Chapter 11

Virginia held hard on her faculties and balanced his words. She had known Chicago men during the six years that she had moved in the most exalted social circles of her own city. The story held water, even if she had been inclined to doubt it. She knew it was always easy for an engagement rumor to start and be carried far, when a prominent girl was involved. "I didn't get your letters," she told him. "Are you sure you addressed them right----"

"I thought so----"

"And you didn't get mine----"

"No--not after the first few days. I changed my address--but I told you of the change in a letter. I never heard from you after that."

"Then it's all been a misunderstanding--a cruel mistake. And you thought I had forgotten----"

"I thought you'd married some one else. I couldn't believe it when Bill came to my cabin to-day and told me you were here--I've been trapping over toward the Yuga. And now--we're together at last."

But curiously these last words cost her her self-possession. Instantly she was ill at ease. The reestablishment of their old relation could only come gradually: although she had not anticipated it, the six years of separation had wrought their changes. She felt that she needed time to become adjusted to him--just as a man who has been blind needs time to become adjusted to his vision. And at once their proximity, in this lonely cabin, was oddly embarrassing.

"Where's Bill?" she asked. She turned to the door and called. "Bill, where are you?"

His voice seemed quite his own when he answered from the stillness of the night. "I'll be in in a moment--I was just getting a load of wood."

It wasn't true. He had been standing dumb and inert in the darkness, his thoughts wandering afar. But he began hastily to fill his arms with fuel. Virginia turned back to her new-found lover.

She was a little frightened by the expression on his face. His eyes were glowing, the color had risen in his cheeks, he was curiously eager and breathless. "Before he comes," he urged. "We've been apart so long----"

His hands reached out and seized hers. He drew her toward him. She didn't resist: she felt a deep self-annoyance that she didn't crave his kiss. She fought away her unwonted fear; perhaps when his lips met hers everything would be the same again, and her long-awaited happiness would be complete. He crushed her to him, and his kiss was greedy.

Yet it was cold upon her lips. She struggled from his arms, and he looked at her in startled amazement. In fact, she was amazed at herself. When she had time to think it over, alone in her bed at night, she decided that her desperate struggle had been merely an attempt to free herself from his arms before Bill came in and saw them. She only knew that she didn't want this comrade of hers, this stalwart forester, to see her in Harold's embrace. But in the second of the act she had known a blind fear, almost a repulsion, and an overwhelming desire to escape.

She turned with a radiant smile to welcome the tall form that strode in, looking neither to the right nor left, arms heaped with wood. She found, much to her surprise, that she felt more at ease after Bill came in. She asked him how he had happened to get trace of the missing man; he answered in an even, almost expressionless tone that someway puzzled her. Then she launched desperately into that old life-saver in moments of embarrassment,--a discussion of the fates and fortunes of mutual acquaintances.

"But I'm tired, Harold," she told him in an hour. "The surprise of seeing you has been--well, too much for me. I believe I'll go to my room. It's behind that curtain."

Harold rose eagerly as if something was due him in the moment of parting; Bill got up in respect to her. But her glance was impartial. A moment later she was gone.

The first night Bill and Harold made bunks on the floor of the cabin, but health and propriety decreed that such an arrangement could only be temporary. They could not put their trust in an immediate deliverance. They might be imprisoned for weeks to come. And Bill solved the problem with a single suggestion.

They would build a small cabin for the two men to sleep in. Many times he had erected such a structure by his own efforts; the two of them could push it up in a few hours' work.

Harold had no fondness for toil of this kind, but he couldn't see how he could well avoid it. His indifference to his own fate was quite past by now. The single moment before Bill had entered the cabin door had thoroughly wakened his keenest interests and desires; already, he thought, he had entirely re-established his relations with Virginia. He was as anxious to make good now as she was to have him. Already he thought himself once more a man and a gentleman of the great outside world. His vanity was heightened; the girl's beauty had increased, if anything, since his departure; and he was more than ready to go through the adventure to its end. And he didn't dare run the risk of displeasing Virginia so soon after their meeting.

He knew how she stood on the matter. He had ventured to make one protest,--and one had been quite enough. "I'm really not much good at cabin building," he had said. "But I don't see why Bill shouldn't go work at it. I suppose you hired him for all camp work."

For an instant Virginia had stared at him in utter wonder, and then a swift look of grave displeasure had come into her face. "You forget, Harold, that it was Bill that brought you back. The thirty days he was hired for were gone long ago." But she had softened at once. "It's your duty to help him, and I'll help him too, if I can."

They had cut short logs, cleaned away the snow, and with the strength of their shoulders lifted the logs one upon another. With his ax Bill cunningly cut the saddles, carving them down so that the rainfall would drain down the corners rather than lie in the cavities and thus rot the timbers. Planks were cut for the roof, and tree boughs laid down for the floor.

