June passed away in the wilds of Back There, leaving warmer, longer
days, a more potent sun, and a greener, fresher loveliness to the land.
The spring calves no longer tottered on wabbly legs, but could follow
their swift mothers over the most steep and difficult trails. Fledglings
learned to fly, the wolf cubs had their first lessons in hunting on the
ridges. The wild Yuga had fallen to such an extent that navigation--down
to the Indian villages on the lower waters--was wholly impossible.
The days passed quickly for Ben and Beatrice. They found plenty of work
and even of play to pass the time. Partly to fill her lonely moments,
but more because it was an instinct with her, Beatrice took an
ever-increasing interest in her cave home. She kept it clean and cooked
the meals, performing her tasks with goodwill, even at times a gaiety
that was as incomprehensible to herself as to Ben.
Their diet was not so simple now. Of course their flour and sugar and
rice, and the meat that they took in the chase furnished the body of
their meals, and without these things they could not live; but Beatrice
was a woods child, and she knew how to find manna in the wilderness.
Almost every morning she ventured out into the still, dew-wet forest,
and nearly always she came in with some dainty for their table. She
gathered watercress in the still pools and she knew a dozen ways to
serve it. Sometimes she made a dressing out of animal oil, beaten to a
cream; and it was better than lettuce salad. Other tender plant tops
were used as a garnish and as greens, and many and varied were the
edible roots that supplied their increasing desire for fresh vegetables.
Sometimes she found wocus in the marsh--the plant formerly in such
demand by the Indians--and by patient experiment she learned how to
prepare it for the table. Washing the plant carefully she would pound it
into paste that could be used as the base for a nutty and delicious
bread. Other roots were baked in ashes or served fried in animal fat,
and once or twice she found patches of wild strawberries, ripening on
the slopes.
This was living! They plucked the sweet, juicy berries from the vines;
they served as dessert and were also used in the fashioning of delicious
puddings with rice and sugar. Several times she found certain treasures
laid by for winter use by the squirrels or the digging people--and
perfectly preserved nuts and acorns, The latter, parched over coals,
became one of the staples of their diet.
She gathered leaves of the red weed and dried them for tea. She searched
out the nests of the grouse and robbed them of their eggs; and always
high celebration in the cave followed such a find as this. Fried eggs,
boiled eggs, poached eggs tickled their palates for mornings to come.
And she traced down, one memorable day when their sugar was all but
gone, a tree that the wild bees had stored with honey.
In the way of meat they had not only caribou, but the tender veal of
moose and all manner of northern small game. Ben did not, however, spend
rifle cartridges in reckless shooting. When at last his enemies came
filing down through the beaver meadow he had no desire to be left with a
half-empty gun. He had never fired this more powerful weapon since he
had felled their first caribou. The moose calves and all the small game
were taken with Beatrice's pistol.
Sometimes he took ptarmigan--those whistling, sprightly grouse of the
high steeps--and Beatrice served uncounted numbers of them, like the
famous blackbirds, baked in a pie. Fried ptarmigan was a dish never to
forget; roast ptarmigan had a distinctive flavor all its own, and the
memory of ptarmigan fricassee often called Ben home to the cavern an
hour before the established mealtime. Indeed, they partook of all the
northern species of that full-bosomed clan, the upland game birds;
little, brown quail, willow grouse, fool hens, and the incomparable blue
grouse, half of the breast of which was a meal. It was true that their
little store of pistol cartridges was all but gone, but worlds of big
game remained to fall back upon.
Ben never ceased regretting that he had not brought a single fishhook
and a piece of line. He had long since carried the canoe from the river
bank and hid it in the tall reeds of the lake shore, not only for
pleasure's sake, but to preserve it for the autumn floods when they
might want to float on down to the Indian villages; and surely it would
have afforded the finest sport in the way of trolling for lake trout.
But with utter callousness he made his pistol serve as a hook and line.
Often he would crawl down, cautiously as a stalking wolf, to the edge of
a trout pool, then fire mercilessly at a great, spotted beauty below.
