The first effect of a great shock is usually a semi-paralysis of the
entire mental mechanism and is, as a rule, beneficent. The brain seems
to be enclosed in a great preoccupation, like a wall, and the messages
of pain and horror brought by the nerves batter against it in vain. The
senses are dulled, the perceptions blunted, and full realization does
not come.
For a long time, in which time itself stood still, Ben sat beside the
dead body of his old counselor and friend as a child might sit among
flowers. He half leaned forward, his arms limp, his hands resting in his
lap, a deep wonder and bewilderment in his eyes. Dully he watched the
moon lifting in the sky and felt the caress of the wind against his
face, glancing only from time to time at the huddled body before him.
The wolf whined softly, and sometimes Ben reached his hand to caress the
furry shoulder.
But slowly his wandering faculties returned to him. He began to
understand. Ezram was dead--that was it--gone from his life as smoke
goes in the air. Never to hear him again, or see him, or make plans with
him, or have high adventures beside him along the lonely trails. Fenris
had found him in the darkness: here he lay--the old family friend, the
man who had saved him, redeemed him and given him his chance, his old
"buddy" who had brought him home. The thing was not credible at first:
that here, dead as a stone, lay the shell of that life that had been his
own salvation. He studied intently the gray face, missed its habitual
smile and for really the first time his gaze rested upon the yawning
wound in the temple.
He gazed at it in speechless, growing horror, and something like an
incredible cold descended upon him. The entire hydraulic system of his
blood seemed to be freezing. His hands were cold, his vitals icy and
lifeless. There was, however, the beginning of heat somewhere back of
his eyes. He could feel it but dimly, but it was increasing, slowly,
like a smoldering coal that eats its way into wood and soon will burst
into a flame. Slowly he began to grow rigid, his muscles flexing. His
face underwent a tangible change. The lines deepened, the lips set in a
hard line, the eyes were like those of a reptile,--cold, passionless,
unutterably terrible. His face was pale like the paleness of death, but
it appeared more like hard, white metal than flesh. His mind began to
work clear again; he began to understand.
Ezram had been shot, murdered by the men who had jumped his claim.
Beatrice's father, who had talked to him, had probably committed the
crime: if not he, one of his understrappers at his order. He found
himself recalling what Jeffery Neilson had said. Oh, the man had been
sharp! Believing that in the depth of the forest the body would never be
discovered, he had tried to send Ben farther into the interior in search
of him.
He arose, wholly self-mastered, and with hard, strong hands made a
detailed examination of Ezram's wound. He had evidently been shot by a
rifle of large caliber, probably at close range. Ezram's own gun lay at
his feet, loaded but not cocked.
"They shot you down in cold blood, old boy, didn't they?" he found
himself asking. "You didn't have a chance!"
But the gray lips were setting with death, and could not answer. Ben
had forgotten for the instant; he must keep better hold of himself. The
time was not ripe to turn himself loose. But he did wish for one more
word with Ezram, just a few little minutes of planning. They could
doubtless work out something good together. They could decide what to
do.
From this point his mind naturally fell to Ezram's parting advice to
him. "I've only got one decent place to keep things safe, and that ain't
so all-fired decent," the old man had told him. "I always put 'em down
my bootleg, between the sock and the leather. If I ever get shuffled
off, all of a sudden, I want you to look there careful."
Still with the same deathly pallor he crept over the dead leaves to
Ezram's feet. His hands were perfectly steady as he unlooped the laces,
one after another, and quietly pulled off the right boot. In the boot
leg, just as Ezram had promised, Ben found a scrap of white paper.
He spread it on his knee, and unfolded it with care. The moonlight was
not sufficiently vivid, however, for him to read the penciled scrawl. He
felt in his pocket for a match.
Because his mind was operating clear and sure, his thoughts flashed at
once to his enemies in their cabins along the creek. He did not want
them to know he had found the body. His first instinct was to work in
the dark, to achieve his ends by stealth and cunning! It was strange
what capacity for cunning had come upon him. Oh, he would be
crafty--sharp--sure in every motion.
It was unlikely, however, that the faint glare of a match could carry so
far. To make sure he walked behind the covert, then turned his back to
the canyon through which the creek flowed. The match cracked,
inordinately loud in the silence, and his eyes followed the script.
Ezram had been faithful to the last:
To WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
In case of my death I leave all I die possessed of including my
brother Hiram's claim near Yuga River to my pard and buddy, Ben
Darby.
