Chapter 3

THE TAMING

XXIX

Ben rose at daybreak, wonderfully refreshed by the night's sleep, and built the fire at the cavern mouth. Beatrice was still asleep, and he was careful not to waken her. The days would be long and monotonous for her, he knew, and the more time she could spend in sleep the better.

He did, however, steal to the opening of the cavern and peer into her face. The soft, morning light fell gently upon it, bringing out its springtime freshness and the elusive shades of gold in her hair. She looked more a child than a woman, some one to shelter and comfort rather than to harry as a foe. "Poor little girl," he murmured under his breath. "I'm going to make it as easy for you as I can."

He meant what he said. He could do that much, at least--extend to her every courtesy and comfort that was in his power, and place his own great strength at her service.

His first work was to remove the skin of last night's invader,--the huge grizzly that lay dead just outside the cavern opening. They would have use for this warm, furry hide before their adventure was done. It would supplement their supply of blankets; and if necessary it could be cut and sewed with threads of sinew into clothes. Because the animal had but recently emerged from hibernation his fur, except for a few rubbed places, was long and rich,--a beautiful, tawny-gray that shimmered like cloth-of-gold in the light.

It taxed his strength to the utmost to roll over the huge body and skin it. When the heavy skin was removed he laid it out, intending to stretch it as soon as he could build a rack. He cut off some of the fat; then quartering the huge body, he dragged it away into the thickets.

The hour was already past ten; but Beatrice--worn out by the stress of the night before--did not waken until she heard the crack of her pistol. She lay a while, resting, watching through the cavern opening Ben's efforts to prepare breakfast. A young grouse had fallen before the pistol, and her companion was busy preparing it for the skillet.

The girl watched with some pleasure his rather awkward efforts to go about his work in silence,--evidently still believing her asleep. She laughed secretly at his distress as he tripped clumsily over a piece of firewood; then watched him with real interest as he mixed batter for griddle cakes and fried the white breast of the grouse in bear fat. Filling one of the two tin plates he stole into the cavern.

Falling into his mood the girl pretended to be asleep. She couldn't have understood why her pulse quickened as he knelt beside her, looking so earnestly and soberly into her face. Then she felt the touch of his fingers on her shoulder.

"Wake up, Beatrice," he commanded, with pretended gruffness. "It's after ten, and you've got to cook my breakfast."

She stirred, pretending difficulty in opening her eyes.

"Get right up," he commanded again. "D'ye think I'm going to wait all morning?"

She opened her eyes to find him regarding her with boyish glee. Then--as a surprise--he proffered the filled plate, meanwhile raising his arm in feigned fear of a blow.

She laughed; then began upon her breakfast with genuine relish. Then he brought her hot water and the meager toilet articles; and left the cave to prepare his own breakfast.

"I'm going on a little hunt," he said, when this rite was over. "We can't depend on grouse and bear forever. I hate to ask you to go--"

His tone was hopeful; and she could not doubt but that the lonely spirit of these solitudes had hold of him. They were two human beings in a vast and uninhabited wilderness, and although they were foes, they felt the primitive need of each other's companionship. "I don't mind going," she told him. "I'd rather, than stay in the cave."

"It's a fine morning. And what's your favorite meat--moose or caribou?"

"Caribou--although I like both."

He might have expected this answer. There are few meats in this imperfect earth to compare in flavor with that of the great, woodland caribou, monarch of the high park-lands.

"That means we do some climbing, instead of watching in the beaver meadows. I'm ready--any time."

They took the game trail up the ridge, venturing at once into the heavy spruce; but curiously enough, the mysterious hush, the dusky shadows did not appall Beatrice greatly to-day. The miles sped swiftly under her feet. Always there were creatures to notice or laugh at,--a squirrel performing on a branch, a squawking Canada Jay surprised and utterly baffled by their tall forms, a porcupine hunched into a spiny ball and pretending a ferociousness that deceived not even such hairbrained folk as the chipmunks in the tree roots, or those queens of stupidity, the fool hens on the branch. In the way of more serious things sometimes they paused to gaze down on some particularly beautiful glen--watered, perhaps, by a gleaming stream--or a long, dark valley steeped deeply in the ancient mysticism of the trackless wilds.

He helped her over the steeps, waited for her at bad crossings; and meanwhile his thoughts found easy expression in words. He had to stop and remind himself that she was his foe. Beatrice herself attempted no such remembrance; she was simply carrying out her resolve to make the best of a deplorable situation.

She could see, however, that he kept close watch of her. He intended to give her no opportunity to strike back at him. He carried his rifle unloaded, so that if she were able, in an unguarded moment, to wrest it from him she could not turn it against him. But there was no joy for her in noticing these small precautions. They only reminded her of her imprisonment; and she wisely resolved to ignore them.

They climbed to the ridge top, following it on to the plateau where patches of snow still gleamed white and the spruce grew in dark clumps, leaving open, lovely parks between. Here they encountered their first caribou.

This animal, however, was not to their liking in the way of meat for the table. A turn in the trail suddenly revealed him at the edge of the glade, his white mane gleaming and his graceful form aquiver with that unquenchable vitality that seems to be the particular property of northern wild animals; but Ben let him go his way. He was an old bull, the monarch of his herd; he had ranged and mated and fought his rivals for nearly a score of years in the wild heart of Back There,--and his flesh would be mostly sinew.

Ten minutes later, however, the girl touched his arm. She pointed to a far glade, fully three hundred yards across the canyon. Her quick eyes made out a tawny form against the thicket.

It was a young caribou--a yearling buck--and his flesh would be tender as a spring fowl.

"It's just what we want, but there's not much chance of getting him at that range," he said.

"Try, anyway. You've got a long-range rifle. If you can hold true, he's yours."

This was one thing that Ben was skilled at,--holding true. He raised the weapon to his shoulder, drawing down finely on that little speck of brown across the gulch. Few times in his life had he been more anxious to make a successful shot. Yet he would never have admitted the true explanation: that he simply desired to make good in the girl's eyes.

He held his breath and pressed the trigger back.

Beatrice could not restrain a low, happy cry of triumph. She had forgotten all things, for the moment, but her joy at his success. And truly, Ben had made a remarkable shot. Most hunters who boast of long-range hits do not step off the distance shot; fifty yards is called a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards three hundred; and to kill true at this range is not the accustomed thing on the trails of sport. The bullet had gone true as a light-shaft, striking the animal through the shoulders, and he had never stirred out of his tracks. With that joy of conquest known to all owners of rod and gun--related darkly to the blood-lust of the beasts--they raced across the gully toward the fallen.

Ben quartered the animal, and again he saw fit to save the hide. It is the best material of all for the parka, the long, full winter garment of the North.

Ben carried the meat in four trips back to the camp. By the time this work was done, and one of the quarters was drying over a fire of quivering aspen chips, the day was done. Again they saw the twilight shadows grow, and the first sable cloak of night was drawn over the shoulders of the forest. Beatrice prepared a wonderful roast of caribou for their evening meal; and thereafter they sat a short time at the mouth of the cavern, looking quietly into the red coals of the dying fire. Again Ben knew the beneficence and peace of the sheltering walls of home. Again he felt a sweet security,--a taming, gentling influence through the innermost fiber of his being.

But Fenris the wolf gazed only into the darkened woods, and the hair stood stiff at his shoulders, and his eyes glowed and shone with the ancient hunting madness induced by the rising moon.

XXX

June passed away in the wilds of Back There, leaving warmer, longer days, a more potent sun, and a greener, fresher loveliness to the land. The spring calves no longer tottered on wabbly legs, but could follow their swift mothers over the most steep and difficult trails. Fledglings learned to fly, the wolf cubs had their first lessons in hunting on the ridges. The wild Yuga had fallen to such an extent that navigation--down to the Indian villages on the lower waters--was wholly impossible.

The days passed quickly for Ben and Beatrice. They found plenty of work and even of play to pass the time. Partly to fill her lonely moments, but more because it was an instinct with her, Beatrice took an ever-increasing interest in her cave home. She kept it clean and cooked the meals, performing her tasks with goodwill, even at times a gaiety that was as incomprehensible to herself as to Ben.

Their diet was not so simple now. Of course their flour and sugar and rice, and the meat that they took in the chase furnished the body of their meals, and without these things they could not live; but Beatrice was a woods child, and she knew how to find manna in the wilderness. Almost every morning she ventured out into the still, dew-wet forest, and nearly always she came in with some dainty for their table. She gathered watercress in the still pools and she knew a dozen ways to serve it. Sometimes she made a dressing out of animal oil, beaten to a cream; and it was better than lettuce salad. Other tender plant tops were used as a garnish and as greens, and many and varied were the edible roots that supplied their increasing desire for fresh vegetables.

Sometimes she found wocus in the marsh--the plant formerly in such demand by the Indians--and by patient experiment she learned how to prepare it for the table. Washing the plant carefully she would pound it into paste that could be used as the base for a nutty and delicious bread. Other roots were baked in ashes or served fried in animal fat, and once or twice she found patches of wild strawberries, ripening on the slopes.

This was living! They plucked the sweet, juicy berries from the vines; they served as dessert and were also used in the fashioning of delicious puddings with rice and sugar. Several times she found certain treasures laid by for winter use by the squirrels or the digging people--and perfectly preserved nuts and acorns, The latter, parched over coals, became one of the staples of their diet.

She gathered leaves of the red weed and dried them for tea. She searched out the nests of the grouse and robbed them of their eggs; and always high celebration in the cave followed such a find as this. Fried eggs, boiled eggs, poached eggs tickled their palates for mornings to come. And she traced down, one memorable day when their sugar was all but gone, a tree that the wild bees had stored with honey.

In the way of meat they had not only caribou, but the tender veal of moose and all manner of northern small game. Ben did not, however, spend rifle cartridges in reckless shooting. When at last his enemies came filing down through the beaver meadow he had no desire to be left with a half-empty gun. He had never fired this more powerful weapon since he had felled their first caribou. The moose calves and all the small game were taken with Beatrice's pistol.

Sometimes he took ptarmigan--those whistling, sprightly grouse of the high steeps--and Beatrice served uncounted numbers of them, like the famous blackbirds, baked in a pie. Fried ptarmigan was a dish never to forget; roast ptarmigan had a distinctive flavor all its own, and the memory of ptarmigan fricassee often called Ben home to the cavern an hour before the established mealtime. Indeed, they partook of all the northern species of that full-bosomed clan, the upland game birds; little, brown quail, willow grouse, fool hens, and the incomparable blue grouse, half of the breast of which was a meal. It was true that their little store of pistol cartridges was all but gone, but worlds of big game remained to fall back upon.

Ben never ceased regretting that he had not brought a single fishhook and a piece of line. He had long since carried the canoe from the river bank and hid it in the tall reeds of the lake shore, not only for pleasure's sake, but to preserve it for the autumn floods when they might want to float on down to the Indian villages; and surely it would have afforded the finest sport in the way of trolling for lake trout. But with utter callousness he made his pistol serve as a hook and line. Often he would crawl down, cautiously as a stalking wolf, to the edge of a trout pool, then fire mercilessly at a great, spotted beauty below. The bullet itself did not penetrate the water, but the shock carried through and the fish usually turned a white belly to the surface. A fat brook or lake trout, dipped in flour and fried to a chestnut brown, was a delight that never grew old.

At every fresh find Beatrice would come triumphant into Ben's presence; and at such times they scarcely conducted themselves like enemies. An unguessed boyishness and charm had come to Ben in these ripe, full summer days: the hard lines softened in his face and mostly the hard shine left his eyes. Beatrice found herself curiously eager to please him, taking the utmost care and pains with every dish she prepared for the table; and it was true that he made the most joyful, exultant response to her efforts. The searing heat back of his eyes was quite gone, now. Even the scarlet fluid of his veins seemed to flow more quietly, with less fire, with less madness. A gentling influence had come to bear upon him; a great kindness, a new forbearance had brightened his outlook toward all the world. A great redemption was even now hovering close to him,--some unspeakable and ultimate blessing that he could not name.

Their days were not without pleasure. Often they ventured far into the heavy forest, and always fresh delight and thrilling adventure awaited them. Ever they learned more of the wild things that were their only neighbors,--creatures all the way down the scale from the lordly moose, proud of his growing antlers and monarch of the marshes, to the small pika, squeaking on the slide-rock of the high peaks. They knew and loved them all; they found ever-increasing enjoyment in the study of their shy ways and furtive occupations; they observed with delight the droll awkwardness of the moose calves, the impertinence and saucy speech of the jays, the humor of the black bear and the surly arrogance of the grizzly. They knew that superlative cunning of his wickedness, the wolverine; the stealth of the red fox; the ferociousness of the ermine whose brown skin, soon to be white, suggested only something silken and soft and tender instead of a fiendish cutthroat, terror of the Little People; the skulking cowardice of the coyote; and the incredible savagery and agility of the fisher,--that middle-sized hunter that catches and kills everything he can master except fish. They climbed high hills and descended into still, mysterious valleys; they paddled long, dreamy twilight hours on the lake; they traversed marshes where the moose wallowed; and they walked through ancient forests where the decayed vegetation was a mossy pulp under their feet. Sometimes they forgot the poignancy of their strange lives, romping sometimes, gossiping like jays in the tree-limbs, and sometimes, forgetting enmity, they told each other their secret beliefs and philosophies. They had picnics in the woods; and long, comfortable evenings before their dancing fire. But there was one enduring joy that always surpassed all the rest, a happiness that seemed to have its origin in the silent places of their hearts. It was just the return, after a fatiguing day in forest and marsh, to the sheltering walls of the cave.

With his axe and hunting knife Ben prepared a complete set of furniture for their little abode. His first Work was a surpassing-marvelous dining-room suite of a table and two chairs. Then he put up shelves for their rapidly dwindling supplies of provisions and cut chunks of spruce log, with a bit of bark remaining, for fireside seats. And for more than a week, Beatrice was forbidden to enter a certain covert just beyond the glade lest she should prematurely discover an even greater wonder that Ben, in off hours, was preparing for a surprise.

From time to time she heard him busily at work, the ring of his axe and his gay whistling as he whittled bolts of wood; but other than that it concerned the grizzly skin she had not the least idea of his task. But the work was completed at last, and then came two days of rather significant silence,--quite incomprehensible to the girl. She was at a loss why Ben did not reveal his treasure.

But one morning she missed the familiar sounds of his fire-building, usually his first work on wakening. The very fact of their absence startled her wide-awake, while otherwise she would have perhaps slept late into the morning. Ben had seemingly vanished into the heavy timber across the glade.

Presently she heard him muttering and grunting as he moved some heavy object to the door of the cave. Boyishly, he could not wait for the usual late hour when she wakened. He made a wholly unnecessary amount of noise as he built the fire. Then he thrust his lean head into the cavern opening.

"I hope I haven't waked you up?" he said.

The girl smiled secretly. "I wanted to wake up, anyway--to-day."

"I wish you'd get up and come and look at something ugly I've got just outside the door."

She hurried into her outer garments, and in a moment appeared. It was ugly, certainly, the object that he had fashioned with such tireless toil: not fitted at all for a stylish city home; yet the girl, for one short instant, stopped breathing. It was a hammock, suspended on a stout frame, to take the place of her tree-bough bed on the cave floor. He had used the grizzly skin, hanging it with unbreakable sinew, and fashioning it in such a manner that folds of the hide could be turned over her on cold nights. For a moment she gazed, very earnestly, into the rugged, homely, raw-boned face of her companion.

Beatrice was deeply and inexplicably sobered, yet a curious happiness took swift possession of her heart. Reading the gratitude in her eyes, Ben's lips broke into a radiant smile.

"I guess you've forgotten what day it is," he said.

"Of course. I hardly know the month."

"I've notched each day, you know. And maybe you've forgotten--on the ride out from Snowy Gulch--we talked of birthdays. To-day is yours."

She stared at him in genuine astonishment. She had not dreamed that this little confidence, given in a careless moment of long weeks before, had lingered in the man's memory. She had supposed that the fury and savagery of his war with her father and the latter's followers had effaced all such things as this.

And it was true that had this birthday come a few weeks before, on the river journey and previous to their occupation of the cave, Ben would have let it pass unnoticed. The smoldering fire in his brain would have seared to ashes any such kindly thought as this. But when the wild hunter leaves his leafy lair and goes to dwell, a man rather than a beast, in a permanent abode, he has thought for other subjects than his tribal wars and the blood-lust of his hates. The hearth, and the care and friendship of the girl had tamed Ben to this degree, at least.

But wonders were not done. The look in the girl's eyes suddenly melted, as the warm sun melts ice, some of the frozen bitterness of his spirit. "It's your birthday--and I hope you have many of 'em," he went on. "No more like this--but all of 'em happy,--as you deserve."

He walked toward her, and her eyes could not leave his. He bent soberly, and brushed her lips with his own.

There were always worlds to talk about in the warm gleam of their fire. When the day's work was done, and the hush of early night gathered the land to its arms, they would sit on their fireside seats and settle all problems, now and hereafter, to the perfect satisfaction of them both.

From Ben, Beatrice gained a certain strength of outlook as well as depth of insight, but she gave him in return more than she received. He felt that her influence, in his early years, would have worked wonders for him. She straightened out his moral problems for him, taught him lessons in simple faith; and her own childish sweetness and absolute purity showed his whole world in a new light.

Sometimes they talked of religion and ethics, sometimes of science and economics, and particularly they talked of what was nearest to them,--the mysteries and works of nature. She had been a close observer of the forest. She had received some glimpse of its secret laws that were, when all was said and done, the basic laws of life. But for all her love of science she was not a mere biologist. She had a full and devout faith in Law and Judgment beyond any earthly sphere.

"No one can live in this boundless wilderness and not believe," she told him earnestly, her dark eyes brimming with her fervor. "Perhaps I can't tell you why--maybe it's just a feeling of need, of insufficiency of self. Besides, God is close, like He was to the Israelites when they were in the wilderness; but you will remember that He never came close again.--This forest is so big and so awful, He knows he must stay close to keep you from dying of fear.--God may not be a reality to the people of the cities, where they see only buildings and streets, but Ben, He is to me. You can't forget Him up here. He stands on every mountain, just as the sons of Aaron saw Him."