The bullet itself did not penetrate the water, but the shock carried
through and the fish usually turned a white belly to the surface. A fat
brook or lake trout, dipped in flour and fried to a chestnut brown, was
a delight that never grew old.
At every fresh find Beatrice would come triumphant into Ben's presence;
and at such times they scarcely conducted themselves like enemies. An
unguessed boyishness and charm had come to Ben in these ripe, full
summer days: the hard lines softened in his face and mostly the hard
shine left his eyes. Beatrice found herself curiously eager to please
him, taking the utmost care and pains with every dish she prepared for
the table; and it was true that he made the most joyful, exultant
response to her efforts. The searing heat back of his eyes was quite
gone, now. Even the scarlet fluid of his veins seemed to flow more
quietly, with less fire, with less madness. A gentling influence had
come to bear upon him; a great kindness, a new forbearance had
brightened his outlook toward all the world. A great redemption was even
now hovering close to him,--some unspeakable and ultimate blessing that
he could not name.
Their days were not without pleasure. Often they ventured far into the
heavy forest, and always fresh delight and thrilling adventure awaited
them. Ever they learned more of the wild things that were their only
neighbors,--creatures all the way down the scale from the lordly moose,
proud of his growing antlers and monarch of the marshes, to the small
pika, squeaking on the slide-rock of the high peaks. They knew and loved
them all; they found ever-increasing enjoyment in the study of their shy
ways and furtive occupations; they observed with delight the droll
awkwardness of the moose calves, the impertinence and saucy speech of
the jays, the humor of the black bear and the surly arrogance of the
grizzly. They knew that superlative cunning of his wickedness, the
wolverine; the stealth of the red fox; the ferociousness of the ermine
whose brown skin, soon to be white, suggested only something silken and
soft and tender instead of a fiendish cutthroat, terror of the Little
People; the skulking cowardice of the coyote; and the incredible
savagery and agility of the fisher,--that middle-sized hunter that
catches and kills everything he can master except fish. They climbed
high hills and descended into still, mysterious valleys; they paddled
long, dreamy twilight hours on the lake; they traversed marshes where
the moose wallowed; and they walked through ancient forests where the
decayed vegetation was a mossy pulp under their feet. Sometimes they
forgot the poignancy of their strange lives, romping sometimes,
gossiping like jays in the tree-limbs, and sometimes, forgetting enmity,
they told each other their secret beliefs and philosophies. They had
picnics in the woods; and long, comfortable evenings before their
dancing fire. But there was one enduring joy that always surpassed all
the rest, a happiness that seemed to have its origin in the silent
places of their hearts. It was just the return, after a fatiguing day in
forest and marsh, to the sheltering walls of the cave.
With his axe and hunting knife Ben prepared a complete set of furniture
for their little abode. His first Work was a surpassing-marvelous
dining-room suite of a table and two chairs. Then he put up shelves for
their rapidly dwindling supplies of provisions and cut chunks of spruce
log, with a bit of bark remaining, for fireside seats. And for more than
a week, Beatrice was forbidden to enter a certain covert just beyond the
glade lest she should prematurely discover an even greater wonder that
Ben, in off hours, was preparing for a surprise.
From time to time she heard him busily at work, the ring of his axe and
his gay whistling as he whittled bolts of wood; but other than that it
concerned the grizzly skin she had not the least idea of his task. But
the work was completed at last, and then came two days of rather
significant silence,--quite incomprehensible to the girl. She was at a
loss why Ben did not reveal his treasure.
But one morning she missed the familiar sounds of his fire-building,
usually his first work on wakening. The very fact of their absence
startled her wide-awake, while otherwise she would have perhaps slept
late into the morning. Ben had seemingly vanished into the heavy timber
across the glade.
Presently she heard him muttering and grunting as he moved some heavy
object to the door of the cave. Boyishly, he could not wait for the
usual late hour when she wakened. He made a wholly unnecessary amount of
noise as he built the fire. Then he thrust his lean head into the cavern
opening.
"I hope I haven't waked you up?" he said.