Quietly Beatrice retrieved the bird and began to remove its feathers.
Ben built the fire, chopped sturdily at a half-grown spruce until it
shattered to the earth, and then chopped it into lengths for fuel. When
the fire was blazing bright, he cut away the green branches and laid
them, stems overlapping, into a fragrant bed.
"Here's where you sleep to-night, Beatrice," he informed her.
She stopped in her work long enough to try the springy boughs with her
arms; then she gave him an answering smile. Even a tenderfoot can make
some sort of a comfortable pallet out of evergreen boughs--ends
overlapping and plumes bent--but a master woodsman can fashion a
veritable cradle, soft as silk with never a hard limb to irritate the
flesh, and yielding as a hair mattress. Such softness, with the
fragrance of the balsam like a sleeping potion, can not help but bring
sweet dreams.
Ben had been wholly deliberate in the care with which he had built the
pallet. He had simply come to the conclusion that she was paying a high
price for her father's sins; and from now on he intended to make all
things as easy as he could for her. Moreover, she had been a sportswoman
of the rarest breed and merited every kindness he could do for her.
He was not half so careful with his own bed, built sixty feet on the
opposite side of the fire. He threw it together rather hastily. And when
he walked back to the fire he found an amazing change.
Already Beatrice had established sovereignty over the little patch of
ground they had chosen for the camp,--and the wilderness had drawn back.
This spot was no longer mere part of the far-spreading, trackless wilds.
It had been set off and marked so that the wilderness creatures could no
longer mistake it for part of their domain. Over the fire she had
erected a cooking rack; and water was already boiling in a small bucket
suspended from it. In another container a fragrant mixture was in the
process of cooking. She had spread one of the blankets on the grass for
a tablecloth.
As twilight lowered they sat down to their simple meal,--tea, sweetened
with sugar, and vegetables and meat happily mingled in a stew. It was
true that the vegetable end was held up by white grains of rice alone,
but the meat was the white, tender flesh of grouse, permeating the
entire dish with its tempting flavor. As a whole, the stew was greatly
satisfying to the inner man.
"I wish I'd brought more tea," Ben complained, as he sipped that most
delightful of all drinks, the black tea beloved of the northern men.
"You a woodsman, and don't know how to remedy that!" the girl responded.
"I know of a native substitute that's almost as good as the real
article."
About the embers of the fire they sat and watched the tremulous wings of
night close round them. The copse grew breathless. The distant trees
blended into shadow, the nearer trunks dimmed and finally faded; the
large, white northern stars emerged in infinite troops and companies,
peering down through the rifts in the trees. Here about their fire they
had established the domain of man. For a few short hours they had routed
the forces of the wilderness; but the foe pressed close upon them. Just
at the fluctuating ring of firelight he waited, clothed in darkness and
mystery,--the infinite, brooding spirit of the ancient forest.
They had never known such silence, broken only by the prolonged chord of
the river, as descended upon them now. It was new and strange to the
conscious life of Ben, himself, the veritable offspring of the woods;
although infinitely old and familiar to a still, watching, secret self
within him. It was as if he had searched forever for this place and had
just found it, and it answered, to the full, a queer mood of silence in
his own heart. The wind had died down now. The last wail of a
coyote--disconsolate on a far-away ridge--had trembled away into
nothingness; the voices of the Little People who had chirped and rustled
in the tree aisles during the daylight hours were stilled with a
breathless, dramatic stillness. Such sound as remained over the
interminable breadth of that dark forest was only the faint stirrings
and rustlings of the beasts of prey going to their hunting; and this was
only a moving tone in the great chord of silence.
To Ben the falling night brought a return of his most terrible moods.
Beatrice sensed them in his pale, set face and his cold, wolfish eyes.
The wolf sat beside him, swept by his master's mood, gazing with deadly
speculations into the darkness. Beatrice saw them as one breed to-night.
The wild had wholly claimed this repatriated son. The paw of the Beast
was heavy upon him; the softening influences of civilization seemed
wholly dispelled. There was little here to remind her that this was the
twentieth century. The primitive that lies just under the skin in all
men was in the ascendancy; and there was little indeed to distinguish
him from the hunter of long ago, a grizzled savage at the edge of the
ice who chased the mammoth and wild pony, knowing no home but the
forest and no gentleness unknown to the wolf that ran at his heels....
