It was a wilderness moon that rose over the spruce to-night,--white as
new silver, incredibly large, inscrutably mysterious. The winds had
whisked away the last pale cloud that might have dimmed its glory, and
its light poured down with equal bounty on peak and hill, forest and
yellow marsh. The heavy woods partook most deeply of its enchantment:
tall, stately trees pale and nebulous as if with silver frost, each
little stream dancing and shimmering in its light, every glade laid with
a fairy tapestry, every shadow dreadful and black in contrast. The
wilderness breathed and shivered as if swept with passion.
The wilderness moon is the moon of desire; and all this great space of
silence seemed to respond. It seemed to throb, like one living entity,
as if in longing for something lost long ago--a half-forgotten
happiness, a glory and a triumph that were gone never to return. No
creatures that followed the woods trails were dull and flat to-night.
They were all swept with mystery, knowing vague longings or fierce
desires. It was the harvest moon; but here it did not light the fields
so that men might harvest grain. Rather it illumined the hunting trails
so that the beasts of prey might find relief from the wild lusts and
seething ferment that was in their veins. But mostly the forest mood was
disconsolate, rather than savage, to-night. The wild geese on the lake
called their weird and plaintive cries, their strange complaints that no
man understands; the loons laughed in insane despair; and the coyotes
on the ridge wailed out the pain of living and the vague longings of
their wild hearts.
In the glory of that moon Fenris the wolf knew the same, resistless
longings that so many times before had turned him from the game trails.
There was something here that was unutterably dear to him,--something
that drew him, called him like a voice, and he could not turn aside.
Because he was a beast, he likely did not know the force that was
drawing him again along the lake shore. Yet the souls of the lower
creatures no man knows; and perhaps he had conscious longings,
profoundly intense, for a moment's touch of a strong hand on his
shoulder,--one never-to-be-forgotten caress from a certain god that had
gone to a cave to live. It was true that his wild instincts, ever more
in dominance these past weeks, would likely halt him at the cavern maw,
permitting no intimacy other than to ascertain that all was well. They
were too strong ever to brook man's control again. The moon was a moon
of desire, but only because it was also the moon of memory,--and perhaps
memories, stirring and exalting, were sweeping through him. Straight as
an arrow he turned toward the cave.
His followers--the gaunt female and two younger males, the structure
about which the winter pack would form--hesitated at first. They had no
commanding memories of the cavern on the far side of the lake. Yet
Fenris was their leader; by the deep-lying laws of the pack they must
follow where he led. They could not decoy him into the trails of game.
As ever they sped swiftly, silently after him.
In this forest of desires Ben knew but one,--that he might yet be of aid
to Beatrice. But he knew in his heart that it was a vain hope. He was
within a hundred yards of Ray's camp now, but the struggle to reach the
lake and the poling across its waters had brought him seemingly to the
absolute limit of his strength, clear to the brink of utter exhaustion.
Never in his life before had he known the full meaning of
fatigue,--fatigue that was like a paralysis, blunting the mechanism of
the brain, burning like a slow fire in his muscles, poisoning the vital
fluids of his nerves. Stroke after stroke, never ceasing!--The flame was
high, crackling--just before him. Through a rift in the trees he could
see the outline of two men and the slim form of the girl. Just a few
yards more.
But of all the desires that the moon invoked in the woods people there
were none so unredeemed, so wicked and cruel as this that slowly wakened
in the evil hearts of these two degenerate men, Beatrice's captors. She
sensed it only vaguely at first. All the disasters that had fallen upon
her had not taught her to accept such a thing as this: surely this would
be spared her, at least. There is a kindly blind spot in the brain that
often will not let the ugly truth go home.
For a strange, still moment Ray's face seemed devoid of all expression.
It was flat and lifeless as dark clay. Then Beatrice felt the insult of
his quickening gaze.
"Put a rope around her wrists, Chan," he said. "We don't want to take
chances on her getting away."
