Chapter 10

A LITTLE PERSONAL HISTORY

Hazel discarded the wet coat, and, drawing a chair up to the fire, took off her sopping footgear and toasted her bare feet at the blaze. Her clothing was also wet, and she wondered pettishly how in the world she was going to manage with only the garments on her back--and those dirty and torn from hacking through the brush for a matter of two weeks. According to her standards, that was roughing it with a vengeance. But presently she gave over thinking of her plight. The fire warmed her, and, with the chill gone from her body, she bestowed a curious glance on her surroundings.

Her experience of homes embraced only homes of two sorts--the middle-class, conventional sort to which she had been accustomed, and the few poorly furnished frontier dwellings she had entered since coming to the hinterlands of British Columbia. She had a vague impression that any dwelling occupied exclusively by a man must of necessity be dirty, disordered, and cheerless. But she had never seen a room such as the one she now found herself in. It conformed to none of her preconceived ideas.

There was furniture of a sort unknown to her, tables and chairs fashioned by hand with infinite labor and rude skill, massive in structure, upholstered with the skins of wild beasts common to the region. Upon the walls hung pictures, dainty black-and-white prints, and a water color or two. And between the pictures were nailed heads of mountain sheep and goat, the antlers of deer and caribou. Above the fireplace spread the huge shovel horns of a moose, bearing across the prongs a shotgun and fishing rods. The center of the floor--itself, as she could see, of hand-smoothed logs--was lightened with a great black and red and yellow rug of curious weave. Covering up the bare surface surrounding it were bearskins, black and brown. Her feet rested in the fur of a monster silvertip, fur thicker and softer than the pile of any carpet ever fabricated by man. All around the walls ran shelves filled with books. A guitar stood in one corner, a mandolin in another. The room was all of sixteen by twenty feet, and it was filled with trophies of the wild--and books.

Except for the dust that had gathered lightly in its owner's absence, the place was as neat and clean as if the housemaid had but gone over it. Hazel shrugged her shoulders. Roaring Bill Wagstaff became, if anything, more of an enigma than ever, in the light of his dwelling. She recollected that Cariboo Meadows had regarded him askance, and wondered why.

He came in while her gaze was still roving from one object to another, and threw his wet outer clothing, boy fashion, on the nearest chair.

"Well," he said, "we're here."

"Please don't forget, Mr. Wagstaff," she replied coldly, "that I would much prefer not to be here."

He stood a moment regarding her with his odd smile. Then he went into the adjoining room. Out of this he presently emerged, dragging a small steamer trunk. He opened it, got down on his knees, and pawed over the contents. Hazel, looking over her shoulder, saw that the trunk was filled with woman's garments, and sat amazed.

"Say, little person," Bill finally remarked, "it looks to me as if you could outfit yourself completely right here."

"I don't know that I care to deck myself in another woman's finery, thank you," she returned perversely.

"Now, see here," Roaring Bill turned reproachfully; "see here--"

He grinned to himself then, and went again into the other room, returning with a small, square mirror. He planted himself squarely in front of her, and held up the glass. Hazel took one look at her reflection, and she could have struck Roaring Bill for his audacity. She had not realized what an altogether disreputable appearance a normally good-looking young woman could acquire in two weeks on the trail, with no toilet accessories and only the clothes on her back. She tried to snatch the mirror from him, but Bill eluded her reach, and laid the glass on the table.

"You'll feel a whole better able to cope with the situation," he told her smilingly, "when you get some decent clothes on and your hair fixed. That's a woman. And you don't need to feel squeamish about these things. This trunk's got a history, let me tell you. A bunch of simon-pure tenderfeet strayed into the mountains west of here a couple of summers ago. There were two women in the bunch. The youngest one, who was about your age and size, must have had more than her share of vanity. I guess she figured on charming the bear and the moose, or the simple aborigines who dwell in this neck of the woods. Anyhow, she had all kinds of unnecessary fixings along, that trunkful of stuff in the lot. You can imagine what a nice time their guides had packing that on a horse, eh? They got into a deuce of a pickle finally, and had to abandon a lot of their stuff, among other things the steamer trunk. I lent them a hand, and they told me to help myself to the stuff. So I did after they were out of the country. That's how you come to have a wardrobe all ready to your hand. Now, you'd be awful foolish to act like a mean and stiff-necked female person. You're not going to, are you?" he wheedled. "Because I want to make you comfortable. What's the use of getting on your dignity over a little thing like clothes?"

