Chapter 5

“You have said enough on that subject, Christine.” Mrs. Bogardus bent her dark, keen gaze upon her daughter's face. “Come”--she rose. “Come with me!”

Christine sat still. “Come!” her mother repeated sternly. “Moya,”--in a different voice,--“your letter was lovely. Shall you read it to your father?”

“Hardly,” said Moya, flushing. “Father does not care for descriptions, and the woods are an old story to him.”

Mrs. Bogardus placed her hands on the girl's shoulders and gave her one of her infrequent, ceremonious kisses, which, like her finest smile, she kept for occasions too nice for words.

IX

THE POWER OF WEAKNESS

Christine followed her mother to their room, and the two faced each other a moment in pale silence.

Mrs. Bogardus spoke first. “What does this mean?”--her breath came short, perhaps from climbing the stairs. She was a large woman.

“What does what mean? I don't understand you, mother.”

“Ah, child, don't repulse me! Twice you and Moya have nearly quarreled about those men. Why were you so rude to her? Why did you behave so about her letter?”

“Paul is so intolerant! And the airs he puts on! If he is my own brother I must say he's an awful prig about other men.”

“We are not discussing Paul. That is not the question now. Have you anything to tell me, Christine?”

“To tell you?--about what, mother?” Christine spoke lower.

“You know what I mean. Which of them is it? Is it Banks?--don't say it is Banks!”

“Mother, how can I say anything when you begin like that?”

“Have you any idea what sort of a man Banks Bowen really is? His father supports him entirely--six years now, ever since he left the law school. He does nothing, never will do anything. He has no will or purpose in life, except about trifles like this hunting-trip. As far as I can see he is without common sense.”

Christine stood by the dressing-table pleating the cover-frilling with her small fingers that were loaded with rings. She pinched the folds hard and let them go. “Why did no one ever say these things before?”

“We don't say things about the sons of our friends, unless we are compelled to. They were implied in every way possible. When have I asked Banks Bowen to the house except when everybody was asked! I would never in the world have come out in Mr. Borland's car if I had known the Bowens were to be of the party.”

“That made no difference,” said Christine loftily.

“It was all settled before then, was it?”

“Have I said it was settled, mother? He asked me if I could ever care for him; and I said that I did--a little. Why shouldn't I? He does what I like a man to do. I don't enjoy people who have wills and purposes. It may be very horrid of me, but I wouldn't be in Moya's place for worlds.”

“You poor child! You poor, unhappy child!”

“Why am I unhappy? Has Paul added so much to our income since he left college?”

“Paul does not make money; neither does he selfishly waste it. He has a conscience in his use of what he has.”

“I don't see what conscience has to do with it. When it is gone it's gone.”

“You will learn what conscience has to do with a man's spending if ever you try to make both ends meet with Banks Bowen. I suppose he will go through the form of speaking to me?”

“Mother dear! He has only just spoken to me. How fast you go!”

“Not fast enough to keep up with my children, it seems. Was it you, Christine, who asked them to come here?”

Christine was silent.

“Where did you learn such ways?--such want of frankness, of delicacy, of the commonest consideration for others? To be looking out for your own little schemes at a time like this!” Mrs. Bogardus saw now what must have been Paul's reason for doing what, with all her forced explanations of the hunting-trip, she had never until now understood. He had taken the alarm before she had, and done what he could to postpone this family catastrophe.

Christine retreated to a deep-cushioned chair, and threw herself into it, her slender hands, palm upwards, extended upon its arms. Total surrender under pressure of cruel odds was the expression of her pointed eyebrows and drooping mouth. She looked exasperatingly pretty and irresponsibly fragile. Her blue-veined eyelids quivered, her breath came in distinct pants.

“Perhaps you will not be troubled with my 'ways' for very many years, mother. If you could feel my heart now! It jumps like something trying to get out. It will get out some day. Have patience!”

“That is a poor way to retaliate upon your mother, Christine. Your health is too serious a matter to trifle with. If you choose to make it a shield against everything I say that doesn't please you, you can cut yourself off from me entirely. I cannot beat down such a defense as that. Anger me you never can, but you can make me helpless to help you.”