He found, to his surprise, that she was not ill-read, particularly in the old-time classics. But her environment had also influenced her choice of reading. She loved the old legends in the minor,--far-off and plaintive things that reflected the mood of the dusky forest in which she lived.

One night, when the moon was in the sky, he told her of his war record, of the shell-shock and the strange, criminal mania that followed it; and then of his swift recovery. With an over-powering need of self-justification he told her of his further adventures with Ezram, of the old man's murder and the theft of the claim. She heard him out, listening attentively; but in loyalty to her father she did not let herself believe him entirely. The answer she gave him was the same as she had always given at his every reference to his side of the case.

"If you were in the right, you'd take me back and let the law take its course," she told him. "You'd not be out here laying an ambush for them, to kill them when they try to rescue me."

He could never make her understand how, by the intricacies of law, it would be a rare chance that he would be able to fasten the crime on the murderers: that he had taken the only sure way open to make them pay for Ezram's death. He told her of the old man's, final request; how that his war with her father and his men was a debt that, by secret, inscrutable laws of his being, could never be written off or disavowed. But he could never fully find words to uphold his position. The thing went back to his instincts, traced at last to the remorseless spirit of the wolf that was his heritage.

Yet these hours of talk were immensely good for him. While they never met on common grounds, the girl's true outlook and nobility of character were ever more manifest to him; and were not without a gentling, healing influence upon him. He could not blind himself to them. And sometimes when he sat alone by his dying fire, as the dark menaced him, and the girl that was his charge slept within the portals of stone, he had the unescapable feeling that the very structure of his life was falling and shattering down; but even now he could see, an enchanted vista in the distance, a mightier, more glorious tower, builded and shaped by this woman's hand.

XXXI

While Beatrice was at her household tasks--cooking the meals, cleaning the cave, washing and repairing their clothes--Ben never forgot his more serious work. Certain hours every day he spent in exploration, seeking out the passes over the hills, examining every possible means of entrance and egress into his valley, getting the lay of the land and picking out the points from which he would make his attack. Already he knew every winding game trail and every detail of the landscape for five miles or more around. His ultimate vengeance seemed just as sure as the night following the day.

Ever he listened for the first sound of the pack train in the forest; and even in his hours of pleasure his eyes ever roamed over the sweep of valley and marsh below. He was prepared for his enemies now. One or five, they couldn't escape him. He had provided for every contingency and had seemingly perfected his plan to the last detail.

He had not the slightest fear that his eagerness would cost him his aim when finally his eye looked along the sights at the forms of his enemies, helpless in the marsh. He was wholly cold about the matter now. The lust and turmoil in his veins, remembered like a ghastly dream from that first night, returned but feebly now, if at all. This change, this restraint had been increasingly manifest since his occupation of the cave, and it had marked, at the same time, a growing barrier between himself and Fenris. But he could not deny but that such a development was wholly to have been expected. Fenris was a child of the open forest aisles, never of the fireside and the hearth. It was not that the wolf had ceased to give him his dint of faithful service, or that he loved him any the less. But each of them had other interests,--one his home and hearth; the other the ever-haunting, enticing call of the wildwood. Lately Fenris had taken to wandering into the forest at night, going and coming like a ghost; and once his throat and jowls had been stained with dark blood.

"It's getting too tame for you here, old boy, isn't it?" Ben said to him one hushed, breathless night. "But wait just a little while more. It won't be tame then."

It was true: the hunting party, if they had started at once, must be nearing their death valley by now. Except for the absolute worst of traveling conditions they would have already come. Ben felt a growing impatience: a desire to do his work and get it over. His pulse no longer quickened and leaped at the thought of vengeance; and the wolflike pleasure in simple killing could no longer be his. It would merely be the soldier's work--a dreadful obligation to perform speedily and to forget. Even the memory of the huddled form of his savior and friend, so silent and impotent in the dead leaves, did not stir him into madness now.

Yet he never thought of disavowing his vengeance. It was still the main purpose of his life. He had no theme but that: when that work was done he could conceive of nothing further of interest on earth, nothing else worth living for. Not for an instant had he relented: except for that one kiss, on the occasion of her birthday, he had never broken his promise in regard to his relations with Beatrice. His first trait was steadfastness, a trait that, curiously enough, is inherent in all living creatures who are by blood close to the wild wolf, from the German police dog to the savage husky of the North. But he was certainly and deeply changed in these weeks in the cave. He no longer hated these three murderous enemies of his. The power to hate had simply died in his body. He regarded their destruction rather as a duty he owed old Ezram, an obligation that he would die sooner than forego.

The hushed, dark, primal forest had a different appeal for him now. He loved it still, with the reverence and adoration of the forester he was, but no longer with that love a servant bears his master. He had distinctly escaped from its dominance. The passion and mounting fire that it wakened at the fall of darkness could no longer take possession of him, as strong drink possesses the brain, bending his will, making of him simply a tool and a pawn to gratify its cruel desires and to achieve its mysterious ends. He had been, in spirit, a brother of the wolf, before: a runner in the packs. Such had been the outgrowth of innate traits; part of his strange destiny. Now, after these weeks in the cave, he was a man. It was hard for him to explain even to himself. It was as if in the escape from his own black passions, he had also escaped the curious tyranny of the wild; not further subject to its cruel moods and whims, but rather one of a Dominant Breed, a being who could lift his head in defiance to the storm, obey his own will, go his own way. This was no little change. Perhaps, when all is said and done, it marks the difference between man and the lesser mammals, the thing that has evolved a certain species of the primates--simply woods creatures that trembled at the storm and cowered in the night--into the rulers and monarchs of the earth.

Ben had come out from the darkened forest trails where he made his lairs and had gone into a cave to live! He had found a permanent abode--a lasting, shelter from the cold and the storm. It suggested a curious allegory to him. Some time in the long-forgotten past, probably when the later glaciers brought their promise of cold, all his race left their leafy bowers and found cave homes in the cliffs. Before that time they were merely woods children, blind puppets of nature, sleeping where exhaustion found them; wandering without aim in the tree aisles; mating when they met the female of their species on the trails and venturing on again; knowing the ghastly, haunting fear of the night and the blind terror of the storm and elements: merely higher beasts in a world of beasts. But they came to the caves. They established permanent abodes. They began to be men.

All that now stands as civilization, all the conquest of the earth and sea and air began from that moment. It was the Great Epoch,--and Ben had illustrated it in his own life. The change had been infinitely slow, but certain as the movement of the planets in their spheres. Behind the sheltering walls they got away from fear,--that cruel bondage in which Nature holds all her wild creatures, the burden that makes them her slaves. Never to shudder with horror when the darkness fell in silence and mystery; never to have the heart freeze with terror when the thunder roared in the sky and the wind raged in the trees. The cave dwellers began to come into their own. Sheltered behind stone walls they could defy the elements that had enslaved them so long. This freedom gained they learned to strike the fire; they took one woman to keep the cave, instead of mating indiscriminately in the forest, thus marking the beginning of family life. Love instead of deathless hatred, gentleness rather than cruelty, peace in the place of passion, mercy and tolerance and self-control: all these mighty bulwarks of man's dominance grew into strength behind the sheltering walls of home.

Thus in these few little weeks Ben Darby--a beast of the forest in his unbridled passions--had in some measure imaged the life history of the race. He had lived again the momentous regeneration. The protecting walls, the hearth, particularly Beatrice's wholesome and healing influence, had tamed him. He was still a forester, bred in the bone--loving these forest depths with an ardor too deep for words--but the mark of the beast was gone from his flesh.

He could still deal justice to Ezram's murderers and thus keep faith with his dead partner; but the primal passions could no longer dominate him. His pet, however, remained the wolf. The sheltering cavern walls were never for him. He loved Ben with an undying devotion, yet a barrier was rising between them. They could not go the same paths forever.

Matters reached a crisis between Fenris and himself one still, warm night in late July. The two were sitting side by side at the cavern maw, watching the slow enchantment of the forest under the spell of the rising moon; Beatrice had already gone to her hammock. As the last little blaze died in the fire, and it crackled at ever longer intervals, Ben suddenly made a moving discovery. The fringe of forest about him, usually so dreamlike and still, was simply breathing and throbbing with life.

Ben dropped his hand to the wolf's shoulders. "The little folks are calling on us to-night," he said quietly.

In all probability he spoke the truth. It was not an uncommon thing for the creatures of the wood--usually the lesser people such as rodents and the small hunters--to crowd close to the edge of the glade and try to puzzle out this ruddy mystery in its center. Unused to men they could never understand. Sometimes the lynx halted in his hunt to investigate, sometimes an old black bear--kindly, benevolent good-humored old bachelor that every naturalist loves--grunted and pondered at the edge of shadow, and sometimes even such lordly creatures as moose and caribou paused in their night journeys to see what was taking place.

Curiously, the wolf started violently at Ben's touch. The man suddenly regarded him with a gaze of deepest interest. The hair was erect on the powerful neck, the eyes swam in pale, blue fire, and he was staring away into the mysterious shadows.

"What do you see, old-timer?" Ben asked. "I wish I could see too."

He brought his senses to the finest focus, trying hard to understand. He was aware only of the strained silence at first. Then here and there, about the dimmining circle of firelight, he heard the soft rustle of little feet, the subdued crack of a twig or the scratch of a dead leaf. The forest smells--of which there is no category in heaven or earth--reached him with incredible clarity. These were faint, vaguely exciting smells, some of them the exquisite fragrances of summer flowers, others beyond his ken. And presently two small, bright circles appeared in a distant covert, glowed once, and then went out.

By peering closely, with unwinking eyes, he began to see other twin-circles of green and yellow light. Yet they were furtive little radiances--vanishing swiftly--and they were nothing of which to be afraid.

"They _are_ out to-night," he murmured. "No wonder you're excited, Fenris. What is it--some celebration in the forest?"

There was no possible explanation. Foresters know that on certain nights the wilderness seems simply to teem with life--scratchings and rustlings in every covert--and on other nights it is still and lifeless as a desert. The wild folk were abroad to-night and were simply paying casual, curious visits to Ben's fire.

Once more Ben glanced at the wolf. The animal no longer crouched. Rather he was standing rigid, his head half-turned and lifted, gazing away toward a distant ridge behind the lake. A wilderness message had reached him, clear as a voice.

But presently Ben understood. Throbbing through the night he heard a weird, far-carrying call--a long-drawn note, broken by half-sobs--the mysterious, plaintive utterance of the wild itself. Yet it was not an inanimate voice. He recognized it at once as the howl of a wolf, one of Fenris' wild brethren.

The creature at his feet started as if from a blow. Then he stood motionless, listening, and the cry came the second time. He took two leaps into the darkness.

Deeply moved, Ben watched him. The wolf halted, then stole back to his master's side. He licked the man's hand with his warm tongue, whining softly.

"What is it, boy?" Ben asked. "What do you want me to do?"

The wolf whined louder, his eyes luminous with ineffable appeal. Once more he leaped into the shadows, pausing as if to see if Ben would follow him.

The man shook his head, rather soberly. A curious, excited light was in his eyes. "I can't go, old boy," he said. "This is my place--here. Fenris, I can't leave the cave."

For a moment they looked eyes into eyes--in the glory of that moon as strange a picture as the wood gods ever beheld. Once more the wolf call sounded. Fenris whimpered softly.

"Go ahead if you like," Ben told him. "God knows it's your destiny."

The wolf seemed to understand. With a glad bark he sped away and almost instantly vanished into the gloom.

But Fenris had not broken all ties with the cave. The chain was too strong for that, the hold on his wild heart too firm. If there is one trait, far and near in the wilds, that distinguishes the woods children, it is their inability to forget. Fenris had joined his fellows, to be sure; but he still kept watch over the cave.

The strongest wolf in the little band, the nucleus about which the winter pack would form, he largely confined their hunting range to the district immediately about the cave. It held him like a chain of iron. Although the woods trails beguiled him with every strong appeal, the sight of his master was a beloved thing to him still, and scarcely a night went by but that he paused to sniff at the cavern maw, seeing that all was well. At such times his followers would linger, trembling and silent, in the farther shadows. Because they had never known the love of man they utterly failed to understand. But in an instant Fenris would come back to them, the wild urge in his heart seemingly appeased by the mere assurance of Ben's presence and safety.

Ben himself was never aware of these midnight visits. The feet of the wolves were like falling feathers on the grass; and if sometimes, through the cavern maw, he half-wakened to catch the gleam of their wild eyes, he attributed it merely to the presence of skulking coyotes, curious concerning the dying coals of the fire.

XXXII

Beatrice had kept only an approximate track of the days; yet she knew that an attempt to rescue her must be almost at hand. Even traveling but half a dozen miles a day, and counting out a reasonable time for exploration and delays, her father's party must be close upon them. And the thought of the forthcoming battle between her abductor and her rescuers filled every waking moment with dread.

She could not escape the thought of it. It lingered, hovering like a shadow, over all her gayest moments; it haunted her more sober hours, and it brought evil dreams at night. Her one hope was that her father had given her up for lost and had not attempted her rescue.

She realized perfectly the perfection of Ben's plans. She knew that he had provided for every contingency; and besides, he had every natural advantage in his favor. The end was inevitable: his victory and the destruction of his foes. There would be little mercy for these three in the hands of this iron man from the eastern provinces. If they were to be saved it must be soon, not a week from now, nor when another moon had waned. If Ben was to be checkmated there were not many hours to waste.

She had had no opportunity to escape, at first. Ben knew that she could not make her way over the hundreds of miles of howling wilderness without food supplies, and always the wolf had been on guard. He was like a were-wolf, a demon, anticipating her every move, knowing her secret thoughts. But the wolf had gone now to join his fellows. She was not aware of his almost nightly return. Perhaps the fact of his absence gave her an opportunity, her one chance to save her father from Ben's ambush.

Conditions for escape were more favorable than at any time since their departure from the canoe landing, that late spring day of long ago. The wolf was gone; Ben's guard of her was ever more lax. The season was verdant: she could supplement what supplies she took from the cave with roots and berries, and the warm nights would enable her to carry a minimum of blankets. She knew that she could never hope to succeed in the venture except by traveling light and fast. On the other hand she would need all of Ben's remaining supplies to bring her through: in a few more days the stores would be so low that she could not attempt the trip. Human beings cannot survive, in the forests of the north, on roots and berries alone. Tissue-building flour and sustaining meat are necessary to climb the ridges and battle the thicket.

How could she obtain these things? For all his seeming carelessness Ben kept a fairly close watch on her actions, and he would discover her flight within a few hours. Stronger than she, and knowing every trail and pass for miles around he could overtake her with ease. He gave her no opportunity to seize his rifle, load it and turn it against him, thus making her escape by force.

The fact that she would leave him without food mattered not one way or another. He would still have his rifle, and his small stock of rifle cartridges would procure sufficient big game to sustain him for weeks and months to come. After all, the whole issue depended on the rifle,--the symbol of force. It would be his instrument of vengeance when his chance came. If she could only take this weapon from him she need not fear the coming of her rescuers. In that case Ben would be helpless against them.

Unfortunately, the gun rarely left his hands. If indeed she should attempt to seize it he would wrest it away from her before she could destroy or injure it. But it was a hopeful fact that the rifle was useless without its shells!

To procure these, however, presented an unsolvable problem. Any way she turned she found a barrier Ben kept them in his shell belt, and he wore the belt about his waist, waking or sleeping. Only to procure it, run like a deer and hurl it into the rapids of the Yuga,--and her problem would be absolutely solved. Ben would be obliged to leave the cave home at once and return with her to the Yuga cabins, utilizing the few stores they had left for the journey--simply because to stay, unarmed, would mean to die of starvation. Indeed the few remaining supplies would not more than last them through now, traveling early and late, so if the venture were to be attempted at all it must be at once. On the other hand his rifle and shells would enable the two of them to remain in the cavern indefinitely on a diet of meat alone.

As she worked about the cavern she brooded over the plan; but at first she could conceive of no possible way to procure the shells. If the chance came, however, she wanted to be ready. She planned all other details of the venture; the shortest route to the nearest rapids of the river where she might dispose of the deadly cylinders of brass. It became necessary, also, to consider the lesser weapon for the plain reason that it might defeat her in the moment of her success.

Ben kept the weapon in his cartridge belt, but the extra pistol shells were among the supplies. They could easily be procured. It would also be necessary to induce him to fire away the few shells that he carried in the pistol magazine; but this would likely be easy enough to do. He put little reliance on the weapon, trusting rather to his rifle both for the impending war and the procurance of big game; and he would not harbor the pistol shells as long as he had his rifle.

But the days were passing! Any attempt at deliverance must be made before the food stores were further depleted. They could not make the march without food. Days and nights overtook her with her triumph as far distant as ever. The moment of opportunity she had watched for, in which she might seize the cartridge belt and destroy it, had never come to pass. The plans she had made while the night lay soft and mysterious in the solitudes had all come to nothing. He had never, as she had hoped, removed his belt and forgotten to replace it, nor had his slumber ever been so deep that she could steal it from him.

His own triumph surely was almost at hand. Surely his pursuers had almost overtaken him. The stores had already fallen far below the margin of safety for the long journey home. The thought was with her, and she was desperate one long, warm afternoon as she searched for roots and berries in the forest. Edible plants were ever more hard to find, these past days; but what there were she gathered almost automatically, herself lost in a deep preoccupation. And all at once her hand reached toward a little vine of black berries, each with a green tuft at the end, not unlike gooseberries in southern gardens.

As if by instinct, hardly aware of the motion, she withdrew her hand. She knew this vine. She was enough of a forester never to mistake it. It was the deadly nightshade, and a handful of the berries spelt death. She started to look elsewhere.

But presently she paused, arrested by an idea so engrossing and yet so terrible that her heart seemed to pause in her breast. Had any rules been laid down for her to follow in her war with Ben? Was she to consider methods at such a time as this? Was she not a woods girl,--a woman, not a child, trained and tutored in the savage code of the wild that knows no ethics other than might, whether might of arm or craft, of brain or fell singleness of purpose? Should she consider ethics now?

