The Sky Line of Spruce Part 20

Quietly Beatrice retrieved the bird and began to remove its feathers.

Ben built the fire, chopped st.u.r.dily at a half-grown spruce until it shattered to the earth, and then chopped it into lengths for fuel. When the fire was blazing bright, he cut away the green branches and laid them, stems overlapping, into a fragrant bed.

"Here's where you sleep to-night, Beatrice," he informed her.

She stopped in her work long enough to try the springy boughs with her arms; then she gave him an answering smile. Even a tenderfoot can make some sort of a comfortable pallet out of evergreen boughs--ends overlapping and plumes bent--but a master woodsman can fas.h.i.+on a veritable cradle, soft as silk with never a hard limb to irritate the flesh, and yielding as a hair mattress. Such softness, with the fragrance of the balsam like a sleeping potion, can not help but bring sweet dreams.

Ben had been wholly deliberate in the care with which he had built the pallet. He had simply come to the conclusion that she was paying a high price for her father's sins; and from now on he intended to make all things as easy as he could for her. Moreover, she had been a sportswoman of the rarest breed and merited every kindness he could do for her.

He was not half so careful with his own bed, built sixty feet on the opposite side of the fire. He threw it together rather hastily. And when he walked back to the fire he found an amazing change.

Already Beatrice had established sovereignty over the little patch of ground they had chosen for the camp,--and the wilderness had drawn back.

This spot was no longer mere part of the far-spreading, trackless wilds.

It had been set off and marked so that the wilderness creatures could no longer mistake it for part of their domain. Over the fire she had erected a cooking rack; and water was already boiling in a small bucket suspended from it. In another container a fragrant mixture was in the process of cooking. She had spread one of the blankets on the gra.s.s for a tablecloth.

As twilight lowered they sat down to their simple meal,--tea, sweetened with sugar, and vegetables and meat happily mingled in a stew. It was true that the vegetable end was held up by white grains of rice alone, but the meat was the white, tender flesh of grouse, permeating the entire dish with its tempting flavor. As a whole, the stew was greatly satisfying to the inner man.

"I wish I'd brought more tea," Ben complained, as he sipped that most delightful of all drinks, the black tea beloved of the northern men.

"You a woodsman, and don't know how to remedy that!" the girl responded.

"I know of a native subst.i.tute that's almost as good as the real article."

About the embers of the fire they sat and watched the tremulous wings of night close round them. The copse grew breathless. The distant trees blended into shadow, the nearer trunks dimmed and finally faded; the large, white northern stars emerged in infinite troops and companies, peering down through the rifts in the trees. Here about their fire they had established the domain of man. For a few short hours they had routed the forces of the wilderness; but the foe pressed close upon them. Just at the fluctuating ring of firelight he waited, clothed in darkness and mystery,--the infinite, brooding spirit of the ancient forest.

They had never known such silence, broken only by the prolonged chord of the river, as descended upon them now. It was new and strange to the conscious life of Ben, himself, the veritable offspring of the woods; although infinitely old and familiar to a still, watching, secret self within him. It was as if he had searched forever for this place and had just found it, and it answered, to the full, a queer mood of silence in his own heart. The wind had died down now. The last wail of a coyote--disconsolate on a far-away ridge--had trembled away into nothingness; the voices of the Little People who had chirped and rustled in the tree aisles during the daylight hours were stilled with a breathless, dramatic stillness. Such sound as remained over the interminable breadth of that dark forest was only the faint stirrings and rustlings of the beasts of prey going to their hunting; and this was only a moving tone in the great chord of silence.

To Ben the falling night brought a return of his most terrible moods.

Beatrice sensed them in his pale, set face and his cold, wolfish eyes.

The wolf sat beside him, swept by his master's mood, gazing with deadly speculations into the darkness. Beatrice saw them as one breed to-night.