“I dare say it's better that I should never marry at all,” said Christine, her eyes closed in resignation. “You never would like anybody I like.”

“I shall say no more. You are a woman. I have protected you as far as I was able on account of your weakness. I cannot protect you from the weakness itself.”

Mrs. Bogardus rose. She did not offer to comfort her child with caresses, but in her eyes as she looked at her there was a profound, inalienable, sorrowing tenderness, a depth of understanding beyond words.

“I know so well,” the dark eyes seemed to say, “how you came to be the poor thing that you are!”

The constraint which she felt towards her mother threw Chrissy back upon Moya. Being a lesser power, she was always seeking alliances. Moya had put aside their foolish tiff as unworthy of another thought; she was embarrassed when at bedtime Christine came humbly to her door, and putting her arms around her neck implored her not to be cross with her “poor pussy.” It was always the other person who was “cross” with Christine.

“Nobody is cross with anybody, so far as I know,” said Moya briskly. A certain sort of sentimentality always made her feel like whistling or singing or asserting the commonplace side of life in some way.

X

THE WHITE PERIL

Mrs. Bogardus received many letters, chiefly on business, and these she answered with manlike brevity, in a strong, provincial hand. They took up much of her time, and mercifully, for it was now the last week in November and the young men did not return.

The range cattle had been driven down into the valleys, deer-tracks multiplied by lonely mountain fords; War Eagle and his brethren of the Owyhees were taking council under their winter blankets. The nights were still, the mornings rimy with hoarfrost. Fogs arose from the river and cut off the bases of the mountains, converting the valley before sunrise into the likeness of a polar sea.

“You have let your fire go out,” said the colonel briskly. He had invaded the sitting-room at an unaccustomed hour, finding the lady at her letters as usual. She turned and held her pen poised above her paper as she looked at him.

“You did not come to see about the fire?” she said.

“No; I have had letters from the north. Would you step into my study a moment?”

Moya was in her father's room when they entered. She had been weeping, but at sight of Paul's mother she rose and stood picking at the handkerchief she held, without raising her eyes.

“Don't be alarmed at Moya's face,” said the colonel stoutly. “Paul was all right at last accounts. We will have a merry Christmas yet.”

“This is not from Paul!” Mrs. Bogardus fixed her eyes upon a letter which she held at arm's length, feeling for her glasses. “It's not for me--'_Miss_ Bogardus.'”

“Ah, well. I saw it was postmarked Lemhi--Fort Lemhi, you know. Sit down, madam. Suppose I give you Mr. Winslow's report first--Lieutenant Winslow. You heard of his going to Lemhi?”

“She doesn't know,” whispered Moya.

“True. Well, two weeks ago I gave Mr. Winslow a hunter's leave, as we call it in the army, to beat up the trail of those boys. I thought it was time we heard from them, but it wasn't worth while to raise a hue and cry. He started out with a few picked men from Lemhi, the Indian Reservation, you know. I couldn't have sent a better man; the thing hasn't got into the local papers even. My object, of course, has been to save unnecessary alarm. Mr. Winslow has just got back to Challis. He rounded up the Bowen youths and the cook and the helper, in bad shape, all of them, but able to tell a story. The details we shall get later, but I have Mr. Winslow's report to me. It is short and probably correct.”

“Was Paul not with them?” his mother questioned in a hard, dry voice. “Where is he then?”

“He is in camp, madam, in charge of the wounded.”

“Dear father! if you would speak plain!” Moya whispered nervously.

“Certainly. There is nothing whatever to hide. We know now that on their last day's hunt they met with an accident which resulted in a division of the party. A fall of snow had covered the ice on the trails, and the guide's horse fell and rolled on him--nature of his injuries not described. This happened a day's journey from their camp at Ten-Mile cabin, and the retreat with the wounded man was slow and of course difficult over such a trail. They put together a sort of horse-litter made of pine poles and carried him on that, slung between two mules tandem. A beastly business, winding and twisting over fallen timber, hugging the cañon wall, near a thousand feet down--'Impassable' the trail is marked, on the government military maps. This first day's march was so discouraging that at Ten Mile they called a council, and the packer spoke up like a man. He disposed of his own case in this way. If he were to live, they could send back help to fetch him out. If not, no help would be needed. The snows were upon them; there was danger in every hour's delay. It was insane to sacrifice four sound men for one, badly hurt, with not many hours perhaps to suffer.”