Her father's life was in imminent danger. Another day might find him stretched lifeless before her. Ben had not hesitated to use every weapon in his power; she should not hesitate now. Ben had made his war; she would wage it by his own code.

For a moment she stood almost without outward motion, intrigued by the possibilities of this little handful of berries. She shuddered once, nervously, but there was no further impulse of remorse. Perhaps she trembled slightly; and her eyes were simply depthless shadows under her brows.

They were so little, seemingly so inoffensive: these dark berries in the shadows of the covert. They were scarcely to be noticed twice. But not even the savage grizzly was of such might; storms or seas were not so deadly. There they were, inconspicuous among their sister plants, waiting for her hand.

It was right that they should be black in color. Their blackness was as of a black night without a star shining through,--a black cloud with never a rainbow to promise hope. She could not turn her eyes away! How black they were among the green leaves--lightless as death itself.

A handful of them meant death: her father had warned her about them long ago. But half a handful--perhaps a dozen of the sable berries in the palm of her hand--what did _they_ mean? Just a sickness wherein one could no longer guard a prisoner. They were a powerful alkaloid, she knew; and a dozen of them would likely mean hours and hours of deep, dreamless sleep,--a sleep in which one could take no reckoning of hands fumbling at a cartridge belt! Half a handful would, in all probability, fail to strike the life from such a powerful frame as Ben's, but would certainly act upon him like a powerful opiate and leave him helpless in her hands.

Eagerly her fingers plucked the black berries.

XXXIII

In one of the tin cups Beatrice pressed the juice from the nightshade, obtaining perhaps a tablespoonful of black liquor. To this she added considerable sugar, barely tasting the mixture on the end of her finger. The balance was inclining toward the success of her plan. The sugar mostly killed the pungent taste of the berries.

Then she concealed the cup in a cluster of vines, ready for the moment of need. Her next act was to procure from among the supplies the little cardboard box containing half a dozen or so of her pistol shells. The way of safety was to destroy these first. The effect of the poison might be of only a few minutes' duration, and every motion might count. Under any conditions, they would be out of the way. She was careful, with a superlative cunning, to take the box as well as its contents. She foresaw that in all likelihood Ben would seek the shells as soon as he fired the few that remained in his pistol magazine; and an empty container might put him upon his guard. On the other hand, if he could not find the box at all, he could easily be led to believe that it had been simply misplaced among the other supplies.

She scattered the shells in the heavy brush where not even the bright, searching eyes of the Canada jay might ever find them. Then she hastened up the ridge to meet Ben on his way to the cave.

She waited a few minutes, then spying his stalwart form at the edge of the beaver meadow, she tripped down to meet him. He was not in the least suspicious of this little act of friendship. It was quite the customary thing, lately, for her thus to watch for his coming; and his brown face always lighted with pleasure at the first glimpse of her graceful form framed by the spruce. She too had always taken pleasure in these little meetings and in the gay talk they had as they sped down toward the cavern; but her delight was singularly absent to-day. She tried to restrain the wild racing of her heart.

She knew she must act her part. Her plan was to put him off his guard, to hide her treachery with pretended friendship. To meet him here--far distant from the poison cup hidden in the vines--would give her time to master her leaping heart and to strengthen her self-control.

Yet she had hardly expected him to greet her in just this way,--with such a light in his eyes and such obvious delight in his smile. He had a rather boyish, friendly smile, this foe of hers whom she was about to despatch into the very shadow of death. She dispelled quickly a small, faltering voice of remorse. This was no time for remorse, for gentleness and mercy. She hurried to his side.

"You're flushed from hurrying down that hill," he told her gayly. "Beatrice, you're getting prettier every day."

"It's the simple life that's doing it, Ben! No late hours, no indigestible food--"

"Speaking of food--I'm famished. I hope you've got something nice for lunch--and I know you have."

She _had_ been careful with to-day's lunch; but it had merely been part of her plot to put him off his guard. "Caribou tenderloin--almost the last of him--wocus bread and strawberries," she assured him. "Does that suit your highness?"

He made a great feint of being overwhelmed by the news. "Then let's hurry. Take my arm and we'll fly."

She seized the strong forearm, thrilled in spite of herself by the muscles of steel she felt through the sleeves. He fell into his fastest walking stride,--long steps that sped the yards under them. They emerged from the marsh and started to climb the ridge.

At a small hollow beside the creek bed her fingers suddenly tightened on his arm. A thrill that was more of wonder than of joy coursed through her; and her dark eyes began to glitter with excitement. The wilderness was her ally to-day. She suddenly saw her chance--in a manner that could not possibly waken his suspicions of her intentions--of disposing of the remainder of his pistol cartridges.

On a log thirty feet distant sat an old grouse with half a dozen of her brood, all of them perched in a row and relying on their protective coloring to save them from sight. They were Franklin's grouse--and they had appeared as if in answer to Beatrice's secret wish.

These birds were common enough in their valley, and not a day passed without seeing from five to fifty of them, yet the sight went straight home to Beatrice's superstitions. "Get them with your pistol," she whispered. "I want them all--for a big grouse pie to-night."

"But our pistol shells are getting low," Ben objected. "I've hardly got enough shells in the gun to get 'em all--"

"No matter. You have to use them some time. There's a few more in the cave, I think. We'll have to rely on big game from now on, anyway. Don't miss one."

Ben drew his pistol, then walked up within twenty feet. He drew slowly down, knocking the old bird from her perch with a bullet through the neck.

"Good work," Beatrice exulted. "Now for the chicks."

Ben took the bird on the extreme right, and again the bullet sped true. The remainder of the flock had become uneasy now; and at the next shot all except one flew into the branches of the surrounding trees. This shot was equally successful, and with the fourth he knocked the remaining bird from the log.

Each of the four birds he had downed with a shot either through the head or the neck; and such shooting would have been marvelous indeed in the eyes of the tenderfoot. But both these two foresters knew that there was nothing exceptional about it. Pistol shooting is simply a matter of a sure eye and steady nerves, combined with a greater or less period of practice. Few were the trappers or woodsmen north of fifty-three that could not have done as much.

Ben turned his attention to the fowl on the lower tree limbs, hitting once but missing the second time. To correct this unpardonable proceeding, he knocked with his seventh a fat cock, his spurs just starting, from almost the top of a young spruce.

"Here's one more," Beatrice urged him. "I'll need every one for the pie."

But the gun was empty. The firing pin snapped harmlessly against the breach. They gathered the grouse and sped on down to the cavern.

Her heart seemingly leaped into her throat at every beat; but with steady hands and smiling face she went about the preparation of the meal. She fried the venison and baked the wocus bread, and with more than usual spirit and gaiety set the dishes at Ben's place at the table. "Draw up your chair," she told him. "I'll have the tea in a minute."

Ben peered with sudden interest into her face. "What's troubling you, Bee?" he asked gently. "You're pale as a ghost."

"I'm not feeling overly well." Her eyes dropped before his gaze. "I'm not hungry--at all. But it's nothing to worry about--"

She saw by his eyes that he _was_ worrying; yet it was evident that he had not the slightest suspicion of the real cause of the sudden pallor in her cheeks. She saw his face cloud and his eyes darken; and again she heard that faint, small voice of remorse--whispering deep in her heart's heart. He was always so considerate of her, this jailer of hers. His concern was always so real and deep. Yet in a moment more the kindly sympathy would be gone from his face. He would be lying very still--and his face would be even more pale than hers.

Listlessly she walked to the door of the cave, procuring a handful of dried red-root leaves that she used for tea. Through the cavern opening he saw her drop them into the bucket that served as their teapot.

Then she came back for the oiled, cloth bag that contained the last of their sugar. This was always one of her little kindnesses,--to sweeten his tea for him before she brought it to him. He began to eat his steak.

In one glance the girl saw that he was wholly unsuspecting. He trusted her; in their weeks together he had lost all fear of treachery from her. There he was, exulting over the frugal lunch she had prepared, with no inkling of the deadly peril that even now was upon him. She wished he did not trust her so completely; it would be easier for her if he was just a little wary, a little more on guard.

She felt cold all over. She could hardly keep from shivering. But this was the moment of trial; the thing would be done in a moment more. She mustn't give way yet to the growing weakness in her muscles. She walked to the vine where she had left the potion.

How much of it there was--it seemed to have doubled in quantity since she had left it. A handful of the black berries meant death--certain as the sunrise--but what did half a handful mean? The question came to her again. How did she know that half a handful did not mean death too,--not just hours of slumber, but relentless and irremediable death! Would that be the end of her day's work--to see this tall, friendly warden of hers lying dead before her gaze, the laughter gone from his lips and the light faded from his eyes? She would be free then to strip the shell belt from his waist. He would never waken to prevent her. She could escape too--back to her father's home--and leave him in the cave.

All that he had told her concerning his war with her father recurred to her in one vivid flash. Could it have been that he had told the truth--that her father and his followers had been the attackers in the beginning? She had never believed him fully; but could it be that he was in the right? His claim had been invaded, he said, and his one friend murdered in cold blood. Was this not cause enough, by the code of the North, for a war of reprisal?

But even as these thoughts came to her, she had walked boldly to the fire and emptied the contents of the cup into the boiling water in the teapot. Ben would have only had to look up to see her do it. Yet still he did not suspect.

She waited an instant, steadying herself for the ordeal to come. Then she took the pot off the fire and poured the hot contents into the cup that had just held the potion. She had been careful not to put enough water into the pot to weaken the drink. The cup brimmed; but none was left. She brought it steaming to Ben's side.

No kindly root tripped her feet as she entered, no merciful unsteadiness caused her to drop this cup of death and spill its contents.

"Thanks, Beatrice." Ben looked up, smiling. "I'm a brute to let you fix my tea when you are feeling so bad. But I sure am grateful, if that helps any--"

His voice sounded far away, like a voice in a nightmare. "It's pretty strong, I'm afraid," she told him. "The leaves weren't very good, and I boiled them too long. I'm afraid you'll find it bitter."

"I'll drink it, if it's bitter as gall," he assured her, "after your kindness to fix it."

His hand reached and seized the handle of the cup. Even now--_now_--he was raising it to his lips. In an instant more he would be pouring it down his throat, too considerate of her to admit its unwholesome taste, drinking it down though it tasted the potion of death that it was! The hair seemed to start on her head.

Then she seemed to writhe as in a convulsion. Her voice rose in a piercing scream. "Ben--_Ben_--_don't drink it_!" she cried. "God have mercy on my soul!"

But with that utterance a strength surpassing that of sinew and muscle returned to her. She reached and knocked the cup from his hand; and its black contents, like dark blood, stained the sandy floor of the cavern.

Ben's first thought was curiously not of his own narrow escape, but was rather in concern for Beatrice. Whether or not he had actually swallowed any of the liquor in the cup he did not know; nor did he give the matter a thought. He was aware of only the terror-stricken girl before him, her face deathly white and her eyes starting and wide. He leaped to his feet.

Fearing that she was about to faint he steadied her with his hand. The echo of her scream died in the cavern, the cup rolled on the floor and came to a standstill against the wall; but still she made no sound, only gazing as if entranced. But slowly, as he steadied her, the blessed tears stole into her eyes and rolled down her white cheeks; and once more breath surged into her lungs.

"Never mind, Beatrice," the man was saying, his deep, rough voice gentle as a woman's. "Don't cry--please don't cry--just forget all about it. Let's go over to your hammock and rest awhile."

With a strong arm he guided her to her cot, and smiling kindly, pushed her down into it. "Just take it easy," he advised. "And forget all about it. You'll be all right in a minute."

"But you don't understand--you don't know--what I tried to do--"

"No matter. Tell me after a while, if you want to. Don't tell me at all if you'd rather not. I'm going back to my lunch." He laughed, trying to bring her to herself. "I wouldn't miss that caribou steak for anything--even though I can't have my tea. Just lay down a while, and rest."

His rugged face lighted as he smiled, kindly and tolerantly, and then he turned to go. But her solemn voice arrested him.

"Wait, Ben. I want you to know--now--so you won't trust me again--or give me another chance. The cup--was poisoned."

But the friendly light did not yet wane in his eyes. "I didn't think it was anything very good--the way you knocked it out of my hand. We'll just pretend it was very bad tea--and let it go at that."

"No. It was nightshade--it might have killed you." She spoke in a flat, lifeless voice. "I didn't want it to kill you--I just wanted to give you enough to put you to sleep--so I could take your rifle shells and throw them away--but I was willing to let you drink it, even if it _did_ kill you."

The man looked at her, in infinite compassion, then came and sat beside her in the hammock. Rather quietly he took one of her hands and gazed at it, without seeing it, a long time. Then he pressed it to his lips.

For a breath he held it close to his cheek, his eyes lightless and far away, and she gazed at him in amazement.

"You'd kiss my hand--after what I did--?"

"After what you _didn't_ do," he corrected. "Please, Beatrice--don't blame yourself. Some way--I understand things better--than I used to. Even if you had killed me--I don't see why it wouldn't have been your right. I've held you here by force. Yet you didn't let me drink the stuff. You knocked it out of my hand."

And now, for the first time, an inordinate amazement came into his face. He looked at her intently, yet with no unfriendliness, no passion. Rather it was with overwhelming wonder.

"_You knocked it out of my hands_!" he repeated, more loudly. "Oh, Beatrice--it's my turn to beg forgiveness now! When I was at your mercy, and the cup at my lips--you spared me. Why did you do it, Beatrice?"

He gazed at her with growing ardor. She shook her head. She simply did not know the reason.

"It's not your place to feel penitent," he told her, with infinite sincerity. "If you had let me take it, you'd have just served me right--you'd have just paid me back in my own coin. It was fair enough--to use every advantage you had. Good Lord, have you forgotten that I am holding you here by force? But instead--you saved me, when you might have killed me--and won the fight. All you've done is to show yourself the finer clay--that's what you've done. God knows I suppose the woman is always finer clay than the man--yet it comes with a jolt, just the same. It's not for you to be down-hearted--Heaven knows the strength you've shown is above any I ever had, or ever will have. You've shown how to feel mercy--I could never show anything but hate, and revenge. You've shown me a bigger and stronger code than mine. And there's nothing--nothing I can say."

The tone changed once more to the personal and solicitous. "But it's been a big strain on you--I can see that. I believe I'd lie here and rest awhile if I were you. I'll eat my dinner--and the fire's about out too. That's the girl--Beatrice."

Gently he picked her up, seemingly with no physical effort and laid her in her hammock. "Then--you'll forgive me?" she asked brokenly.

"Good Heavens, I wish there was something to forgive--so we'd be a little more even. But you've accomplished something, Beatrice--and I don't know what it is yet--I only know you've changed me--and softened me--as I never dreamed any one in the world could. Now go to sleep."

He turned from her, but the food on the table no longer tempted him. For a full hour he stood before the ashes of the fire, deeply and inextricably bewildered with himself, with life, and with all these thoughts and hopes and regrets that thronged him. He was like ashes now himself; the fires of his life seemed burned out. The thought recalled him to the need of cutting fuel for the night's fire.

He might be able to quiet the growing turmoil in his brain when the still shadows of the spruce closed around him. He seized his axe, then peered into the cave. Beatrice, worn out by the stress of the hour before and immensely comforted by Ben's words, was already deeply asleep. His rifle leaned against the wall of the cavern, and he put it in the hollow of his arm. It was not that he feared Beatrice would attempt to procure it. The act was mostly habit, combined with the fact that their supply of meat was all but exhausted and he did not wish to miss any opportunity for big game.

The forest was particularly gloomy to-day. Its shadows lay deep. And this was not merely the result of his own darkened outlook: glancing up, he saw that clouds were gathering in the sky. They would need fuel in plenty to keep the fire bright to-night. Evidently rain was impending,--one of those cold, steady downpours that are disliked so cordially by the folk of the upper Selkirks.

He went a full two hundred yards before he found a tree to his liking. It was a tough spruce of medium height and just at the edge of the stream. He laid his rifle down, leaning it against a fallen log; then began his work.

It was an awkward place to stand; but he gave no thought to it. His mind dwelt steadily on the events in the cavern of the hour before; the girl's remorse in the instant that she had him at her mercy and the example it set for him. The blade bit into the wood with slow encroachments. Perhaps the expenditure of brute energy in swinging the axe would relieve his pent-up feelings.

He was not watching his work. His blows struck true from habit. Now the tree was half-severed: it was time to cut on the opposite side. Suddenly his axe crashed into yielding, rotten wood.

Instantly the powers of the wilderness took their long-awaited toll. Ben had been unwary, too absorbed by his swirling thoughts to mark the ambush of death that had been prepared for him. Ever to keep watch, ever to be on guard: such is the first law of the wild; and Ben had disregarded it. Half of the tree had been rotten, changing the direction of its fall and crashing it down before its time.

Ben leaped for his life, instinctively aiming for the shelter of the log against which he had inclined his rifle; but the blow came too soon. He was aware only of the rush of air as he leaped, an instant's hovering at the crest of a depthless chasm, then the sense of a mighty, resistless blow hurling him into infinity.

Ben's rifle, catching the full might of the blow, was broken like a match. Ben himself was crushed to earth as beneath a meteor, the branchy trunk shattering down upon his stalwart form like the jaws of a great trap. He uttered one short, half-strangled cry.

Then the darkness, shot with varied and multiple lights, dropped over him. The noise of the falling tree died away; the forest-dwellers returned to their varied activities. The rain clouds deepened and spread above his motionless form.

XXXIV

Beatrice's dreams were troubled after Ben's departure into the forest. She tossed and murmured, secretly aware that all was not well with her. Yet in the moments that she half-wakened she ascribed the vague warning to nervousness only, falling immediately to sleep again. Wakefulness came vividly to her only with the beginnings of twilight.

