VI

At a little town at the end of steel Ben and Ezram ended the first lap

of their journey. They had had good traveling these past days. Steadily

they had gone north, through the tilled lands of Northern Washington,

through the fertile valleys of lower British Columbia, traversing great

mountain ranges and penetrating gloomy forests, and now had come to the

bank of a north-flowing river,--a veritable flood and one of the monarch

rivers of the North. Every hour their companionship had been more close

and their hopes higher. Every waking moment Ben had been swept with

thankfulness for the chance that had come to him.

They had worked for their meals and passage--hard, manual toil--but it

had seemed only play to them both. Sometimes they mended fence,

sometimes helped at farm labor, and one gala morning, with entire good

will and cheer, they beat into cleanliness every carpet in a widow's

cottage. And the sign of the outcast was fading from Ben's flesh.

The change was marked in his face. His eye seemed more clear and

steadfast, his lips more firm, the lines of his face were not so hard

and deep. His fellows of the underworld would have scarcely known him

now,--his lips and chin darkening with beard and this new air of

self-respect upon him. Perhaps they had forgotten him, but it was no

less than he had done to them. The prison walls seemed already as if

they hadn't been true. He loved every minute of the journey, freshness

instead of filth, freedom instead of confinement, fragrant fields and

blossoming flowers. Ever the stars and the moon, remembered of old,

yielded him a peace and happiness beyond his power to tell. And his

gratitude to Ezram grew apace.

Besides self-confidence and the constant, slow unraveling of his memory

problems, each day yielded rich gifts: no less than added trust in each

other. Always they found each other steadfast, utterly to be relied

upon. Ezram never regretted for a moment his offer to Ben. The young man

had seemingly developed under his eye and was a real aid to him in all

the problems of the journey.

As the days passed, the whole tone and key of the land had seemed to

change. They were full in the mountains now, snow gleaming on the

heights, forests blue-black on the slopes; and Ben's response was a

growing excitement that at first he could not analyze. The air was

sweeter, more bracing, and sometimes he discerned a fleeting, delicate

odor that drew him up short in his talk and held him entranced. There

was a sparkle and stir in the air, unknown in the cities he had left;

and to breathe it deeply thrilled him with an unexplainable happiness.

Some way it was all familiar, all dear to him as if it had once been

close to his life. The sparkle in the air was not new, only recalled:

long and long ago he had wakened to find just such a delicate fragrance

in his nostrils. But the key hadn't come to him yet. His memory pictures

were ever stronger of outline, clearer in his mind's eye, yet they were

still too dim for him to interpret them. In these days Ezram watched him

closely, with a curious, intense interest.

It was no longer pleasant to sleep out in the hay. For the sake of

warmth alone they were obliged to hire their night's lodging at cheap

hotels. Spring was full in the land they had left: it was just

beginning here. The mountains, visible from the village of Saltsville

where they left the railroad, were still swept with snow.

Ben felt that he would have liked to take a day off at this point and

venture with his companion into the high, wooded hills that fronted the

town, but he agreed with Ezram that they could not spare the time. They

swiftly made preparations for their journey down-river. A canoe was

bought for a reasonable sum--they were told they had a good chance of

selling it again when they left the river near Snowy Gulch--and at the

general store they bought an axe, rudimentary fishing tackle, tobacco,

blankets, and all manner of simpler provisions, such as flour, rice,

bacon, coffee, canned milk, and sugar. And for a ridiculously small sum

which he mysteriously produced from the pocket of his faded jeans Ezram

bought a second-hand rifle--an ancient gun of large caliber but of

enduring quality--and a box of shells to match.

"Old Hiram left me a gun, but we'll each need one," Ezram explained.

"And they tell me there's a chance to pick up game, like as not, goin'

down the river."

They would have need of good canoe-craft before the journey's end, the

villagers told them. Ezram had not boasted of any such ability, and at

first Ben regarded the plan with considerable misgivings. And it was

with the most profound amazement that, when they pushed off, he saw

Ezram deliberately seat himself in the bow, leaving the more important

place to his young companion.

