Chapter 15

The fire had evidently burned down and out. He struggled to open his eyes, then gazed around the walls in search of the opening in the door. But he could not see the reflection of an ember. He fought his way to his feet.

His fumbling hands encountered the log walls; he then groped about till he found the plank door. His gloved hands smarted, but their sense of touch did no seem blunted. He had never known a darker night! Now that he found the hole in the door, it was curious that he could not see one star gleaming through. But perhaps clouds had overspread.

A measure of heat against his face told him that coals were still glowing under the ashes, yet he might be able to creep through. It was worth a trial: the smoke in the cabin was still almost unbearable. His muscles were more at his command now; with a great lurch he sprang up and thrust head and shoulders through the opening.

The hot ashes punished his face, and his hand encountered hot coals as he thrust them through. Yet with a mighty effort he pushed on until his wrists touched the icy snow. He knew that he was safe.

He stood erect, scarcely believing in his deliverance. And the snow had crusted during the night; it would almost hold him up without snowshoes. As soon as the light came, he could mush on toward his Twenty-three Mile cabin. It would be a cold and exhausting march, but he could make it. The night was bitter now, assailing him like a scourge the moment he left the warm cabin; and the temperature would continue to fall until after dawn. The wind still blew the snow dust--a stinging lash from the north and west--and it had brought the cold from the Bering Sea.

It was curious that a cloudy night could be so cold. Yet when he opened his eyes he could not see the gleam of a star. The red coals of the fire, too, were smothered and obscured in ashes. He stepped toward them, intending to rake them up for such heat as they could yield. Presently he halted, gazing with fascinated horror at the ground.

He was suddenly struck with a ghastly and terrible possibility. He could not give it credence, yet the thought seemed to seize and chill him like a great cold. But he would know the truth in a moment. It was always his creed: not to spare himself the truth. Surely it would simply be an interesting story--this of his great fear--when he returned with his backload of supplies to Virginia. Something to talk about, in the painful and embarrassed moments that remained before Virginia and her lover went out of his sight forever.

His hand groped for a match. In his eagerness it broke off at his fingers as he tried to strike it. But soon he found another.

He heard it crack in the silence, but evidently it was a dud! The darkness before his eyes remained unbroken.

Filled with a sick fear, he removed his glove and passed his hand over the upheld match. There was no longer a possibility for doubt. The tiny flame smarted his flesh.

"Blind!" he cried. "Out here in the snow and the forest--blind!"

It was true. The pungent wood smoke had done a cruel work. Until time should heal the wounds of the tortured lenses, Bill was blind.

XXIII

Standing motionless in the dreadful gloom of blindness, insensible to the growing cold, Bill made himself look his situation in the face. His mind was no longer blunt and dull. It was cool, analytic; he balanced one thing against another; he judged the per cent. of his chance. At present it did not occur to him to give up. It is never the way of the sons of the wilderness to yield without a fight. They know life in all its travail and pain, but also they know the Cold and Darkness and Fear that is death. No matter how long the odds are, the wilderness creature fights to his last breath. Bill had always fought; his life had been a great war of which birth was the reveille and death would be retreat.

He was wholly self-contained, his mind under perfect discipline. He would figure it all out and seek the best way through. Long, weary miles of trackless forest stretched between him and safety. There was no food in this cabin, no blankets; and the fire was out. His Twenty-three Mile cabin was only slightly less distant than the one he had left. And through those endless drifts and interminable forests the blind, unaided, could not find their way.

He could conceive of no circumstances whereby Virginia and Harold would come to look for him short of another day and night. They did not expect him back until the end of the present day; they could not possible start forth to seek him until another daylight. And this man knew what the forest and the cold would do to him in twenty-four hours. Already the cold was getting to him.

For all that he had no food, he knew that if he could keep warm he could survive until help came. Yet men cannot fast in these winter woods as they can in the South. The simple matter of inner fuel is a desperate and an essential thing. But he had no blankets, and without a fire he would die, speedily and surely. He didn't deceive himself on this point. He knew the northern winter only too well. A few hours of suffering, then a slow warmth that stole through the veins and was the herald of departure. He had been warmed through in the cabin, but that warmth would soon pass away. He wondered if he could rebuild the fire.

He was suddenly shaken with terror at the thought that already he did not know in what direction the fire and the cabin lay. He had become turned around when he strode out to light the match. Instantly he began to search for the cabin door. He went down on his hands in the snow, groping, then moved in a slow, careful circle. Just one little second's bewilderment, one variation from the circle, and he might lose the cabin altogether. That meant _death!_ It could mean no other thing.

But in a moment the smoke blew into his face, and he advanced into the ashes. The next moment, by circling again, he found the cabin door. He leaned against it, breathing hard.