She opened her eyes; the cavern was deep with shadow. She lay resting a short time, adjusting her eyes to the soft light. In an instant all the dramatic events of the day were recalled to her: the tin cup that had held the poison still lay against the wall, and the liquor still stained the sandy floor, or was it only a patch of deeper shadow?

She wondered why Ben did not come into the cave. Was he embittered against her, after all; had he spoken as he did just from kindness, to save her remorse? She listened for the familiar sounds of his fuel cutting, or his other work about the camp. Wherever he was, he made no sound at all.

She sat up then, staring out through the cavern maw. For an instant she experienced a deep sense of bewilderment at the pressing gloom, so mysterious and unbroken over the face of the land. But soon she understood what was missing. The fire was out.

The fact went home to her with an inexplicable shock. She had become so accustomed to seeing the bright, cheerful blaze at the cavern mouth that its absence was like a little tragedy in itself. Always it had been the last vista of her closing eyes as she dropped off to sleep--the soft, warm glow of the coals--and the sight always comforted her. She could scarcely remember the morning that it wasn't crackling cheerily when she wakened. Ben had always been so considerate of her in this regard--removing the chill of the cave with its radiating heat to make it comfortable for her to dress. Not even coals were left now--only ashes, gray as death.

She got up, then walked to the cavern maw. For a moment she stood peering into the gloom, one hand resting against the portals of stone. The twilight was already deep. It was the supper hour and past; dark night was almost at hand. There could be no further doubt of Ben's absence. He was not at the little creek getting water, nor did she hear the ring of his axe in the forest. She wondered if he had gone out on one of his scouting expeditions and had not yet returned. Of course this was the true explanation; she had no real cause to worry.

Likely enough he had little desire to return to the cavern now. She could picture him following at his tireless pace one of the winding woods trails, lost in contemplation, his vivid eyes clouded with thought.

She looked up for the sight of the familiar stars that might guide him home. They were all hidden to-night. Not a gleam of light softened the stark gloom of the spruce. As she watched the first drops of rain fell softly on the grass.

The drops came in ever-increasing frequency, cold as ice on her hand. She heard them rustling in the spruce boughs; and far in the forest she discerned the first whine of the wakening wind. The sound of the rain was no longer soft. It swelled and grew, and all at once the wind caught it and swept it into her face. And now the whole forest moaned and soughed under the sweep of the wind.

There is no sound quite like the beat of a hard rain on dense forest. It has no startling discords, but rather a regular cadence as if the wood gods were playing melodies in the minor on giant instruments,--melodies remembered from the first, unhappy days of the earth and on instruments such as men have never seen. But this was never a melody to fill the heart with joy. It touches deep chords of sorrow in the most secret realms of the spirit. The rain song grew and fell as the gusts of the wind swept it, and the rock walls of the cliff swam in clouds of spray.

The storm could not help but bring Ben to camp, she thought. At least she did not fear that he would lose his way: he knew every trail and ridge for miles around the cave. Even such pressing, baleful darkness as this could not bewilder him. She went back to her cot to wait his coming.

The minutes seemed interminable. Time had never moved so slowly before. She tried to lie still, to relax; then to direct her thought in other channels; but all of these meandering streams flowed back into the main current which was Ben. Yet it was folly to worry about him; any moment she would hear his step at the edge of the forest. But the night was so dark, and the storm so wild. A half-hour dragged its interminable length away.

Her uneasiness was swiftly developing into panic. Just to-day she was willing to risk his life for her freedom: it was certainly folly now to goad herself to despair by dwelling on his mysterious absence. It might speed the passing minutes if she got up and found some work to do about the cave; but she simply had no heart for it. Once she sat up, only to lie down again.

The moments dragged by. Surely he would have had time to reach camp by now. The storm neither increased nor decreased; only played its mournful melodies in the forest. The song of the rain was despairing,--low mournful notes rising to a sharp crescendo as the fiercer gusts swept it into the tree tops. The limbs murmured unhappily as they smote together; and a tall tree, swaying in the wind, creaked with a maddening regularity. She was never so lonely before, so darkly miserable.

"I want him to come," her voice suddenly spoke aloud. It rang strangely in the gloomy cave. "I want him to come back to me."

She felt no impulse for the words. They seemed to speak themselves. Presently she sat erect, her heart leaping with inexpressible relief, at the sound of a heavy tread at the edge of the glade.

The steps came nearer, and then paused. She sprang to her feet and went to the mouth of the cave. A silence that lived between the beating rain and the complaining wind settled down about her. Her eyes could not pierce the darkness.

"Is that you, Ben?" she called.

She strained into the silence for his reply. The cold drops splashed into her face.

"Ben?" she called again. "Is that you?"

Then something leaped with an explosive sound, and running feet splashed in the wet grass in flight. The little spruce trees at the edge of the glade whipped and rustled as a heavy body crashed through. The steps had been only those of some forest beast--a caribou, perhaps, or a moose--come to mock her despair.

She remembered that Ben had been wishing for just such a visitation these past few days; of course in the daylight hours when he could see to shoot. Their meat supply was almost gone.

She did not go to her cot again. She stood peering into the gloom. All further effort to repel her fears came to nothing. The storm was already of two hours' duration, and Ben would have certainly returned to the cave unless disaster had befallen him. Was he lost somewhere in the intertwining trails, seeking shelter in a heavy thicket until the dawn should show him his way? There were so many pitfalls for the unsuspecting in these trackless wilds.

Yet she could be of no aid to him. The dark woods stretched interminably; she would not even know which way to start. It would just mean to be lost herself, should she attempt to seek him. The trails that wound through the glades and over the ridges had no end.

"Ben!" she called again. Then with increasing volume. "Ben!"

But no echo returned. The darkness swallowed the sound at once.

The night was chill: she longed for the comfort of the fire. The actual labor of building it might take her mind from her fears for a while at least; and its warm glow might dispel the growing cold of fear and loneliness in her breast. Besides, it might be a beacon light for Ben. She turned at once to the pile of kindling Ben had prepared.

But before she could build a really satisfactory fire, one that would endure the rain, she must cut fuel from some of the logs Ben had hewn down and dragged to the cave. She lighted a short piece of pitchy wood, intending to locate the heavy camp axe. Then, putting on her heavy coat--the same garment of lustrous fur which Ben had sent her back for the day of her abduction--she ventured into the storm.

The rain splashed in vain at her torch. The pitch burned with a fierce flame. But her eyes sought in vain for the axe.

This was a strange thing: Ben always left it leaning against one of the chunks of spruce. Presently she halted, startled, gazing into the black depths of the forest.

Ben had taken it; he had plainly gone forth after fuel. Trees stood all about the little glade: he couldn't have gone far. The inference was obvious: whatever disaster had befallen him must have occurred within a few hundred yards of the cave.

Holding her torch high she went to the edge of the glade and again called into the gloom. There was no repression in her voice now. She called as loudly as she could. She started to push on into the fringe of timber.

But at once she paused, holding hard on her self-control. It was folly to make a blind search. To penetrate the dark mystery of the forest with only this little light--already flickering out--would probably result in becoming lost herself. Such a course would not help Ben's cause. Evidently he was lying within a few hundred feet of her, unconscious--perhaps dead--or he would have replied to her call.

Dead! The thought sped an icy current throughout the hydraulic system of her veins.

She was a mountain girl, and she made no further false motions. She turned at once to the cave, and piling up her kindling, built a fire just at the mouth of the cave. It was protected here in some degree from the rain, and the wind was right to carry the smoke away. This fire would serve to keep her direction and lead her back to the cavern.

Once more she ventured into the storm, and gathering all the cut fuel she could find, piled it on her fire. The two spruce chunks that Ben had cut for their fireside seats were placed as back logs. Then she hunted for pine knots taken from the scrub pines that grew in scattering clumps among the spruce, and which were laden with pitch.

One of these knots she put in the iron pan they used for frying, then lighted it. Then she pushed into the timber.

Holding her light high she began to encircle the glade clear to the barrier of the cliffs. To the eyes of the wild creatures this might have been a never-to-be-forgotten picture: the slight form of the girl, her face blanched and her eyes wide and dark in the flaring light, her grotesque torch and its weird shadows, and then rain sweeping down between. She reached the cliff, then started back, making a wider circle.

Adding fresh fuel to the torch, she peered into every covert and examined with minute care any human-shaped shadow in that eerie world of shadows; but the long half-circle brought her back to the cliff wall without results. She was already wet to the skin, and her pine knots were nearly spent. Ever the load of dread was heavier at her heart. In the hour or more she had searched--she had no way of estimating time--she had already gone farther than Ben usually went for his fuel.

As yet no tears came; only the raindrops lay on her face and curled her dark hair in ringlets. But she must not give up yet. It was hard to hold her shoulders straight; but she must make the long circle once more.

With courage and strength such as she had not dreamed she possessed, she launched forward again. But fatigue was breaking her now. The tree roots tripped her faltering feet, the branches clutched at her as she passed. It was hard to tell what territory she had searched, or how far she had gone. But when she was halfway around, she suddenly halted, motionless as an image, at the edge of the stream.

The flickering light revealed a tree, freshly cut, its, naked stump gleaming and its tall form lying prone. Yet beneath it the shadows were of strange, unearthly shape, and something showed stark white through the green foliage. Great branches stretched over it, like bars over a prison window.

Just one curious deep sob wracked her whole body. The life-heat, the mystery that is being, seemed to steal away from her. Her strength wilted; and for an instant she could only stand and gaze with fixed, unbelieving eyes. But almost at once the unquenchable fires of her spirit blazed up anew. She saw her task, and with a faith and steadfastness conformable more to the sun and the earth than to human frailty, her muscles made instant and incredible response.

Instantly she was beside the form of her comrade and enemy, struggling with the cruel limbs that pinned him to the earth.

XXXV

Beatrice knew one thing and one alone: that she must not give way to the devastating terror in her heart. There was mighty work to do, and she must keep strong. Her only wish was to kneel beside him, to lift the bleeding head into her arms and let the storm and the darkness smother her existence; but her stern woods training came to her aid. She began the stupendous task of freeing him from the imprisoning tree limbs.

The pine knots flickered feebly; and by their light she looked about for Ben's axe. Her eyes rested on the broken gun first: then she saw the blade, shining in the rain, protruding from beneath a broken bough. She drew it out and swung it down.

Some of the lesser limbs she broke off, with a strength in her hands she did not dream she possessed. The larger ones were cut away with blows incredibly strong and accurate. How and by what might she did not know, but almost at once the man's body was free except for the tree trunk that wedged him against a dead log toward which he had leaped for shelter.

She seemed powerless to move it. Her shoulders surged against it in vain. A desperate frenzy seized her, but she fought it remorselessly down. Her self-discipline must not break yet. Seeing that she could not move the tree itself, she thrust with all her power against the dead log beside which Ben lay. In a moment she had rolled it aside.

Then for the first time she went to her knees beside the prone form. Ben was free of the imprisoning limbs, but was his soul already free of the stalwart body broken among the broken boughs? She had to know this first; further effort was unavailing until she knew this. Her hand stole over his face.

She found no reassuring warmth. It was wet with the rain, cold to the touch. His hair was wet too, and matted from some dreadful wound in the scalp. Very softly she felt along the skull for some dreadful fracture that might have caused instant death; but the descending trunk had missed his head, at least. Very gently she shook him by the shoulders.

Her stern self-control gave way a little now. The strain had been too much for human nerves to bear. She gathered him into her arms, still without sobbing, but the hot tears dropped on to his face.

"Speak to me, Ben," she said quietly. The wind caught her words and whisked them away; and the rain played its unhappy music in the tree foliage; but Ben made no answer. "Speak to me," she repeated, her tone lifting. "My man, my baby--tell me you're not dead!"

Dead! Was that it--struck to the earth like the caribou that fell before his rifle? And in that weird, dark instant a light far more bright than that the flickering pine knots cast so dim and strange over the scene beamed forth from the altar flame of her own soul. It was only the light of knowledge, not of hope, but it transfigured her none the less.

All at once she knew why she had hurled the poisoned cup from his hand, even though her father's life might be the price of her weakness. She understood, now, why these long weeks had been a delight rather than a torment; why her fears for him had gone so straight to her heart. She pressed his battered head tight against her breast.

"My love, my love," she crooned in his ear, pressing her warm cheek close to his. "I do love you, I do, I do," she told him confidingly, as if this message would call him back to life. Her lips sought his, trying to give them warmth, and her voice was low and broken when she spoke again. "Can't you hear me, Ben--won't you try to come back to me? If you're dead I'll die too--"

But the man did not open his eyes. Would not even this appeal arouse him from this deep, strange sleep in which he lay? He had always been so watchful of her--since that first day--so zealous for her safety. She held him closer, her lips trembling against his.

But she must get herself in hand again! Perhaps life had not yet completely flickered out; and she could nurse it back. She dropped her ear to his breast, listening.

Yes, she felt the faint stirring of his heart. It was so feeble, the throbs were so far apart, yet they meant life,--life that might flush his cheeks again, and might yet bring him back to her, into her arms. He was breathing, too; breaths so faint that she hardly dared to believe in their reality. And presently she realized that his one hope of life lay in getting back to the fire.

For long hours he had been lying in the cold rain; a few more minutes would likely extinguish the spark of life that remained in his breast. Her hand stole over his powerful frame, in an effort to get some idea of the nature of his wounds.

One of his arms was broken; its position indicated that. Some of his ribs were crushed too--what internal injuries he had that might end him before the morning she did not know. But she could not take time to build a sledge and cut away the brush. She worked her shoulder under his body.

Wrenching with all her fine, young strength she lifted him upon her shoulder; then, kneeling in the vines, she struggled for breath. Then thrusting with her arm she got on her feet.

His weight was over fifty pounds greater than her own; but her woods training, the hard work she had always done, had fitted her for just such a test as this. She started with her burden toward the cave.

She had long known how to carry an injured man, suspending him over her shoulder, head pointed behind her, her arms clasping his thigh. With her free arm she seized the tree branches to sustain her. She had no light now; she was guided only by the faint glow of the fire at the cavern mouth.

After a hundred feet the load seemed unbearable. Except for the fact that she soon got on the well-worn moose trail that followed the creek, she could scarcely have progressed a hundred feet farther. As it was, she was taxed to the utmost: every ounce of her reserve strength would be needed before the end.

At the end of a hundred yards she stopped to rest, leaning against a tree and still holding the beloved weight upon her shoulder. If she laid it down she knew she could not lift it again. But soon she plunged on, down toward the beacon light.

Except for her love for him, and that miraculous strength that love has always given to women, she could not have gone on that last, cruel hundred yards. But slowly, steadily, the circle of light grew brighter, larger, nearer; ever less dense were the thickets of evergreen between. Now she was almost to the glade; now she felt the wet grass at her ankles. She lunged on and laid her burden on her bed.

Then she relaxed at his feet, breathing in sobbing gasps. Except for the crackle of the fire and the beat of the rain, there was no sound in the cave but this,--those anguished sobs from her wracked lungs.

But far distant though Ben was and deep as he slept--just outside the dark portals of death itself--those sounds went down to him. He heard them dimly at first, like a far-distant voice in a dream, but as the moments passed he began to recognize their nature and their source. Sobs of exhaustion and distress--from the girl that was in his charge. He lay a long time, trying to understand.

On her knees beside him Beatrice saw the first flutter of his eyelids. In awe, rather than rapture, her arms crept around him, and she kissed his rain-wet brow. His eyes opened, looking wonderingly into hers.

She saw the first light of recognition, then a half-smile, gentle as a girl's, as he realized his own injuries. Of course Ben Darby would smile in such a moment as this; his instincts, true and manly, were always to try to cheer her. Presently he spoke in the silence.

"The tree got me, didn't it?" he asked.

"Don't try to talk," she cautioned. "Yes--the tree fell on you. But you're not going to die. You're going to live, live--"

He shook his head, the half-smile flickering at his lips. "Let me talk, Beatrice," he said, with just a whisper of his old determination. "It's important--and I don't think--I have much time."

Her eyes widened in horror. "You don't mean--"

"I'm going back in a minute--I can't hardly keep awake," he said. His voice, though feeble, was preternaturally clear. She heard every kind accent, every gentle tone even above the crackle of the fire without and the beat of the rain. "I think it's the limit," he went on. "I believe the tree got me--clear inside--but you must listen to everything I say."

She nodded. In that eerie moment of suspense she knew she must hear what he had to tell her.

"Don't wait to see what happens to me," he went on. "I'll either go out or I'll live--you really can't help me any. Where's the rifle?"

"The rifle was broken--when the tree fell."

"I knew it would be. I saw it coming." He rested, waiting for further breath. "Beatrice--please, please don't stay here, trying to save me."

"Do you think I would go?" she cried.

"You must. The food--is about gone. Just enough to last one person through to the Yuga cabins--with berries, roots. Take the pistol. There's six shots or so--in the box. Make every one tell. Take the dead grouse too. The rifle's broken and we can't get meat. It's just--death--if you wait. You can just make it through now."

"And leave you here to die, as long as there's a chance to save you?" the girl answered. "You couldn't get up to get water--or build a fire--"

He listened patiently, but shook his head at the end. "No, Bee--please don't make me talk any more. It's just death for both of us if you stay. The food is gone--the rifle broken. Your father's gang'll be here sooner or later--and they'd smash me, anyway. I could hardly fight 'em off with those few pistol shells--but by God I'd like to try--"

He struggled for breath, and she thought he had slipped back into unconsciousness. But in a moment the faltering current of his speech began again.

"Take the pistol--and go," he told her. "You showed me to-day how to give up--and I don't want to kill--your father--any more. I renounce it all! Ezram--forgive me--old Ez that lay dead in the leaves." He smiled at the girl again. "So don't mind leaving me. Life work's all spent--given over. Please, Beatrice--you'd just kill yourself without aiding me. Wait till the sun comes up--then follow up the river--"

Unconsciousness welled high above him, and the lids dropped over his eyes. The gloom still pressed about the cavern, yet a sun no less effulgent than that of which he had spoken had risen for Ben. It was his moment of renunciation, glorious past any moment of his life. He had renounced his last, little fighting chance that the girl might live. And Ezram, watching high and afar, and with infinite serenity knowing at last the true balance of all things one with another, gave him his full forgiveness.