A murmur from the mother announced her appreciation of the packer's argument.

“It was no more than a man should do; but as to taking him at his word, why, that's another question.” The colonel paused and gustily cleared his throat. “They were up against it right then and there, and the party split upon it. Three of them went on,--for help, as they put it,--and Paul stayed behind with the wounded man.”

“Paul stayed--alone?” Mrs. Bogardus uttered with hoarse emphasis. “Was not that a very strange way to divide? Among them all, I should think they might have brought the man out with them.”

“Their story is that his injuries were such that he could not have borne the pain of the journey. Rather an unusual case,” the colonel added dryly. “In my experience, a wounded man will stand anything sooner than be left on the field.”

“I cannot understand it,” Mrs. Bogardus repeated, in a voice of indignant pain. “Such a strange division! One man left alone--to nurse, and hunt, and cook, and keep up fires! Suppose the guide should die!”

“Paul was not _left_, you know,” the colonel said emphatically. “He _stayed_. And I should be thankful in your place, madam, that my son was the man who made that choice. But setting conduct aside, for we are not prepared to judge, it is merely a matter of time our getting in there, now that we know where he is.”

“How much time?” Mrs. Bogardus opened her ashen lips to say.

The colonel's face fell. “Mr. Winslow reports heavy snows for the past week,--soft, clogging snow,--too deep to wade through and too soft to bear. A little later, when the cold has formed a crust, our men can get in on snowshoes. There is nothing for it but patience, Mrs. Bogardus, and faith in the boy's endurance. The pluck that made him stay behind will help him to hold out.”

Moya gave a hurt sob; the colonel stepped to the desk and stood there a moment turning over his papers. Behind his back the mother sent a glance to Moya expressive of despair.

“Do you know what happened to his father? Did he ever tell you?” she whispered.

Moya assented; she could not speak.

“Twice, twice in a lifetime!” said the older woman.

With a gesture, Moya protested against this wild prophecy; but as Paul's mother left the room she rushed upon her father, crying: “Tell _me_ the truth! What do you think of it? Did you ever hear of such a dastardly thing?”

“It was a rout,” said the colonel coolly. “They were in full flight before the enemy.”

“What enemy? They deserted a wounded comrade, and a servant at that!”

“The enemy was panic,--panic, my dear. In these woods I've seen strong men go half beside themselves with fear of something--the Lord knows what! Then, add the winter and what they had seen and heard of that. Anyway, you can afford to be easy on the other boys. The honors of the day are with Paul--and the old packer, though it's all in the day's work to him.”

“And you are satisfied with Paul, father?”

“He didn't desert his command to save his own skin.” The colonel smiled grimly.

“When the men of the Fourth discovered those other fellows they had literally sat down in the snow to die. Not a man of them knew how to pack a mule. Their meat pack slipped, going along one of those high trails, and scared the mule, and in trying to kick himself free the beast fell off the trail--mule and meat both gone. They got tired of carrying their stuff and made a raft to float it down the river, and lost that! Paul has been much better off in camp than he would have been with them. So cheer up, my girl, and think how you'd like to have your bridegroom out on an Indian campaign!”

“Ah, but that would be orders! It's the uselessness that hurts. There was nothing to do or to gain. He didn't want to go. Oh, daddy dear, I made fun of his shooting,--I did! I laughed at his way with firearms. Wretched fool and snob that I was! As if I cared! I thought of what other people would say. You remember,--he went shooting up the gulch with Mr. Lane, and when he hit but didn't kill he wouldn't--couldn't put the birds out of pain. Jephson had to do it for him, and he told it in barracks and the men laughed.”

“How did you know that! And what does it all amount to! Blame yourself all you like, dear, if it does you any good, but don't make him out a fool! There's not much that comes to us straight in this world--not even orders, you'll find. But we have to take it straight and leave the muddles and the blunders as they are. That's the brave man's courage and the brave woman's. Orders are mixed, but duty is clear. And the boy out there in the woods has found his duty and done it like a man. That should be enough for any soldier's daughter.”