(Signed) EZRA MELVILLE.
The document was as formal as Ezram could make it, with a carefully
drawn seal, and for all its quaint wording, it was a will to stand in
any court. But Ezram had not been able to hold his dignity for long. He
had added a postscript:
Son, old Hiram made a will, and I guess I can make one too. I just
found out about them devils that jumped our claim. I left you back
there at the river because I didn't want you taking any dam fool
risks till I found out how things lay.
I just got one thing to ask. If them devils get me--get them. My
life ain't worth much but I want you to make them pay for the little
it is worth. Never stop till you've done it.
Ben lighted match after match until he had absorbed every word. Then he
folded the paper and placed it in his pocket; but the action did not in
the least take his eyes from the words. He could still see them, written
in fire. They were branded on his spirit.
He stood wholly motionless for a space of almost a minute, as if
listening. The heat back of his eyes was more intense now. The red coals
were about to burst into flame. All the blood of his huge body seemed to
be collecting there, searing his brain.
The moon was no longer white in the sky. It had turned a fiery red. The
stars were red too,--all of them more red than the Star of War. "I want
you to make them pay," a voice said clearly in his ears. "Never stop
till you've done it."
And now Ben was no longer pale. His face was no longer hard and set.
Rather it was dark--dark as dark earth. His eyes glowed like coals
beneath his black brows. He was not standing still and lifeless now. He
was shivering all over with the blackest hate, the most deadly fury.
"Make them pay," he said aloud again, "and never stop till you've done
it."
A sudden snarl from the lips of the wolf drew his eyes downward. Heaven
help him; for the moment he had forgotten Fenris! But he must not forget
him again. They had work to do, the two of them.
Fenris was no longer whining disconsolately. His master's fury had
passed to him, and Ben looked and saw before him not the docile pet, but
the savage beast of the wild. The hair was erect on his shoulders, his
lips were drawn, too; he was crouched as if for battle. The eyes, sunken
in their sockets, were red and terrible to see. Yet he was still Ben's
servant. That quality could never pass from him. The eyes of two
met,--the wolf and the man.
At that instant the little tongue of flame that had been mounting in
Ben's brain burst into a dreadful conflagration. It was the explosion at
last, no less terrible because of its silence--because the sound of the
least, little wind was still discernible in the distant thickets. He
dropped to his knees before the wolf, seizing its head in a terrific
grasp. He half jerked it off its feet, till he held it so that its eyes
burned straight into his.
"Fenris, Fenris!" he breathed. "We've got to make them pay. And we must
not stop till we're done."
It was more than a command. It had the quality of a vow. And now, as
they knelt, eyes looking into eyes, it was like a pagan rite in the
ancient world.
Their separate identities were no longer greatly pronounced. They were
not man and beast, they were simply the wolves of the forest. The old
qualities most often associated with manhood--gentleness, forbearance,
mercy--seemed to pass away from Ben as a light passes into darkness.
Only the Wolf was left, the dominant Beast--that darker, hidden side of
himself from which no man can wholly escape and which civilization has
only smothered, as fresh fuel smothers a flame. Not for nothing had his
fellows known him as "Wolf" Darby; and now the name was true.
The Beast that dwells under every man's skin, in a greater or less
degree, was in the full ascendancy at last. The unnamable ferocity that
marks the death-leap of the wild hunters was in his face. In his eyes
was cunning,--such craft as marks the pack in its hunting. All over him
was written that unearthly rage that is alone the property and trait of
the woods creatures: the fury with which a she-wolf fights for her cubs
or a rattlesnake avenges the death of its mate. Mercy, remorse,
compassion there was none.
And the demon gods of the wilderness rejoiced. For uncounted thousands
of years the tide of battle had flowed against them; and it was long and
long since they had won such a victory as this. Mostly their men
children had forsaken their leafy bowers to live in houses. They tilled
the ground rather than hunt in the forest. The cattle that had once run
wild in the marshes now fed dully in enclosed pastures; the horses--that
mighty breed that once mated and fought and died in freedom on the high
lands--pulled lowly burdens in the cultivated fields. Even some of the
canine people too--first cousins to the wolves themselves--had sold
themselves into slavery for a gnawed bone and a chimney corner. But
to-night the wild had claimed its own again.
Here was one, at least, who had come back into his own. The forest
seemed to whisper and thrill with rapture.