The girl began to strip the wet clothes from his injured body.

XXXVI

The trail was long and steep into Back There for Jeffery Neilson and his men. Day after day they traveled with their train of pack horses, pushing deeper into the wilds, fording mighty rivers, traversing silent and majestic mountain ranges, climbing slopes so steep that the packs had to be lightened to half before the gasping animals could reach the crest. They could go only at a snail's pace,--even in the best day's travel only ten miles, and often a single mile was a hard, exhausting day's work.

Of course there was no kind of a trail for them to follow. As far as possible they followed the winding pathways of big game--as long as these led them in their general direction--but often they were obliged to cut their way through the underbrush. Time after time they encountered impassable cliffs or rivers from which they were obliged to turn back and seek new routes; they found marshes that they could not penetrate; ranges they could not climb; wastes of slide rock where they could make headway only at a creeping pace and with hourly risk of their lives.

They had counted on slow travel, but the weeks grew into the months before they even neared the obscure heart of Back There where they thought Ben and Beatrice might be hidden. The way was hard as they had never dreamed. Every day, it seemed to them, brought its fresh tragedy: a long back-trailing to avoid some impassable place, a fatiguing digression, perhaps several hours of grinding work with the axe in order to cut a trail. Sometimes the harness broke, requiring long stops on the trail to repair it, the packs slipped continually from the hard going; and they found it increasingly difficult to secure horse feed for the animals.

Even Indian ponies cannot keep fat on such grass as grows in the deep shade of the spruce. They need the rich growths of the open park lands to stiffen them for the grinding toil; and even with good feeding, foresters know that pack animals must not be kept on the trail for too many days in succession. Jeffery Neilson and his men disregarded both these facts, with the result that the animals lost flesh and strength, cutting down the speed of their advance. Oaths and shouts were unavailing now: only cruel blows could drive them forward at all.

They seemed to sense a great hopelessness in their undertaking. Usually well-trained pack horses will follow their leader without question, walk almost in his tracks, and the rider in front only has to show the way. After the first few days of grinding toil, the morale of the entire outfit began to break. The horses broke away into thickets on each side; and time after time, one hour upon another, the horsemen had to round them up again. When they came to the great rivers--wild tributaries of the Yuga--they had to follow up the streams for days in search of a place to ford. Then they were obliged to carry the packs across in small loads, making trip after trip with the utmost patience and toil. The horses, broken in spirit, took the wild waters just as they climbed the steep slopes, with little care whether they lived or died.

The days passed, June and July. Ever they moved at a slower pace. One of the horses, giving up on a steep pitch and frenzied by Ray's cruel, lashing blows, fell off the edge of the trail and shot down like a plummet two hundred feet into the canyon below--and thereupon it became necessary not only to spend the rest of the day in retrieving and repairing the supplies that had fallen with him, but also to heap bigger loads on the backs of the remaining horses. And always they were faced by the cruel possibility that this whole, mighty labor was in vain,--that Ben and Beatrice might have gone to their deaths in the rapids, weeks before.

The food stores brought for the journey were rapidly depleted. The result was that they had to depend more and more upon a diet of meat. Men can hold up fairly well on meat alone, particularly if it has a fair amount of fat, but the effort of hunting and drying the flesh into jerky served to cut down their speed.

The constant delays, the grinding, blasting toil of the day's march, and particularly the ever-recurring crises of ford and steep, made serious inroads on the morale of the three men. Just the work of urging on the exhausted horses drained their nervous energy in a frightful stream: the uncertainty of their quest, the danger, the scarcity of any food but meat, and most of all the burning hatred in their hearts for the man who had forced the expedition upon them combined to torment them; even now, Ben Darby had received no little measure of vengeance.

No experience of their individual lives had ever presented such a daily ordeal of physical distress; none had ever been so devastating to hope and spirit. There was not one moment of pleasure, one instant of relief from the day's beginning to its end. At night they went to sleep on hastily made beds, cursing at all things in heaven and earth; they blasphemed with growing savagery all that men hold holy and true; and degeneracy grew upon them very swiftly. They quarreled over their tasks, and they hated each other with a hatred only second to that they bore Darby himself. All three had always been reckless, wicked, brutal men; but now, particularly in the case of Ray and Chan, the ordeal brought out and augmented the latent abnormalities that made them criminals in the beginning, developing those odd quirks in human minds that make toward perversion and the most fiendish crime.

Jeffery Neilson had almost forgotten the issue of the claim by now. He had told the truth, those weary weeks before, when he had wished he had never seen it. His only thought was of his daughter, the captive of a relentless, merciless man in these far wilds. Never the moon rose or the sun declined but that he was sick with haunting fear for her. Had she gone down to her death in the rapids? This was Neilson's fondest wish: the enfolding oblivion of wild waters would be infinitely better than the fate Ben had hinted at in his letter. Yet he dared not turn back. She might yet live, held prisoner in some far-off cave.

At first all three agreed on this point: that they must not turn back until either Ben was crushed under their heels or they had made sure of his death. Ray had not forgotten that Ben alone stood between him and the wealth and power he had always craved. He dreamed, at first, that the deadly hardships of the journey could be atoned for by years of luxury and ease. His mind was also haunted with dark conjectures as to the fate of Beatrice, but jealousy, rather than concern for her, was the moving impulse.

Neilson knew his young partner now. He saw clearly at last that Ray was not and had never been a faithful confederate, but indeed a malicious and bitter enemy, only waiting his chance to overthrow his leader. They were still partners in their effort to rescue the girl and slay her abductor; otherwise they were at swords' points. And there would be something more than plain, swift slaying, now. If Neilson could read aright, the actual, physical change that had been wrought in Ray's face foretold no ordinary end for Ben. His features were curiously drawn; and his eyes had a fixed, magnetic, evil light. Occasionally in his darker hours Neilson foresaw even more sinister possibilities in this change in Ray: the abnormal intensity manifest in every look and word, the weird, evil preoccupation that seemed ever upon him. There was not only the fate of Ben to consider, but that of Beatrice too, out in these desolate forests. But surely Ray's degenerate impulses could be mastered. Neilson need not fear this, at least.

Chan Heminway, also, had developed marvelously in the journey. He also was more assertive, less the underling he had been. He had developed a brutality that, though it contained nothing of the exquisite fineness of cruelty of which Ray's diseased thought might conceive, was nevertheless the full expression of his depraved nature. He no longer cowered in fear of Neilson. Rather he looked to Ray as his leader, took him as his example, tried to imitate him, and at last really began to share in his mood. In cruelty to the horses he was particularly adept; but he was also given to strange, savage bursts of insane fury.

"We must be close on them now," Neilson said one morning when they had left the main gorge of the Yuga far behind them. "If they're not dead we're bound to find trace of 'em in a few days."

The hope seemed well-founded. It is impossible for even most of the wild creatures--furtive as twilight shadows--to journey through wood spaces without leaving trace of their goings and comings: much less clumsy human beings. Ultimately the searchers would find their tracks in the soft earth, the ashes of a camp fire, or a charred cooking rack.

"And when we get 'em, we can wait and live on meat until the river goes up in fall--then float on down to the Indian villages in their canoe," Chan answered. "It will carry four of us, all right."

Ray, Chan, Neilson and Neilson's daughter--these made four. What remained of Ben when Ray was through could be left, silent upon some hushed hillside, to the mercy of the wild creatures and the elements.

Surely they were in the enemy-country now; and now a fresh fear began to oppress them. They might expect an attack from their implacable foe at any moment. It did not make for ease of mind to know that any brush clump might be their enemy's ambush; that any instant a concealed rifle might speak death to them in the silence. Ben would have every advantage of fortress and ambush. They had not thought greatly of this matter at first; but now the fear increased with the passing days. Even Neilson was not wholly exempt from it. It seemed a hideous, deadly thing, incompatible with life and hope, that they should be plunging deeper, farther into helplessness and peril.

If mental distress and physical discomfort can constitute vengeance Ben was already avenged. Now that they were in the hill-lands, out from the gorge and into a region of yellow beaver meadows lying between gently sloping hills, their apprehension turned to veritable terror. A blind man could see how small was their fighting chance against a hidden foe who had prepared for their coming. The skin twitched and crept when a twig cracked about their camp at night, and a cold like death crept over the frame when the thickets crashed under a leaping moose.

Ray found himself regretting, for the first time, that murderous crime of his of months before. Even riches might not pay for these days of dread and nights of terror: the recovery of the girl from Ben's arms could not begin to recompense. Indeed, the girl's memory was increasingly hard to call up. The mind was kept busy elsewhere.

"We're walking right into a death trap," he told Neilson one morning. "If he is here, what chance have we got; he'd have weeks to explore the country and lay an ambush for us. Besides, I believe he's dead. I don't believe a human being could have got down this far, alive."

Chan too had found himself inclining toward this latter belief; without Ray's energy and ambition he had less to keep him fronted to the chase. Neilson, however, was not yet ready to turn back. He too feared Ben's attack, but already in the twilight of advancing years, he did not regard physical danger in the same light as these two younger men. Besides, he was made of different stuff. The safety of his daughter was the one remaining impulse in his life.

And more and more, in the chill August nights, the talk about the camp fire took this trend: the folly of pushing on. It was better to turn back and wait his chances to strike again, Ray argued, than to walk bald-faced into death. Sometime Ben must return to the claim: a chance might come to lay him low. Besides, ever it seemed more probable that the river had claimed him.

One rainy, disagreeable morning, as they camped beside the river near the mouth of a small creek, affairs reached their crisis. They had caught and saddled the horses; Ray was pulling tight the last hitch. Chan stood beside him, speaking in an undertone. When he had finished Ray cursed explosively in the silence.

Neilson turned. He seemed to sense impending developments. "What now?" he asked.

"I'm not going on, that's what it is," Ray replied. "Neilson, it's two against one--if you want to go on you can--but Ray and I are going back. That devil's dead. Beatrice is, too--sure as hell. If they ain't dead, he'll get us. I was a fool ever to start out. And that's final."

"You're going back, eh--scared out!" Neilson commented coldly.

"I'm going back--and don't say too much about being scared out, either."

"And you too, Chan? You're against me, too?"

Chan cursed. "I'd gone a week ago if it'd been me. We knew the way home, at least."

The old man looked a long time into the river depths. Only too well he realized that their decision was final. But there was no answer, in the swirling depths, to the question that wracked his heart: whether or not in these spruce-clad hills his daughter still lived. It could only murmur and roar, without shaping words that human ears could grasp, never relieving the dreadful uncertainty that would be his life's curse from henceforth. He sighed, and the lines across his brow were dark and deep.

"Then turn the horses around, you cowards," he answered. "I can't go on alone."

For once neither Ray nor Chan had outward resentment for the epithet. Secretly they realized that old Neilson was to the wall at last, and like a grizzly at bay, it was safer not to molest him. Chan went down to the edge of the creek to water his saddle horse.

But presently they heard him curse, in inordinate and startled amazement, as he gazed at some imprint in the mud of the shore. They saw the color sweep from his face. In an instant his two companions were beside him.

Clear and unmistakable in the mud they saw the stale imprint of Ben's canoe as they had landed, and the tracks of both the man and the girl as they had turned into the forest.

XXXVII

The dawn that crept so gray and mysterious over the frosty green of spruce brought no hope to Beatrice, sitting beside the unconscious form of Ben in the cave fronting the glade. Rather it only brought the tragic truth home more clearly. Her love for him had manifested itself too late to give happiness to either of them: even now his life seemed to be stealing from her, into the valley of the shadow.

She had watched beside him the whole night; and now she beheld a sinister change in his condition. He was still unconscious, but he no longer drew his breath at long intervals, softly and quietly. He was breathing in short, troubled gasps, and an ominous red glow was in his cheeks. She touched his brow, only to find it burning with fever.

The fact was not hard to understand. The downpour of cold rain in which he had lain, wounded, for so many hours had drawn the life heat out of him, and some organic malady had combined with his bodily injuries to strike out his life. Her predicament was one of absolute helplessness. She was hundreds of miles--weary weeks of march--from medical attention, and she could neither leave him nor carry him. The wilderness forces, resenting the intrusion into their secret depths, had seemingly taken full vengeance at last. They had seemingly closed all gates to life and safety. They had set the trap with care; and the cruel jaws had sprung.

She sat dry-eyed, incoherent prayers at her trembling lips. Mostly she did not touch the man, only sat at his bedside in the crude chair Ben had fashioned for her while the minutes rolled into hours and the hours sped the night away,--in tireless vigil, watching with lightless eyes. Once she bent and touched her lips to his.

They were not cold now. They were warm with fever. But in the strange twilight-world of unconsciousness he could neither know of nor respond to her kiss. She patted down his covering and sometimes held his hard hands warm between hers, as if she could thus keep death from seizing them and leading him away. But her courage did not break again.

The wan light showed her his drawn face; and just for an instant her arms pressed about it. "I won't give up, Ben," she promised. "I'll keep on fighting--to the last minute. And maybe I can pull you through."

Beatrice meant exactly what she said: to the last minute. That did not mean to the gray hour when, by all dictate of common sense, further fight is useless. She meant that she would battle tirelessly as long as one pale spark glowed in his spirit, as long as his breath could cloud a glass. The best thing for her now, however, was rest. She was exhausted by the strain of the night; and she must save herself for the crisis that was sure to come. Ben was sleeping easily now; the instant when his life hung in the balance still impended.

She built up the fire, put on water to heat, covered the man with added blankets, then lay down on Ben's cot. Soon she drifted into uneasy slumber, waking at intervals to serve her patient.

The hours dragged by, the night sloped down to the forest; and the dawn followed the night. Ben's life still flickered, like a flame in the wind, in the twilight land between life and death.

Yet little could she do for him these first few days, except, in her simple faith, to pray. Never an hour passed but that prayers were at her lips, childlike, direct, entreating prayers from her woman's heart. Of all her offices these were first: she had no doubt but that they counted most. She sat by his bedside, kept him covered with the warmest robes, hewed wood for the fire; but as yet he had never fully emerged from his unconsciousness. Would he slip away in the night without ever wakening?

But in the morning of the fourth day he opened his eyes vividly, muttered, and fell immediately to sleep. He woke again at evening; and his moving lips conveyed a message. In response she brought him steaming grouse broth, administering it a spoonful at a time until he fell to sleep again.

In the days that followed he was conscious to the degree that he could drink broth, yet never recognizing Beatrice nor seeming to know where he was. His fever still lingered, raging; yet in these days she began to notice a slow improvement in his condition. The healing agents of his body were hard at work; and doubt was removed that he had received mortal internal injuries. She had set his broken arm the best she could, holding the bones in place with splints; but in all likelihood it would have to be broken and set again when he reached the settlements. She began to notice the first cessation of his fever; although weeks of sickness yet remained, she believed that the crisis was past. Yet in spite of these hopeful signs, she was face to face with the most tragic situation of all. Their food was almost gone.

It would be long weeks before Ben could hope for sufficient strength to start the journey down to the settlements, even if the way were open. As it was their only chance lay in the fall rains that would flood the Yuga and enable them to journey down to the native villages in their canoe. These rains would not fall till October. For all that she had hoarded their supplies to the last morsel, eating barely enough herself to sustain life in her body, the dread spectre of starvation waited just without the cave. She had realized perfectly that Ben could not hope to throw off the malady without nutritious food and she had not stinted with him; and now, just when she had begun to hope for his recovery, she shook the last precious cup of flour from the sack.

The rice and sugar were gone, long since. The honey she had hoarded to give Ben--knowing its warming, nutritive value--not tasting a drop herself. Of all their stores only a few pieces of jerked caribou remained; she had used the rest to make rich broth for Ben, and there was no way under heaven whereby they might procure more.

The rifle was broken. The last of the pistol shots was fired the day she had prepared the poisoned cup for Ben.

Yet she still waged the fight, struggling with high courage and tireless resolution against the frightful odds that opposed her. Her faith was as of that nameless daughter of the Gileadite; and she could not yield. Not ambition, not hatred--not even such fire of fury as had been wakened in Wolf Darby's heart that first frenzied night on the hillside--could have been the impulse for such fortitude and sacrifice as hers. It was not one of these base passions--known in the full category to her rescuers who were even now bearing down upon her valley--that kept the steel in her thews and the steadfastness in her heart. She loved this man; her love for him was as wholesome and as steadfast as her own self; and the law of that love was to give him all she had.

There were few witnesses to this infinite giving of hers. Ben himself still lingered in a strange stupor, remembering nothing, knowing neither the girl nor himself. Perhaps the wild things saw her desperate efforts to find food in the wilderness,--the long hours of weary searching for a handful of berries that gave such little nourishment to his weakened body, or for a few acorns stored for winter by bird or rodent. Sometimes a great-antlered moose--an easy trophy if the rifle had been unbroken--saw her searching for wocus like a lost thing in the tenacious mud of the marshes; and almost nightly a silent wolf, pausing in his hunting, gazed uneasily through the cavern maw. But mostly her long hours of service in the cave, the chill nights that she sat beside Ben's cot, the dreary mornings when she cooked her own scanty breakfast and took her uneasy rest, the endless labor of fire-mending so that the cave could be kept at an even heat went unobserved by mortal eyes. The healing forces of his body called for warmth and nourishment; but for all the might of her efforts she waged a losing fight.

What little wocus she was able to find she made into bread for Ben; yet it was never enough to satisfy his body's craving. The only meat she had herself was the vapid flesh that had been previously boiled for Ben's broth; and now only a few pieces of the jerked meat remained. She herself tried to live on such plants as the wilderness yielded, and she soon began to notice the tragic loss of her own strength. Her eyes were hollow, preternaturally large; she experienced a strange, floating sensation, as if spirit and flesh were disassociated.