He spoke slowly, rather flatly. There was nothing that her senses could
seize upon--either in his face or voice to justify the swift,
strangling, killing horror that came upon her. He stood simply gazing,
and as she met his gaze her lips parted and drew back in a grimace of
terror; thus they stood until the blood began to leap fast in Chan's
veins. She needed no further disillusionment. Chan spoke behind her, a
startled oath cut off short, and she felt him moving swiftly toward her.
It was her last instant of respite; and her muscle set and drew for a
final, desperate attempt at self-defense.
She wore Ben's knife at her belt, and her hand sped toward it. But the
motion, fast as it was, came too late. Chan saw it; and leaping swiftly,
his arms went about her and pinned her own arms to her sides.
She tried in vain to fight her way out of his grasp. She writhed,
screaming; and in the frenzy of her fear she all but succeeded in
hurling him off. She managed to draw the knife clear of the sheath, yet
she couldn't raise her arm to strike. Ray was aiding his confederate
now; and in an instant more she was helpless.
Their drawn faces bent close to hers. She felt their hot hands as they
drew her wrists in front of her and fastened them with a rope. "Not too
tight, Chan," Ray advised. "We don't want her to get uncomfortable
before we're done with her. Don't tie her ankles; she can't run through
the brush with her arms tied.--Now give her a moment to breathe."
They stood on each side of her, regarding her with secret, growing
excitement. Already they had descended too far to know pity for this
girl. The wide-open eyes, so dark with terror and in contrast with the
stark paleness of her face, the lips that trembled so piteously, the
slender, girlish figure so helpless to their depraved desires moved them
not at all.
The scene was one of never-to-be-forgotten vividness. The tenderness and
mercy, most of all the restraint that has become manifest in men in
these centuries since they have left their forest lairs to live in
permanent abodes, had no place here. About them ringed the primeval
forest, ensilvered by the moon; the fire crackled with a dread ferocity;
and at the edge of the thickets the motionless form of Jeffery Neilson
lay with face buried in the soft, summer grass. All was silent and
motionless, except the fierce crackling of the fire; except a curious,
intermittent, upward twitching of the corner of Ray's lips.
"So you and Ben are bunkies now, are you?" he asked slowly, without
emphasis.
But the girl made no reply, only gazing at him with starting eyes.
"A traitor to us, and Ben's squaw!" He turned fiercely to Chan. "I guess
that gives us right to do what we want to with her. And now she can yell
if she wants to for her lover to come and save her."
She did not even try to buy their mercy by informing them where they
might find Ben. Only too well she knew that their dreadful intentions
could not be turned aside: she would only sacrifice Ben without aiding
herself. Ray moved toward her, his eyes deeply sunken, the pupils
abnormally enlarged.
"You haven't lost all your looks," he told her breathlessly. "That mouth
is still pretty enough to kiss. And I guess you won't slap--this time--"
He drew her toward him, his dark face lowering toward hers. She
struggled, trying to wrench away from him. Helpless and alone, the
moment of final horror was at hand. In this last instant her whole being
leaped again to Ben,--the man whose strength had been her fort
throughout all their first weeks in the wilds, but whom she had left
helpless and sick in the distant cavern. Yet even now he would rise and
come to her if he knew of her peril. Her voice rose shrilly to a scream.
"Ben--help me!"
And Ray's hands fell from her shoulders as he heard the incredible
answer from the shore of the lake. The brush rustled and cracked: there
was a strange sound of a heavy footfall,--slow, unsteady, but
approaching them as certain as the speeding stars approach their
mysterious destinations in the far reaches of the sky. Ray
straightened, staring; Chan stood as if frozen, his hands half-raised,
his eyes wide open.
"I'm coming, Beatrice," some one said in the coverts. Her cries, uttered
when her father fell, had not gone unheard. In the last stages of
exhaustion, deathly pale yet with a face of iron, Ben came reeling
toward them out of the moonlight.