IN CAMP AGAIN
The violence of the storm precluded the use of horses about the camp,
and the trail that slanted from the clearing to the water-hole was soon
drifted high with snow, rendering useless the heavy tank-sled. Fallon,
who had been placed in temporary charge of the camp, told the men into
water-shifts; barrels were lashed to strong sleds and man-hauled to the
top of the bank, where the guide-rope had been run to the water-hole.
The men of the shift formed a long line reaching from the sled to the
river, and the water dipped from the hole cut in the ice was passed
from man to man in buckets to be dumped into the barrels and
distributed between the stables, cook-shack, bunk-house, and "house."
Darkness had fallen when the men of the afternoon shift wallowed toward
the river upon the last trip of the second day of the great blizzard.
The roar of the wind as it hurled the frozen particles against their
cold-benumbed faces drowned their muttered curses as, thirty strong,
they pushed and hauled the cumbersome sled to the top of the bank.
Seizing the buckets, they strung out, making their way down the steep
slope with one hand on the guide-rope.
Suddenly the foremost man stumbled and fell. He scrambled profanely to
his knees and began feeling about in the thick darkness for his bucket.
His mittened hand came into contact with the object which, protruding
from the snow, had tripped him, and with a vicious wrench he endeavored
to remove it from the trail. It yielded a little, but remained firmly
imbedded.
With a wild yell he forgot his bucket and began digging and clawing in
the snow, for the object he grasped was the bent ash edge of a
snowshoe, and firmly lashed in the center of the webbing was the
moccasined foot of a man.
Other men came, floundering and sprawling over each other in the
darkness, and the word was bellowed from lips to listening ear that a
man lay buried beneath the drift.
"Dig! Ye tarriers!" roared Fallon as his heavy mittens gouged into the
snow. "Dig! Ut's th' boss!" he yelled into the ear of the nearest man.
"Oi know thim rackets!"
And from lip to bearded lip the word passed, and the big men of the
logs redoubled their efforts; but the fine snow had packed hard around
the prostrate form, and it was many minutes before they had uncovered
him sufficiently to note the smaller body lashed tightly upon his back.
The frozen lash was soon severed and the two exanimate bodies lifted in
eager hands.
Buckets were left to snow under as the men crowded up the bank, howling
into each other's ears. Big Stromberg, who bore the boss in his arms,
was propelled up the steep slope by the men who crowded about him,
pushing, pulling, hauling--the ground-gaining, revolving wedge of the
old days of mass formation in football.
"To th' office wid um!" roared Fallon in Stromberg's ear as they milled
across the clearing. "Th' b'ys'll crowd th' bunk-house till they
hindher more thin hilp!"
The boy responded quickly to vigorous treatment and stimulants and was
removed to his own bunk and placed under the able care of his Aunt
Margaret and Mrs. Sheridan.
In the office Ethel Manton, white-faced and silent, watched
breathlessly the efforts of Appleton and Blood River Jack to revive the
exhausted and half-frozen foreman. The lumber magnate unscrewed the
silver cap from a morocco-covered flask and poured out a generous dose
of liquor; but before it reached the unconscious man's lips the
half-breed stayed his hand.
"M's'u' Bill drinks no whisky," he said. "Even in the time of his great
sickness would he drink no whisky; and if you give him whisky he will
be very angry."
Appleton paused and glanced curiously from the face of the half-breed
to the still form upon the bunk, and the other continued:
"It is strange--I do not know--but he told it to Jeanne one day--that,
in the great city of the white man is a girl he loves. He used to drink
much whisky, and for that reason she sent him from her--and now he
drinks no whisky--even though this girl has married another."
Ethel stared at the speaker, wide-eyed, and the pallor of her face
increased.
"Married another!" she gasped.
Jacques regarded her gravely. "I know nothing except it was told me by
Jeanne," he returned--"how he talked in the voice of the fever-spirit,
that this girl would marry another. In the paper he read it--but even
so, will he drink no whisky. One week ago did he not hear how one night
in the bunk-house Leduc tried to make the little boy drink whisky? And
did he not hunt up Leduc the next morning, and, upon the skidway, smash
the nose of him and knock four teeth from his jaw?"
The guide paused, and Appleton slowly screwed the silver top to his
flask and returned it to his pocket.
"Upon the stove is a pot of very strong coffee which Daddy Dunnigan
told me to bring," Jacques went on; "and he is even now making broth in
the cook-shack. M's'u' Bill cannot die. The strong coffee and the good
broth will bring him back to life; for he is called in the woods
The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die.
"If he could die he would die in the blizzard. For, since blizzards
were known, has no man done a thing like this--to search for two days
and a night for one boy lost in the snow, and carry him home in
safety."
The half-breed finished, and the girl, with a low cry, sank into a
chair and, leaning forward upon the desk, buried her face in her arms
while her shoulders shook with the violence of her sobbing.
