XI

Ben found, rather as he had expected, that the girl was not at all

embarrassed by the knowledge that they were to have a lonely all-day

ride together. She looked at the matter from a perfectly natural and

wholesome point of view, and she could see nothing in it amiss or

improper. The girls of the frontier rarely feel the need of chaperones.

Their womanhood comes early, and the open places and the

fresh-life-giving air they breathe give them a healthy confidence in

their ability to take care of themselves. Beatrice had a pistol, and she

could shoot it like a man. She loved the solitude of the forest, but she

also knew it was good to hear the sound of a human voice when journeying

the lonely trails.

The frontier had also taught her to judge men. Here foregathered many

types, strong-thewed frontiersmen whose reverence for women surpassed,

perhaps, that of any other class of men on earth, as well as the most

villainous renegades, brutish offspring of the wilds, but she knew them

apart. She realized from the first that this tall woodsman would have

only kindness and respect for her; and that he was to be trusted even in

those lonely forest depths beyond Spruce Pass.

Ben knew the wild beasts of the field better than he knew women, so her

actual reception of the plan was lost to him. He felt that she was not

displeased: in reality the delight and anticipation she felt were beyond

any power of hers to tell. She had been tremendously thrilled and

impressed by his dominance over the wolf. She liked his bright, steady,

friendly eyes; because she was a woods girl her heart leaped at the

sight of his upright, powerful body; but most of all she felt that he

was very near indeed to an ideal come true, a man of terrific strength

and prowess yet not without those traits that women love best in

men,--courage and character and gentleness.

"I'm surely glad I'm going to have a companion," he told her. "I won't

miss Ez--"

But just then remembrance came to him, cutting the word off short. The

letter he carried in his pocket contained certain advice in regard to

silence, and perhaps now was a good time to follow it. There was no need

to tell the people of Snowy Gulch about Ezram and the claim. He

remembered that he had been warned of the danger of claim jumpers.

For an instant his mind seemed to hover at the edge of a more elusive

memory; but he could not quite seize upon it. He only knew that it

concerned the matter in hand, and that it left him vaguely troubled.

"You were saying," the girl prompted him.

"Nothing very important--except how glad I am you are going my way. The

woods are certainly lonesome by yourself. I suppose you'll be willing to

make an early start."

"The earlier the better. I've got a long way to go."

They made their plans, and soon they parted to complete preparations for

the journey. The girl went into her house: Ben took the rifle, and

followed by the wolf, struck down the main street of the village.

It can be said for Ben that he aroused no little conjecture and interest

in the minds of the townspeople, striding through the street with the

savage woods creature following abjectly at his heels. Evidently Ben's

conquest was complete: the animal obeyed his every command as quickly

as an intelligent dog. It was noticeable, however, that even the

hardiest citizens kept an apprehensive eye on the wolf during the course

of any conversation with Ben.

He bought supplies--flour and salt and a few other essentials--simple

tools and utensils such as are carried by prospectors, blankets, shells

for his rifle, and a few, simple, hard-wearing clothes. He went to bed

dead tired, his funds materially reduced. But before dawn he was up,

wholly refreshed; and after a hasty breakfast went to pack his horses

for the trip.

Beatrice came stealing out of the shadows, more than ever suggestive of

some timid creature of the forest, and the three of them saddled and

packed the animals. As daylight broke they started out, down the

shadowed street of the little town.

"The last we'll see of civilization for a long, long time," the girl

reminded him.

The man thrilled deeply. "And I'm glad of it," he answered. "Nothing

ahead but the long trail!"

It was a long trail, that which they followed along Poor Man's creek in

the morning hours. The girl led, by right of having some previous

acquaintance with the trail. The three pack horses walked in file

between, heads low, tails whisking; and Ben, with Fenris at his horse's

hoofs, brought up the rear. Almost at once the spruce forest dropped

over them, the silence and the gloom that Ben had known of old.

This was not like gliding in a boat down-river. The narrow, winding

trail offered a chance for the most intimate study of the wilderness.

From the river the woodsfolk were but an occasional glimpse, the stir of

a thicket on the bank: here they were living, breathing

realities,--vivid pictures perfectly framed by the frosty green of the

spruce.

From the first mile these two riders were the best of companions. They

talked gaily, their voices carrying to each other with entire ease

through the still glades. He found her spirited, warm-hearted,

responding with an eager gladness to every fresh manifestation of the

wild; and in spite of his gay laughter she read something of the dark

moodiness and intensity that were his dominant traits. But he was kind,

too. His attitude toward the Little People met with on the trail--the

little, scurrying folk--was particularly appealing: like that of a

strong man toward children. She saw that he was sympathetic,

instinctively chivalrous; and she got past his barrier of reserve as few

living beings had ever done before.