The floor space was only seven feet long by eight wide--just enough for two bunks--and the walls were about as high as a sleeping-car berth. The work was done at the day's end.

In the next few days Bill mostly left the two together, trying to find his consolation in the wild life of the forest world outside the cabin. Harold had taken advantage of his absence and had made good progress: Virginia's period of readjustment was almost complete. She was prepared to make the joys of the future atone for the sorrows of the past.

Harold was still good-looking, she thought; his speech, though breaking careless at times, was attractive and charming; and most of all his love-making was more arduous than ever. In the city life that they planned he would fit in well; his uncle would help him to get on his feet. Fortunately for their peace of mind, they did not know the real truth,--that Kenly Lounsbury himself was at that moment struggling with financial problems that were about to overwhelm him. She told herself, again and again, that her life would be all that she had dreamed, that her fondest hopes had come true. A few weeks more of the snow and the waste places,--and then they could start life anew.

Yet there was something vaguely sinister, something amiss in the fact that she found herself repeating the thought so many times. It was almost as if she were trying to reassure herself, to drown out some whispering inner voice of doubt and fear. She couldn't get away from a haunting feeling that, in an indescribable way, her relations with Harold had changed.

His ardent speeches didn't seem to waken sufficient response in her own breast. She lacked the ecstasy, the wonder that she had known when, as a girl, she had first become engaged to Harold. They embarrassed her rather than thrilled her; they didn't seem quite real. Perhaps she had simply grown older. That was it: some of her girlish romance had died a natural death. She would give his man her love, would take his in return, and they would have the usual, normal happiness of marriage. All would come out well, once they got away from the silence and the snows.

Perhaps his large and extravagant speeches were merely out of place in the stark reality of the wilderness; they could thrill her as ever when she returned to her native city. Likely he could dance, after a little practice, as well as ever; fill his niche in society and give her all the happiness that woman has a right to expect upon this imperfect earth. There was certainly nothing to be distressed over now. They had been brought together as if by a miracle; any haunting doubt and fear, too subtle and intangible to put into words or even concrete thought, would quickly pass away.

She did not, however, go frequently into his arms. Someway, an embarrassment, a sense of inappropriateness and unrest always assailed her when he tried to claim the caresses that he felt were his due. And at first she could not find a plausible explanation for her reserve. Perhaps these tendernesses were also out of place in the grim reality of the North; more likely, she decided, it was a subtle sense, the guardian angel of her own integrity, warning her that too intimate relations with that man must be avoided, isolated and exiled as they were. "Not now, Harold," she would tell him. "Not until we're established again--at home."

Finally his habits and his actions did not quite meet with her approval. The first of these was only a little thing,--a failure to keep shaved. Shaving in these surroundings, without a mirror, with a battered old razor that had lain long in the cabin and had to be sharpened on a whetstone, where every drop of hot water used had to be laboriously heated on the stove, was an annoying chore at best: besides, there was no one to see him except Virginia and the guide. The stubble matted and grew on his lips and jowls. Bill, in contrast, shaved with greatest care every evening. A more important point was that his avoidance of his proper share of Bill's daily toil. He neither hewed wood nor drew water, nor made any apologies for the omission. Rather he gave the idea that Bill's services were due him by rights.

There was a little explosion, one afternoon, when he ventured to advise her in regard to her relations with Bill. The forester himself was cutting wood outside the cabin: they heard the mighty ring of his ax against the tough spruce. Virginia was at work preparing their simple evening meal; Harold was stretched on her own cot, the curtain drawn back, his arms under his head, his unshaven face curiously dark and unprepossessing.

"You must begin to keep on your own ground--with Bill, Virginia," he began in the silence.

Virginia turned to him, a wave of hot resentment flowing clear to her finger tips. If he had seen her flushed, intent face he would have backed ground quickly. Unfortunately he was gazing quietly out the window.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Wholly aware of her own displeasure, wondering at it and anxious to hide it, she was able to control her voice. Its tone gave no key to her thoughts. Harold answered her, still unwarned:

"I mean--keep him at his distance. He's a different sort from you and I. I don't mean he isn't all right, as far as his kind goes--but he hasn't had the advantages." Harold spoke tolerantly, patronizingly. "Those fellows are apt to take advantage of any familiarity. They're all right if you keep 'em in their place--but they're mighty likely to break lose from it any minute. I'm sorry you ever let him call you Virginia."

Virginia's eyes blazed. If it is one of the precepts of good breeding ever to let anger control the spirit, Virginia had made a breach indeed. Her little hands clenched, and she had a fierce and insane desire to beat those babbling lips with her fists. Then she struggled to regain her composure.

"Listen, Harold," she began at last coldly. "I don't care to hear any more such talk as that."