"Good heavens, I'll capsize you in a minute," Ben said. "How do you dare

risk it----"

"Push off and stop botherin' me," Ezram answered. "There's a paddle--go

ahead and shoot 'er."

The waters caught the canoe, speeding it downstream; and in

apprehension of immediate disaster Ben seized the paddle. Swiftly he

thrust it into the streaming water at his side.

He was not further aware of Ezram's searching gaze. He did not know of

the old man's delight at the entire incident--first the anxious, hurried

stroke of the paddle, then the movement of Ben's long fingers as he

caught a new hold, finally the white flame of exultation that came into

his face. For himself, Ben instantly knew that this was his own sphere.

He suddenly found himself an absolute master of his craft: at the touch

of the paddle controlling it as a master mechanic controls a delicate

machine.

The white waters were no more to be feared. He found that he knew, as if

by instinct, every trick of the riverman's trade,--the slow stroke, the

fast stroke, the best stroke for a long day's sail, the little half-turn

in his hands that put the blade on edge in the water and gave him the

finest control. It was all so familiar, so unspeakably dear to him.

Clear, bright memories hovered close to him, almost within his grasp.

"Do you remember when you shot the Athabaska Rapids?" Ezram had asked.

It was all clear enough. In that life that was forgotten he had

evidently lived much in a canoe, knowing every detail of river life.

Perhaps he had been a master canoeist; at least he felt a strange,

surging sense of self-confidence and power. He understood, now, why the

image of rushing waters had come so often into his dreams. Dim pictures

of river scenes--cataracts white with foam, rapids with thunderous

voices, perilous eddies, and then, just beyond, glassy waters where the

shadow of the canoe was unbroken in the blue depths--streamed through

his mind, but they were not yet bright enough for him to seize and hold.

He enjoyed the first few hours of paddling, but in the long, warm

afternoon came indolence, and they were both willing to glide with the

current and watch the ever-changing vista of the shore. For the first

time since they had come into the real North, Ben found opportunity to

observe and study the country.

Already they were out of sight of the last vestige of a habitation; and

the evergreen forests pushed down to the water's edge. From the middle

of the stream the woods appeared only as a dark wall, but this was

immeasurably fascinating to Ben. It suggested mystery, adventure; yet

its deeper appeal, the thing that stirred him and thrilled him to the

quick, he could neither understand nor analyze.

Sometimes a little clump of trees stood apart, and from their shape he

identified them as the incomparable spruce, perhaps the most

distinguished and beautiful of all the evergreens. He marked their great

height, their slender forms, their dark foliage that ever seemed to be

silvered with frost; and they seemed to him to answer, to the fullest

extent, some vague expectation of which he had scarcely been aware.

The wild life of the river filled him with speechless delight. Sometimes

he saw the waters break and gleam at the leap of a mighty salmon--the

king fish of the North on his spring rush to the headwaters where he

would spawn and die--and often the canoe sent flocks of waterfowl into

flight. Ben dimly felt that on the tree-clad shores larger, more

glorious living creatures were standing, hiding, watching the canoe

glide past. The thought thrilled him.

Late afternoon, and they worked closer to the shore. They were watching

for a place to land. But because the shadows of twilight were already

falling, the forest itself was hardly more vivid to their eyes. Once it

seemed to Ben that he saw the underbrush move and waver at the water's

edge, and his heart leaped; but whatever stirred kept itself concealed.

And now, in the gray of twilight, Ezram saw the place to land.

It was a small lagoon into which a creek emptied, and beyond was an open

meadow, found so often and so unexpectedly in the North woods. Swiftly

Ben turned the canoe into shore.

Ezram climbed out and made fast, and so busy was he with his work that

he did not glance at Ben, otherwise he might have beheld a phenomenon

that would have been of keen interest to the alienist, Forest. His young

charge had suddenly grown quite pale. Ben himself was neither aware of

this nor of the fact that his heart was hammering wildly in his breast

and his blood racing, like wild rivers, through his veins: he was only

thrilled and held by a sense of vast, impending developments. Every

nerve tingled and thrilled, and why he did not know.

