried, a world of pleading in her tone. "Oh, Bill--you can't give up. You must try. If you die, I'll die too--here beside you. Oh, Bill--don't you know I need you?"

The words stirred and wakened him more than all her first aid. She needed him; she was pleading to him to get up and go on. Could he refuse that appeal? Could any wish of hers, as long as he lived and was able to strive for her, go ungranted? The blood mounted through his veins, awakened. A mysterious strength flowed back into his thews.

There could be no further question of giving up. He struggled with himself, and his voice was almost his own when he spoke. "Give me more food--and more whisky," he commanded. "Take some yourself too--you'll have to help me a lot going home. And give me your hands."

He struggled to his feet. He reeled, nearly fell; but her arms held him up. She gave him more chocolate and a swallow of the burning liquid.

"It's a race against time," she told him. "If I can get you into the cabin before the reaction comes, I can save you. Try with every muscle you've got, Bill--for me!"

She need make no other appeal. She took his hand, and they started mus.h.i.+ng over the drifts.

The moose that stands at bay against the wolf pack, the ferocious little ermine in the grasp of the climbing marten never made a harder, more valiant fight than these two waged on the way to the cabin. There was no mercy for them in the biting cold. Bill was frightfully worn and spent from his experience of the day and the previous night, and Virginia had lent her own young strength to him. Often he reeled and faltered, and at such times her arm in his kept him up. The miles seemed innumerable and long.

A might that has its seat higher and beyond the mere energy-giving chemistry of their bodies came to their aid. Virginia had never dreamed that she possessed such power of endurance and unfaltering muscles: a spirit born of an unconquerable will rose within her and bore her on.

She was aware of no physical pain; the magnificent exertion of her muscles was almost unconscious. Just as women fight for the lives of their babes she fought for him, as if it were the deepest instinct of her being. The thought of giving up was intolerable, and such spirit is the soul of victory!

They won at last. Without the stimulant and the nutritious food defeat would have been certain. But all these factors would have been unavailing except for the fighting spirit that her appeal to him had awakened and which she had found, full-grown, in her own soul.

They mused up to the cabin, and Harold stared at them like a lifeless thing as Bill reeled through the doorway. Virginia led him to her own cot, then drew the blankets over him. And she was not so exhausted but that she could continue the fight for his recovery.

"Build up the fire, and do it quickly," she ordered Harold. Her tone was terse, commanding, and curiously he leaped to obey her. She removed Bill's snow-covered garments, and as Harold went out to procure more fuel she put water on the stove to heat. Then, procuring snow, she began to rub Bill's right hand, the hand that had been frozen in his effort to grope for the trail. Quick and hard work was needed to save it.

Harold came to her aid, but she put him to other work. She wanted to do this task herself. Then she aroused the woodsman from his half-sleep to give him coffee, cup after cup of it that used up the last of their meager supply.

It is one of the peculiar faculties of the human body to recover quickly from the effects of severe cold. Even coupled with exhaustion his hards.h.i.+ps had wrought no lasting organic injury, and the magnificent recuperative powers of Bill's tough body came quickly to his aid. About midnight he wakened from a long sleep, wholly clear-headed and free from pain. Wet bandages were over his eyes.

He groped and in a moment found Virginia's hands. But an instant he held them only; it was enough to know that she was near. He realized that he was out of danger now: such tenderness as she had given him must be forgotten. She was still sitting beside his bed, wrapped in a blanket.

He started to get up so that she could have her own cot; but she wakened at his motions. Gently she pushed him down.

"But I'm all right now," he told her. "I'm sleepy--and sore--but I'm strong as ever. Let me go to my bed, and get some sleep."

"No. I'm not sleepy yet."

But the dull tones of her voice--even thought Bill could not see the white fatigue in her face--belied her words. Bill laughed, the same gay laugh that had cheered her so many times, and swung his feet to the floor. "It's my turn to be nurse--now," he told her. "Get in quick."

"But I've had Harold bring some blankets here and spread them on the floor," she objected. "I can go to sleep there, when--I'm--tired."

"And I can go to sleep there right now."

With his strong arms he half-lifted her and laid her in his warm place.

She yielded to his strength, sleepily and gratefully, and he drew the blankets about her shoulders. The touch of his hand was in some way wonderful,--so strong, so comforting. Then, reeling only a little, he groped his way to the bed she had made upon the floor.

"Good night," he called, when he had pulled his blankets up. Guided by a hope that flooded his heart with tremulous antic.i.p.ations, he held out his hand in the darkness toward her.

As if by a miracle, her own hand came stealing into his. No man could tell by what unity of longing they had acted: but neither seemed surprised to find the other's, waiting in the darkness. It was simply the Mystery that all men see and no man understands.

He held the little hand in his for just a breath, as a man might hold a holy thing that a prophet had blessed. Then he let it go.

"Good night, Bill," she told him sleepily.

