Chapter 9

"Won't you find him for me, Bill?" she cried. "You are so strong, so capable--you can do anything, anything you try. Won't you find him and bring him back to me?"

The man looked down at her, and his face was ashen. Perhaps it was only the effect of the Northern Lights that made his eyes seem so dark and strange.

XIII

One clear, icy night a gale sprang up in the east, and Virginia and Bill fell to sleep to the sound of its complaint. It swept like a mad thing through the forest, shattering down the dead snags, shaking the snow from the limbs of the spruce, roaring and soughing in the tree tops, and blustering, like an arrogant foe, around the cabin walls. And when Bill went forth for his morning's woodcutting he found that his snowshoes did not break through the crust.

The wind had blown and crusted the drifts during the night. But it did not mean that he and his companion could start at once down the settlements. The crust was treacherous and possibly only temporary. The clouds had overspread again, and any moment the snowfall might recommence. The fact remained, however, that it was the beginning of the end. Probably in a few more weeks, perhaps days, it would be safe to start their journey. Bill was desolated by the thought.

The morning, however, could not be wasted. It permitted him to make a dash over to a certain stream further down toward the Yuga River in search of any sign of the lost mine. The stream itself was frozen to blue steel, and the snow had covered it to the depth of several feet, but there might be blazes on the trees or the remnants of a broken cabin to indicate the location of the lost claim. He had searched this particular stream once before, but it was one of the few remaining places that he hadn't literally combed from the springs out of which it flowed to its mouth. He started out immediately after breakfast.

It was not to be, however, that Bill should make the search that day. When about two miles from the cabin he saw, through a rift in the distant trees, a distinct trail in the snow.

It was too far to determine what it was. Likely it was only the track of a wild animal,--a leaping caribou that cut deep into the drifts, or perhaps a bear, tardy in hibernating. No one could blame him, he thought, if he didn't go to investigate. It was a matter he would not even have to mention to Virginia. He stood a moment in the drifts, torn by an inner struggle.

Bill was an extremely sensitive man and his senses were trained even to the half-psychic, mysterious vibrations of the forest life, and he had a distant premonition of disaster. All of his fondest hopes, his dreams, all of the inner guardians of his own happiness told him to keep to his search, to journey on his way and forget he had seen the tracks. Every desire of Self spoke in warning to him. But Bill Bronson had a higher law than self. Long ago, in front of the ramshackle hotel in Bradleyburg, he had given a promise; and he had reaffirmed it in the gleam of the Northern Lights not many nights before. There was no one to hold him to his pledged word. There were none that need know; no one to whom he must answer but his own soul. Yet even while he stood, seemingly hesitating between the two courses, he already knew what he must do.

It was impossible for Bill to be false to himself. He could not disobey the laws of his own being. He would be steadfast. He turned and went over to investigate the tracks.

He was not in the least surprised at their nature. Those that had ordained his destiny had never written that he should know the good fortune of finding them merely the tracks of animals. The trail was distinctly that of snowshoes, and it led away toward the Yuga River.

Bill glanced once, then turned back toward his cabin. He mushed the distance quickly. Virginia met him with a look of surprise.

"I'm planning a longer dash than I had in mind at first," he told her. "It's important----" he hesitated, and a lie came to his lips. But it was not such a falsehood as would be marked, in ineffaceable letters, against him on the Book of Judgement. He spoke to save the girl any false hopes. "It's about my mine," he said, "and I'll not likely be back before to-morrow night. It might take even longer than that. Would you be afraid to stay alone?"

"There's nothing to be afraid of here," the girl replied. "But it will be awfully lonesome without you. But if you think you've got a real clew, I wouldn't ask you to stay."

"It's a real clew." The man spoke softly, rather painfully. She wondered why he did not show more jubilation or excitement. "You've got your pistol and you can bolt the door. I've got plenty of wood cut. There's kindling too--and you can light a fire in the morning. If you put a big log on to-night you'll have glowing coals in the morning. It will be cold getting up, and I wish I could be here to build your fire. But I don't think I can."