Ezram began to unload; but now, his blue eyes shining, he began a covert

watch of his young companion. He saw the man from prison suddenly catch

his breath in inexpressible awe and his eye kindle with a light of

unknown source. A great question was shaping itself in Ben's mind, but

as yet he could not find the answer.

All at once Ben knew this place. Here was nothing strange or new: it was

all as he had known it would be in his inmost heart. All of it spoke to

him with familiar voice, seemingly to welcome him as a son is welcomed

after long absence. There was nothing here that had not been known and

beloved of old. Vivid memories, bright as lightning, swept through him.

He had always known this wholesome, sweet breath that swept into his

face. It was merely that of the outdoors, the open places that were his

own haunts. It was wholly fitting and true that the silence should lie

over the dark spruce that ringed about him, a silence that, in its

infinite harmony with some queer mood of silence in his own heart, was

more moving than any voice. All was as he had secretly known: the hushed

tree aisles, the gray radiance--soft as a hand upon the brow--of the

afterglow; the all-pervading health and peace of the wilderness. Except

for an old and trusted companion, he was alone with it all, and that too

was as it should be. Just he and the forest, his companion and the

gliding river.

He didn't try to understand, at first, the joy and the wonder that

thrilled him, nor could he speak aloud the thoughts that came to him.

Ravished and mystified, he walked softly to the dark, still edge of the

forest, penetrated it a distance, then sat down to wait.

For the first time in years, it seemed to him, he was at peace. A

strange sense of self-realization--lost to him in his years of

exile--climbed like fire through him; and with it the return of a lost

virility, a supreme vigor tingling each little nerve; a sense of

strength and power that was almost blinding.

He sat still. He saw the twilight descending, ever heavier, over the

forest. The sharp edges of the individual trees faded and blended, the

trunks blurred. He turned one fleeting glance of infinite, inexpressible

gratitude toward Ezram--the man who had brought him here and who now was

busily engaged in unpacking the canoe and making camp--then looked back

to his forests. The wind brought the wood smells,--spruce and moldering

earth and a thousand more no man could name. The great, watchful,

brooding spirit of the forest went in to him.

All at once his heart seemed to pause in his breast. He was

listening,--for what he did not know. His eyes strained into the

shadows. Brush wavered, a twig cracked with a miniature explosion. And

then two figures emerged into the beaver meadow opposite him.

They were only creatures of the wild, an old cow moose, black and

ungainly, and her long-legged, awkward calf. Yet they supplied the

detail that was missing. They were the one thing needed to complete the

picture--the crowning touch that revealed this land as it was--the

virgin wilderness where the creatures of the wild still held full sway.

But it did more. All at once a great clarity seemed to take possession

of his mind. Here, in these dark forests, were the _stimuli_ of which

Forest, the alienist, had spoken; and his brain seemed to leap, as in

one impulse, to the truth. Suddenly he knew the answer to all the

questions and problems that had troubled him so long.

Many times, in the past years, he had seen logs jammed in the water, a

veritable labyrinth that defied dissolution. Suddenly, as if by magic,

the key log would be ejected, and the whole jam would break, shatter

down in one stupendous crash, settle and dissolve, leaving at last only

drift logs floating quietly in the river. Thus it was with the confusion

in his brain. All at once it seemed to dissolve, the tangled skeins

straightened out, the association areas of his mind stirred full into

life once more. As he sat there, pale as the twilight sky, the mists of

amnesia lifted from him. He was cured as if by the touch of a holy man.

No wonder these forests depths were familiar. His boyhood and early

manhood, clear until the vortex of war had engulfed him, had been spent

amid just such surroundings, in just such silences, on the banks of

just such wilderness rivers. The same sky line of dark, heaven-reaching

spruce had fronted him of old. He sprang up, his eyes blazing. "I

remember everything," an inaudible voice spoke within him. Then he

whispered, fervently, to his familiar wilds. "And I have come home."