The wild had wholly claimed this repatriated son. The paw of the Beast was heavy upon him; the softening influences of civilization seemed wholly dispelled. There was little here to remind her that this was the twentieth century. The primitive that lies just under the skin in all men was in the ascendancy; and there was little indeed to distinguish him from the hunter of long ago, a grizzled savage at the edge of the ice who chased the mammoth and wild pony, knowing no home but the forest and no gentleness unknown to the wolf that ran at his heels....

The tenderness and sympathy he had had for her earlier that day seemed quite gone now. She searched for it in vain in the dark and savage lines of his pale face.

Because it has always been that the happiness of women must depend upon the mood of men, her own spirits fell. The despair that descended upon her brought also resentment and rage; and soon she slipped away quietly to her bed. She drew the blankets over her face; but no tears wet her cheeks to-night. She was dry-eyed, thoughtful--full of vague plans.

She lay awake a long time, until at last a little, faint ray of hope beamed bright and clear. More than a hundred miles farther down the Yuga, past the mouth of Grizzly River, not far from the great, north-flowing stream of which the Yuga was a tributary, lay an Indian village--and if only she could reach it she might enlist the aid of the natives and make a safe return, by a long, roundabout route, to her father's arms. The plan meant deliverance from Ben and the defeat of all his schemes of vengeance,--perhaps the salvation of her father and his subordinates.

She realized perfectly the reality of her father's danger. She had read the iron resolve in Ben's face. She knew that if she failed to make an immediate escape from him, all his dreadful plans were likely to succeed: his enemies would follow him into the unexplored mazes of Back There to effect her rescue and fall helpless in his trap. What quality of mercy he would extend to them then she could readily guess.

Just to get down to the Indian village: this was her whole problem. But it was Ben's plan to land and enter the interior somewhere in the vast wilderness between, from which escape could not be made until the flood waters of fall. The way would remain open but a few hours more, due to the simple fact that the waters were steadily falling and the river-bottom crags, forming impa.s.sable barriers at some points, would be exposed. _If she made her escape at all it must be soon._

Yet she could not attempt it at night. She could not see to guide the canoe while the darkness lay over the river. Just one further chance remained--to depart in the first gray of dawn.

She fell into troubled sleep, but true to her resolution, wakened when the first ribbon of light stretched along the eastern horizon. She sat up, laying the blankets back with infinite care. This was her chance: Ben still lay asleep.

Just to steal down to the water's edge, push off the canoe, and trust her life to the doubtful mercy of the river. The morning soon would break; if she could avoid the first few crags, she had every chance to guide her craft through to deliverance and safety. By no conceivable chance could Ben follow her. He would be left in the shadow of the gorge, a prisoner without hope or prayer of deliverance. There was no crossing the cliffs that lifted so stern and gray just behind. Before he could build any kind of a craft with axe and fire, the waters would fall to a death level, beyond any hope of carrying him to safety. The tables would be turned; he would be left as helpless to follow her as Neilson had been to follow him.

The plan meant deliverance for her; but surely it meant _death_ to him.

Starvation would drive him to the river and destruction, before men could ever come the long way to rescue him. But this was not her concern. She was a forest girl and he her enemy: he must pay the price for his own deeds.

She got to her feet, stalking with absolute silence. She must not waken him now. Softly she pressed her unshod foot into the gra.s.s. He stirred in his sleep; and she paused, scarcely breathing.

She looked toward him. Dimly she could see his face, tranquil in sleep and gray in the soft light; and an instantaneous surge of remorse sped through her. There was a sweetness, a hint of kindly boyishness in his face now, so changed since she had left him beside the glowing coals.

Yet he was her deadly enemy; and she must not let her woman's heart cost her her victory in its moment of fulfillment. She crept on down to the water.

She could discern the black shadow of the canoe. One swift surge of her shoulders, one leap, the splash of the stern in the water and the swift stroke of the paddle, and she would be safe. She stepped nearer.

But at that instant a subdued note of warning froze her in her tracks.

It was only a small sound, hushed and hardly sharp enough to arouse Ben from his sleep; but it was deadly, savage, unutterably sinister. She had forgotten that Ben did not wage war alone. For the moment she had given no thought to his terrible ally,--a pack brother faithful to the death.

