THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT
All the rest of that day they bore steadily northward. Hazel had no
idea of Bill Wagstaff's destination. She was too bitter against him to
ask, after admitting that she could not face the wilderness alone.
Between going it alone and accompanying him, it seemed to be a case of
choosing the lesser evil. Curiously she felt no fear of Bill Wagstaff
in person, and she did have a dread vision of what might happen to her
if she went wandering alone in the woods. There was one loophole left
to comfort her. It seemed scarcely reasonable that they could fare on
forever without encountering other frontier folk. Upon that
possibility she based her hopes of getting back to civilization, not so
much for love of civilization as to defeat Roaring Bill's object, to
show him that a woman had to be courted rather than carried away
against her will by any careless, strong-armed male. She knew nothing
of the North, but she thought there must be some mode of communication
or transportation. If she could once get in touch with other
people--well, she would show Roaring Bill. Of course, getting back to
Cariboo Meadows meant a new start in the world, for she had no hope,
nor any desire, to teach school there after this episode. She found
herself facing that prospect unmoved, however. The important thing was
getting out of her present predicament.
Roaring Bill made his camp that night as if no change in their attitude
had taken place. To all his efforts at conversation she turned a deaf
ear and a stony countenance. She proposed to eat his food and use his
bedding, because that was necessary. But socially she would have none
of him. Bill eventually gave over trying to talk. But he lost none of
his cheerfulness. He lay on his own side of the fire, regarding her
with the amused tolerance that one bestows upon the capricious temper
of a spoiled child.
Thereafter, day by day, the miles unrolled behind them. Always Roaring
Bill faced straight north. For a week he kept on tirelessly, and a
consuming desire to know how far he intended to go began to take hold
of her. But she would not ask, even when daily association dulled the
edge of her resentment, and she found it hard to keep up her hostile
attitude, to nurse bitterness against a man who remained serenely
unperturbed, and who, for all his apparent lawlessness, treated her as
a man might treat his sister.
To her unpracticed eye, the character of the country remained unchanged
except for minor variations. Everywhere the timber stood in serried
ranks, spotted with lakes and small meadows, and threaded here and
there with little streams. But at last they dropped into a valley
where the woods thinned out, and down the center of which flowed a
sizable river. This they followed north a matter of three days. On
the west the valley wall ran to a timbered ridge. Eastward the jagged
peaks of a snow-capped mountain chain pierced the sky.
Two hours from their noon camp on the fourth day in the valley Hazel
sighted some moving objects in the distance, angling up on the
timber-patched hillside. She watched them, at first uncertain whether
they were moose, which they had frequently encountered, or domestic
animals. Accustomed by now to gauging direction at a glance toward the
sun, she observed that these objects traveled south.
Presently, as the lines of their respective travel brought them nearer,
she made them out to be men, mounted, and accompanied by packs. She
counted the riders--five, and as many pack horses. One, she felt
certain, was a woman--whether white or red she could not tell.
But--there was safety in numbers. And they were going south.
Upon her first impulse she swung off Silk, and started for the
hillside, at an angle calculated to intercept the pack train. There
was a chance, and she was rapidly becoming inured to taking chances.
At a distance of a hundred yards, she looked back, half fearful that
Roaring Bill was at her heels. But he stood with his hands in his
pockets, watching her. She did not look again until she was half a
mile up the hill. Then he and his packs had vanished.
So, too, had the travelers that she was hurrying to meet. Off the
valley floor, she no longer commanded the same sweeping outlook. The
patches of timber intervened. As she kept on, she became more
uncertain. But she bore up the slope until satisfied that she was
parallel with where they should come out; then she stopped to rest.
After a few minutes she climbed farther, endeavoring to reach a point
whence she could see more of the slope. In so far had she absorbed
woodcraft that she now began watching for tracks. There were enough of
these, but they were the slender, triangle prints of the shy deer.
Nothing resembling the hoofmark of a horse rewarded her searching. And
before long, what with turning this way and that, she found herself on
a plateau where the pine and spruce stood like bristles in a brush, and
from whence she could see neither valley below nor hillside above.
She was growing tired. Her feet ached from climbing, and she was wet
with perspiration. She rested again, and tried calling. But her voice
sounded muffled in the timber, and she soon gave over that. The
afternoon was on the wane, and she began to think of and dread the
coming of night. Already the sun had dipped out of sight behind the
western ridges; his last beams were gilding the blue-white pinnacles a
hundred miles to the east. The shadows where she sat were thickening.
She had given up hope of finding the pack train, and she had cut loose
from Roaring Bill. It would be just like him to shrug his shoulders
and keep on going, she thought resentfully.
As twilight fell a brief panic seized her, followed by frightened
despair. The wilderness, in its evening hush, menaced her with huge
emptinesses, utter loneliness. She worked her way to the edge of the
wooded plateau. There was a lingering gleam of yellow and rose pink on
the distant mountains, but the valley itself lay in a blur of shade,
out of which rose the faint murmur of running water, a monotone in the
silence. She sat down on a dead tree, and cried softly to herself.