Appleton crossed to her side and laid a hand gently upon her shoulder.
"Come, Ethel," he said; "this has been too much for you. Let me take
you to the house."
But the girl shook her head. She raised her eyes, wet with tears, and
with an effort controlled her voice.
"My place is here--with _him_," she said softly as she arose, and,
walking to the side of the cot, looked down at the set face of the
unconscious man. "Leave me alone now. There is nothing you can do. I
will stay with him while you sleep. Draw your cot close to the wall,
and if I need you I will knock. Jacques will go to the cook-shack," she
added, turning to the half-breed, "and when the broth is ready bring it
to me."
The men obeyed without question, and as the office door closed behind
them the girl dropped to her knees beside the bunk and, throwing her
arms about the man's neck, pressed her soft cheek close against his
bearded face.
The little tin lamp in its bracket beside the row of books on the top
of the desk was turned low and its yellow light illuminated dimly the
interior of the rough room. She slipped into an easier position and,
seated upon the floor at the edge of the low bunk, drew his head close
against her breast. At the touch--the feel of this strong man lying
helpless in her arms--the long-pent yearning of her soul burst the
studied bonds of its restraint and through her whole body swept the
torrent of a mighty love.
Resistlessly it engulfed every nerve and fiber of her--wave upon wave
of wild, primitive passion surged through her veins until her heart
seemed bursting with the sweet, intense pain of it. Fiercely, in the
hot, quick flame of passion, she strained him to her breast and her
lips sought his in an abandon of feverish kisses.
And in that moment she knew that, in all the world of men, this man was
_her_ man. Always he had dominated her life--always she had known this
great love, had fought against it, and feared it--and always she had
held it in check.
But now, alone in the night, with the man lying helpless in her arms,
this mighty passion welled to the bursting of restraint.
Her heart, subservient no longer to the will of her brain nor to creeds
nor the tenets of convention, had this night come into its own, and she
loved with the hot, savage mate-love of her pristine forebears.
The man's lips moved feebly upon hers and the closed eyelids fluttered.
The girl sprang to the stove and returned a second later bearing a
thick porcelain cup steaming with strong, black coffee.
She raised his head upon her arm and, holding the cup, let part of its
contents trickle between his lips. He strangled weakly and swallowed.
Again she tilted the cup and again he swallowed. "My darling! My
darling!" she sobbed as the fluttering eyelids half opened and the lips
moved, and then leaned close to catch their faintest murmur.
"Jeanne," he whispered, "Jeanne, little girl----" and then the lips
ceased to move, he shuddered slightly through the length of him, his
eyes closed, and he slept.
The thick cup thudded heavily upon the floor and its contents splashed
unheeded over her gown, as the girl sat motionless, staring past the
bunk at the blank wall of logs.
The little nickel-plated alarm-clock ticked loudly in sharp, insistent
threes, as she sat, white of face, with set lips and unwinking eyes
staring stonily at the parallel logs of the wall.
Centuries of supercultivation and the refinement of breeding were
concentrated in that white-lipped, cold-eyed stare, which is the
heart-mask of the _recherche_ woman of empire. And then--the mask
dropped.
The inevitable artificiality of years of unconscious eugenic selection
melted in a breath before the fierce onrush of savage emotion. The girl
sprang to her feet as the hot blood surged to her face and paced
frantically back and forth in a fume of primordial hate. Her small
fists clenched till pink nails bit deep into soft, pink palms. Her
nostrils dilated, quivering; her eyes flashed, and the breath hissed
through her lips in deep sobs of impotent rage against the woman who
had robbed her of this man's love and whose name was upon his lips in
the first moment of his awakening.
She paused and gazed into the face of the man who was the hero of her
fondest dreams--the man who had overcome obstacles, who defied danger
and death, and had won, with his two hands and the great force of his
personality, the respect and devotion of the big men of the rough
country.
And he was hers--never had he been aught else but hers--and she had
lost him! Wildly she resumed her restless pacing, while the words of
the half-breed rang in her ears: "She is beautiful, and she loves him."
She halted abruptly, and in her eye flashed a momentary ray of hope;
the man had said, not "He loves her," but, "She loves him." Could it
be--but, no, there were his own words, spoken at the time of their
first meeting in the gloom of this very room: "I forgot that I have not
the right--that there is another."
And was it not _her_ name that sprang to his lips in the
half-consciousness of a few moments ago? In her mind she pictured the
wild, dark beauty of the other girl, and in the jealous fury of her
heart could have torn her in pieces with her two hands.
"M's'u' Bill drinks no whisky"--the dream of her life had been
realized, but in the realization she had been beaten--all her hopes and
prayers, the long, bitter hours of her soul-anguish, which burned and
gnawed beneath the stoicism and apathy her environment demanded, had
gone for naught, and she, who had borne the brunt of the long battle,
was brushed aside and forgotten.
The spoils belonged to another--and that other, an _Indian_!