She gave him a smile and was startled sober in the middle of it. All at once she saw that the man was pale. He had, then, found a clew of real importance. "Go ahead, of course," she told him. "We'll fix some lunch for you right away."

He took a piece of dried moose meat, a can of beans and another of marmalade, and these, with a number of dried biscuits, would comprise his lunch. "Be careful of yourself," he told her at parting. "If I don't get back to-morrow, don't worry. And pray for me."

She told him she would, but she did not guess the context of the prayer his own heart asked. His prayer was for failure, rather than success.

Following his own tracks, he went directly back to the mysterious snowshoe trail. He followed swiftly down it, anxious to know his fate at the first possible instant. He saw that the trail was fresh, made that morning; he had every reason to think that he could overtake the man who had made it within a few hours.

He was not camped on the Yuga,--whoever had come mushing through the silences that morning. From the river to that point where he had found the tracks was too great a distance for any musher to cover in the few hours since dawn. There was nothing to believe but that the stranger's camp lay within a few miles of his own. He decided, from his frequent stops, that the man had been hunting; there was nothing to indicate that he was following a trap line. The frequent tracks in the snow, however, indicated an unusually good tracking country. He wondered if strangers--Indians, most likely--had come to poach on his domain.

He did not catch up with the traveler in the snow. The man had mushed swiftly. But shortly after the noon hour his keen eyes saw a wisp of smoke drifting through the trees, and his heart leaped in his breast. He pushed on, emerging all at once upon a human habitation.

It was a lean-to, rather than a cabin. Some logs had been used in its construction, but mostly its walls were merely frames, thatched heavily with spruce boughs. A fire smoldered in front. And his heart leaped with indescribable relief when he saw that neither of the two men that were squatted in the lean-to mouth was the stranger that had passed his camp six years before.

Bill had old acquaintance with the type of man that confronted him now. One of them was Joe Robinson,--an Indian who had wintered in Bradleyburg a few years before. Bill recognized him at once; he came of a breed that outwardly, at least, changes little before the march of time. There was nothing about him to indicate his age. He might be thirty--perhaps ten years older. Bill felt fairly certain, however, that he was not greatly older. In spite of legend to the contrary, a forty-year old Indian is among the patriarchs, and pneumonia or some other evil child of the northern winter, claims him quickly.

Joe's blood, he remembered, was about three-fourths pure. His mother had been a full-blooded squaw, his father a breed from the lake region to the east. He was slovenly as were most of his kind; unclean; and the most distinguished traits about him were not to his credit,--a certain quality of craft and treachery in his lupine face. His yellow eyes were too close together; his mouth was brutal. His companion, a half-breed with a dangerous mixture of French, was a man unknown to Bill,--but the latter did not desire a closer acquaintance. He was a boon companion and a mate for Joe.

Yet both of them possessed something of that strange aloofness and dignity that is a quality of all their people. They showed no surprise at Bill's appearance. In these mighty forests human beings were as rare a sight as would be an aeroplane to African savages, yet they glanced at him seemingly with little interest. It was true, however, that these men knew of his residence in this immediate section of Clearwater. The loss of his father's mine was a legend known all over that particular part of the province; they knew that he sought it yearly, clear up to the trapping season. When the snows were deep, they were well aware that he ran trap lines down the Grizzly River. Human inhabitants of the North are not so many but that they keep good track of one another's business.

But they had a better reason still for knowing that he was near. The prevailing winds blew down toward them from Bill's camp, and sometimes, through the unfathomable silence of the snowy forest, they had heard the faint report of his loud-mouthed gun.