"I don't intend to," Hazel suddenly changed front. "I'll make myself as comfortable as I can--particularly if it will put you to any trouble."

"You're bound to scrap, eh?" he grinned. "But it takes two to build a fight, and I positively refuse to fight with _you_."

He dragged the trunk back into the room, and came out carrying a great armful of masculine belongings. Two such trips he made, piling all his things onto a chair.

"There!" he said at last. "That end of the house belongs to you, little person. Now, get those wet things off before you catch a cold. Oh, wait a minute!"

He disappeared into the kitchen end of the house, and came back with a wash-basin and a pail of water.

"Your room is now ready, madam, an it please you." He bowed with mock dignity, and went back into the kitchen.

Hazel heard him rattling pots and dishes, whistling cheerfully the while. She closed the door, and busied herself with an inventory of the tenderfoot lady's trunk. In it she found everything needful for complete change, and a variety of garments to boot. Folded in the bottom of the trunk was a gray cloth skirt and a short blue silk kimono. There was a coat and skirt, too, of brown corduroy. But the feminine instinct asserted itself, and she laid out the gray skirt and the kimono.

For a dresser Roaring Bill had fashioned a wide shelf, and on it she found a toilet set complete--hand mirror, military brushes, and sundry articles, backed with silver and engraved with his initials. Perhaps with a spice of malice, she put on a few extra touches. There would be some small satisfaction in tantalizing Bill Wagstaff--even if she could not help feeling that it might be a dangerous game. And, thus arrayed in the weapons of her sex, she slipped on the kimono, and went into the living-room to the cheerful glow of the fire.

Bill remained busy in the kitchen. Dusk fell. The gleam of a light showed through a crack in the door. In the big room only the fire gave battle to the shadows, throwing a ruddy glow into the far corners. Presently Bill came in with a pair of candles which he set on the mantel above the fireplace.

"By Jove!" he said, looking down at her. "You look good enough to eat! I'm not a cannibal, however," he continued hastily, when Hazel flushed. She was not used to such plain speaking. "And supper's ready. Come on!"

The table was set. Moreover, to her surprise--and yet not so greatly to her surprise, for she was beginning to expect almost anything from this paradoxical young man--it was spread with linen, and the cutlery was silver, the dishes china, in contradistinction to the tinware of his camp outfit.

As a cook Roaring Bill Wagstaff had no cause to be ashamed of himself, and Hazel enjoyed the meal, particularly since she had eaten nothing since six in the morning. After a time, when her appetite was partially satisfied, she took to glancing over his kitchen. There seemed to be some adjunct of a kitchen missing. A fire burned on a hearth similar to the one in the living room. Pots stood about the edge of the fire. But there was no sign of a stove.

Bill finished eating, and resorted to cigarette material instead of his pipe.

"Well, little person," he said at last, "what do you think of this joint of mine, anyway?"

"I've just been wondering," she replied. "I don't see any stove, yet you have food here that looks as if it were baked, and biscuits that must have been cooked in an oven."

"You see no stove for the good and sufficient reason," he returned, "that you can't pack a stove on a horse--and we're three hundred odd miles from the end of any wagon road. With a Dutch oven or two--that heavy, round iron thing you see there--I can guarantee to cook almost anything you can cook on a stove. Anybody can if they know how. Besides, I like things better this way. If I didn't, I suppose I'd have a stove--and maybe a hot-water supply, and modern plumbing. As it is, it affords me a sort of prideful satisfaction, which you may or may not be able to understand, that this cabin and everything in it is the work of my hands--of stuff I've packed in here with all sorts of effort from the outside. Maybe I'm a freak. But I'm proud of this place. Barring the inevitable lonesomeness that comes now and then, I can be happier here than any place I've ever struck yet. This country grows on one."

"Yes--on one's nerves," Hazel retorted.

Bill smiled, and, rising, began to clear away the dishes. Hazel resisted an impulse to help. She would not work; she would not lift her finger to any task, she reminded herself. He had put her in her present position, and he could wait on her. So she rested an elbow on the table and watched him. In the midst of his work he stopped suddenly.

"There's oceans of time to do this," he observed. "I'm just a wee bit tired, if anybody should ask you. Let's camp in the other room. It's a heap more comfy."

He put more wood on the kitchen fire, and set a pot of water to heat. Out in the living-room Hazel drew her chair to one side of the hearth. Bill sprawled on the bearskin robe with another cigarette in his fingers.