"It won't do, Bill," he told himself. "Hold steady--for one minute more."

A spruce log, the last segment of the tree he had cut, lay somewhere a few feet from his door. But he remembered it had fallen into a thicket of evergreen: could he find it now? The log would not burn until it was cut up with his ax: the ax would be hard to find in the pressing darkness. Even if he found it, even if he could cut kindling with his knife, he couldn't maintain a blaze. Building and mending a fire with green timber is a cruel task even with vision; and he knew as well as he knew the fact of his own life that it would be wholly impossible to the blind.

Then what was left? Only a deeper, colder darkness than this he knew now. Death was left--nothing else. In an hour, perhaps in a half-hour, possibly not until the night had gone and come again with its wind and its chill, the end would be the same. There was no light to guide him home, no landmarks that he could see.

Then his thought seized upon an idea so fantastic, seemingly so impossible of achievement, that at first he could not give it credence. His mind had flashed to those unfortunates that had sometimes lost their way in the dark chambers of an underground cavern and thence to that method by which they guarded against this danger. These men carried strings, unwinding them as they entered the cavern and following them out. He had not carried a string-end here, but he had made a trail! His snowshoe tracks probably were not yet obliterated under the wind-blown snow. Could he feel his way along them back to the cabin?

The miles were many and long, but he wouldn't have to creep on hands and knees all the way. Perhaps he could walk, stooped, touching the depressions in the snow at every step. In his own soul he did not believe that he had one chance in a hundred of making it through to safety. Crawling, creeping, groping from track to track would wear him out quickly. But was there any other course for him? If he didn't try that, would he have any alternative other than to lie still and die? He wasn't sure that he could even find the tracks in the snow, but if he were able to encircle the cabin at a radius of fifty feet he could not miss them. He groped about at the side of the cabin for his snowshoes.

He found them in a minute, then walked straight as he could fifty feet out from the door. Once more he went on hands and feet, groping in the icy snow. He started to make a great circle.

Fifteen feet farther he felt a break in the even surface. The snow had been so soft and his shoes had sunk so deep that the powdered flakes the wind had strewn during the night had only half filled his tracks. He started to follow them down.

He walked stooped, groping with one hand, and after an endless time his fingers dipped into dry, warm ashes.

Only for a fraction of a second did he fail to understand. And in the darkness and the silence the man's breath caught in what was almost a sob. He realized that he had followed the tracks in the wrong direction, and had traced them straight to the cabin door that he had just left.

It was only a matter of a hundred feet, but it was tragedy here. Once more he started on the out-trail.

He soon found that he could not walk in his present stooped position. Human flesh is not build to stand such a strain as that. Before he had gone half a mile sharp pains began to attack him, viciously, in the back and thighs. For all his magnificent strength--largely returned to him in his hours of rest--he could not progress in this position more than half a mile farther.

He took another course. He would walk ahead five paces, then drop down and grope again for the tracks. Sometimes he found them at once, often he had to go on his hands and feet and start to circle. Then, finding the trail, he would mush on for five steps more.

Oh, the way was cruel! He could not see to avoid the stinging lash of the spruce needles, the cruel blows of the branches. Already the attempt began to partake of a quality of nightmare,--a blind and stumbling advance over infinite difficulties through the infinity of time. It was like some torment of an evil Hereafter,--eternal, remorseless, wholly without hope. Many times he sprawled at full length, and always it was harder to force himself to his feet.

Five steps on, halting and groping, then five steps more: thus the lone figure journeyed through the winter forest. The seconds dragged into the minutes, the minutes into hours. The cold deepened; likely it was the bitter hour just after dawn. The hand with which he groped for the tracks had lost all power of feeling.

He could not judge distance or time. Already it seemed to him that he had been upon the journey endless hours. Because of the faint grayness before his eyes he judged it was broad daylight: perhaps already the day was giving over to darkness. He didn't know how far he had come. The only thought he had left was always to count his terrible five steps, and count five more.

Nothing else mattered. He had for the moment at least lost sight of all other things. His thought was not so clear now; it seemed to him that the forest was no longer silent. There were confused murmurings in his ear, a curious confusion and perplexity in his brain. It was hard to remember who he was and where he was going. Just to count his steps, stoop, grope and find the snowshoe trail, then journey on again.

He tried to increase the number of steps between his gropings--first six, then seven. Above seven, however, the trail was so hard to find that time was lost rather than gained. Yes, he thought it was still daylight. Sometimes he seemed to feel the sunlight on his face. He was not cold now, and even the pain was gone from his hips and thighs.

He was mistaken in this, however. The pain still sent its fearful messages to his brain, but in his growing stupor he was no longer aware of them. Even his hand didn't hurt him now. He wondered if it were frozen; yet it was still sensitive to the depressions in the drifts. It could still grope through the snow and find the tracks.