It is doubtful that a white man--even a resident of the forest such as Bill--could ever have heard as much. He was a woodsman, but he did not inherit, straight from a thousand woodsman ancestors, perceptions almost as keen as those of the animals themselves. As it was, he hadn't had a chance to guess their presence. The wind always carried the sound of their rifles away from him rather than toward him; besides, their guns were of smaller caliber and had a less violent report.

Last of all, they had been careful about shooting. For a certain very good reason they had no desire for Bill to discover their presence. There are certain laws, among the northern men, as to trapping rights. Nothing can be learned in the provincial statute books concerning these laws. Mostly they are unwritten; but their influence is felt clear beyond the Arctic Circle. They state quite clearly that when a man lays down a line of traps, for a certain distance on each side of him the district is his, and no one shall poach on his preserves. And these Indians had lately been partners in an undertaking to clear the whole region of its furs.

They had no idea but that Bill had discovered their trap lines and had come to make trouble. For all that they sat so still and aloof, Joe's mind had flashed to his rifle in the corner of the lean-to, six feet away. He rather wished it was nearer. His friend Pete the Breed was considerably reassured by the feel of his long, keen-bladed knife against his thigh. Knives, after all, were very effective at close work. The two of them could really afford to be insolent.

And they were considerably amazed at Bill's first question. He had left the snowshoe trail that evidently passed in front of the shelter and had crossed the snow crust to the mouth of the lean-to. "Did one of you make those tracks out there?" he asked. He felt certain that one of them had. He only asked to make sure.

There was a quality in Bill's voice that usually, even from such gentry as this, won him a quick response. Joe's mind gave over the insolence it had planned. But for all that Bill's inner triumph was doomed to be short-lived.

"No," Joe grunted. "Our partner made it. Follow it down--pretty soon find another cabin."

XIV

Bill only had to turn to see the snowy roof of the cabin, two hundred yards away down the glade. Ordinarily his sharp eyes would have discerned it long before: perhaps the same inner spirit, encountered before this eventful day, was trying to protect him still. He turned without a word, and no man could have read the expression on his wind-tanned face. He mushed slowly on to his journey's end.

It was a new cabin, just erected, and smoke drifted faintly from its chimney. Bill rapped on the door.

"Come along in," some one answered gruffly. Bill removed his snowshoes, and the door opened before his hand.

He did not have to glance twice at the bearded face to know in whose presence he stood. His inner senses told him all too plainly. Changed as he was, there was no chance in heaven or earth for a mistake. This was Harold Lounsbury, the same man who had passed his camp years before, the same lost lover that Virginia had come to find.

Even now, Bill thought, it was not too late to withdraw. He could pretend that he had came to quarrel in regard to his trapping rights. After one glance he knew that, from the standard of good sense, there was a full reason for withdrawal. In the years he might even reconcile his own conscience to the act. Harold leaned forward, but he didn't get up to meet him.

Bill scarcely noticed the man's furtive preparations for self-defense. His rifle lay across his knees, and ostensibly he was in the act of cleaning it, but in reality he was holding it ready for Bill's first offensive move. He had known of Bill of old; in the circle in which he moved--lost utterly to the sight of the men of Bradleyburg--there were stories in plenty about this stalwart woodsman. For days--ever since he had come here with his Indians and laid down his trap line--he had dreaded just such a visit. The real reason for Bill's coming did not even occur to him.

Bill saw that the man was frightened. His lips were loose, his eyes nervous and bright, his hands did not hold quite steady. But all these observations were at once obliterated and forgotten in the face of a greater, more profound discovery. In one scrutinizing glance the truth swept him like a flood. Here was one that the wilderness had crushed in its brutal grasp. As far as Bill's standards were concerned, it had broken and destroyed him.

This did not mean that his health was wasted. His body was strong and trim: except for a suspicious network of red lines in his cheeks and a yellow tinge to the whites of his eyes, he would have seemed in superb physical condition. The evidence lay rather in the expression of his face, and most of all in the surroundings in which he lived.

