The Bride's luggage came down from Gardiner, that she might be arrayed
in her purple and fine linen--and silks, satins, ribbons, laces and
fallals--for the dinner. And then her heart failed her; and she took
counsel of the Groom.
"Wear 'em!" said he. And she did. She floated into their banquet room in
a costume that would have been the envy of every woman in the room if
the function had been at one of the mansions along the Sheridan Road or
the Lake Shore Drive, instead of at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel.
Aconite gasped, wrenched for a moment at his new silk neckerchief of the
sort whose local color had won for him the Bride and Groom as fares, and
bowed as he backed into a corner, where the Hired Man joined him. But
after the Groom, the Artist and the Poet had made their appearance in
their outing suits, and the Colonel in nothing more formal than a black
frock, they gradually recovered, and were soon in the group which hung
about the Bride paying homage to those twin gods of all our adoration,
Beauty and Millinery. From soup to nuts they discussed their adventures,
and re-trod their marvelous road. As the Bride rose to withdraw when the
coffee and cigars were served, there was a loud adverse vivâ voce vote.
The Bride must stay; she had stayed at the camp-fire, and she should not
leave them in the banquet hall. So it was an unbroken circle that
listened to the last of the Yellowstone Nights' tales, as it fell from
the Poet's lips. The story was suggested, as most of its predecessors
had been, by the events of the day. They had seen antelope and elk and
deer as they drove in from Yancey's, and had talked of hunting
adventures and accidents. The Poet began by speaking of the way in which
men are sometimes the hunters, sometimes the hunted--quoting the lines
from Hiawatha,
"The fiery eyes of Pauguk,
Glare upon him in the darkness."
"Pauguk," said he, "is Death. And I will tell you the true story of how
a man stalked Pauguk through the Minnesota woods."
THE STALKING OF PAUGUK
THE POET'S SECOND STORY
This story has been told elsewhere, and has been blamed for its lack of
a moral. People seem to expect one so to put to the rack the facts in
the case that they will shriek out some well-tried message. Some have
behaved as if they thought the moral here, but faulty. Colonel Loree of
the Solar Selling Company, however, thinks the affair rich in the
_hic-fabula-docet_ element. So does Williamson, soliciting-agent for the
Mid-Continent Life; and so--emphatically so--does the Mid-Continent
itself. Trudeau, the "breed" guide, has had so few years in which to
turn it over in his slow-moving mind as he has lain rolled in his
blankets while the snow sifted through the moaning pines, that he has
not made up his mind. As for Foster Van Dorn and Gwendolyn, their
opinions--but the story itself is not long.
Williamson says that when he left Van Dorn's office with the
application, he was as near walking on air as insurance men ever are.
People had been so slow in writing their autographs on the dotted
line--and here was a six-figure application, with a check. These,
accompanied by the wide-eyed Williamson, exploded into the mid-December
calm of the agency headquarters like the news of a Tonopah strike in the
poker-playing ennui of a Poverty Flat.
"What's that, Williamson?" ejaculated the cashier. "Five hundred--you
don't mean _thousand_?"
"Why, confound you," sneered Williamson, "look at that application!"
"Let me see it!" panted the manager, bursting in. "'Foster G. Van Dorn;'
half a million! Holy cat, Williamson; but this will put you and the
agency in the lead, for--Is he good for it, Williamson?"
"Why don't you see that _check_?" inquired the lofty solicitor. "I tell
you, fellows, there's always a way to land any man. Why, for a year,
I've--by George! I'm forgetting to send Doctor Watson over to make the
examination. Van Dorn's going on a hunting trip, and we've got to
hustle, and get him nailed before he goes!"
The manager stood by Williamson during the telephoning. "Who is Mr. Van
Dorn?" he asked, as the agent hung up the receiver.
"President of the Kosmos Chemical Company," replied Williamson.
"Son-in-law and enemy of Colonel Loree of the Solar Selling Company, you
know," said the cashier.
"Oh-h-h-h!" replied the manager, as if recalling something. "I remember
the 'romance' in the newspapers; but I thought the young fellow was
poor. Fixed it up with the colonel, I suppose--the usual thing."
"Not on your life!" replied Williamson. "Loree would kill him if he
dared--old aristocrat, you know; but Van Dorn's too smart for him. You
remember he was an engineer for Loree's company, and met the daughter on
some inspection trip. Love at first sight--moonlight on the
mountains--runaway and wedding on the sly--father's curse--turned out to
starve, and all that."
"I remember that," answered the manager; "but it doesn't seem to lead
logically up to this application."