"Well?"
She started, with an involuntary gasp of fear, it was so unexpected.
Roaring Bill Wagstaff stood within five feet of her, resting one hand
on the muzzle of his grounded rifle, smiling placidly.
[Illustration: Roaring Bill Wagstaff stood within five feet of her,
resting one hand on the muzzle of his grounded rifle.]
"Well," he repeated, "this chasing up a pack train isn't so easy as it
looks, eh?"
She did not answer. Her pride would not allow her to admit that she
was glad to see him, relieved to be overtaken like a truant from
school. And Bill did not seem to expect a reply. He slung his rifle
into the crook of his arm.
"Come on, little woman," he said gently. "I knew you'd be tired, and I
made camp down below. It isn't far."
Obediently she followed him, and as she tramped at his heels she saw
why he had been able to come up on her so noiselessly. He had put on a
pair of moccasins, and his tread gave forth no sound.
"How did you manage to find me?" she asked suddenly--the first
voluntary speech from her in days.
Bill answered over his shoulder:
"Find you? Bless your soul, your little, high-heeled slices left a
trail a one-eyed man could follow. I've been within fifty yards of you
for two hours.
"Just the same," he continued, after a minute's interval, "it's bad
business for you to run off like that. Suppose you played hide and
seek with me till a storm wiped out your track? You'd be in a deuce of
a fix."
She made no reply. The lesson of the experience was not lost on her,
but she was not going to tell him so.
In a short time they reached camp. Roaring Bill had tarried long
enough to unpack. The horses grazed on picket. It was borne in upon
her that short of actually meeting other people her only recourse lay
in sticking to Bill Wagstaff, whether she liked it or not. To strike
out alone was courting self-destruction. And she began to understand
why Roaring Bill made no effort to watch or restrain her. He knew the
grim power of the wilderness. It was his best ally in what he had set
out to do.
Within forty-eight hours the stream they followed merged itself in
another, both wide and deep, which flowed west through a level-bottomed
valley three miles or more in width. Westward the land spread out in a
continuous roll, marked here and there with jutting ridges and isolated
peaks; but on the east a chain of rugged mountains marked the horizon
as far as she could see.
Roaring Bill halted on the river brink and stripped his horses clean,
though it was but two in the afternoon and their midday fire less than
an hour extinguished. She watched him curiously. When his packs were
off he beckoned her.
"Hold them a minute," he said, and put the lead ropes in her hand.
Then he went up the bank into a thicket of saskatoons. Out of this he
presently emerged, bearing on his shoulders a canoe, old and
weather-beaten, but stanch, for it rode light as a feather on the
stream. Bill seated himself in the canoe, holding to Silk's lead rope.
The other two he left free.
"Now," he directed, "when I start across, you drive Nigger and Satin in
if they show signs of hanging back. Bounce a rock or two off them if
they lag."
Her task was an easy one, for Satin and Nigger followed Silk
unhesitatingly. The river lapped along the sleek sides of them for
fifty yards. Then they dropped suddenly into swimming water, and the
current swept them downstream slantwise for the opposite shore, only
their heads showing above the surface. Hazel wondered what river it
might be. It was a good quarter of a mile wide, and swift.
Roaring Bill did not trouble to enlighten her as to the locality. When
he got back he stowed the saddle and pack equipment in the canoe.
"All aboard for the north side," he said boyishly. And Hazel climbed
obediently amidships.
On the farther side, Bill emptied the canoe, and stowed it out of sight
in a convenient thicket, repacked his horses, and struck out again.
They left the valley behind, and camped that evening on a great height
of land that rolled up to the brink of the valley.
Thereafter the country underwent a gradual change as they progressed
north, slanting a bit eastward. The heavy timber gave way to a sparser
growth, and that in turn dwindled to scrubby thickets, covering great
areas of comparative level. Long reaches of grassland opened before
them, waving yellow in the autumn sun. They crossed other rivers of
various degrees of depth and swiftness, swimming some and fording
others. Hazel drew upon her knowledge of British Columbia geography,
and decided that the big river where Bill hid his canoe must be the
Fraser where it debouched from the mountains. And in that case she was
far north, and in a wilderness indeed.
Her muscles gradually hardened to the saddle and to walking. Her
appetite grew in proportion. The small supply of eatable dainties that
Roaring Bill had brought from the Meadows dwindled and disappeared,
until they were living on bannocks baked à la frontier in his frying
pan, on beans and coffee, and venison killed by the way. Yet she
relished the coarse fare even while she rebelled against the
circumstances of its partaking. Occasionally Bill varied the meat diet
with trout caught in the streams beside which they made their various
camps. He offered to teach her the secrets of angling, but she
shrugged her shoulders by way of showing her contempt for Roaring Bill
and all his works.
"Do you realize," she broke out one evening over the fire, "that this
is simply abduction?"