The tenderness and sympathy he had had for her earlier that day seemed
quite gone now. She searched for it in vain in the dark and savage lines
of his pale face.
Because it has always been that the happiness of women must depend upon
the mood of men, her own spirits fell. The despair that descended upon
her brought also resentment and rage; and soon she slipped away quietly
to her bed. She drew the blankets over her face; but no tears wet her
cheeks to-night. She was dry-eyed, thoughtful--full of vague plans.
She lay awake a long time, until at last a little, faint ray of hope
beamed bright and clear. More than a hundred miles farther down the
Yuga, past the mouth of Grizzly River, not far from the great,
north-flowing stream of which the Yuga was a tributary, lay an Indian
village--and if only she could reach it she might enlist the aid of the
natives and make a safe return, by a long, roundabout route, to her
father's arms. The plan meant deliverance from Ben and the defeat of all
his schemes of vengeance,--perhaps the salvation of her father and his
subordinates.
She realized perfectly the reality of her father's danger. She had read
the iron resolve in Ben's face. She knew that if she failed to make an
immediate escape from him, all his dreadful plans were likely to
succeed: his enemies would follow him into the unexplored mazes of Back
There to effect her rescue and fall helpless in his trap. What quality
of mercy he would extend to them then she could readily guess.
Just to get down to the Indian village: this was her whole problem. But
it was Ben's plan to land and enter the interior somewhere in the vast
wilderness between, from which escape could not be made until the flood
waters of fall. The way would remain open but a few hours more, due to
the simple fact that the waters were steadily falling and the
river-bottom crags, forming impassable barriers at some points, would be
exposed. _If she made her escape at all it must be soon._
Yet she could not attempt it at night. She could not see to guide the
canoe while the darkness lay over the river. Just one further chance
remained--to depart in the first gray of dawn.
She fell into troubled sleep, but true to her resolution, wakened when
the first ribbon of light stretched along the eastern horizon. She sat
up, laying the blankets back with infinite care. This was her chance:
Ben still lay asleep.
Just to steal down to the water's edge, push off the canoe, and trust
her life to the doubtful mercy of the river. The morning soon would
break; if she could avoid the first few crags, she had every chance to
guide her craft through to deliverance and safety. By no conceivable
chance could Ben follow her. He would be left in the shadow of the
gorge, a prisoner without hope or prayer of deliverance. There was no
crossing the cliffs that lifted so stern and gray just behind. Before he
could build any kind of a craft with axe and fire, the waters would fall
to a death level, beyond any hope of carrying him to safety. The tables
would be turned; he would be left as helpless to follow her as Neilson
had been to follow him.
The plan meant deliverance for her; but surely it meant _death_ to him.
Starvation would drive him to the river and destruction, before men
could ever come the long way to rescue him. But this was not her
concern. She was a forest girl and he her enemy: he must pay the price
for his own deeds.
She got to her feet, stalking with absolute silence. She must not waken
him now. Softly she pressed her unshod foot into the grass. He stirred
in his sleep; and she paused, scarcely breathing.
She looked toward him. Dimly she could see his face, tranquil in sleep
and gray in the soft light; and an instantaneous surge of remorse sped
through her. There was a sweetness, a hint of kindly boyishness in his
face now, so changed since she had left him beside the glowing coals.
Yet he was her deadly enemy; and she must not let her woman's heart cost
her her victory in its moment of fulfillment. She crept on down to the
water.
She could discern the black shadow of the canoe. One swift surge of her
shoulders, one leap, the splash of the stern in the water and the swift
stroke of the paddle, and she would be safe. She stepped nearer.
But at that instant a subdued note of warning froze her in her tracks.
It was only a small sound, hushed and hardly sharp enough to arouse Ben
from his sleep; but it was deadly, savage, unutterably sinister. She had
forgotten that Ben did not wage war alone. For the moment she had given
no thought to his terrible ally,--a pack brother faithful to the death.
A great, gaunt form raised up from the pile of duffle in the canoe; and
his fangs showed ivory white in the wan light. It was Fenris, and he
guarded the canoe. He crouched, ready to spring if she drew near.
The girl sobbed once, then stole back to her blankets.