"Well," went on Williamson, "Van Dorn turns up with a company formed to
work a deposit of the sal-ammoniac, or asphaltum, or whatever the stuff
the Solar Company had cornered may be, and began trust-busting. The
colonel swore the new deposit really belonged to his company because Van
Dorn found it while in his employ, and called him all sorts of a
scoundrel. But the young man's gone on, all the same, floating his
company, and flying high."
"I heard that Loree was sure to ruin him," interposed the cashier.
"Ruin nothing!" said Williamson. "It was a case of the whale and the
swordfish. Van Dorn's got him licked--why, don't you see that check!"
"That does look like success," replied the manager. "I hope his
strenuous life hasn't hurt his health--Watson is fussy about hearts and
lungs."
"That's the least of my troubles," replied Williamson. "Van Dorn's an
athlete, and a first-class risk. There's nothing the matter with Van
Dorn!"
* * * * *
And yet, Trudeau the guide, far up in the Minnesota woods, looked at the
young man and wondered if there wasn't something the matter with Van
Dorn. They had come by the old "tote-road" to the deserted lumber-camp
armed and equipped to hunt deer. Most young men in Van Dorn's situation
were keen-eyed, eager for the trail and the chase--at least until tamed
by weariness. But Van Dorn was like a somnambulist. Once Trudeau had
left him behind on the road, and on retracing his steps to find him, had
discovered him standing by the path, gazing at nothing, his lips slowly
moving as if repeating something under his breath--and he had started as
if in fright at Trudeau's hail. He had been careful to give Trudeau his
card, and admonished him to keep it; but he seemed careless of all
opportunities of following up the acquaintance. Most of these city
hunters were anxious to talk; but what troubled Trudeau, was the manner
in which Van Dorn sat by the fire, wrote in a book from time to time,
and gazed into the flames. Now that they had reached the old camp,
Trudeau hoped that actual hunting would bring to his man's eyes the fire
of interest in the thing he had come so far to enjoy.
"I'll fix up camp," said he. "If you like, you hunt. Big par_tie_
Chicageau men ove' by lake--keep othe' way."
"How far to their camp?" asked the fire-gazer.
"'Bout two mile," answered Trudeau.
"Chicago men?" queried Van Dorn. "How many?"
"Mebbe ten," answered Trudeau; "mebbe six. She have car on track down at
depot. Big man--come ev'ry wintaire. Jacques Lacroix guide heem, Colonel
Lorie--big man!"
"Colonel Loree! From Chicago?" cried Van Dorn.
"_Oui_, yes!" replied Trudeau. "You know heem?"
"No," said Van Dorn.
The man who did not know Loree went to his knapsack and took out a
jacket made of deerskin tanned with the hair on. It was lined with red
flannel. He held it up and looked at it fixedly. Trudeau started as it
met his gaze, and he came up to Van Dorn and pointed to the garment.
"You wear zat?" asked he.
"Yes," said the other. "It is a good warm jacket."
"A man w'at wear deerskin zhaquette," said Trudeau, "in zese wood', in
shoo_ting_ sea_sone_, sartaine go home in wooden ove'coat--sure's hell!"
"Oh, I guess there's no danger!" said Van Dorn, his lips parting with a
mirthless smile.
"_Non?_" queried Trudeau. "You ben in zese wood' before?"
"Oh, yes!" replied Van Dorn. "Lots of times!"
"Zen you know!" asserted Trudeau. "Zen you are zho_king_ wiz me. Zese
huntaire sink brown cloth coat, gray coat, black coat, anysing zat
move--she sink zem every time a deer. Las' wintaire lots men killed for
deer. Pete St. Cyr's boy kill deer, hang heem in tree, and nex' morning
take heem on back an' tote. A city huntaire see deer-hide wiz hair on
mov_ing_, an him! sof'-nose bullet go thoo deer, thoo Pete St. Cyr's
boy's head! Zat zhaquette damn-fool thing!"
"It goes either side out," said the hunter. "I can turn it, you know."
"_I_ turn heem! _I_ turn heem!" said Trudeau, suiting the action to the
word. "Red is bettaire, by gosh--in zese wood'."
Trudeau watched his companion as he made his laborious way through the
cut-over chaos until he disappeared; but he did not see him pause when
out of sight of camp, and turn toward the lake.
"I would rather it were any one else," said Van Dorn, as if to something
that walked by his side; "but what difference does it make? Why not let
him finish his work?"