An hour passed in suspense. Moya was disappointed in her expectation of sharing in whatever the letter from Fort Lemhi might contain. Christine was in bed with a headache, her mother dully gave out, with no apparent expectation that any one would accept this excuse for the girl's complete withdrawal. The letter, she told Moya, was from Banks Bowen. “There was nothing in it of consequence--to us,” she added, and Moya took the words to mean “you and me” to the unhappy exclusion of Christine.

Mrs. Bogardus's face had settled into lines of anxiety printed years before, as the creases in an old garment, smoothed and laid away, will reappear with fresh wear. Her plan was to go back to New York with Christine, who was plainly unfit to bear a long siege of suspense. There she could leave the girl with friends and learn what particulars could be gathered from the Bowens, who would have arrived. She would then return alone and wait for news at the garrison. That night, with Moya's help, she completed her packing, and on the following day the wedding party broke up.

XI

A SEARCHING OF HEARTS

Fine, dry snowflakes were drifting past the upper square of a window set in a wall of logs. The lower half was obscured by a white bulk that shouldered up against the sash in the likeness of a muffled figure stooping to peer in.

Lying in his bunk against the wall, the packer watched this sentinel snowdrift grow and become human and bold and familiar. His deep-lined visage was reduced to its bony structure. The hand was a claw with which he plucked at the ancient fever-crust shredding from his lips: an occupation at once so absorbing and so exhausting that often the hand would drop and the blankets rise upon the arch of the chest in a sigh of retarded respiration. The sigh would be followed by a cough, controlled, as in dread of the shock to a sore and shattered frame. The snow came faster and faster until the dim, wintry pane was a blur. Millions of atoms crossed the watcher's weary vision, whirling, wavering, driven with an aimless persistence, unable to pause or to stop. And the blind white snowdrift climbed, fed, like human circumstance, from disconnected atoms impelled by a common law.

There were sounds in the cabin: wet wood sweating on hot coals; a step that went to and fro. Outside, a snow-weighted bough let go its load and sprang up, scraping against the logs. Some heavy soft thing slid off the roof and dropped with a _chug_. Then the door, that hung awry like a drooping eyelid, gave a disreputable wink, and the whole front gable of the cabin loomed a giant countenance with a silly forehead and an evil leer. Now it seemed that a hand was hurling snow against the door, as a sower scatters grain,--snow that lay like beach sand on the floor, or melted into a crawling pool--red in the firelight, red as blood!

These and other phantasms had now for an unmeasured time been tenants of the packer's brain, sharing and often overpowering the reality of the human step that went to and fro. To-day the shapes and relations of things were more natural, and the step aroused a querulous curiosity.

“Who's there?” the sick man imagined himself to have said. A croaking sound in his throat, which was all he could do by way of speech, brought the step to his bedside. A young face, lightly bearded, and gaunt almost as his own, bent over him. Large, black eyes rested on his; a hand with womanish nails placed its fingers on his wrist.

“You are better to-day. Your pulse is down. I wouldn't try to talk.”

“Who's that--outside?”

“There is no one outside,” Paul answered, following the direction of his patient's eyes. “That? That is only a snowdrift. It grows faster than I can shovel it away.”

The packer had forgotten his own question. He dozed off, and presently roused again as suddenly as he had slept. His utterance was clearer, but not his meaning.

“What--you want to fetch me back for?”

“Back?” Paul repeated.

“I was most gone, wa'n't I?”

“Back to life, you mean? You came back of yourself. I hadn't much to do with it.”

“What's been the matter--gen'ly speaking?”

“You were hurt, don't you remember? Something like wound fever set in. The altitude is bad for fevers. You have had a pretty close call.”

“Been here all the time?”

“Have I been here?--yes.”

“'Lone?”

“With you. How is your chest? Does it hurt you still when you breathe?”

The sick man filled his lungs experimentally. “Something busted inside, I guess,” he panted. “'Tain't no killing matter, though.”

Nourishment, in a tin cup, warm from the fire was offered him, refused with a gesture, and firmly urged upon him. This necessitated another rest. It was long before he spoke again--out of some remoter train of thought apparently.