"I can't go on!" his voice suddenly spoke aloud. "I can't go--any more."

The words seemed to come from an inner man, without volition on his part. He was a little amazed to hear them. Yet the time had not yet come to stop and rest. The tracks still led him on.

Always, it seemed to him, he had to grope longer to find the indentations in the snow. The simple reason was that the motor centers of his brain had begun to be impaired by cold and exhaustion, and he could no longer walk in a straight line. He found out, however, that the trail usually lay to the right rather than to his left. He was taking a shorter step with his left than with his right--the same tendency that often makes a tried woodsman walk in a great circle--and he thus bore constantly to the left. Soon it became necessary to drop his formula down to six, then to the original five.

On and on, through the long hours. But the fight was almost done. Exhaustion and hunger, but cold most of all, were swiftly breaking him down. He advanced with staggering steps.

The indentations were more shallow now. The point where he had begun to break through the snow crust, because of the softening snow, was passed long ago: only because he was in a valley sheltered from the wind were the tracks manifest at all.

The time came at last when he could no longer get upon his feet. And now, like a Tithonus who could not die, he crawled along the snowshoe trail on is hands and knees. "I can't go on," he told himself. "I'm through!" Yet always his muscles made one movement more.

Suddenly he missed the trail. His hand groped in vain over the white crust. He crept on a few more feet, then as ever, began to circle. Soon his hand found an indentation in the snow crust, and he started to creep forward again.

But slowly the conviction grew upon him that he was crawling in a small circle,--the very circle he had just made. Some way, he had missed the snowshoe trail. He did not remember how on his journey out he had once been obliged to backtrack a hundred yards and start on at a new angle. He had merely come to that point from which he had turned back. He could not find the trail because he was at its end.

He could not remember that it was his own trail. How he came here, his purpose and his destination, were all lost and forgotten in the intricate mazes of the past. He had but one purpose, one theme,--to keep to his trail an journey on. He would make a bigger circle. He started to creep forward in the snow.

But as he waited, on hands and knees in the drifts, the Spirit of Mercy came down to him and gave him one moment of lucid thought. All at once full consciousness returned to him in a sweep as of a tide, and he remembered all that had occurred. He saw all things in their exact relations. And now he knew his course.

No longer would he struggle on, slave to the remorseless instinct of self-preservation. Was there any glory, any happiness at his journey's end that would pay him for the agony of one more forward step? He had waged a mighty battle; but now--in a flash--he realized that the spoil for which he had fought was not worth one moment of his hours of pain. He remembered Virginia, Harold, the mind and its revelation: he recalled that his mission had been merely an expedition after provisions so that the two could go out of his life. Was there any reason why he should fight for life, only to find death?

There was nothing in the distant cabin worth having now. He was suddenly crushed with bitterness at the thought that he had made this mighty effort for a goal not worth attaining. If he struggled on, even to success, the only thing that waited him was a moment of farewell with Virginia and the vision of her slipping away from him, into her lover's arms. When she departed only the forest and the darkness would be left, and he had these here.

It would be different if he felt Virginia still needed him. If he could win her any happiness by fighting on, the struggle would still be worth while. But she had Harold to show her the way through the winter woods. It was true that they would have to rely on the fallen grizzly for meat: an uncomfortable experience, but nothing to compare with any further movement through the cruel drifts. Harold would come back and claim the mine; perhaps he would even erect his own notice before his departure, and the Rutheford family would know the full fruits of their crime of long ago. But it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered now was rest and sleep.

Slowly he sank down in the snow.

XXIV

When the Chinook wind, moving northwest at a faster pace than the waterfowl move south, struck the home cabin, Virginia's first thought was for Bill. She heard it come, faint at first, then blustering, just as Bill had heard it; she saw it rock down a few dead trees, and she listened to its raging complaints at the window.

"I'll show you my might," it seemed to say. "You have dared my silent places, come into my fastness, but now I will have revenge. I'll pay you--in secret ways that you don't know."

It so happened that Harold's first thought was also of Bill. It was a curious fact that his heart seemed to leap as if the wind had smitten it. He knew what the Chinook could do to a snow crust. He estimated that Bill was about halfway between the two cabins, and he didn't know about the little, deserted cabin where Bill could find refuge during the night. His eyes gleamed with high anticipations.

Harold's thought was curiously intertwined with the remembrance of the dark cavern he had entered yesterday, the gravel laden with gold. If indeed all things went as it seemed likely that they would go, Bill would never carry the word of his find down to the recorder's office. It was something to think of, something to dream about. Yellow gold,--and no further trouble in seeking it. Such a development would also save the labor of further planning. It was a friend of his, this wind at the window.

"Won't this Chinook melt the snow crust?" Virginia asked him.