Still Ben lingered in his mysterious stupor, unaware of what went on about him; but his fever was almost gone by now, and the first beginnings of strength returned to his thews. His mind had begun to grope vaguely for the key that would open the doors of his memory and remind him again of some great, half-forgotten task that still confronted him, some duty unperformed. Yet he could not quite seize it. The girl who worked about his cot was without his bourne of knowledge; her voice reached him as if from an infinite distance, and her words penetrated only to the outer edges of his consciousness. It was not strictly, however, a return of his amnesia. It was simply an outgrowth of delirium caused by his sickness and injuries, to be wholly dispelled as soon as he was wholly well.

But now the real hour of crisis was at hand,--not from his illness, but from the depletion of their food supplies. Beatrice had spent a hard afternoon in the forest in search of roots and berries, and as she crept homeward, exhausted and almost empty-handed, the full, tragic truth was suddenly laid bare. Her own strength had waned. Without the miracle of a fresh food supply she could hardly keep on her feet another day. Plainly and simply, the wolf was at the door. His cruel fangs menaced not only her, but this stalwart man for whose life she had fought so hard.

The fear of the obliterating darkness known to all the woods people pressed close upon her and appalled her. She loved life simply and primitively; and it was an unspeakable thing to lose at the end of such a battle. Out so far, surrounded by such endless, desolate wastes of gloomy forest, the Shadow was cold, inhospitable; and she was afraid to face it alone. If Ben would only waken and sustain her drooping spirit with his own! She was lonely and afraid, in the shadow of the inert spruce, under the gray sky.

She could hardly summon strength for the evening's work of cutting fuel. The blade would not drive with its old force into the wood. The blaze itself burned dully; and she could not make it leap and crackle with its old cheer. And further misfortune was in store for her when she crept into the cave to prepare Ben's supper.

A pack rat--one of those detested rodents known so well to all northern peoples--had carried off in her absence two of the three remaining sticks of jerked caribou. For a moment she gazed in unbelieving and speechless horror, then made a frenzied search in the darkened corners of the cabin.

This was no little tragedy: the two sticks of condensed and concentrated protein might have kept Ben alive for a few days more. It was disaster, merciless and sweeping. And the brave heart of the girl seemed to break under the blow.

The hot, bitter tears leaped forth; but she suppressed the bitter, hopeless sobs that clutched at her throat. She must not let Ben know of this catastrophe. Likely in his stupor he would not understand; yet she must not take the chance. She must nourish the spark of hope in his breast to the last hour. She walked to the mouth of the cave; and Famine itself stood close, waiting in the shadows. She gazed out into the gathering gloom.

The tears blinded her eyes at first. Slowly the dark profile of the spruce against the gray sky penetrated to her consciousness: the somber beauty of the wilderness sky line that haunts the woodsman's dreams. With it came full realization of the might and the malevolency of these shadowed wilds she had battled so long. They had got her down at last; they had crushed her and beaten her, and had held up to scorn her sacrifice and her mortal strength. She knew the wild wood now: its savage power, its remorselessness, and yet, woods girl that she was, she could not forget its dark and moving beauty.

The forest was silent to-night. Not a twig cracked or a branch rustled. It was hushed, breathless, darkly sinister. All at once her eyes peered and strained into the dusk.

Far across the valley, beyond the beaver marsh and on the farther shore of the lake she saw a little glimmer of light through the rift in the trees. She dared not believe in its reality at first. Perhaps it was a trick of her imagination only, a hallucination born of her starvation, child of her heartfelt prayer. She looked away, then peered again. But, yes--a tiny gleam of yellow light twinkled through the gloom! It was real, _it was true_! A gleam of hope in the darkness of despair.

Her rescuers had come. There could be no other explanation. She hastened into the cave, drew the blankets higher about Ben's shoulders, then crept out into the dusk. Half running, she hastened toward their distant camp fire.

XXXVIII

Beatrice's first impulse was to run at a breakneck pace down the ridge and about the lake into her father's camp, beseeching instant aid to the starving man in the cave. She wished that she had a firearm with which to signal to them and bring them at once to the cavern. And it was not until she had descended the ridge and stood at the edge of the beaver meadow that her delirious joy began to give way to serious, thought.

She was brought to a halt first by the sight of the horses that had wandered about the long loop of the lake and were feeding in the rich grass of the meadow. The full moon rising in the east had cast a nebulous glow over the whole countryside by now; and she could make a hasty estimation of their numbers. It was evident at once that her father had not made the expedition alone. The large outfit implied a party of at least three,--indicating that Ray Brent and Chan Heminway had accompanied him.

She had only fear and disdain for these two younger men; but surely they would not refuse aid to Ben. Yet perhaps it was best to proceed with some caution. These were her lover's enemies; if for no other reason than their rage at her own abduction they might be difficult to control. Her father, in all probability, would willingly show mercy to the helpless man in the cavern--particularly after she told him of Ben's consideration and kindness--but she put no faith in Ray and Chan. She knew them of old. Besides, she remembered there was a further consideration,--that of a gold claim.

Could Ben have told her the truth when he had maintained that they would kill him on sight if he did not destroy them first? Was it true that he had waged the war in defense of his own rights? Weeks and months had passed since she had seen her father's face: perhaps her old control of him could no longer be relied upon. If indeed their ownership of a rich claim depended upon Ben's death, Ray and Chan could not be trusted at all.

She resolved to proceed with the utmost caution. Abruptly she turned out of the beaver marsh, where the moonlight might reveal her, and followed close to the edge of the timber, a course that could not be visible from beyond the lake. She approached the lake at its far neck, then followed back along the margin clear to the edge of the woods in which the fire was built.

In her years in the woods Beatrice had learned to stalk, and the knowledge was of value to her now. With never a misstep she took down a little game trail toward the camp fire. She was within fifty yards of it now--she could make out three dark figures seated in the circle of firelight. Walking softly but upright she pushed within ninety feet of the fire.

Then she waited, in doubt as to her course. She was still too far distant to hear more than the murmur of their voices. If she could just get near enough to catch their words she could probably glean some idea of their attitude toward Ben. She pushed on nearer, through the dew-wet brush.

Impelled by the excitement under which she advanced, her old agility of motion had for the moment returned to her; and she crept softly as a fawn between the young trees. One misstep, one rustling branch or crackling twig might give her away; but she took each step with consummate care, gently thrusting the tree branches from her path.

Once a rodent stirred beneath her feet, and she froze--like a hunting wolf--in her tracks. One of the three men looked up, and she saw his face plainly through the low spruce boughs. And for a moment she thought that this was a stranger. It was with a distinct foreboding of disaster that she saw, on second glance, that the man was Ray Brent.

She had never seen such change in human countenance in the space of a few months. She did not pause to analyze it. She only knew that his eyes were glittering and fixed; and that she herself was deeply, unexplainably appalled. The man cursed once, blasphemously, his face dusky and evil in the eerie firelight, but immediately turned back to his talk. Beatrice crept closer.

Now she was near enough to catch an occasional word, but not discern their thoughts. It was evident, however, that their conversation was of Ben and herself,--the same topic they had discussed nights without end. She caught her own name; once Chan used an obscene epithet as he spoke of their enemy.

Her instincts were true and infallible to-night; and she was ever more convinced of their deadly intentions toward Ben. It was not wise to announce herself yet. Perhaps she would have to rely upon a course other than a direct appeal for aid. Now her keen eyes could see the whole camp: the three seated figures of the men, their rifles leaning near them, their supplies spread out about the fire.

At one side, quite to the edge of the firelight, she saw a kyack--one of those square boxes that are hung on a pack saddle--which seemed to be heaped with jerked caribou or moose flesh. For the time of a breath she could not take her eyes from it. It was food--food in plenty to sustain Ben through his illness and the remaining weeks of their exile--and her eyes moistened and her hands trembled at the sight. She had been taught the meaning of famine, these last, bitter days. In reality she was now in the first stage of starvation, experiencing the first, vague hallucinations, the sense of incorporeality, the ever-declining strength, the constant yearning that is nothing but the vitals' submerged demand for food. The contents of the kyack meant _life_ to herself and to Ben,--deliverance and safety when all seemed lost.

A daughter of the cities far to the south--even a child of poverty--rarely could have understood the unutterable craving that overswept her at the sight of this simple food. It was unadorned, unaccompanied by the delicacies that most human beings have come to look upon as essentials and to expect with every meal: it was only animal flesh dried in the smoke and the sun. It not only attracted her physically; but in that moment it possessed real objective beauty for her; as it would have possessed for the most cultivated esthete that might be standing in her place. This girl was down to the most stern realities, and life and death hung in the balance.

She went on her hands and knees, creeping nearer. Still she did not make the slightest false motion, creeping with an uncanny silence in the under shrubbery. And now the words came plain.

"But we must be near," Chan was saying. "They can't be more than a mile or so from here. We'll find 'em in the morning--"

"If he doesn't find us first and shoot up our camp," Ray replied. "I wish we'd built our fire further into the woods. Here we've looked all day without even finding a track except those tracks in the mud."

"They might be beyond the marsh," Neilson suggested.

"But Chan went over that way and didn't find a trace," Ray objected. "But just the same--we'll make a real search to-morrow. I believe we'll find the devil. And then--we can leave this hellish country and go back in peace--if we don't want to wait for the flood."

Beatrice's eyes were on his face, wondering what growth of wickedness, what degeneracy had so filled his cruel eyes with light and stamped his face with evil. This was the man to whom she must look for mercy. Ben's life, if she led the three men to the cave, would be in his hands. She sensed from his authoritative tone that her father's control over him was largely broken. She hovered, terrified and motionless, in her covert.

Ray reached for his rifle, glancing at the sights and drawing the lever back far enough to see the brass of its shells. Chan's lean face was drawn with a cruel glee.

"You can't keep your hands off that gun, Ray," he said. "You sure are gettin' anxious."

"I won't use it on him," Ray replied, slowly and carefully. "It's too good for him--except maybe the stock. He didn't lead me clear out here just to see him puff out and blow up in a minute with a rifle ball through his head. Just the same I want the gun near me, all the time."

The two men looked at him, sardonic-eyed; and both of them seemed to understand fully what he meant. They seemed to catch more from the slow tones, so full of lust and frenzy that they seemed to drop from his lips in an ugly monotone, than they did from the words themselves. They took a certain grim amusement in these quirks of abnormal depravity that had begun to manifest themselves in Ray. The man's fingers were wide spread as he spoke, and his lip twitched twice, sharply, when he had finished.

The words came clear and distinct to the listening girl. She tried to take them literally--that Ray would not shoot Ben! _"It's too good for him--except maybe the stock!"_ Did he mean _that_ too! Was there any possible meaning in the world other than that he was planning some unearthly, more terrible fate for the man she loved! She would not yet yield to the dreadful truth, yet even now terror was clutching at her throat, strangling her; and the cold drops were beading her brow. Still the dark drama of the fireside continued before her eyes.

Chan suddenly turned to Neilson, evidently imbued with Ray's fervor. "What do you think of that, old man?" he asked menacingly. Thus Chan, too, had escaped from Neilson's dominance: plainly Ray was his idol now. It was also plain that he recognized attributes of mercy and decency in his grizzled leader that might interfere with his own and his companion's plans. "What's worrying me--whether you're goin' to join in on the sport when we catch the weasel!"

Sport! The word was more terrible to Beatrice than the vilest oath he had used to emphasize it. She crouched, shivering. Watching intently, she saw Ray look up, too, waiting for the reply; and her father, sensing his lost dominance, bowed his head.

"You could hardly expect me to let him off easy--seeing what he did to my daughter--"

"What he done to your daughter ain't all--I don't care if he treated her like a queen of the realm all the time," Ray interrupted harshly. "That makes no difference to neither me nor Chan. The main thing is--he brought us out here, away from the claim--and gave us months of the worst hell I ever hope to spend. I guess you ain't forgotten what Chan found out in Snowy Gulch--that the claim's recorded--in old Hiram's name. This Darby's got a letter in his pocket from Hiram's brother that would stand in any court. We've got to get that first. If Darby was an angel I'd mash him under my heel just the same; we've gone too far to start crawfishing. Just let me see him tied up in front of me--"

Beatrice did not linger to hear more. She had her answer: only in Ben's continued concealment lay the least hope of his salvation. These wolves about the fire meant what they said. But already her plans were shaping; and now she saw the light.

In the kyack of venison lay her own and her lover's safety: it contained enough nutritious food to sustain them until the fall rains could swell the Yuga and enable them to escape down to the Indian encampment. Her mind was swift and keen as never before: swiftly she perfected the last detail of her plan. The canoe, due to Ben's foresight, was securely hidden in a maze of tall reeds on the lake shore: they were certain to overlook it. The cavern, however, was almost certain to be discovered in the next day's search. They must make their escape to-night.

Ben, though terribly weakened, would be able to walk a short distance with her help. They could slip into the deepest forest, concealing themselves in the coverts until the three men had given up the search and gone away. She would take their robes and blankets to keep them warm; a camp fire would of course reveal their hiding place. The work could easily be accomplished in the midnight shadows: deliverance, salvation, life itself depended on the tide of fate in the next few hours.

She intended to steal the kyack of dried meat without which Ben and herself could not live. She crept back farther into the underbrush; then waited, scarcely breathing, while the fire died down. Already the three men were preparing to go to their bunks. Chan had already lain down; her father was removing his coat and boots. Ray, however, still sat in the firelight.

The moments passed. Would he never rise and go? The fire, however, was dying: its circle of ruddy light ever drew inward. The kyack was quite in the shadow now, yet she dared not attempt its theft until the three men were asleep. She waited, thrilling with excitement.

Chan and Neilson were seemingly asleep, and now Ray was knocking the ashes from his pipe. He yawned, stretching wide his arms; then, as if held by some intriguing thought, sat almost motionless, gazing into the graying coals. Presently Beatrice heard him curse, softly, in the shadows.

He got up, and removing his outer coat, rolled in his blankets. The night hours began their mystic march across the face of the wilderness.

Now was the time to act. As far as she could tell, the three men were deeply asleep: at least the likelihood would be as great as at any time later in the night. The fire was a heap of gray ashes except for its red-hot center: the kyack was in gloom. Very softly she crept through the thickets, meanwhile encircling the dying fire, and came up behind it.

Now it was almost in reach: now her hands were at its loops. She started to lift it in her arms.

But disaster still dogged her trail. Ray Brent had been too wary of attack, to-night, to sink easily into deep slumber. He heard the soft movement as Beatrice lifted the heavy canvas bag off the ground; and with a startled oath sprang to his feet.

He leaped like a panther. "Who's there?" he cried.

Sensing immediate discovery the girl placed all her hope in flight. Perhaps yet she could lose her pursuers in the darkness. Still trying to hold the kyack of food that meant life to Ben, she turned and darted into the shadows.

Like a wolf Ray sped after her. The moonlight showed her fleeing figure in the trees, and shouting aloud he sprang through the coverts to intercept her flight. The chase was of short duration thereafter. Emburdened by the heavy box she could not watch her step; and a protruding root caught cruelly at her ankle. She was hurled with stunning force to the ground.

Desperate and intent, but in realization of impending triumph, Ray's strong arms went about her.

XXXIX

For the second time in his life Ray Brent felt the sting of Beatrice's strong hand against his face. In the desperation of fear she had smote him with all her force. His arms withdrew quickly from about her; and her wide, disdainful eyes beheld a sinister change in his expression. The moonlight was in his eyes, silver-white; and they seemed actually to redden with fury, and again she saw that queer, ghastly twitching at the corner of his lips. The girl's defiance was broken with that one blow. She dropped her head, then walked past him into the presence of her father.

Neilson and Chan were on their feet now, and they regarded her in the utter silence of amazement. Breathing fast, Ray came behind her.

"Build up the fire, Chan," he said in a strange, grim voice. "We want to see what we've caught."

Obediently Chan kicked the coals from under the ashes, and began to heap on broken pieces of wood. The sticks smoked, then a little tongue of yellow flame crept about the fuel. But still the emburdened silence continued--the white-faced girl in the ring of silent, watching men.

Slowly the fire's glow crept out to her, revealing--even better than the bright moonlight--her wide, frightened eyes and the dark, speculative faces of the men. Then Ray spoke sharply in his place.

"Well, why don't you question her?" he demanded of Neilson. "I suppose you know what she was doing. She was trying to steal food. It looks to me like she's gone over to the opposite camp."

Her father sighed, a peculiar sound that seemed to come from above the tree tops, as if fast-flying waterfowl were passing overhead. "Is that so, daughter?" he asked simply.

"I was trying to take some of your food--to Ben," Beatrice replied softly. "He's in need of it."

"You see, they're on intimate terms," Ray suggested viciously. "Ben was in need of food--so she came here to steal it."

But Neilson acted as if he had not heard. "Why didn't you speak to us--and tell us you were safe?" he asked. "We've come all the way here to find you."

"Perhaps _you_ did. If you had been here alone, I would have told you. But Ray and Chan came all the way here to find Ben. I heard what they said--back there in the brush. They intend to kill him when they find him. I--I didn't want him killed."

Her father stared at her from under his bushy brows. "After carrying you from your home--taking you into danger and keeping you a prisoner--you still want to protect him?"

The girl nodded. "And I want you to protect him, too," she said. "Against these men." Suddenly she moved forward in earnest appeal. "Oh, Father--I want you to save him. He's never touched me--he's treated me with every respect--done everything he could for me. When he was injured he told me to go back--to take what little food there was, and go back--"

"I can take it, then, that you're out of food?" Ray asked.

"We're starving--and Ben's sick. Father, I make this one appeal--if your love for me isn't all gone, you'll grant it. I love him. You might as well know that now, as later. I want you to save the man your daughter loves."

Chan cursed in the gloom, his lean face darkened; but Neilson made no answer. Ray in his place sharply inhaled; but the sullen glow in his eyes snapped into a flame.

If Beatrice had glanced at Ray, she would have ceased her appeal and trusted everything to the doubtful mercy of flight,--into the gloom of the forest. As it was, she did not fully comprehend the cruel lust, like flame, that sped through his veins. She would have hoped for no mercy if she could have seen the strange, black surge of wrath in his face.