He had been, to some extent at least, a man of refinement and culture when he had passed through Bill's camp so long ago. He had been clean-shaven except for a small mustache; courteous, rather patronizing but still friendly. Now he was like a surly beast. His eyes were narrow and greedy,--weasel eyes that at once Bill mistrusted and disliked. A scowl was at his lips, no more were they in a firm, straight line. The light and glory of upright manhood, if indeed he had ever possessed it, had gone from him now. He was a friend and a companion of Joe and Pete: in a measure at least he was of their own kind.

When the white man chooses to descend, even the savages of the forest cannot keep pace with him. Bill knew now why Harold had never written home. The wilderness had seized him body and soul, but not in the embrace of love with which it held Bill. Obviously he had taken the line of least resistance to perdition. He had forgotten the world of men; in reality he was no longer of it. Bill read the truth--a familiar truth in the North--in his crafty, stealthy, yet savage face.

He was utterly unkempt and slovenly. His coarse beard covered his lips, his matted hair was dull with dirt, his skin was scarcely less dark than that of the Indians themselves. The nails on his hands were foul; the floor of the house was cluttered with rubbish and filth. It was a worthy place, this new-built cabin! Even the desolate wastes outside were not comparable with this.

Yet leering through his degeneracy, his identity could not be mistaken. Here was the man Virginia had pierced the North to seek.

Harold removed his pipe. "What do you want?" he asked.

For a moment Bill did not answer. His thoughts were wandering afar. He remembered, when Harold had passed his camp, there had been something vaguely familiar, a haunting resemblance to a face seen long before. The same familiarity recurred to him now. But he pushed it away and bent his mind to the subject in hand. "You're Lounsbury, of course," he said.

"Sure." This man had not forgotten his name, in the years that he was lost to men. "I ask you again--what do you want?"

"You've been living on the Yuga. You came up here to trap in my territory."

The man's hands stirred, ever so little, and the rifle moved on his knees. "You don't own this whole country." Then he seemed to take courage from Bill's impassive face. He remembered his stanch allies--Pete and Joe. "And what if I did?"

"You knew I trapped here. You brought up Joe Robinson and a breed with you. You meant to clean up this winter--all the furs in the country."

Harold's face drew in a scowl. "And what are you goin' to do about it?"

"The queer thing is----" and Bill spoke quietly, slowly, "I'm not going to do anything about it--now."

Harold's crafty eyes searched his face. He wondered if Bill was afraid--some way it didn't fit into the stories that he had heard of him that this woodsman should be afraid. But he might as well go on that supposition as any other. "Maybe it's a good thing," he said. And for an instant, something of his lost suavity of speech came back to him. "Then to what--do I owe the honor of this visit?"

Bill sighed and straightened. The struggle within himself had, an instant before, waged more furiously than ever. Why should he not leave this man to his filthy cabin and his degeneracy and never let Virginia know of their meeting? He wondered if such had been his secret plan, concealed in the further recesses of his mind, when he had told her to-day's expedition concerned his mine,--so that he could withdraw if he wished. In this course most likely lay the girl's ultimate happiness, certainly his own. He could steal back; no one would ever know the truth. The man had sunk beneath her; even he, Bill, was more worthy of her than this degenerate son of cities and culture.

Yet who was he to dare to take into his own hands the question of Virginia's destiny? He had promised to bring her lost lover back to her; the fact that he was no longer the man she had known could be only a subterfuge to quiet his own conscience. Besides, the last sentence that the man had spoken had been singularly portentous. For the instant he had fallen into his own native speech, and the fact offered tremendous possibilities. Could it be that the old days were not entirely forgotten, that some of the virtues that Virginia had loved in him still dwelt in his degenerate hulk, ready to be wakened again? He had heard of men being redeemed. And all at once he knew his course.

So intent was he upon his thoughts that he scarcely heard the sound of steps in the snow outside the cabin door, then the noise of some one on the threshold in the act of removing snowshoes.