In the hours of refres.h.i.+ng slumber that lasted full into the next morning there was but one curious circ.u.mstance. In the full light of morning it seemed to him that he heard the faint p.r.i.c.k of a rifle, far away. The truth was that for all his heavy sleep, some of his guardian senses were awake to receive impressions, and the sound was a reality.

It was curiously woven into the fabric of his dreams.

There were four shots, one swiftly upon another. Four,--and the figure four had a puzzling, yet sinister significance to his mind. He didn't know what it was: he had a confused sense of some sort of an inner warning, an impression of impending danger and treachery. Who was it that had held up four fingers somewhere in his experience, and what manner of signal had it been? But Bill didn't fully waken. His dreams ran on, confused and troubled.

XXVII

The same rifle shots that brought bad dreams to Bill had a much more lucid meaning for Joe Robinson and Pete the Breed, the two Indians that were occupying Harold's cabin. The wind bore toward them from Harold's new abode, the rifle was of heavy caliber, and the sound came clear and unmistakable through the stillness. They looked from one to the other.

"Four shots," Pete said at last. "Lounsbury's signal."

Pete stood very still, as if in thought. "Didn't come heap too quick,"

he observed. "One day more you and me been gone down to Yuga--after supplies."

"Yes--but we can't go now." Joe's face grew crafty. The wolfish character of his eyes was for the moment all the more p.r.o.nounced. There was a hint of excitement in his swarthy, unclean face.

"That means--big doin's," he p.r.o.nounced gravely. "We go."

Pete agreed, and they made swift preparations for their departure. Some of these preparations would have been an amazement to the white woodsmen of the region,--for instance, the slow cleaning and oiling of their weapons. The red race--at least such representatives of it as lived in Clearwater--was not greatly given to cleanliness in any form. It was noticeable that Joe looked well to see if his pistol was loaded, and Pete slapped once at the long, cruel blade that he wore in his belt.

Then they put on their snowshoes and mushed away.

There was no nervous waiting at the appointed meeting place,--a spring a half-mile from Bill's cabin. Harold Lounsbury was already there. The look on his face confirmed Joe's predictions very nicely. There would, it seemed, be big doings, and very soon.

A stranger to this land might have thought that Harold was drunk.

Unfamiliar little fires glittered and glowed in his eyes, his features were drawn, his word of greeting was heavy and strained. His hands, however, were quite steady as he rolled his cigarette.

For all that the North had failed to teach him so many of its lessons Harold knew how to deal with Indians. It was never wise to appear too eager; and he had learned that a certain nonchalance, an indifference, gave prestige to his schemes. The truth was, however, that Harold was seared by inner and raging fires. He had just spent the most black and bitter night of his life. The hatred that had been smoldering a long time in his breast had at last burst into a searing flame.

There was one quality, at least, that he shared with the breeds; hatred was an old lesson soon learned and never forgotten. He had hated Bill from the first moment, not only for what he was and what he stood for--so opposite to Harold in everything--but also for that first mortifying meeting in his own cabin. He felt no grat.i.tude to him for rescuing him from his degenerate life. The fact that Bill's agency, and Bill's alone, had brought Virginia to his arms was no softening factor in his malice. Every day since, it seemed to him, he had further cause for hatred, till now it stung and burned him like strong drink, like live hot steam in his brain. In his inner soul he knew that Bill had endured tests in which he had failed, and he hated him the worse for it.

He had sensed Bill's contempt for him, and the absolute fairness with which the woodsman had always treated him brought no remorse. Bill had found the mine for which he sought, to which, by the degenerate code by which he lived, he felt he had an ancestral right.

Ever since he had gone down into that darkened treasure house he had known in his own soul, late or soon, his future course. The gold alone was worth the crime he planned. And as a crowning touch came the events of the day and night just pa.s.sed.

He had had no desire for Bill to return to the cabin alive. It would have been a simple way out of his difficulties for the woodsman to fall and die in the snow wastes of Clearwater. For him to lie so still and impotent in the drifts would compensate for many things, and in such a case he would never have opportunity to record the finding of his mine.

The only imperfection, in this event, was that it deprived Harold of his personal vengeance, and magnanimously he was willing to forgo that. It wouldn't be his pleasure to see the final agony, the last shudder of the frame,--but yet at least he might see much remnants as would be left when the snow had melted in spring.

Every event of the day had pointed to a successful trip, from Harold's point of view. He had known that Bill couldn't make it through to his Twenty-three Mile cabin after the Chinook wind had softened the snow.

The bitter night that followed would have likely claimed quickly any one that tried to sleep, without blankets, unsheltered in the snow fields.

And when Virginia had gone out to save him and had brought back the blind and reeling man, his first impulse had been to leap upon him, in his helplessness, and drive his hunting knife through his heart!

It wouldn't, however, had been a wise course to pursue. He didn't want to lose Virginia. He flattered himself that he had been cunning and self-mastered. He had watched Virginia's tender services to the woodsman, and once he had seen a l.u.s.ter in her eyes that had seemed to shatter his reason. And he knew that the time had come to strike.