"He has been kind to me--and he was in the right, not in the wrong. I know about the claim-jumping. Father, I want you to stand between him and these men--help him--and give him food. I didn't speak to you because I was afraid for him--afraid you'd kill him or do some other awful thing to him--"

Slowly her father shook his head. "But I can't save him now. He brought this on himself."

"Remember, he was in the right," the girl pleaded brokenly. "You won't--you couldn't be a partner to murder. That's all it would be--murder--brutal, terrible, cold-blooded murder--if you kill him without a fight. It couldn't be in defense of me--I tell you he hasn't injured me--but was always kind to me. It would be just to take that letter away from him--"

"So he has the letter, has he?" Ray interrupted. He smiled grimly, and his tone was again flat and strained. "And he's sick--and starving. It isn't for your father to say, Beatrice, what's to be done with Ben. There's three of us here, and he's just one. Don't go interfering with what doesn't concern you, either--about the claim. You take us where he is, and we'll decide what to do with him."

Her eyes went to his face; and her lips closed tight. Here was one thing, on this mortal earth, that she must not tell. Perhaps, by the mercy of heaven, they would not find the cave, hidden as it was at the edge of the little glade. The forests were boundless; perhaps they would miss the place in their search. She straightened, scarcely perceptibly.

"Yes, tell us where he is," her father urged. "That's the first thing. We'll find him, anyway, in the morning."

The girl shook her head. She knew now that even if they promised mercy she must not reveal Ben's whereabouts. Their rage and cruelty would not be stayed for a spoken promise. The only card she had left, her one last, feeble hope of preserving Ben's life, lay in her continued silence. Ray's foul-nailed, eager hands could claw her lips apart, but he could not make her speak.

"I won't tell you," she answered at last, more clearly than she had spoken since her capture. "You said a few minutes ago I had gone over--to the opposite camp. I am, from now on. He was in the right, and he gave up his fight against you long ago. Now I want to go."

Fearing that Neilson might show mercy, Ray leaped in front of her. "You don't go yet awhile," he told her grimly. "I've got a few minutes' business with you yet. I tell you that we'll find him, if we have to search all year. And he'll have twice the chance of getting out alive if you tell us where he is."

She looked into his face, and she knew what that chance was. Her eyelids dropped halfway, and she shook her head. "I'd die first," she answered.

"It never occurred to you, did it, that there's ways of _making_ people tell things." He suddenly whirled, with drawn lips, to her father. "Neilson, is there any reason for showing any further consideration to this wench of yours? She's betrayed us--gone over to the opposite camp--lived for weeks, willing, with Ben. I for one am never going to see her leave this camp till she tells us where he is. I'm tired of talking and waiting. I'm going to get that paper away from him, and I'm going to smash his heart with my heel. We've almost won out--and I'm going to go the rest of the way."

Neilson straightened, his eyes steely and bright under his grizzled brows. Only too well he knew that this was the test. Affairs were at their crisis at last. But in this final moment his love for his daughter swept back to him in all its unmeasured fullness,--and when all was said and done it was the first, the mightiest impulse in his life. Ben had been kind to her, and she loved him; and all at once he knew that he could not yield him or her to the mercy of this black-hearted man before him.

He had lived an iniquitous life; he was inured to all except the worst forms of wickedness; but for the moment--in love of his daughter--he stood redeemed. He was on the right side at last. His hand drew back, and his face was like iron.

"Shut that foul mouth!" he cautioned, with a curious, deadly evenness of tone. "I haven't surrendered yet to you two wolves. If one of you dares to lay a hand on Beatrice, I'll kill him where he stands."

Even as he spoke his thought went to his rifle, leaning against a dead log ten feet away. This was the moment of test: the jealousy and rivalry and hatred between himself and Ray had reached the crisis. And the spirit of murder, terrible past any demon of the Pit, came stalking from the savage forest into the ruddy firelight.

Ray leered, his muscles bunching. "And I say to you, you're a dirty traitor too," he answered. "She ain't your daughter any more. She's Ben Darby's squaw. She's not fit for a white man to touch any more, for all her lies. You say one word and you'll get it too."

And at that instant the speeding pace of time seemed to halt, showing this accursed scene, so savage and terrible in the eerie light of the camp fire, at the edge of the haunted, breathless darkness, in vivid and ghastly detail. Neilson leaped forward with all his power; and if his blow had gone home, Ray would have been shattered beneath it like a tree in the lightning blast. But Ray's arms were incredibly swift, and his rifle leaped in his hands.

The barrel gleamed. The roar reechoed in the silence. Neilson's head bowed strangely; and for a moment he stood swaying, a ghastly blankness on his face; then pitched forward in the dew-wet grass.

Beatrice's last defense had fallen, seriously wounded; and Ray's arm seized her as, screaming, she tried to flee.

XL

The shot that wounded Jeffery Neilson carried far through the forest aisles, re√ęchoing against the hills, and arresting, for one breathless moment, all the business of the wilderness. The feeding caribou swung his horns and tried to catch the scent; the moose, grubbing for water roots in the lake bottom, lifted his grotesque head and stood like a form in black iron. It came clear as a voice to the cavern where Ben lay.

The man started violently in his cot. His entire nervous system seemed to react. Then there ensued a curious state in which his physical functions seemed to cease,--his heart motionless in his breast, his body tensely rigid, his breath held. There was an infinite straining and travail in his mind.

The truth was that the sound acted much as a powerful stimulant to his retarded nervous forces. It was the one thing his resting nerve-system needed; it was as if chemicals were in suspension in a crucible, and at a slight jar of the glass they made mysterious union and expelled a precipitation. Almost instantly he recognized the sound that had reached him, with a clear and unmistakable recognition such as he had not experienced since the night of the accident, as the report of a rifle. His mind gave a great leap and remembered its familiar world.

A rifle--probably discharged by Beatrice in a hunt after big game. It was true that their meat supply was low; he remembered now. Yet it was curious that she should be hunting after dark. The gloom was deep at the cavern mouth. Besides, he had always kept his rifle from her, fearing that she might turn it against him. He looked about him, trying to locate the source of the flood of light on the cavern floor. It was the moon, and it showed that the girl was gone. He started to sit up.

But his left arm did not react just properly to the command of his brain. It impeded him, and its old strength was impaired. For a moment more he lay quiet, deep in thought. Of course--he had been injured by the falling tree. He remembered clearly, now. And the rifle had been broken.

The only possible explanation for the shot was that a rifle had been fired by some invader in their valley--in all probability Neilson or one of his men. Beatrice's absence would also indicate this fact: perhaps she had already joined her father and was on her way back to Snowy Gulch with him. In that case, why had he himself been spared?

He looked out of the door of the cavern, trying to get some idea of the lateness of the hour. The very quality of the darkness indicated that the night was far advanced. Neilson would not be hunting game at this hour. Was his own war--planned long ago--even now being waged in ways beyond his ken?

His old concern for Beatrice swept through him. With considerable difficulty he got to his feet, then holding on to the wail, guided himself to the shelf where they ordinarily kept their little store of matches. He scratched one of them against the wall.

In the flaring light his eyes made a swift but careful appraisal of his surroundings. The girl's cot had not been slept in; and to his great amazement he saw that their food supplies were spent. Still holding to the wall he walked to the cave mouth.

Instantly his keen eyes saw the far-off gleam of the camp fire on the distant margin of the lake. For all that the hour was late, it burned high and bright. He watched it, vaguely conscious of the insidious advance of a ghastly fear. Beatrice was his ally now--if these weeks had sent home one fact to him it was this--and her absence might easily indicate that she was helpless in the enemy's hands. The thing suggested ugly possibilities. Yet he could not aid her. He could scarcely walk; even the knife that he wore at his belt was missing, probably carried by Beatrice when she gathered roots in the woods.

But presently all questions as to his course were settled for him. His straining ear caught the faintest, almost imperceptible vibration in the air--a soundwave so dim and obscure that it seemed impossible that the human mind could interpret it--but Ben recognized it in a flash. In some great trouble and horror, in the sullen light of that distant camp fire, Beatrice had screamed for aid.

Only by the grace of the Red Gods had he heard the sound at all. Except for the fact that the half-mile intervening was as still as death, and that half the way the sound sped over water, he couldn't have hoped to perceive it. If the wind had blown elsewhere than straight toward him from the enemy camp, or if his marvelous sense of hearing had been less acute, the result would have been the same; and there could have been no answer from this dark man at the cave mouth who stood so tense and still. Finally, by instinct as much as by conscious intelligence, he identified the sound, marked it as a reality rather than a fancy, and read the tragic need behind it. Swiftly he started down the glade toward her.

Yet in a moment he knew that unless he conserved his strength he could not hope to make a fourth of the distance. At the first steps he swayed, half staggering. He had paid the price for his weeks of illness and his injuries. If he had been in a sick room, under a physician's care, he would have believed it impossible to walk unsupported across the room. But need is the mother of strength, and this was the test. Besides, he had had several days of convalescence that had put back into his sinews a measure of his mighty strength. Mostly he progressed by holding on to the trees, pulling himself forward step by step.

Likely he would come too late to change the girl's fate. Yet even now he knew he must not turn back. If the penalty were death, there must be no hesitancy in him; he must not withhold one step.

But it was a losing fight. The hill itself seemed endless; a hundred cruel yards of marsh must be traversed before ever he reached the nearest point by the lake. The enemy camp from where Beatrice had called to him lay on the far side of the lake, a distance of a full mile if he followed around the curving shore. And black and bitter self-hatred swept like fire through him when he realized that he could not possibly keep on his feet for so long a way.

Was this all he had fought for--surging upward through these long, weary weeks out of the shadow of death--only to fall dead on the trail in the moment of Beatrice's need? Instantly he knew that nothing in his life, no other desire or dream, had ever meant as much to him as this: that he might reach her side in time. Even his desire for vengeance, in that twilight madness, like Roland's, that had shaped his destiny, had been wavering and feeble compared to this. And no moment of his existence had ever been so dark, so bereft of the last, dim star of hope that lights men's way in the deep night of despair.

He gave no thought to the fact of his own helplessness against three armed men in case he did succeed in reaching their camp. The point could not possibly be considered. The imperious instincts that forced him on simply could not take it into reckoning. He knew only he must reach her side and put in her service all that he had.

He fell again and again as he tried to make headway in the marsh. But always he forced himself up and on. Only too plain he saw that the time was even now upon him when he could no longer keep his feet at all. But still he plunged on, and with tragically slow encroachments the shore line drew up to him.

But he could not go on. The fire itself was hardly a quarter of a mile distant, directly across the lake, but to follow the long shore was an insuperable mile. Already his leg muscles were failing him, refusing to the respond to the impulse of his nerves. Yet it might be that if he could make himself heard his enemies would leave the girl for a moment, at least--give her an instant's respite--while they came and dispatched his own life. Whatever they were doing to her, there in that ring of firelight, might be stayed for a moment, at least.

But at that instant he remembered the canoe. He had always kept it hidden in a little thicket of tall reeds,--if only the girl had not removed it from its place in his weeks of sickness! He plunged down into the tall tules. Yes, the boat was still in place.

It took all the strength of his weakened body to push it out from the reeds into the water. Then he seized the long pole they had sometimes used to propel themselves over the lake. Except for his injured arm, the paddle would have been better--he could have made better time and escaped the danger of being stranded in deep water--but he doubted that he could handle it with his faltering arm. He pushed off, putting most of the strain on his uninjured right arm.

The canoe was strongly but lightly made, so that it could be portaged with greatest possible ease; and his strokes, though feeble, propelled it slowly through the water. The great, white full moon, beloved of long ago, looked down from above the tall, dark heads of the spruce and changed the little water-body into a miracle of burnished silver. In its light Ben's face showed pale, but with a curious, calm strength.

The lake seemed untouched by the faint breath of wind that blew from the distant shore. The waters lay quiet, and the trout beneath saw the black shadow of the canoe as it passed. A cow moose and her calf sprang up the bank with a splash, frightened by the poling figure in the stern. And on the far shore, clear where the lake had its outlet in a small river, even more keen wilderness eyes might have beheld the black, moving dot that was the craft. But the distance was too far and the wind was wrong for the keen mind behind the eyes to make any sort of an interpretation.

It might have been that Fenris the wolf, running with a female and two younger males that he had mastered that long-ago night on the ridge, paused in his hunting to watch and wonder. But his wild brute thoughts were not under the bondage of memory to-night; his savage heart was thrilled and full; and more than likely he did not even turn his head.

Ray and Chan, standing beside their prisoner in their grisly camp on the opposite shore, might have beheld Ben's approach if weightier matters had not occupied their minds. They had only to walk to the edge of the firelight and stare down through a rift in the trees to see him. But they stood with the angry glare revealing a strange and sinister intentness in their drawn faces and ominous speculations in their evil eyes.

XLI

It was a wilderness moon that rose over the spruce to-night,--white as new silver, incredibly large, inscrutably mysterious. The winds had whisked away the last pale cloud that might have dimmed its glory, and its light poured down with equal bounty on peak and hill, forest and yellow marsh. The heavy woods partook most deeply of its enchantment: tall, stately trees pale and nebulous as if with silver frost, each little stream dancing and shimmering in its light, every glade laid with a fairy tapestry, every shadow dreadful and black in contrast. The wilderness breathed and shivered as if swept with passion.

The wilderness moon is the moon of desire; and all this great space of silence seemed to respond. It seemed to throb, like one living entity, as if in longing for something lost long ago--a half-forgotten happiness, a glory and a triumph that were gone never to return. No creatures that followed the woods trails were dull and flat to-night. They were all swept with mystery, knowing vague longings or fierce desires. It was the harvest moon; but here it did not light the fields so that men might harvest grain. Rather it illumined the hunting trails so that the beasts of prey might find relief from the wild lusts and seething ferment that was in their veins. But mostly the forest mood was disconsolate, rather than savage, to-night. The wild geese on the lake called their weird and plaintive cries, their strange complaints that no man understands; the loons laughed in insane despair; and the coyotes on the ridge wailed out the pain of living and the vague longings of their wild hearts.

In the glory of that moon Fenris the wolf knew the same, resistless longings that so many times before had turned him from the game trails. There was something here that was unutterably dear to him,--something that drew him, called him like a voice, and he could not turn aside. Because he was a beast, he likely did not know the force that was drawing him again along the lake shore. Yet the souls of the lower creatures no man knows; and perhaps he had conscious longings, profoundly intense, for a moment's touch of a strong hand on his shoulder,--one never-to-be-forgotten caress from a certain god that had gone to a cave to live. It was true that his wild instincts, ever more in dominance these past weeks, would likely halt him at the cavern maw, permitting no intimacy other than to ascertain that all was well. They were too strong ever to brook man's control again. The moon was a moon of desire, but only because it was also the moon of memory,--and perhaps memories, stirring and exalting, were sweeping through him. Straight as an arrow he turned toward the cave.

His followers--the gaunt female and two younger males, the structure about which the winter pack would form--hesitated at first. They had no commanding memories of the cavern on the far side of the lake. Yet Fenris was their leader; by the deep-lying laws of the pack they must follow where he led. They could not decoy him into the trails of game. As ever they sped swiftly, silently after him.

In this forest of desires Ben knew but one,--that he might yet be of aid to Beatrice. But he knew in his heart that it was a vain hope. He was within a hundred yards of Ray's camp now, but the struggle to reach the lake and the poling across its waters had brought him seemingly to the absolute limit of his strength, clear to the brink of utter exhaustion. Never in his life before had he known the full meaning of fatigue,--fatigue that was like a paralysis, blunting the mechanism of the brain, burning like a slow fire in his muscles, poisoning the vital fluids of his nerves. Stroke after stroke, never ceasing!--The flame was high, crackling--just before him. Through a rift in the trees he could see the outline of two men and the slim form of the girl. Just a few yards more.

But of all the desires that the moon invoked in the woods people there were none so unredeemed, so wicked and cruel as this that slowly wakened in the evil hearts of these two degenerate men, Beatrice's captors. She sensed it only vaguely at first. All the disasters that had fallen upon her had not taught her to accept such a thing as this: surely this would be spared her, at least. There is a kindly blind spot in the brain that often will not let the ugly truth go home.

For a strange, still moment Ray's face seemed devoid of all expression. It was flat and lifeless as dark clay. Then Beatrice felt the insult of his quickening gaze.

"Put a rope around her wrists, Chan," he said. "We don't want to take chances on her getting away."

He spoke slowly, rather flatly. There was nothing that her senses could seize upon--either in his face or voice to justify the swift, strangling, killing horror that came upon her. He stood simply gazing, and as she met his gaze her lips parted and drew back in a grimace of terror; thus they stood until the blood began to leap fast in Chan's veins. She needed no further disillusionment. Chan spoke behind her, a startled oath cut off short, and she felt him moving swiftly toward her. It was her last instant of respite; and her muscle set and drew for a final, desperate attempt at self-defense.

She wore Ben's knife at her belt, and her hand sped toward it. But the motion, fast as it was, came too late. Chan saw it; and leaping swiftly, his arms went about her and pinned her own arms to her sides.

She tried in vain to fight her way out of his grasp. She writhed, screaming; and in the frenzy of her fear she all but succeeded in hurling him off. She managed to draw the knife clear of the sheath, yet she couldn't raise her arm to strike. Ray was aiding his confederate now; and in an instant more she was helpless.

Their drawn faces bent close to hers. She felt their hot hands as they drew her wrists in front of her and fastened them with a rope. "Not too tight, Chan," Ray advised. "We don't want her to get uncomfortable before we're done with her. Don't tie her ankles; she can't run through the brush with her arms tied.--Now give her a moment to breathe."

They stood on each side of her, regarding her with secret, growing excitement. Already they had descended too far to know pity for this girl. The wide-open eyes, so dark with terror and in contrast with the stark paleness of her face, the lips that trembled so piteously, the slender, girlish figure so helpless to their depraved desires moved them not at all.

