"I wish you'd get up and come and look at something ugly I've got just
outside the door."
She hurried into her outer garments, and in a moment appeared. It was
ugly, certainly, the object that he had fashioned with such tireless
toil: not fitted at all for a stylish city home; yet the girl, for one
short instant, stopped breathing. It was a hammock, suspended on a stout
frame, to take the place of her tree-bough bed on the cave floor. He had
used the grizzly skin, hanging it with unbreakable sinew, and fashioning
it in such a manner that folds of the hide could be turned over her on
cold nights. For a moment she gazed, very earnestly, into the rugged,
homely, raw-boned face of her companion.
Beatrice was deeply and inexplicably sobered, yet a curious happiness
took swift possession of her heart. Reading the gratitude in her eyes,
Ben's lips broke into a radiant smile.
"I guess you've forgotten what day it is," he said.
"Of course. I hardly know the month."
"I've notched each day, you know. And maybe you've forgotten--on the
ride out from Snowy Gulch--we talked of birthdays. To-day is yours."
She stared at him in genuine astonishment. She had not dreamed that this
little confidence, given in a careless moment of long weeks before, had
lingered in the man's memory. She had supposed that the fury and
savagery of his war with her father and the latter's followers had
effaced all such things as this.
And it was true that had this birthday come a few weeks before, on the
river journey and previous to their occupation of the cave, Ben would
have let it pass unnoticed. The smoldering fire in his brain would have
seared to ashes any such kindly thought as this. But when the wild
hunter leaves his leafy lair and goes to dwell, a man rather than a
beast, in a permanent abode, he has thought for other subjects than his
tribal wars and the blood-lust of his hates. The hearth, and the care
and friendship of the girl had tamed Ben to this degree, at least.
But wonders were not done. The look in the girl's eyes suddenly melted,
as the warm sun melts ice, some of the frozen bitterness of his spirit.
"It's your birthday--and I hope you have many of 'em," he went on. "No
more like this--but all of 'em happy,--as you deserve."
He walked toward her, and her eyes could not leave his. He bent soberly,
and brushed her lips with his own.
There were always worlds to talk about in the warm gleam of their fire.
When the day's work was done, and the hush of early night gathered the
land to its arms, they would sit on their fireside seats and settle all
problems, now and hereafter, to the perfect satisfaction of them both.
From Ben, Beatrice gained a certain strength of outlook as well as depth
of insight, but she gave him in return more than she received. He felt
that her influence, in his early years, would have worked wonders for
him. She straightened out his moral problems for him, taught him lessons
in simple faith; and her own childish sweetness and absolute purity
showed his whole world in a new light.
Sometimes they talked of religion and ethics, sometimes of science and
economics, and particularly they talked of what was nearest to
them,--the mysteries and works of nature. She had been a close observer
of the forest. She had received some glimpse of its secret laws that
were, when all was said and done, the basic laws of life. But for all
her love of science she was not a mere biologist. She had a full and
devout faith in Law and Judgment beyond any earthly sphere.
"No one can live in this boundless wilderness and not believe," she told
him earnestly, her dark eyes brimming with her fervor. "Perhaps I can't
tell you why--maybe it's just a feeling of need, of insufficiency of
self. Besides, God is close, like He was to the Israelites when they
were in the wilderness; but you will remember that He never came close
again.--This forest is so big and so awful, He knows he must stay close
to keep you from dying of fear.--God may not be a reality to the people
of the cities, where they see only buildings and streets, but Ben, He is
to me. You can't forget Him up here. He stands on every mountain, just
as the sons of Aaron saw Him."
He found, to his surprise, that she was not ill-read, particularly in
the old-time classics. But her environment had also influenced her
choice of reading. She loved the old legends in the minor,--far-off and
plaintive things that reflected the mood of the dusky forest in which
she lived.
One night, when the moon was in the sky, he told her of his war record,
of the shell-shock and the strange, criminal mania that followed it; and
then of his swift recovery. With an over-powering need of
self-justification he told her of his further adventures with Ezram, of
the old man's murder and the theft of the claim. She heard him out,
listening attentively; but in loyalty to her father she did not let
herself believe him entirely. The answer she gave him was the same as
she had always given at his every reference to his side of the case.
"If you were in the right, you'd take me back and let the law take its
course," she told him. "You'd not be out here laying an ambush for them,
to kill them when they try to rescue me."
He could never make her understand how, by the intricacies of law, it
would be a rare chance that he would be able to fasten the crime on the
murderers: that he had taken the only sure way open to make them pay for
Ezram's death. He told her of the old man's, final request; how that his
war with her father and his men was a debt that, by secret, inscrutable
laws of his being, could never be written off or disavowed. But he could
never fully find words to uphold his position. The thing went back to
his instincts, traced at last to the remorseless spirit of the wolf that
was his heritage.
Yet these hours of talk were immensely good for him. While they never
met on common grounds, the girl's true outlook and nobility of character
were ever more manifest to him; and were not without a gentling, healing
influence upon him. He could not blind himself to them. And sometimes
when he sat alone by his dying fire, as the dark menaced him, and the
girl that was his charge slept within the portals of stone, he had the
unescapable feeling that the very structure of his life was falling and
shattering down; but even now he could see, an enchanted vista in the
distance, a mightier, more glorious tower, builded and shaped by this
woman's hand.