The sheer difficulty of the country brought back to Van Dorn something
like the forester's alertness. The lust for lumber had ravaged the spiry
forest, and left, inextricably tangled, the wrecks of the noble
trees--forest maidens whose beauty had been their destruction; only
the crooked and ugly having escaped. So deep and complex was the
wreckage that it seemed like the spilikins of a giants' game of
jack-straws--gnarled logs, limbs like _chevaux-de-frise_, saplings and
underbrush growing up through chaos. And spread over and sifted through
all was the snow, as light as down.
Van Dorn must have told the truth as to his former visits; for he went
on like one used to this terrible maze. Nowhere could he take three
steps straight forward: it was always climbing up, or leaping down, or
going around, or crawling under. Here thick leaves upheld the snow, and
in the dry pine straw on the ground he could hear the forest mice rustle
and scurry. There a field was smoothed over by the snow, as a trap is
hidden by sand, covering débris just high enough to imperil the limbs of
the pedestrian. Yonder was a tamarack swamp too thick to be pierced: and
everywhere it was over and under and up and down, and desperately hard,
for miles and miles, with no place for repose.
He gazed away over the strange abomination of desolation, blindly
reflecting upon man's way of coming, doing his worst, and passing on
with sated appetite, leaving ruin--as he had done here. He wondered why
that tall tract of virgin pine over at the right had been allowed to
escape, standing against the sky like a black wall, spiked with tall
rampikes. He stared fixedly at the snow, the blue shadows, the black
pines, somnambulistic again.
To the something that seemed to walk by his side, he spoke of these
things, as if it had been visible. Strange actions, strange thoughts for
the president of the Kosmos Chemical Company, the great antagonist of
Loree of the Solar Selling Company, the David to Loree's Goliath, the
swordfish to the colonel's whale! Think, however, of David, with all the
stones spent against the giant's buckler, and cowering within the lethal
reach of that spear like a weaver's beam; or of the swordfish, with
broken weapon, hunted to the uttermost black depths by the oncoming
silent yawning destruction. And in Van Dorn's case, the enemy was an
avenger as well as a natural foe.
Poor little Kosmos Chemical Company with its big name, its great
deposits of "a prime commercial necessity"--see prospectus--its
dependence on railways with which Loree was on terms of which Van Dorn
never dreamed, its old and wily foe, skilled to snatch victory from the
jaws of defeat, raging for the loss of his ewe lamb, whom,
notwithstanding his giantship, he had loved for twenty years to Van
Dorn's two, and had dreamed dreams and committed crimes for! Not very
strange after all, perhaps, that the man went on muttering
somnambulistically. They say that one gripped in the lion's mouth is
numb and filled with delusions.
Suddenly, putting life into the dead scene, a bounding form came into
view past a thicket--a noble buck with many-pointed antlers, moving with
great deliberate leaps among the giants' spilikins. The delicate, glassy
hoofs, the slender, brittle limbs and horns, fragile as china, seemed
courting destruction in those terrific entanglements. Yet the beautiful
animal, as if by some magic levitation, rose lightly from a perilous
crevice between two logs, turned smoothly in mid-leap, struck the four
pipe-stem limbs into the only safe landing-place, shot thence with
arrowy spring between two bayonet-like branches to another foothold, and
so on and on, every rod of progress a miracle.
He stopped, snuffing the air. Instinctively the hunter leveled his
rifle; and then came into view the buck's retinue, two does, one large
and matronly, the other a last summer's fawn. The sleep-walker's eyes
softened, the rifle swung downward from the point-blank aim, snapping a
twig in its descent, and with swift, mighty bounds, the deer vanished,
putting a clump of bushes between themselves and the foe with unerring
strategy.
"Toward the lake," said the hunter. "I'll follow!"
There came the report of a distant rifle from the direction of the
deer's flight, then another and another. Some one was working a repeater
rapidly. The hunter stopped, took off his deerskin jacket, turned it
hair side out, and like a soldier making for the firing-line, pressed
forward after the deer.
Trudeau saw his man halt on the edge of the firelight that evening, turn
his jacket, and come weariedly into camp. Trudeau sat and thought that
night, while the other slept heavily. Next morning there was a raging
storm, and the guide was puzzled that the hunter refused to brave its
dangers. It was not sure then that monsieur desired the wooden overcoat?
He told Van Dorn many stories of death in these storms, and watched for
the effect.
"W'en man is lost in bliz_zaird_," said Trudeau, "ze vidow mus' wait an'
wait, an' mebbe nevaire know if he is vidow or not."
"It would be better," said the other reflectively, "to have the proof
ample--ample!"