The task that confronted him now was that, no more and no less, to which he had consecrated his life,--to bring happiness to the girl he loved. There was work to do with this man. But even yet he might be redeemed; with Bill's aid his manhood might return to him. His own love for the girl tore at his heart, the image of his life stretched lonely and drear before him, yet he could not turn aside.

"I didn't come to see you about trapping. I came--about Virginia Tremont."

His eyes were on Harold's face, and he saw the man start. He had not forgotten the name. Just for an instant his face was stark pale and devoid of expression. "Virginia!" he cried. "My God, what do you know about her?"

But he didn't wait the answer. All at once he looked, with an annoyance and anxiety that at first Bill could not understand, toward the door of the cabin. The door knob slightly turned.

Bill wheeled, with a sense of vast and impending drama. Harold swore, a single brutal oath, then laughed nervously. An Indian squaw--for all her filth an untidiness a fair representative of her breed--pushed through the door and came stolidly inside. She walked to the back of the cabin and began upon some household task.

Bill's face was stern as the gray cliffs of the Selkirks when he turned again to Harold. "Is that your woman?" he asked simply.

Harold did not reply. He had not wished this man, emissary from his old acquaintances of his native city, to know about Sindy. He retained that much pride, at least. But the answer to Bill's question was too self-evident for him to attempt denial. He nodded, shrugging his shoulders.

Bill waited an instant; and his voice when he spoke again was singularly low and flat. "Did you marry her?"

Harold shrugged again. "One doesn't marry squaws," he replied.

Once more the silence was poignant in the wretched cabin. "I came to find Harold Lounsbury, a gentleman," Bill went on in the same strange, flat voice, "and I find--a squaw man."

* * * * *

Bill realized at once that this new development did not in the least affect his own duty. His job had been to find Harold and return him to Virginia's arms. It was not for him to settle the girl's destiny. For all he had spent his days in the great solitudes of nature he knew enough of life to know that women do not give their love to angels. Rather they love their men as much for their weaknesses as for their virtues. This smirch in Harold's life was a question for the two of them to settle between them.

It did, however, complicate the work of regeneration. Bill had known squaw men before, and few of them had ever regenerated. Usually they were men that could not stand the test of existence by their own toil: either from failure or weakness they took this sordid line of least resistance. From thence on they did not struggle down the trap line in the bitter winter days. They laid comfortably in their cabins and their squaws tended to such small matters. It was true that the squaws wore out quickly; sometimes they needed beating, and at about forty they withered and died, or else the blizzard caught them unprotected in the forest,--and then it became necessary to select another. This was an annoyance, but not a tragedy. One was usually as faithful and as industrious as another.

It was perfectly evident that Sindy had been at work setting out traps. Bill stared at the woman and for the moment he did not see the little sparks growing to flame in Harold's eyes.

"What did you say?" he asked, menacing. He had caught a word that has come to be an epithet in the North.

But by taking it up Harold made a severe strategical error. Bill had never hesitated, by the light of an ancient idiom, to call a spade a spade. Also he always had good reasons before he took back his words. "I said," he repeated clearly, "that I'd found--a squaw man."

Harold's muscles set but immediately relaxed again. He shrugged once. "And is it anybody's business but my own?" he asked.

"It hadn't ought to be, but it is," was the answer. "It's my business, and somebody else's too." he turned to the woman. "Listen, Sindy, and give me a polite answer. You're Joe Robinson's sister, aren't you?"

The Indian looked up, nodded, then went back to her work.

"Then you left Buckshot Dan--to come here and live with this white man?"

Harold turned to her with a snarl. "Don't answer him, Sindy. It's none of his business." Then his smoldering eyes met Bill's. "Now we've talked enough. You can go."

"Wait!" Something in the grave face and set features silenced the squaw man. "But it's true--we have talked just about enough. I've got one question. Lounsbury--do you think, by any chance--you've got any manhood left? Do you think you're rotten clear through?"