"No," he began, after a long silence, "this country doesn't get on one's nerves--not if one is a normal human being. You'll find that. When I first came up here I thought so, too; it seemed so big and empty and forbidding. But the more I see of it the better it compares with the outer world, where the extremes of luxury and want are always in evidence. It began to seem like home to me when I first looked down into this little basin. I had a partner then. I said to him: 'Here's a dandy, fine place to winter.' So we wintered--in a log shack sixteen foot square that Silk and Satin and Nigger have for a stable now. When summer came my partner wanted to move on, so I stayed. Stayed and began to build for the next winter. And I've been working at it ever since, making little things like chairs and tables and shelves, and fixing up game heads whenever I got an extra good one. And maybe two or three times a year I'd go out. Get restless, you know. I'm not really a hermit by nature. Lord, the things I've packed in here from the outside! Books--I hired a whole pack train at Ashcroft once to bring in just books; they thought I was crazy, I guess. I've quit this place once or twice, but I always come back. It's got that home feel that I can't find anywhere else. Only it has always lacked one important home qualification," he finished softly. "Do you ever build air castles?"

"No," Hazel answered untruthfully, uneasy at the trend of his talk. She was learning that Bill Wagstaff, for all his gentleness and patience with her, was a persistent mortal.

"Well, I do," he continued, unperturbed. "Lots of 'em. But mostly around one thing--a woman--a dream woman--because I never saw one that seemed to fit in until I ran across you."

"Mr. Wagstaff," Hazel pleaded, "won't you please stop talking like that? It isn't--it isn't--"

"Isn't proper, I suppose," Bill supplied dryly. "Now, that's merely an error, and a fundamental error on your part, little person. Our emotion and instincts are perfectly proper when you get down to fundamentals. You've got an artificial standard to judge by, that's all. And I don't suppose you have the least idea how many lives are spoiled one way and another by the operation of those same artificial standards in this little old world. Now, I may seem to you a lawless, unprincipled individual indeed, because I've acted contrary to your idea of the accepted order of things. But here's my side of it: I'm in search of happiness. We all are. I have a few ideals--and very few illusions. I don't quite believe in this thing called love at first sight. That presupposes a volatility of emotion that people of any strength of character arc not likely to indulge in. But--for instance, a man can have a very definite ideal of the kind of woman he would like for a mate, the kind of woman he could be happy with and could make happy. And whenever he finds a woman who corresponds to that ideal he's apt to make a strenuous attempt to get her. That's pretty much how I felt about you."

"You had no right to kidnap me," Hazel cried.

"You had no business getting lost and making it possible for me to carry you off," Bill replied. "Isn't that logic?"

"I'll never forgive you," Hazel flashed. "It was treacherous and unmanly. There are other ways of winning a woman."

"There wasn't any other way open to me." Bill grew suddenly moody. "Not with you in Cariboo Meadows. I'm taboo there. You'd have got a history of me that would have made you cut me dead; you may have had the tale of my misdeeds for all I know. No, it was impossible for me to get acquainted with you in the conventional way. I knew that, and so I didn't make any effort. Why, I'd have been at your elbow when you left the supper table at Jim Briggs' that night if I hadn't known how it would be. I went there out of sheer curiosity to take a look at you--maybe out of a spirit of defiance, too, because I knew that I was certainly not welcome even if they were willing to take my money for a meal. And I came away all up in the air. There was something about you--the tone of your voice, the way your proud little head is set on your shoulders, your make-up in general--that sent me away with a large-sized grouch at myself, at Cariboo Meadows, and at you for coming in my way."

"Why?" she asked in wonder.

"Because you'd have believed what they told you, and Cariboo Meadows can't tell anything about me that isn't bad," he said quietly. "My record there makes me entirely unfit to associate with--that would have been your conclusion. And I wanted to be with you, to talk to you, to take you by storm and make you like me as I felt I could care for you. You can't have grown up, little person, without realizing that you do attract men very strongly. All women do, but some far more than others."

"Perhaps," she admitted coldly. "Men have annoyed me with their unwelcome attentions. But none of them ever dared go the length of carrying me away against my will. You can't explain or excuse that."