Trudeau, pondering over this, watched his charge putting names in a book
opposite amounts in figures; but he did not know that here was the lost
fortune of an old aunt, there the savings of a college chum. Van Dorn
looked them over calmly as if it had been a bills-payable sheet to be
paid in the morning. Then the strange pleasure-hunter began writing a
letter to a sweetheart to whom he seemed to be able to say only that he
loved her better than life, that she must try to love his memory, and to
train up the baby to respect his name, that the right thing is not
always easy to discern, that sometimes one has only a choice of evils,
that when a man has made a mess of it which he can straighten out by
stepping off the stage, he might as well do it--and that he had had his
share of happiness since she had been with him anyhow, and was far ahead
of the game! Trudeau could not know what a foolish, silly, tragic letter
it was, this product of insane commercialism. He thought life and the
woods enough, and wondered at the shaking of the man's shoulders, and
was amazed to see the tears dropping through his fingers as he bowed his
head upon his hands--a man with a fifty-dollar sleeping-bag!
Over at the Loree headquarters there were roaring fires, fresh venison,
a skilful chef, jolly companions, and the perfection of camp-life. The
storm cleared. That strong old hunter, Loree, declaring that his
business was to stalk deer, marched off in the solitary quest which is
the only thing that brings the haunch to the spit in the Minnesota
cut-over forest. He was bristly bearded, keen of eye and vigorous,
handled his gun cannily, and craftily negotiated the fallen and tangled
timbers, his glance sweeping every open vista for game. There was no
time to think of anything but the making of his way, and of the chase.
Troubles and triumphs retired to the outer verge of consciousness.
Primeval problems claimed his thoughts, and the primeval man rose to
meet them. It was in this ancient and effective wise that he had
sharpened his weapons, set his snares, and hunted down Foster Van
Dorn--and left him in the money-jungle, apparently unhurt, but really
smitten to the heart and staggering to his fall. It was the Loree way.
As an old hunter, he knew just where his shaft had struck, and how long
the quarry could endure the hemorrhage. Had he not said that the fellow
should be made to rue the Loree displeasure?
Like a flash these half-thoughts became no thoughts, as a dark blotch
caught his eye, far off on the snow, beyond a little thicket.
"What is that?" he said to himself. It is a little hard to say, but the
matter is worth looking into. Just the color of a deer! Just where a
deer would rest! We must work up the wind a little closer, for some men
are so foolish as to wear those duns and browns; but that!--that is a
deer's coat. It won't do to jump him and trust a shot as he goes--those
firs will hide him at the first leap. A long shot at a standing
target--there! He moved! There's not a second to lose!
A long shot, truly; but that graceful rifle thinks nothing of half a
mile. There are many intervening bushes and saplings; but the
steel-jacketed bullet would kill on the farther side of the thickest
pine, and even a soft-nosed one will cut cleanly to this mark. The
colonel's practised left hand immovably supported the barrel; the
colonel's keen eye through the carefully adjusted sights saw plainly the
blotch of deerskin down the little glade; and the colonel's steady
forefinger confidently pressed the lightly-set trigger. Spat! The
colonel felt the rifleman's delicious certitude that his bullet had
found its mark, threw in another shell, and stood tensely ready to try
the bisecting of the smitten deer's first agonized bound--but the blur
of fur just stirred a little, and slipped down out of sight.
Panting in the killer's frenzy, Loree struggled over the débris to
reach his game. How oddly the deer had fallen! Heart, or brain, likely;
as it went down like a log. Here was the thicket, and on the other
side--yes, a patch of reddened snow, and the body of--no, not a deer,
but a man, dead, it seemed, clad in a deerskin jacket, a rifle by his
side and in his hand a note-book full of figures, its pages all stained
and crumpled!
There was a shout in the far distance, but Loree heard it not. He knew
his solitude, and never looked for aid. The white strangeness of the
face of the man he had shot overcame the sense of something familiar in
it; and the colonel, after a moment's scrutiny of it, addressed himself
frantically to the stanching of the blood. A deep groan seemed to
warrant hope; and stooping beneath the body Loree took it up and began
bearing it toward the camp. He had an overwhelming consciousness of the
terrible task before him; but the realization of the human life dashed
out, some home blasted, some infinity of woe, and the bare chance of
rescue rolled sickeningly over him, and he set his teeth and attacked
the task like an incarnate will.
Logs and boughs and dead-wood held him back; countless obstacles
exhausted him. He felt like crying out in agony as he realized that his
age was telling against him. He felt strangely tender at this meeting
with death in its simple and more merciful form. He clenched his teeth
hard, felt his heart swell as if to burst, his lungs labor in agonized
heavings--and when Trudeau the guide overtook him, he found him a
frenzied man, covered with dark streaks and splashes of blood,
unconquerably hurling upon his impossible task his last reserves of
strength, with all that iron resolution with which he had beaten down
resistance in his long battle with a relentless world.