"Not at all," Bill answered promptly. "Abduction means to take away
surreptitiously by force, to carry away wrongfully and by violence any
human being, to kidnap. Now, you can't by any stretch of the
imagination accuse me of force, violence, or kidnaping--not by a long
shot. You merely wandered into my camp, and it wasn't convenient for
me to turn back. Therefore circumstances--not my act, remember--made
it advisable for you to accompany me. Of course I'll admit that,
according to custom and usage, you would expect me to do the polite
thing and restore you to your own stamping ground. But there's no law
making it mandatory for a fellow to pilot home a lady in distress.
Isn't that right?"
"Anyhow," he went on, when she remained silent, "I didn't. And you'll
have to lay the blame on nature for making you a wonderfully attractive
woman. I did honestly try to find the way to Cariboo Meadows that
first night. It was only when I found myself thinking how fine it
would be to pike through these old woods and mountains with a partner
like you that I decided--as I did. I'm human--the woman, she tempted
me. And aren't you better off? I could hazard a guess that you were
running away from yourself--or something--when you struck Cariboo
Meadows. And what's Cariboo Meadows but a little blot on the face of
this fair earth, where you were tied to a deadly routine in order to
earn your daily bread? You don't care two whoops about anybody there.
Here you are free--free in every sense of the word. You have no
responsibility except what you impose on yourself; no board bills to
pay; nobody to please but your own little self. You've got the clean,
wide land for a bedroom, and the sky for its ceiling, instead of a
stuffy little ten-by-ten chamber. Do you know that you look fifty per
cent better for these few days of living in the open--the way every
normal being likes to live? You're getting some color in your cheeks,
and you're losing that worried, archangel look. Honest, if I were a
physician, I'd have only one prescription: Get out into the wild
country, and live off the country as your primitive forefathers did.
Of course, you can't do that alone. I know because I've tried it. We
humans don't differ so greatly from the other animals. We're made to
hunt in couples or packs. There's a purpose, a law, you might say,
behind that, too; only it's terribly obscured by a lot of other
nonessentials in this day and age.
"Is there any comparison between this sort of life, for instance--if it
appeals to one at all--and being a stenographer and bucking up against
the things any good-looking, unprotected girl gets up against in a
city? You know, if you'd be frank, that there isn't. Shucks! Herding
in the mass, and struggling for a mere subsistence, like dogs over a
bone, degenerates man physically, mentally, and morally--all our
vaunted civilization and culture to the contrary notwithstanding. Eh?"
But she would not take up the cudgels against him, would not seem to
countenance or condone his offense by discussing it from any angle
whatsoever. And she was the more determined to allow no degree of
friendliness, even in conversation, because she recognized the
masterful quality of the man. She told herself that she could have
liked Roaring Bill Wagstaff very well if he had not violated what she
considered the rules of the game. And she had no mind to allow his
personality to sweep her off her feet in the same determined manner
that he had carried her into the wilderness. She was no longer afraid
of him. She occasionally forgot, in spite of herself, that she had a
deep-seated grievance against him. At such times the wild land, the
changing vistas the journey opened up, charmed her into genuine
enjoyment. She would find herself smiling at Bill's quaint tricks of
speech. Then she would recollect that she was, to all intents and
purposes, a prisoner, the captive of his bow and spear. That was
maddening.
After a lapse of time they dropped into another valley, and faced
westward to a mountain range which Bill told her was the Rockies. The
next day a snowstorm struck them. At daybreak the clouds were massed
overhead, lowering, and a dirty gray. An uncommon chill, a rawness of
atmosphere foretold the change. And shortly after they broke camp the
first snowflakes began to drift down, slowly at first, then more
rapidly, until the grayness of the sky and the misty woods were
enveloped in the white swirl of the storm. It was not particularly
cold. Bill wrapped her in a heavy canvas coat, and plodded on. Noon
passed, and he made no stop. If anything, he increased his pace.
Suddenly, late in the afternoon, they stepped out of the timber into a
little clearing, in which the blurred outline of a cabin showed under
the wide arms of a leafless tree.
The melting snow had soaked through the coat; her feet were wet with
the clinging flakes, and the chill of a lowering temperature had set
Hazel shivering.
Roaring Bill halted at the door and lifted her down from Silk's back
without the formality of asking her leave. He pulled the latchstring,
and led her in. Beside the rude stone fireplace wood and kindling were
piled in readiness for use. Bill kicked the door shut, dropped on his
knees, and started the fire. In five minutes a great blaze leaped and
crackled into the wide throat of the chimney. Then he piled on more
wood, and turned to her.
"This is the house that Jack built," he said, with a sober face and a
twinkle in his gray eyes. "This is the man that lives in the house
that Jack built. And this"--he pointed mischievously at her--"is the
woman who's going to love the man that lives in the house that Jack
built."
"That's a lie!" she flashed stormily through her chattering teeth.
"Well, we'll see," he answered cheerfully. "Get up here close to the
fire and take off those wet things while I put away the horses."
And with that he went out, whistling.