The dawn that crept so gray and mysterious over the frosty green of
spruce brought no hope to Beatrice, sitting beside the unconscious form
of Ben in the cave fronting the glade. Rather it only brought the tragic
truth home more clearly. Her love for him had manifested itself too late
to give happiness to either of them: even now his life seemed to be
stealing from her, into the valley of the shadow.
She had watched beside him the whole night; and now she beheld a
sinister change in his condition. He was still unconscious, but he no
longer drew his breath at long intervals, softly and quietly. He was
breathing in short, troubled gasps, and an ominous red glow was in his
cheeks. She touched his brow, only to find it burning with fever.
The fact was not hard to understand. The downpour of cold rain in which
he had lain, wounded, for so many hours had drawn the life heat out of
him, and some organic malady had combined with his bodily injuries to
strike out his life. Her predicament was one of absolute helplessness.
She was hundreds of miles--weary weeks of march--from medical attention,
and she could neither leave him nor carry him. The wilderness forces,
resenting the intrusion into their secret depths, had seemingly taken
full vengeance at last. They had seemingly closed all gates to life and
safety. They had set the trap with care; and the cruel jaws had sprung.
She sat dry-eyed, incoherent prayers at her trembling lips. Mostly she
did not touch the man, only sat at his bedside in the crude chair Ben
had fashioned for her while the minutes rolled into hours and the hours
sped the night away,--in tireless vigil, watching with lightless eyes.
Once she bent and touched her lips to his.
They were not cold now. They were warm with fever. But in the strange
twilight-world of unconsciousness he could neither know of nor respond
to her kiss. She patted down his covering and sometimes held his hard
hands warm between hers, as if she could thus keep death from seizing
them and leading him away. But her courage did not break again.
The wan light showed her his drawn face; and just for an instant her
arms pressed about it. "I won't give up, Ben," she promised. "I'll keep
on fighting--to the last minute. And maybe I can pull you through."
Beatrice meant exactly what she said: to the last minute. That did not
mean to the gray hour when, by all dictate of common sense, further
fight is useless. She meant that she would battle tirelessly as long as
one pale spark glowed in his spirit, as long as his breath could cloud a
glass. The best thing for her now, however, was rest. She was exhausted
by the strain of the night; and she must save herself for the crisis
that was sure to come. Ben was sleeping easily now; the instant when his
life hung in the balance still impended.
She built up the fire, put on water to heat, covered the man with added
blankets, then lay down on Ben's cot. Soon she drifted into uneasy
slumber, waking at intervals to serve her patient.
The hours dragged by, the night sloped down to the forest; and the dawn
followed the night. Ben's life still flickered, like a flame in the
wind, in the twilight land between life and death.
Yet little could she do for him these first few days, except, in her
simple faith, to pray. Never an hour passed but that prayers were at her
lips, childlike, direct, entreating prayers from her woman's heart. Of
all her offices these were first: she had no doubt but that they counted
most. She sat by his bedside, kept him covered with the warmest robes,
hewed wood for the fire; but as yet he had never fully emerged from his
unconsciousness. Would he slip away in the night without ever wakening?
But in the morning of the fourth day he opened his eyes vividly,
muttered, and fell immediately to sleep. He woke again at evening; and
his moving lips conveyed a message. In response she brought him steaming
grouse broth, administering it a spoonful at a time until he fell to
sleep again.
In the days that followed he was conscious to the degree that he could
drink broth, yet never recognizing Beatrice nor seeming to know where he
was. His fever still lingered, raging; yet in these days she began to
notice a slow improvement in his condition. The healing agents of his
body were hard at work; and doubt was removed that he had received
mortal internal injuries. She had set his broken arm the best she could,
holding the bones in place with splints; but in all likelihood it would
have to be broken and set again when he reached the settlements. She
began to notice the first cessation of his fever; although weeks of
sickness yet remained, she believed that the crisis was past. Yet in
spite of these hopeful signs, she was face to face with the most tragic
situation of all. Their food was almost gone.
It would be long weeks before Ben could hope for sufficient strength to
start the journey down to the settlements, even if the way were open. As
it was their only chance lay in the fall rains that would flood the
Yuga and enable them to journey down to the native villages in their
canoe. These rains would not fall till October. For all that she had
hoarded their supplies to the last morsel, eating barely enough herself
to sustain life in her body, the dread spectre of starvation waited just
without the cave. She had realized perfectly that Ben could not hope to
throw off the malady without nutritious food and she had not stinted
with him; and now, just when she had begun to hope for his recovery, she
shook the last precious cup of flour from the sack.
The rice and sugar were gone, long since. The honey she had hoarded to
give Ben--knowing its warming, nutritive value--not tasting a drop
herself. Of all their stores only a few pieces of jerked caribou
remained; she had used the rest to make rich broth for Ben, and there
was no way under heaven whereby they might procure more.
The rifle was broken. The last of the pistol shots was fired the day she
had prepared the poisoned cup for Ben.
Yet she still waged the fight, struggling with high courage and tireless
resolution against the frightful odds that opposed her. Her faith was as
of that nameless daughter of the Gileadite; and she could not yield. Not
ambition, not hatred--not even such fire of fury as had been wakened in
Wolf Darby's heart that first frenzied night on the hillside--could have
been the impulse for such fortitude and sacrifice as hers. It was not
one of these base passions--known in the full category to her rescuers
who were even now bearing down upon her valley--that kept the steel in
her thews and the steadfastness in her heart. She loved this man; her
love for him was as wholesome and as steadfast as her own self; and the
law of that love was to give him all she had.