He started. He hadn't realized that this newfound sweetheart of his knew the ways of Chinook winds and snow crusts. "Oh, no," he responded. "Why should it? Wind makes crusts, not softens them."

Virginia was satisfied for the moment. Then her mind went back to certain things Bill had told her on one of their little expeditions. Strangely, she took Bill's word rather than Harold's.

"But this is a warm wind, Harold," she objected. "If the crust is melted Bill can't possibly get through to his Twenty-three Mile cabin to-night. What will he do?"

"He'll make it through. The crust won't melt that fast, if it melts at all. He may have a long, hard tramp, though. Don't worry, Virginia, he'll be coming in to-morrow night--with his back loaded with food."

"I only wish I hadn't let him go." The girl's tone was heavy and dull.

"But we have to have supplies----"

"We could have gone out on that grizzly meat. It was so foolish to risk his life, and I had a presentiment too."

He was glad that she had had a presentiment. It tended to verify his fondest dreams. But he laughed at her, and falling into one of his most brilliant moods, tried to entertain her. Her interest was hard to hold to-day. Her mind kept dwelling on Bill, mushing on through the softening snow, and her eyes kept seeking the window.

She cooked lunch and burned every dish. Then, no longer able to deny her own fears, she ventured out in the snow to test its crust. She put on her snowshoes, starting a little way down Bill's trail. She was white-faced and sick of heart when she returned.

"Harold, I'm worried," she cried. "I tried to walk in this snow--and you can talk about Bill making it through all you want, but I won't believe you. A hundred steps has tired me out."

He was beginning to be a little angry with her fears. And he made the mistake of answering rather impatiently.

"Well, what can you do about it? he's gone, hasn't he, and we can't call him back."

"I suppose not. But if I--we--were out there in that soft snow, and he was here, he'd find something to do about it! He'd come racing out there to us--bringing food an blankets----"

"Oh, he'd be a hero!" Harold scorned. "Listen, Virginia--there's nothing in the world to fear. The Chinook sprang up at nine----"

"Oh, it was much later than that."

"I looked at my watch," the man lied. "He was only well started then; he's woodsman enough to turn around and come back if there's danger. You may see him before dark."

"I pray that I will! And if--if--anything has happened to him----"

All at once the tears leaped to her eyes. She couldn't restrain them any more than the earth can constrain the rain. She turned into her own curtained-off portion of the cabin so that Harold could not see.

The afternoon that followed was endlessly long, and lonely. Her heart sank at the every complaint of the wind, and she dreaded the fall of the shadows. Three times she thrilled with inexpressible joy at a sound on the threshold, but always it was just the wind, mocking her distress.

She saw the sinister, northern night growing between the spruce trees, and she dreaded it as never before. She cooked a meager supper--the supplies were almost gone--but she had no heart to sit up and talk with Harold. At last she went behind her curtain, hoping to forget her fears in sleep.

All through the hours of early night she slept only at intervals: dozing, coming to herself in starts and jerks, and dreaming miserably. The hours passed, and still Bill did not return.

Her imagination was only too vivid. In her thoughts she could see this stalwart woodsman of hers camping somewhere in the snowdrifts, blanketless, staying awake through the bitter night to mend the fire, and perhaps in trouble. She knew something of the northern cold that was assailing him, hovering, waiting for the single instant when his fire should go down or when he should drop off to sleep. Oh, it was patient, remorseless. He was likely hungry, too, and despairing.

She wakened before dawn; and the icy, winter stars were peering through the cabin window. Surely Bill had returned by now: yet it would hardly be like him to come in and not let her know of his safe return. He had always seemed so well to understand her fears, he was always so thoughtful. There was no use trying to go back to sleep until she knew for certain. She slipped from her bed onto the floor of the icy cabin.

She missed the cozy warmth of the fire; but, shivering, she slipped quickly into her clothes. Then she lighted a candle and put on her snowshoes. She mushed across the little space of snow to the men's cabin.

The east was just beginning to pale: the stars seemed lucid as ever in the sky. There was a labyrinth of them, uncounted millions that gleamed and twinkled in every little rift between the spruce trees. Even the stars of lesser magnitude that through the smoke of her native city had never revealed themselves were out in full array to-night. And the icy air stabbed like knives the instant she left the cabin door. It was the coldest hour she had ever known.

She knocked on Harold's door, then waited for a reply. But the cabin was ominously silent. Her fears increased: she knew that if Bill were present he would have wakened at her slightest sound. He would have seemed to know instinctively that she was there. She knocked again, louder.

"Who's there?" a sleepy voice answered. Virginia felt a world of impatience at the dull, drowsy tones. Harold had been able to sleep! He wasn't worrying over Bill's safety.

"It's I--Virginia. I'm up and dressed. Did Bill come back?"