"For God's sake," he panted hoarsely, "help me get him to camp! We've
got a doctor there!"
* * * * *
"How's the colonel?" said the doctor, when he had done all he could for
the colonel's victim.
"Knocked all to pieces," answered a young man. "Wants to know if we've
found out who the man is."
Colonel Loree was interrogating Trudeau; surprised that he did not know
the name of the wounded man.
"_Non_," answered Trudeau, "she tell me his name, and give me _carte_,
but I lose heem an' forget firs' day. Remember wood', remember trail,
remember face ver' well--but name; she I forget. She write lettaire an'
cry, an' all time put fig' in book. Zis is heem; mebbe _she_ tell name!"
The smutched names were strange to the colonel; but on another page
there were some inexplicable references to Kosmos Chemical affairs; and
on the cover were dim initials that looked like "F. V. D."
"I know something is wrong," went on Trudeau; "for I tell her it ben
_très dangéreuse_ to wear deerskin zhaquette in zese wood' in shoo_ting_
sea_sone_. I turn zhaquette red out. She go toward your camp. I watch. I
see her turn heem hair out. I tell you, messieurs, zat man want to go
home in wooden ove'coat. She have hungaire to die."
"Here's a letter we found in his pocket," said the young man. "Look at
it, Colonel."
The colonel looked, saw his daughter's name, remembered the familiar
look in the white, agonized, pitiful face; and saw the whole situation
as by some baleful flash-light.
"Good God! Good God!" he cried. "It's Van Dorn! Get things ready to
carry him in his bed to the car--quick, Johnson! And get to the wire as
soon as you can. Have Tibbals bring Gwennie--Mrs. Van Dorn--to Duluth.
Wire the hospital there! You know what's needed--look after things
right, Johnson, for I think--I think--I'm going mad, old man!"
* * * * *
Mrs. Van Dorn ran into her father's arms in the hospital anteroom.
Through mazes of frenzied anxiety she felt an epoch open in her life
with that embrace from the father who had put her out of his life for
ever, as they thought.
"Dear, dear papa!" she whispered, "let me go to Foster, quick!"
"Not just now, Gwennie, little girl," said he, patting her shoulder.
"He's asleep. Did you bring the--the baby?"
"No, no! I thought--but Foster?" cried Gwendolyn. "Will he--will he--"
"He'll live, by Heaven!" cried the colonel. "I fired one fool for
hinting that he wouldn't; and now they're all sure he'll pull through.
Why, he's got to live, Gwennie!"
The colonel reached for his handkerchief, much hampered by Gwendolyn's
arms.
"And when he's well," said he, "I want your help--in a business way. I'm
too old to fight a man like Foster. He's got me down, Gwennie--beaten me
to earth. If he won't come in with me, it's all up with the Solar. He's
a fine fellow, Gwen--I--like him, you know--but he don't know how hard
he hits. You'll help your old dad, won't you, Gwennie?"
To this point had the appeal of concrete, piteous need brought Colonel
Loree, the ferocious, whose heart had never once softened while he did
so much more cruel things than the mere shooting of Van Dorn. It broke
Gwendolyn's heart afresh.
"Oh, don't papa!" she cried. "I can't sta-stand it! He sha'n't use his
strength against you! I'll be on your side. He's generous, papa--he
wanted to name baby Loree--and, oh, I must go to him, papa! I can't
wait!"
* * * * *
The cigars had burned out, and the coffee cups and their saucers were
messy with ashes. The Hired Man nodded in his chair. Aconite was slowly
formulating some comment on the Poet's story--when the Bride rose.
"You've all been awfully nice to me," said she, "and I feel almost weepy
when I think of never seeing you again. So I am not going to think of
it. I shall hope to meet you," said she to Aconite, "in the stories
which my friends bring back from the Park--for I'm going to tell them
all to come, and to ride with you, and learn about Old Jim Bridger. And
you, Mr. Bill, I shall see when I pass through the corn country
sometime--I feel sure of it. You will be plowing corn, and I shall wave
my hand from the car window as you look up at the speeding train. I
shall always see a friend in every plowman now. And you, sir, I shall
watch for in the Poet's Corner of the Hall of Fame; and you in the
Artist's alcove. And, Colonel, I know I shall see you sometime, for
every one passes through Omaha sooner or later. Good-by, and God bless
you, every one! We have made a continued story of our trip--for that,
thanks to all, and now let us close the book, after writing
THE END