“Family all in New York?”

“My family? They were at Bisuka when I left them.”

“You don't _live_ West!”

“No. I was born in the West, though. Idaho is my native state.”

The patient fell to whimpering suddenly like a hurt child. He drew up the blanket to cover his face. Paul, interpreting this as a signal for more nourishment, brought the sad decoction,--rinds of dried beef cooked with rice in snow water.

“Guess that'll do, thank ye. My tongue feels like an old buckskin glove.”

“When I was a little fellow,” said the nurse, beguiling the patient while he tucked the spoonfuls down, “I was like you: I wouldn't take what the doctor ordered, and they used to pretend I must take it for the others of the family,--a kind of vicarious milk diet, or gruel, or whatever it was. 'Here's a spoonful for mother, poor mother,' they would say; and of course it couldn't be refused when mother needed it so much. 'And now one for Chrissy'”--

“Who?”

“My sister, Christine. And then I'd take one for 'uncle' and one for each of the servants; and the cupful would go down to the health of the household, and I the dupe of my sympathies! Now you are taking this for me, because it's nicer to be shut up here with a live man than a dead one; and we haven't the conveniences for a first-class funeral.”

“You never took a spoonful for 'father,'--eh?”

Paul answered the question with gravity. “No. We never used that name in common.”

“Dead was he?”

“I will tell you some time. Better try to sleep now.”

Paul returned the saucepan to the fire, after piecing out its contents with water, and retired out of his patient's sight.

Again came a murmur, chiefly unintelligible, from the bunk.

“Did you ask for anything?”

The sick man heaved a worried sigh. “See what a mis'rable presumptuous piece of work!” he muttered, addressing the logs overhead. “But that Clauson--he wa'n't no more fit to guide ye than to go to heaven! Couldn't 'a' done much worse than this, though!”

“He has done worse!” Paul came over to the bunk-side to reason on this matter. “They started back from here, four strong men with all the animals and all the food they needed for a six weeks' trip. We came in in one. If they got through at all, where is the help they were to send us?”

“Help!” The packer roused. “They helped themselves, and pretty frequent. I said to them more than once--they didn't like it any too well: 'We can't drink up here like they do down to the coast. The air is too light. What a man would take with his dinner down there would fit him out with a first-class jag up here, 'leven thousand above the sea!'”

“It's a waste of breath to talk about them--breath burns up food and we haven't much to spare. We rushed into this trouble and we dragged you in after us. We have hurt you a good deal more than you have us.”

The sick man groaned. He flung one hand back against the logs, dislodging ancient dust that fell upon his corpse-like forehead. It was carefully wiped away. Helpless tears stole down the rigid face.

“John,” said Paul with animation, “your general appearance just now reminds me of those worked-out placer claims we passed in Ruby Gulch, the first day out. The fever and my cooking have ground-sluiced you to the bone.”

John smiled faintly. “Don't look very fat yourself. Where'd you git all that baird on your face?”

“We have been here some time, you know--or you don't know; you have been living in places far away from here. I used to envy you sometimes. And other times I didn't.”

“You mean I was off my head?”

“At times. But more of the time you were dreaming and talking in your dreams; seeing things out loud by the flash-light of fever.”

“Talking, was I? Guess there wa'n't much sense in any of it?” The hazard was a question.

“A kind of sense,--out of focus, distorted. Some of it was opium. Didn't you coax a little of his favorite medicine out of the cook?”

Packer John apologized sheepishly, “I cal'lated I was going to be left. You put it up on me--making out you were off with the rest. _That_ was all right. But I wa'n't going to suffer it out; why should I? A gunshot would have cured me quicker, perhaps. Then some critter might 'a' found me and called it murder. A word like that set going can hang a man. No, I just took a little to deaden the pain.”

“The whole discussion was rather nasty, right before the man we were talking about,” said Paul. “I wanted to get them off and out of hearing. Then we had a few words.”

At intervals during that day and the next, Paul's patient expended his strength in questions, apparently trivial. His eyes, whenever they were open, followed his nurse with a shrinking intelligence. Paul was on his guard.

“What day of the month do you make it out to be?”