The man looked up then. He saw the righteous indignation in her face. He felt the rising tide of his own anger. "I'm only trying to warn you----" he began weakly.

"And I don't need or want any such warnings. I don't care what you think of Bill--for that matter, you can be sure that Bill doesn't care at all either--but I'll ask you to keep your thoughts to yourself. Oh, if you only knew--how good, how strong, how true he has been--how tender he has been to me----"

Harold was torn with jealous rage, and in his fury and malice he made the worst mistake of all. "I hope he hasn't been _too_ tender----" he suggested viciously.

But at once he was on his feet, begging her pardon. He knew that he had made a dangerous and regrettable mistake. She forgave him--forgiveness was as much a part of her as her graciousness or her loyalty--but she didn't immediately forget. And Harold sat long hours with smoldering eyes and clenched hands, a climbing fire and fury in his brain, while the malice and resentment and jealousy that he held toward Bill grew to hatred, bitter and black.

XVII

The addition of Harold to their number did not influence, for long, Virginia's old relations with Bill. They were comrades as ever; they talked and chatted around the little stove in the hushed nights; they played their favorite melodies on the battered phonograph, and they took the same joyous, exciting expeditions into the wild. These latter diversions were looked upon with no favor by Harold, but he couldn't see how he could reasonably interfere. Nor did he care, at first, to accompany them. He had no love for the snow-swept wastes.

The crust on the snow was steadily strengthening; most the days were clear and excessively cold. The journey could be undertaken soon. Only a few more days of the adventure remained.

Their excursions at first were a matter of pleasure only, but by one unexpected stroke from the sinister powers of the wild they were suddenly made necessary. Her first knowledge of the blow came when Bill entered her cabin to build the morning fire.

She had not yet risen. It had always been her practice to wait till the room was snug and warm before she dressed. She was asleep when Bill came in, and aroused by his footsteps, she was aware of the fleeting memory of unhappy dreams. She couldn't have told just what they were. It seemed to her that some unseen danger had been menacing her security,--that evil and dangerous forces were conspiring and making war against her. Hidden foes were in ambush, ready to pounce forth.

The danger seemed different and beyond that which she had faced every day: snow and cold and the other inanimate forces of the wild. And she was vastly relieved to hear Bill's voice calling her from sleep.

But the next instant her fears returned--not the ghastly fear of evil dreams but of actual and real disaster. It wasn't Bill's usual custom to waken her. He wanted her to spend as many as possible of the monotonous hours in sleep. There was a subdued quality in his voice, too, that once or twice she had heard before. She drew aside the curtain, far enough to see his face. There was no paleness, however, nor no fear, for all that his eyes were sober.

"You'd better get up as soon as you can, Virginia," he said. "We've got to take a real hunt to-day."

"Hunt? After meat?"

"Yes. We're face to face with a new problem. The pack came by last night--the wolf pack. As usual, when men are near, they didn't make a sound. I didn't hear them at all. And they got away with the big moose ham, hanging on the spruce. Stripped the bone clean."

"Then we're out of meat?"

"All except the little piece outside the door. We've been going through it pretty fast."

Bill spoke true. Their meat consumption had practically doubled since Harold had come. For all his lack of physical exercise, the latter was an unusually heavy eater.

"But we won't be able to find any now. The moose are gone----"

"We're not very likely to, that's certain; but it won't be a tragedy if we don't. It would only be an annoyance. It's true that we've got to have more supplies to start down--I don't believe we could make it through with what we have, considering the loss of this ham--but if it's necessary I can mush over to me Twenty-three Mile cabin and get the supplies I left over there. Harold tells me he hasn't a thing in his old place. However, I can do it, if we don't happen to pick up some meat to-day."

"We might track down the wolves, and get one of those----"

"Wolf meat hasn't a flavor you'd care for, I'm afraid. The Indians have been known to eat it, but they can but away beaver and tough old grizzly bear. Those things are starvation meats only. But if you care to, we can dash out and see if we can pick up a young caribou or a left-over moose. It's pleasant out to-day, anyway. It's rather warm--I believe there's going to be a change of weather."

"Good or bad?" the girl asked.

"Haven't had any government bulletins on that point, this morning. Probably bad. The weather in the North, Virginia, goes along the way it is a while, and then it gets worse."

She dressed, and at breakfast their exultation over their trip grew painful to Harold's ears. He announced his intention of going along.

Curiously, even Virginia did not receive this announcement with particular enthusiasm. It was not that her regard for Bill was any kin to that she held for Harold. Rather, it was a fear that Harold's presence might blunt the edge of the fine companionship she enjoyed with the woodsman. It would throw a personal element into an otherwise care-free and adventurous day. But she smiled at him, rather fondly.

"Just as you like, Harold."