She saw at once that he was an expert horseman. Riding a half-broken

mustang over the winding, brush-grown moose trails of the North is not

like cantering a thoroughbred along a park avenue, and a certain amount

of difficulty is the rule rather than the exception; but he controlled

his animal as no man of her acquaintance had ever done. He rode a bay

mare that was not, by a long way, the most reliable piece of horseflesh

McClurg owned, yet she gave him the best she had in her, scrambling with

a burst of energy on the pitches, leaping the logs, battling the mires,

and obeying his every wish. The joy of the Northern trails depends

largely upon the service rendered by the horse between one's knees, and

Ben knew it to the full.

Before the first two hours were past Beatrice found herself thrilling

with admiration at Ben's woodcraft. Not only by experience but by

instinct and character he was wholly fitted for life in the waste

places. Just as some artists are born with the soul of music, he had

come to the earth with the Red Gods at his beck and call; the spirit of

the wild things seemed to move in his being. She didn't wholly

understand. She only knew that this man, newly come from "The States,"

riding so straight and talking so gaily behind her, had qualities native

to the forest that were lacking not only in her, but in such men as her

father and Ray Brent. Seemingly he had inherited straight from the

youngest days of the earth those traits by which aboriginal man

conquered the wild.

The first real manifestation of this truth occurred soon after they

reached the bank of Poor Man's creek. All at once he had shouted at her

and told her to stop her horse. She drew up and turned in her saddle,

questioning.

"There's something stirring in the thicket beside you. Don't you hear

him?"

Beatrice had sharp ears, but she strained in vain for the sound that,

forty feet farther distant, Ben heard easily. She shook her head, firmly

believing his imagination had led him astray. But an instant later a

coyote--one of those gray skulkers whose waging cries at twilight every

woodfarer knows--sprang out of his covert and darted away.

Beatrice was amazed. The significance of the incident went further than

the fact of mere good hearing. The coyote, except when he chooses to

wail out his wrongs at the fall of night, is one of the forest shadows

for silence--yet Ben had heard him. It meant nothing less than that

strange quickening of the senses found in but few--master woodsmen--that

is the especial trait and property of the beasts themselves.

Now that they climbed toward Spruce Pass their talk died away, and more

and more they yielded themselves to the hushed mood of the forest. Their

trail was no longer clearly pronounced. It was a wilderness

thoroughfare in the true sense,--a winding path made by the feet of the

great moose journeying from valley to valley.

Wild life became ever more manifest. They saw the grouse, Franklin's

fowl so well beloved by tenderfeet because of their propensity to sit

still under fire and give an unsteady marksman a second shot. Fool hens,

the woodsman called them, and the motley and mark of their weak

mentality were a red badge near the eye. The fat birds perched on the

tree limbs over the trail, relying on their mottled plumage, blending

perfectly with the dull grays and browns of the foliage, to keep them

out of sight. But such wiles did not deceive Ben. And once, in provision

for their noon lunch, a fat cock tumbled through the branches at

Beatrice's pistol shot.

The pine squirrels seemed to be having some sort of a competitive field

meet, and the tricks they did in the trees above the trail filled the

two riders with delight. They sped up and down the trunks; they sprang

from limb to limb; they flicked their tails and turned their heads

around backward and stood on their haunches, all the time chattering in

the greatest excitement. Once a porcupine--stupid, inoffensive old Urson

who carries his fort around on his back--rattled his quills in a near-by

thicket; and once they caught a glimpse of a mule deer on the hillside.

This was rather too cold and hard a country, however, to be beloved by

deer. Mostly they dwelt farther upriver.

All manner of wild creatures, great and small, had left signs on the

trails. There were tracks of otter and mink, those two river hunters

whose skins, on ladies' shoulders, are better known than the animals

themselves. They might be only patches of fur in cities, but they were

living, breathing personages here. Particularly they were personages to

the trout. Ben knew perfectly how the silver fish had learned to dart

with such rapidity in the water. They learned it keeping out of the way

of the otter and the mink.

They saw the tracks of marten--the mink that has gone into the tree tops

to live; the doglike imprints of a coyote at which Fenris whimpered and

scratched in excitement (doubtless wishing to run him down and bite him,

as is the usual reception to the detested coyote by the more important

woods creatures) and once the fresh mud showed that an old grizzly--the

forest monarch, the ancient, savage despot of the woods of which all

foresters, near and far, speak with deep respect--had passed that way

but a few minutes before. Foresters both, the two riders had every

reason to believe that the old gray tyrant was lurking somewhere in the

thickets beside the trail, half in anger, half in curiosity watching

them ride past. And of course the tracks of moose, and of their fellows

of mighty antlers, the caribou, were in profusion.

To all these things Beatrice responded with the joy of a true nature

lover. Her heart thrilled and her eyes were bright; and every new track

was a fresh surprise and delight. But Ben was affected more deeply

still. The response he made had its origin and font in deeply hidden

centers of his spirit; mysterious realms that no introspection could

reveal or words lay bare.

He knew nothing of Beatrice's sense of constant surprise. In his own

heart he had known that all these woodspeople would be waiting for

him--just as they were--and he would have known far greater amazement to

have found some of them gone. And instead of sprightly delight he knew

only an all-pervading sense of comfort, as a man feels upon returning to

his home country, among the people whom he knows and understands.