Ben and Beatrice went together back to the canoe, and in two trips they
carried the supplies to the cave. By instinct a housekeeper, Beatrice
showed him where to stow the various supplies, what part of the cave was
to be used for provisions, where their cots would be laid, and where to
erect the cooking rack. Shadows had fallen over the land before they
finished the work.
Tired from the hard tramp, yet sustained by a vague excitement neither
of them could name or trace, they began to prepare for the night. Ben
cut boughs as before, placing Beatrice's bed within the portals of the
cave and his own on the grass outside. He cut fuel and made his fire:
Beatrice prepared the evening meal.
The flesh of the cub-bear they had procured that morning would have to
serve them to-night; but more delicious meat could be procured
to-morrow. Ben knew that the white-maned caribou fed in the high park
lands. Beatrice made biscuits and brewed tea; and they ate the simple
food in the firelight. Already the darkness was pressing close upon
them, tremulous, vaguely sinister, inscrutably mysterious.
They had talked gayly at first; but they grew silent as the fire burned
down to coals. A great preoccupation seemed to hold them both. When one
spoke the other started, and word did not immediately come in answer.
Beatrice's despair was not nearly so dominating to-night; and Ben
harbored a secret excitement that was almost happiness.
Its source and origin Ben could not trace. Perhaps it was just relief
that the perilous journey was over. The strain of his hours at the
paddle had been severe; but now they were safe upon the sustaining
earth. Yet this fact alone could hardly have given him such a sense of
security,--an inner comfort new to his adventurous life.
The forest was oppressive to-night, tremulous with the passions of the
Young World; yet he did not respond to it as before. The excitement that
sparkled in the red wine of his veins was not of the chase and death,
and he had difficulty in linking it up with the thoughts of his
forthcoming vengeance. Rather it was a mood that sprang from their
surroundings here, their shelter at the mouth of the cave. He felt
deeply at peace.
The fire blazed warmly at the cavern maw; the wolf stood tense and
still, by means of the secret wireless of the wild fully aware of the
tragic drama, the curtain of which was the dark just fallen; yet Ben's
wild, bitter thoughts of the preceding night did not come readily back
to him. There was a quality here--in the firelight and the haven of the
cave--that soothed him and comforted him. The powers of the wild were
helpless against him now. The wind might hurl down the dead trees, but
the rock of the cavern Wall would stand against them. Even the dreaded
avalanche could roar and thunder on the steep above in vain.
There was no peril in the hushed, breathless forest for him to-night.
This was his stronghold, and none could assail it. And it was a
significant fact that his sense of intimate relationship with the wolf,
Fenris, Was someway lessened. Fenris was a creature of the open forest,
sleeping where he chose on the trail; but his master had found a cavern
home. There was a strange and bridgeless chasm between such breeds as
roamed abroad and those that slept, night after night, in the shelter of
the same walls.
He watched the girl's face, ruddy in the firelight, and it was
increasingly hard to remember that she was of the enemy camp,--the
daughter of his arch foe. To-night she was just a comrade, a habitat of
his own cave.
For the first time since he had found Ezram's body--so huddled and
impotent in the dead leaves--he remembered the solace of tobacco. He
hunted through his pockets, found his pipe and a single tin of the weed,
and began to inhale the fragrant, peace-giving smoke. When he raised his
eyes again he found the girl studying him with intent gaze.
She looked away, embarrassed, and he spoke to put her at ease. "You are
perfectly comfortable, Beatrice?" he asked gently.
"As good as I could expect--considering everything. I'm awfully relieved
that we're off the water."
"Of course." He paused, looking away into the tremulous shadows. "Is
that all? Don't you feel something else, too--a kind of satisfaction?"
The coals threw their lurid glow on her lovely, deeply tanned face.
"It's for you to feel satisfaction, not me. You couldn't expect me to
feel very satisfied--taken from my home--as a hostage--in a feud with my
father. But I think I know what you mean. You mean--the comfort of the
fire, and a place to stay."
"That's it. Of course."
"I feel it--but every human being does who has a fire when this big,
northern night comes down and takes charge of things. It's just an
instinct, I suppose, a comfort and a feeling of safety--and likely only
the wild beasts are exempt from it." Her voice changed and softened, as
her girlish fancy reached ever farther. "I suppose the first men that
you were telling me about on the way out, the hairy men of long ago,
felt the same way when the cold drove them to their caves for the first
time. A great comfort in the protecting walls and the fire."
"It's an interesting thought--that perhaps the love of home sprang from
that hour."
"Quite possibly. Perhaps it came only when they had to fight for their
homes--against beasts, and such other hairy men as tried to take their
homes away from them. Perhaps, after all, that's one of the great
differences between men and beasts. Men have a place to live in and a
place to fight for--and the fire is the symbol of it all. And the beasts
run in the forest and make a new lair every day."
Thoughts of the stone age were wholly fitting in this stone-age forest,
and Ben's fancy caught on fire quickly. "And perhaps, when the hairy men
came to the caves to live, they forgot their wild passions they knew on
the open trails--their blood-lust and their wars among themselves--and
began to be men instead of beasts." Ben's voice had dropped to an even,
low murmur. "Perhaps they got gentle, and the Brute died in their
bodies."
"Yes. Perhaps then they began to be tamed."
The silence dropped about them, settling slowly; and all except the
largest heap of red coals burned down to gray ashes. The darkness
pressed ever nearer. The girl stretched her slender, brown arms.
"I'm sleepy," she said. "I'm going in."
He got up, with good manners; and he smiled, quietly and gently, into
her sober, wistful face. "Sleep good," he prayed. "You've got solid
walls around you to-night--and some one on guard, too. Good night."
A like good wish was on her lips, but she pressed it back. She had
almost forgotten, for the moment, that this man was her abductor and her
father's enemy. She ventured into the darkness of the cave.
Scratching a match Ben followed her, so that she could see her way. For
the instant the fireside was deserted. And then both of them grew
breathless and alert as the brush cracked and rustled just beyond the
glowing coals.
Some huge wilderness creature was venturing toward them, at the edge of
the little glade.