A great, gaunt form raised up from the pile of duffle in the canoe; and his fangs showed ivory white in the wan light. It was Fenris, and he guarded the canoe. He crouched, ready to spring if she drew near.

The girl sobbed once, then stole back to her blankets.

XXV

Ben wakened refreshed, at peace with the world as far as he could ever be until his ends were attained; and immediately built a roaring fire.

Beatrice still slept, exhausted from the stress and suspense of her attempt to escape. When the leaping flames had dispelled the frost from the gra.s.s about the fire Ben stepped to her side and touched her shoulder.

"It's time to get up and go on," he said. "We have only a few hours more of travel."

It was true. The river had fallen appreciably during the night. Not many hours remained in which to make their permanent landing. Although the river was somewhat less violent from this point on, the lower water line would make traveling practically as perilous as on the preceding day.

The girl opened her eyes. "I'd rather hoped--I had dreamed it all," she told him miserably.

The words touched him. He looked into her face, moved by the girlishness and appeal about the red, wistful mouth and the dark, br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes.

"It's pretty tough, but I'm afraid it's true," he said, more kindly than he had spoken since they had left the landing. "Do you want me to cook breakfast and bring it to you here?"

"No, I want to do that part myself. It makes the time pa.s.s faster to have something to do."

He went to look for fresh meat, and she slipped into her outer garments.

She found water already hot in a bucket suspended from the cooking rack, permitting a simple but refres.h.i.+ng toilet. With Ben's comb she straightened out the snarls in her dark tresses, parted them, and braided them into two dusky ropes to be worn Indian fas.h.i.+on in front of her shoulders. Then she prepared the meal.

It was a problem to tax the ingenuity of any housekeeper,--to prepare an appetizing breakfast out of such limited supplies. But in this art, particularly, the forest girls are trained. A quant.i.ty of rice had been left from the stew of the preceding night, and mixing it with flour and water and salt, she made a batter. Sooner or later fresh fat could be obtained from game to use in frying: to-day she saw no course other than to melt a piece of candle. The reverberating roar of the rifle a hundred yards down the river bank, however, suggested another alternative.

A moment later Ben appeared--and the breakfast problem was solved. It was another of the woods people that his rifle had brought down,--one that wore fur rather than feathers and which had just come in from night explorations along the river bank. It was a yearling black bear--really no larger than a cub--and he had an inch of fat under his furry hide.

The fat he yielded was not greatly different from lard; and the pancakes--or fritters, as Ben termed them--were soon frying merrily.

Served with hot tea they const.i.tuted a filling and satisfactory breakfast for both travelers.

After breakfast they took to the river, yielding themselves once more to the whims of the current. Once more the steep banks whipped past them in ever-changing vista; and Ben had to strain at his paddle to guide the craft between the perilous crags. The previous day the high waters had carried them safely above the boulders of the river bed: to-day some of the larger crags all but sc.r.a.ped the bottom of the canoe. It did not tend toward peace of mind to know that any instant they might encounter a submerged crag that would rip their craft in twain. Ben felt a growing eagerness to land.

But within an hour they came out once more upon the open forest. The river broadened, sped less swiftly, the bank sloped gradually to the distant hills. This was the heart of Back There,--a virgin and primeval forest unchanged since the piling-up of the untrodden ranges. The wild pace of the craft was checked, and they kept watch for a suitable place to land.

There was no need to push on through the seething cataracts that lay still farther below. Shortly before the noon hour Ben's quick eye saw a break in the heavy brushwood that lined the bank and quickly paddled toward it. In a moment it was revealed as the mouth, of a small, clear stream, flowing out of a beaver meadow where the gra.s.s was rank and high. In a moment more he pushed the canoe into the mud of the creek bank.

They both got out, rather sober of mien, and she helped him haul the canoe out upon the bank. They unloaded it quickly, carrying the supplies in easy loads fifty yards up into the edge of the forest, on well-drained dry ground.