"I'm not attempting excuses," Bill made answer. "There are two things I never do--apologize or bully. I dare say that's one reason the Meadows gives me such a black eye. In the first place, the confounded, ignorant fools did me a very great injustice, and I've never taken the trouble to explain to them wherein they were wrong. I came into this country with a partner six years ago--a white man, if ever one lived--about the only real man friend I ever had. He was known to have over three thousand dollars on his person. He took sick and died the second year, at the head of the Peace, in midwinter. I buried him; couldn't take him out. Somehow the yarn got to going in the Meadows that I'd murdered him for his money. The gossip started there because we had an argument about outfitting while we were there, and roasted each other as only real pals can. So they got it into their heads I killed him, and tried to have the provincial police investigate. It made me hot, and so I wouldn't explain to anybody the circumstances, nor what became of Dave's three thousand, which happened to be five thousand by that time, and which I sent to his mother and sister in New York, as he told me to do when he was dying. When they got to hinting things the next time I hit the Meadows, I started in to clean out the town. I think I whipped about a dozen men that time. And once or twice every season since I've been in the habit of dropping in there and raising the very devil out of sheer resentment. It's a wonder some fellow hasn't killed me, for it's a fact that I've thrashed every man in the blamed place except Jim Briggs--and some of them two or three times. And I make them line up at the bar and drink at my expense, and all that sort of foolishness.

"That may sound to you like real depravity," he concluded, "but it's a fact in nature that a man has to blow the steam off his chest about every so often. I have got drunk in Cariboo Meadows, and I have raised all manner of disturbances there, partly out of pure animal spirits, and mostly because I had a grudge against them. Consequently I really have given them reason to look askance at any one--particularly a nice girl from the East--who would have anything to do with me. If they weren't a good deal afraid of me, and always laying for a chance to do me up, they wouldn't let me stay in the town overnight. So you can see what a handicap I was under when it came to making your acquaintance and courting you in the orthodox manner."

"You've made a great mistake," she said bitterly, "if you think you've removed the handicap. I've suffered a great deal at the hands of men in the past six months. I'm beginning to believe that all men are brutes at heart."

Roaring Bill sat up and clasped his hands over his knees and stared fixedly into the fire.

"No," he said slowly, "all men are not brutes--any more than all women are angels. I'll convince you of that."

"Take me home, then," she cried forlornly. "That's the only way you can convince me or make amends."

"No," Bill murmured, "that isn't the way. Wait till you know me better. Besides, I couldn't take you out now if I wanted to without exposing you to greater hardships than you'll have to endure here. Do you realize that it's fall, and we're in the high latitudes? This snow may not go off at all. Even if it does it will storm again before a week. You couldn't wallow through snow to your waist in forty-below-zero weather."

"People will pass here, and I'll get word out," Hazel asserted desperately.

"What good would that do you? You've got too much conventional regard for what you term your reputation to send word to Cariboo Meadows that you're living back here with Roaring Bill Wagstaff, and won't some one please come and rescue you." He paused to let that sink in, then continued: "Besides, you won't see a white face before spring; then only by accident. No one in the North, outside of a few Indians, has ever seen this cabin or knows where it stands."

She sat there, dumb, raging inwardly. For the minute she could have killed Roaring Bill. She who had been so sure in her independence carried, whether or no, into the heart of the wilderness at the whim of a man who stood a self-confessed rowdy, in ill repute among his own kind. There was a slumbering devil in Miss Hazel Weir, and it took little to wake her temper. She looked at Bill Wagstaff, and her breast heaved. He was responsible, and he could sit coolly talking about it. The resentment that had smoldered against Andrew Bush and Jack Barrow concentrated on Roaring Bill as the arch offender of them all. And lest she yield to a savage impulse to scream at him, she got up and ran into the bedroom, slammed the door shut behind her, and threw herself across the bed to muffle the sound of her crying in a pillow.

After a time she lifted her head. Outside, the wind whistled gustily around the cabin corners. In the hushed intervals she heard a steady pad, pad, sounding sometimes close by her door, again faintly at the far end of the room. A beam of light shone through the generous latchstring hole in the door. Stealing softly over, she peeped through this hole. From end to end of the big room and back again Roaring Bill paced slowly, looking straight ahead of him with a fixed, absent stare, his teeth closed on his nether lip. Hazel blinked wonderingly. Many an hour in the last three months she had walked the floor like that, biting her lip in mental agony. And then, while she was looking, Bill abruptly extinguished the candles. In the red gleam from the hearth she saw him go into the kitchen, closing the door softly. After that there was no sound but the swirl of the storm brushing at her window.