There were few witnesses to this infinite giving of hers. Ben himself
still lingered in a strange stupor, remembering nothing, knowing neither
the girl nor himself. Perhaps the wild things saw her desperate efforts
to find food in the wilderness,--the long hours of weary searching for a
handful of berries that gave such little nourishment to his weakened
body, or for a few acorns stored for winter by bird or rodent. Sometimes
a great-antlered moose--an easy trophy if the rifle had been
unbroken--saw her searching for wocus like a lost thing in the tenacious
mud of the marshes; and almost nightly a silent wolf, pausing in his
hunting, gazed uneasily through the cavern maw. But mostly her long
hours of service in the cave, the chill nights that she sat beside Ben's
cot, the dreary mornings when she cooked her own scanty breakfast and
took her uneasy rest, the endless labor of fire-mending so that the cave
could be kept at an even heat went unobserved by mortal eyes. The
healing forces of his body called for warmth and nourishment; but for
all the might of her efforts she waged a losing fight.
What little wocus she was able to find she made into bread for Ben; yet
it was never enough to satisfy his body's craving. The only meat she had
herself was the vapid flesh that had been previously boiled for Ben's
broth; and now only a few pieces of the jerked meat remained. She
herself tried to live on such plants as the wilderness yielded, and she
soon began to notice the tragic loss of her own strength. Her eyes were
hollow, preternaturally large; she experienced a strange, floating
sensation, as if spirit and flesh were disassociated.
Still Ben lingered in his mysterious stupor, unaware of what went on
about him; but his fever was almost gone by now, and the first
beginnings of strength returned to his thews. His mind had begun to
grope vaguely for the key that would open the doors of his memory and
remind him again of some great, half-forgotten task that still
confronted him, some duty unperformed. Yet he could not quite seize it.
The girl who worked about his cot was without his bourne of knowledge;
her voice reached him as if from an infinite distance, and her words
penetrated only to the outer edges of his consciousness. It was not
strictly, however, a return of his amnesia. It was simply an outgrowth
of delirium caused by his sickness and injuries, to be wholly dispelled
as soon as he was wholly well.
But now the real hour of crisis was at hand,--not from his illness, but
from the depletion of their food supplies. Beatrice had spent a hard
afternoon in the forest in search of roots and berries, and as she crept
homeward, exhausted and almost empty-handed, the full, tragic truth was
suddenly laid bare. Her own strength had waned. Without the miracle of a
fresh food supply she could hardly keep on her feet another day. Plainly
and simply, the wolf was at the door. His cruel fangs menaced not only
her, but this stalwart man for whose life she had fought so hard.
The fear of the obliterating darkness known to all the woods people
pressed close upon her and appalled her. She loved life simply and
primitively; and it was an unspeakable thing to lose at the end of such
a battle. Out so far, surrounded by such endless, desolate wastes of
gloomy forest, the Shadow was cold, inhospitable; and she was afraid to
face it alone. If Ben would only waken and sustain her drooping spirit
with his own! She was lonely and afraid, in the shadow of the inert
spruce, under the gray sky.
She could hardly summon strength for the evening's work of cutting fuel.
The blade would not drive with its old force into the wood. The blaze
itself burned dully; and she could not make it leap and crackle with its
old cheer. And further misfortune was in store for her when she crept
into the cave to prepare Ben's supper.
A pack rat--one of those detested rodents known so well to all northern
peoples--had carried off in her absence two of the three remaining
sticks of jerked caribou. For a moment she gazed in unbelieving and
speechless horror, then made a frenzied search in the darkened corners
of the cabin.
This was no little tragedy: the two sticks of condensed and concentrated
protein might have kept Ben alive for a few days more. It was disaster,
merciless and sweeping. And the brave heart of the girl seemed to break
under the blow.
The hot, bitter tears leaped forth; but she suppressed the bitter,
hopeless sobs that clutched at her throat. She must not let Ben know of
this catastrophe. Likely in his stupor he would not understand; yet she
must not take the chance. She must nourish the spark of hope in his
breast to the last hour. She walked to the mouth of the cave; and Famine
itself stood close, waiting in the shadows. She gazed out into the
gathering gloom.
The tears blinded her eyes at first. Slowly the dark profile of the
spruce against the gray sky penetrated to her consciousness: the somber
beauty of the wilderness sky line that haunts the woodsman's dreams.
With it came full realization of the might and the malevolency of these
shadowed wilds she had battled so long. They had got her down at last;
they had crushed her and beaten her, and had held up to scorn her
sacrifice and her mortal strength. She knew the wild wood now: its
savage power, its remorselessness, and yet, woods girl that she was, she
could not forget its dark and moving beauty.
The forest was silent to-night. Not a twig cracked or a branch rustled.
It was hushed, breathless, darkly sinister. All at once her eyes peered
and strained into the dusk.
Far across the valley, beyond the beaver marsh and on the farther shore
of the lake she saw a little glimmer of light through the rift in the
trees. She dared not believe in its reality at first. Perhaps it was a
trick of her imagination only, a hallucination born of her starvation,
child of her heartfelt prayer. She looked away, then peered again. But,
yes--a tiny gleam of yellow light twinkled through the gloom! It was
real, _it was true_! A gleam of hope in the darkness of despair.
Her rescuers had come. There could be no other explanation. She hastened
into the cave, drew the blankets higher about Ben's shoulders, then
crept out into the dusk. Half running, she hastened toward their distant
camp fire.