The scene was one of never-to-be-forgotten vividness. The tenderness and mercy, most of all the restraint that has become manifest in men in these centuries since they have left their forest lairs to live in permanent abodes, had no place here. About them ringed the primeval forest, ensilvered by the moon; the fire crackled with a dread ferocity; and at the edge of the thickets the motionless form of Jeffery Neilson lay with face buried in the soft, summer grass. All was silent and motionless, except the fierce crackling of the fire; except a curious, intermittent, upward twitching of the corner of Ray's lips.

"So you and Ben are bunkies now, are you?" he asked slowly, without emphasis.

But the girl made no reply, only gazing at him with starting eyes.

"A traitor to us, and Ben's squaw!" He turned fiercely to Chan. "I guess that gives us right to do what we want to with her. And now she can yell if she wants to for her lover to come and save her."

She did not even try to buy their mercy by informing them where they might find Ben. Only too well she knew that their dreadful intentions could not be turned aside: she would only sacrifice Ben without aiding herself. Ray moved toward her, his eyes deeply sunken, the pupils abnormally enlarged.

"You haven't lost all your looks," he told her breathlessly. "That mouth is still pretty enough to kiss. And I guess you won't slap--this time--"

He drew her toward him, his dark face lowering toward hers. She struggled, trying to wrench away from him. Helpless and alone, the moment of final horror was at hand. In this last instant her whole being leaped again to Ben,--the man whose strength had been her fort throughout all their first weeks in the wilds, but whom she had left helpless and sick in the distant cavern. Yet even now he would rise and come to her if he knew of her peril. Her voice rose shrilly to a scream. "Ben--help me!"

And Ray's hands fell from her shoulders as he heard the incredible answer from the shore of the lake. The brush rustled and cracked: there was a strange sound of a heavy footfall,--slow, unsteady, but approaching them as certain as the speeding stars approach their mysterious destinations in the far reaches of the sky. Ray straightened, staring; Chan stood as if frozen, his hands half-raised, his eyes wide open.

"I'm coming, Beatrice," some one said in the coverts. Her cries, uttered when her father fell, had not gone unheard. In the last stages of exhaustion, deathly pale yet with a face of iron, Ben came reeling toward them out of the moonlight.

XLII

Ben walked quietly into the circle of firelight and stood at Beatrice's side. But while Ray and Chan gazed at him as if he were a spectre from the grave, Beatrice's only impulse was one of immeasurable and unspeakable thankfulness. No fate on earth was so dreadful but that it would be somewhat alleviated by the fact of his presence: just the sight of him, standing beside her, put her in some vague way out of Ray's power to harm. Exhausted, reeling, he was still the prop of her life and hope.

"Here I am," he said quietly. "The letter's in my pocket. Do what you want with me--but let Beatrice go."

His words brought Ray to himself in some degree at least. The ridiculous fear of the moment before speedily passed away. Why, the man was exhausted--helpless in their hands--and the letter was in his pocket. It meant _triumph_--nothing else. All Ray's aims had been attained. With Ben's death the claim, a fourth of which had been his motive when he had slain Ezram, would pass entirely to him,--except for such share as he would have to give Chan. His star of fortune was in the sky. It was his moment of glory,--long-awaited but enrapturing him at last.

Neilson lay seriously wounded, perhaps dead by now. Whatever his injuries, he would not go back with them to share in the gold of the claim. The girl, also, was his prey,--to do with what he liked.

"I see you've come," he answered. "You might as well; we'd have found you to-morrow." His voice was no longer flat, but rather exultant, boasting. "You thought you could get away--but we've shown you."

Ben nodded. "You are--" he strained for the name he had heard Beatrice speak so often--"Ray Brent?" His eyes fell to the form of Neilson, wounded beyond the fire. "I see you've been at your old job--killing. It was you who killed Ezra Melville."

Ray smiled, ever so faintly: this was what he loved. "You're talking to the right man. Anything you'd like to do about it?"

Ben's face hardened. "There is nothing I can do, now. You came too late. But I would have had something to do if I had my rifle. I'm glad it was you, not Beatrice's father. I ask you this--will you accept my proposition. To take Ezram's letter, destroy it and me too--and let the girl go in safety?"

Beatrice stretched her bound arms and touched his hairy wrist. "No, Ben," she told him quietly. "There's no use of trying to make such a bargain as that. Men that murder--and assault women,--won't keep their word."

"They were about to attack you, were they?" His voice dropped a tone; otherwise it seemed the same.

"Yes--just as you came."

He turned once more to Ray, eyeing him with such a look of contempt and scorn that it smarted like a whiplash in spite of the protecting mantel of his new-found triumph. "Oh, you depraved dogs!" he told them quietly and distinctly. "You yellow, mongrel cowards!"

Ray straightened, stung by the words. "And I'll make you wish you was dead before you ever said that," he threatened. "I'll tell you what you wanted to know a minute ago--and I tell you no. I won't make any deal with you. We'll do what we like to you, and we'll do what we like with your dirty squaw, too--the woman you've been living with all these months. We've got you where we want you. You're in no fix to make terms. Chan--put a rope around his legs and a gag in his rotten mouth!"

They moved toward him simultaneously, and Ben summoned the last jot of his almost-spent strength to hurl them off. They did not need deadly weapons for this wasted form. Yet for the duration of one second Ben fought with an incredible ferocity and valor.

He hurled Chan from his path, and his sound right arm leaped to Ray's throat in a death grip. For that one instant his old-time strength returned to him,--as to Samson as his arms went about the pillars of the temple. They found him no weakling, in that first instant, but a deadly, fighting beast, the "Wolf" Darby of the provinces,--his finger nails sinking ever deeper into the flesh of Ray's throat, his body braced against Chan's attack. And for all that Beatrice's arms were tied, she leaped like a she-wolf to her lover's aid.

But such an unequal battle could last only an instant. Ray focused his attack upon Ben's injured left arm, Chan struck once at the girl, hurling her to the ground with a base blow, then lashed brutal blows into Ben's face. The burst of strength ebbed as quickly as it had come: his legs wilted under him, and he sank slowly to the ground.

Maddened with battle, for a moment more Chan lashed cowardly blows into his face; and he left the brutal labor only to help Ray affix ropes about his ankles. Then the two conquerors stood erect, breathing loudly.

Seemingly the utter limit of their brutality was reached,--but for the moment only. A strange and foreboding silence fell over the camp: only the sound of troubled breathing was heard above the lessening crackle of the fire. They did not turn at once again to the work of crushing Ben's life out with their fists and boots, nor did they restrain Beatrice as she crawled over the blood-stained grass to reach her lover's side.

"Let her go," Ray said to Charley. "She can't help him any."

It was true. They had put up their last defense. The girl crept nearer, lying almost prone beside him, and her soft hands stole over his bruised flesh. But no tears came now. She was past the kindly mercy of tears. She could only gaze at him, and sometimes dry half-sobs clutched at her throat. The man half-opened his eyes, smiling.

Life still remained in his rugged body. Even the cruel test of the last hour had not taken that from him. The sturdy heart still beat, and the breath still whispered through his lips: there was life in plenty to afford such sport as Ray and Chan might have for him.

The last, least quality of redemption--such magic and beauty as might have been wrought by the firelight dancing over the moonlit glade--was quite gone now. The powers of wickedness were in the ascendency, and this was only the abode of horror. Yet it was all tragically true, not a nightmare from which she would soon waken. This was the remote heart of Back There--a primeval land where the demons of lust and death walked unrestrained--and the shadow of the moonlit trees fell dark upon her.

The back logs were burning dully now, and the coals were red, and Chan and Ray took seats on a huge, dead spruce to talk over their further plans. It was all easy enough. They could linger here, living mostly on meat, until the rising waters of the Yuga could carry them down to the Indian villages. Their methods and procedure in regard to Ben were the only remaining questions.

For a few minutes they took little notice of the prone figures at the far edge of the fading firelight. In their hands they were as helpless as Jeffery Neilson, left already by the receding radiance to the soft mercy of the shadows. Attention could be given them soon enough. Their own triumph was beginning to give way to deep fatigue.

Ben and Beatrice had talked softly at first, accepting their fate at last and trying to forget all things but the fact of each other's presence. They had kept the faith to-night, they had both been true; and perhaps they had conquered, in some degree, the horror of death. His right hand held hers close to his lips, and only she could understand the message in its soft pressure, and the gentle, kindly shadows in his quiet eyes. But presently her gaze fastened on some object in the grass beside him.

He did not understand at first. He knew enough not to attract his enemies' attention by trying to turn. The girl relaxed again, but her hand throbbed in his, and her eyes shone somberly as if the luster of some strange, dark hope.

"What is it?" he asked whispering.

"I see a way out--for us both," she told him. She knew he would not misunderstand and dream that she saw an actual avenue to life and safety. "Don't give any sign."

"Then hurry," he urged. "They may be back any instant. What is it?"

"A way to cheat 'em--to keep them from torturing you--and to save me--from all the things they'll do to me--when you're dead. Oh, Ben--you won't fail me--you'll do it for me."

He smiled, gently and strongly. "Do you think I'd fail you now?"

"Then reach your good arm on the other side--soft as you can. There's a knife lying there--your own knife--they knocked out of my hand. They'll jump at the first gleam. You know what to do--first me, in the throat--then yourself."

His face showed no horror at her words. They were down to the most terrible realities; and as she had said, this was the way out! The great kindness still dwelt in his eyes--and she knew he would do as she asked.

One gleam of steal, one swift touch at the throat--and they would never know the unspeakable fate that their depraved captors planned for them. _It was no less than victory in the last instant of despair!_ It was freedom: although they did not know into what Mystery and what Fear the act would dispatch them, it was freedom from Ray and Chan, none the less. And Ben welcomed the plan as might a prisoner, waiting in the death-cell, welcome a reprieve.

He turned, groping with his hand. There was no use of waiting longer. The knife lay just beyond his reach; and softly he moved his body through the grass.

But this gate to mercy was closed before they reached it. A sudden flaring of the fire revealed them--the gleam of the blade and Ben's stretching hand--and Ray left his log in a swift, catlike leap.

If Ben had possessed full use of both hands there still might have been time to send home the two crucial blows, or at least to dispatch Beatrice out of Ray's power to harm. But his injured arm impeded him, and his hand fumbled as he tried to seize the hilt. With a sharp oath Ray crushed the blade into the ground with his heel; then kicked viciously at the prone body of his enemy.

And at that first base blow his rage and blood-lust that had been gathering was swiftly freed. It was all that was needed to set him at the work of torture. For an instant he stood almost motionless except for the spasmodic twitching--now almost continuous--at his lips and for the slow turning of his head as he looked about for a weapon with which he could more quickly satiate the murder-madness in his veins. The knife appealed to him not at all; but his eye fell on a long, heavy club of spruce that had been cut for fuel. He bent and his strong hands seized it.

As he swung it high the girl leaped between--with a last, frantic effort, wholly instinctive--to shield Ben's body with her own. But it was only an instant's reprieve. Chan had followed Ben, and sharing Ray's fiendish mood, jerked her aside. Ben raised himself up as far as he could at a final impulse to thrust the girl out of harm's way.

Yet it was to be that Ray's murderous blow was never to go home. A mighty and terrible ally had come to Ben's aid. He came pouncing from the darkness, a gaunt and dreadful avenger whose code of death was as remorseless as Ray's own.

It was Fenris the wolf, and he had found his master at last. Missing him at the accustomed place in the cave, he had trailed him to the lake margin: a smell on the wind had led him the rest of the way. He was not one to announce his coming by an audible footfall in the thicket. Like a ghost he had glided almost to the edge of the firelight, lingering there--with a caution learned in these last wild weeks of running with his brethren--until he had made up his brute mind in regard to the strangers in the camp. But he had waited only until he saw Ray kick the helpless form before him,--that of the god that Fenris, for all the wild had claimed him, still worshipped in his inmost heart. With fiendish, maniacal fury he had sprung to avenge the blow.

And his three followers, trained by the pack laws to follow where he led, and keyed to the highest pitch by their leader's fury, leaped like gray demons of the Pit in his wake.

XLII

As a young tree breaks and goes down in the gale Ray Brent went down before the combined attack of the wolves. What desperate struggle he made only seemed to increase their fury and shatter him the faster. Utterly futile were all his blows: his frantic, piercing screams of fear and agony raised to heaven, but were answered with no greater mercy than that he would have shown to Ben a moment before.

Seemingly in an instant he was on his back and the ravening pack were about him in a ring. In that lurid firelight their fangs gleamed like ivory as they flashed, here and there, over his body and throat, and their fierce eyes blazed with pale-blue fire,--the mark and sign of the blood madness of the beasts of prey.

Seemingly in a single instant the life had been torn from him, leaving only a strange, huddled, ghastly thing beside the dying fire. But the pack leaped from him at once. Fenris had caught sight of Chan's figure as he ran for the nearest tree and seemingly with one leap he was upon him. He sprang at him from the side; and his fangs gleamed once.

He had struck true, his fangs went home, and the life went out of Chan Heminway in a single, neighing scream. He pitched forward, shuddered once in the soft grass, and lay still. The pack surged around his body, struck at it once or twice, then stood growling as if waiting for their leader's command.

Before ever Ray fell, Ben had taken what measures of self-defense he could in case the pack, forgetting its master's master, might turn on himself and the girl. He had reached the knife hilt and severed the ropes about the girl's wrists. "Stay behind me," he cautioned. "Don't move a muscle."

He knew that any attempt to reach and climb a tree would attract the attention of the pack and send them ravening about her. Again he knew that her life as well as his own depended on his control of the pack leader. He saw Chan go down, seemingly in a single instant, and he braced himself against attack. "Down, Fenris!" he shouted. "Down--get down!"

The great wolf started at the voice, then stood beside the fallen, gazing at Ben with fierce, luminous eyes. "Down, down, boy," Ben cautioned, in a softer voice. "There, old fellow--down--down."

Then Fenris whined in answer, and Ben knew that he was no longer to be feared. The three lesser wolves seemed startled, standing in a nervous group, yet growling savagely and eyeing him across the dying fire. For a moment Fenris's fury had passed to them, but now that his rage was dead, all they had left was an inborn fear of such a breed as this,--these tall forms that died so easily in their fangs. Fenris trotted slowly toward Ben, but with the true instincts of the wild his followers knew that this was no affair of fangs and death. He came in love, in a remembered comradeship, just as often he had led them to the mouth of the cavern, and they did not understand. They slowly backed away into the shadows, fading like ghosts.

Ben's arms, in unspeakable gratitude, went about the shoulders of the wolf. Beatrice, sobbing uncontrollably yet swept with that infinite thankfulness of the redeemed, crept to his side. Fenris whined and shivered in the arms of his god.

Quietude came at last to that camp beside the lake, in the far, hidden heart of Back There. Once more the blood moved with sweet, normal tranquillity in the veins, the thrill and stir died in the air, and the moonlight was beautiful on the spruce.

The wolves had gone. Fenris's three brethren had slipped away, perhaps wholly mystified and deeply awed by their madness of a moment before; and from the ridge top they had called for their leader to join them. He had done his work, he had avenged the base blow that had seemed to strike at his own wild heart, he had received the caress he had craved,--and there was no law for him to stay. The female called enticingly; the wild game was running for his pleasure on the trails.

Ben had watched the struggle in his fierce breast, and Beatrice's eyes were soft and wonderfully lustrous in the subdued light as she gave the wolf a parting caress. But he could not stay with them. The primal laws of his being bade otherwise. His was the way of the open trails, the nights of madness and the rapture of hunting--and these were folk of the caves! They were not his people, although his love for them burned like fire in his heart.

He could not deny the call of his followers on the ridge. It was like a chain, drawing him remorselessly to them. Whining, he had sped away into the darkness.

The fire had been built up, Beatrice had rallied her spent strength by full feeding of the rich, dried meat, and had done what she could for Neilson's injury. Ben, exhausted, had lain down in some of the blankets of his enemy's outfit. Neilson was not, however, mortally hurt. The bullet had coursed through the region of his shoulder, missing his heart and lungs, and although he was all but unconscious, they had every reason to believe that a few weeks of rest would see him well again.

Beatrice bathed the wound, bandaged it the best she could, then covered him up warmly and let him go to sleep. And the time came at last, long past the midnight hour, that she crept once more to Ben's side.

There was little indeed for them to say. The stress of the night had taken from them almost all desire to talk. But Ben took her hand in his feebly, and held it against his lips.

"We're safe now," Beatrice told him, her eye's still bright with tears. "We've seen it through, and we're safe."

Ben nodded happily. It was true: there was nothing further for them to fear. With the aid of the rifles of the three fallen, they could procure meat in plenty for their remaining time at Back There; besides, the store of jerked caribou and moose was enough to hold them over. When the rains came again, the three of them--Neilson and Ben and Beatrice--could glide on down to the Indian encampments in the canoe. Thence they could reach the white settlements beyond the mountains.

Her glance into the future went still farther, because she knew certain news that as yet Ben had not heard. She had heard from Ray's lips that night that Ben's claim had been legally filed; he had only to return and take possession. It straightened out the future, promised success in the battle of life, gave him an interest to hold him in these northern forests. But she would not tell him to-night. It could wait for a more quiet hour.

Presently she saw that he was trying to speak to her, whispering; trying to draw her ear down to his lips. She smiled, with an infinite tenderness. Dimly though he spoke, she heard him every word.

"I love you," he told her simply. He watched her face, as intently as the three Wise Men watched the East, for a sign. And he saw it, clear and ineffably wonderful, in the stars that came into her eyes.

"I love you," she answered, with equal simplicity. They lay a while in silence, blissful in this wonder each had for the other, wholly content just that their hands and lips should touch.

The same miracle was upon them both; and the girl's thought, ranging far, seized upon a deep and moving discovery. "All this belongs to us," she told him, indicating with one movement of her arm the boundless solitudes about them. "This is our own country, isn't it, Ben? We can't ever--go away."

It was true: they could never leave the forest for long. They were its children, bred in the bone. Their strong thews would waste in a gentler land. It was their heritage. They must not go where they could not behold the dark line of the forest against the sky.

The fire burned down. The moon wheeled through the sky. The tall spruce saw the dawn afar and beckoned.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Sky Line of Spruce, by Edison Marshall