They put on their snowshoes, their warmest wraps, and started gayly forth. Bill took rather a new course to-day. He bent his steps toward a stream that he called Creek Despair,--named for the fact that he had once held high hopes of finding his lost mine along its waters, only to meet an utter and hopeless failure. From the map he had judged that the lost claim lay somewhere along its course, but he had washed it from its mother springs clear to its mouth, finding scarcely the faintest traces in the pan. Because he had made such a tireless search in this particular section in previous years he had completely avoided it in the present adventure. Even on his pleasure trips with Virginia he had never forgotten his search: thus he had led her into more favorable regions where he might reasonably keep his eyes over for clews. Now that he had given up finding the claim--for this season, at least, and perhaps forever--one way was as good as another. And he remembered that an old caribou trail lay just beyond the stream on the steep hillside.

Bill led the way, mushing quietly an swiftly, and Virginia sped after him. The cold had brought a high color to her cheeks and a luster to her eyes; her nerves and muscles tingled with life. She was in wonderful spirits. Never she took a hundred paces without experiencing some sort of a little, heart-gladdening adventure.

Every manifestation of the forest life about her filled her with delight. The beauty of the winter woods, the absorbing record that the wild creatures had left in the snow, the long sweep of range and valley that she could glimpse from a still hilltop, all had their joy for her. With Bill she found something to delight her, something to make her laugh and quicken her blood, in every hundred yards of their course. Sometimes when the snow record was obscure, Bill stopped and explained, usually with a graphic story and unconscious humor that made the woods tingle and ring with her joyous, rippling laughter. More than often, however, she was able to piece our the mystery by herself.

Bill had a long and highly fanciful conversation with a little, black-tailed ermine that tried to run under his feet; he imitated--to Virginia's delight, the spectacle of a large and stiff cow moose pulling herself through the mud; he repeated for her the demented cries of the loons that they had sometimes heard from the still waters of Gray Lake. But he didn't forget that the main purpose of their expedition was to hunt. When at last they reached the caribou range he commanded silence.

Harold, silent in the others' gayety, immediately evinced a decided inclination to talk. He had not particularly enjoyed the excursion so far. In the first place he had no love either for the winter forest or the creatures that inhabited it; he would have been much more comfortable and at ease beside the cabin stove. He couldn't much with comfort at Bill's regular pace: he was rather out of breath and irritated after the first two hundred rods. Most of all, he was savagely conscious of the fact that Virginia was not giving him a rightful share of her attention. For the time being she seemed to have forgotten his presence. He was resentful, wishing disaster upon the hunt, eager to turn back.

"The rule is silence, from now on," Virginia answered his first remark. "Bill says we're in a game country."

The answer didn't satisfy him. But his heart suddenly leaped when Bill glanced back in warning and pointed to an entrancing wilderness picture, a hundred yards in front.

In a little glade and framed by the forest stood a large bull caribou, flashing and incredibly vivid against the snow. There is no animal in all North American fauna, even the bull elk, that presents a more splendid figure than that huge member of the deer family, Osburn's caribou. His mane is snow white, his back and sides a glossy brown, his eye flashes, and his antlers--in the season that he carries them--stream back like young trees. The bull did not stir out of his tracks, yet he gave the impression of infinite movement and pulsing, quivering vitality. He shook and threw his head, he lifted his fore foot nervously, and framed by the winter forest he was a sight never to forget. Incidentally he made a first-class target,--one that seemed impossible to miss.

"I'll take him," Harold shouted. "Let me take him."

In a flash Harold realized that here was his opportunity: in one stroke, one easy shot, he could turn the day's ignominy into triumph. He could focus Virginia's admiration upon himself. But the impulse had even deeper significances. It was not the way of sportsmen, wandering in file on mountain trails, to clamor for the first shot at game. Whatever is said is usually in solicitation to a companion to shoot; and Virginia felt oddly embarrassed. Harold's gun leaped to his shoulder.

But in the fields of sport there is always a penalty for extreme eagerness. There is a retributive justice for those that attempt to grasp opportunities. Harold was afraid that Bill might raise and shoot, thus rubbing him of his triumph, and he pressed back against the trigger just a fifth of a second too soon. The target looked too big to miss, but his bullet flung up the snow behind the animal.

The caribou's powerful limbs pushed out a mighty leap. Frenzied, Harold shot again; but his nerve was broken and his self-control blown to the four winds. The animal had gained the shelter of the thickets by now, and Harold's third and fourth shots went wild. Then he lowered his weapon with a curse.

It is part of the creed of a certain type of hunter to never admit a clean miss. "My sights are off," Harold shouted. "They didn't shoot within three feet of where I aimed. Damn such a gun--but I think I wounded him the third shot. You'll find him dead if you follow him long enough."