BOREAS CHANTS HIS LAY
December winged by, the days succeeding each other like glittering
panels on a black ground of long, drear nights. Christmas came. They
mustered up something of the holiday spirit, dining gayly off a roast
of caribou. For the occasion Hazel had saved the last half dozen
potatoes. With the material at her command she evolved a Christmas
pudding, serving it with brandy sauce. And after satisfying appetites
bred of a morning tilt with Jack Frost along Bill's trap line, they
spent a pleasant hour picturing their next Christmas. There would be
holly and bright lights and music--the festival spirit freed of all
restraint.
The new year was born in a wild smother of flying snow, which died at
dawn to let a pale, heatless sun peer tentatively over the southern
mountains, his slanting beams setting everything aglitter. Frost
particles vibrated in the air, coruscating diamond dust. Underfoot, on
the path beaten betwixt house and stable, the snow crunched and
complained as they walked, and in the open where the mad winds had
piled it in hard, white windrows. But in the thick woods it lay as it
had fallen, full five foot deep, a downy wrapping for the slumbering
earth, over which Bill Wagstaff flitted on his snowshoes as silently as
a ghost--a fur-clad ghost, however, who bore a rifle on his shoulder,
and whose breath exhaled in white, steamy puffs.
Gold or no gold, the wild land was giving up its treasure to them.
Already the catch of furs totaled ninety marten, a few mink, a dozen
wolves--and two pelts of that rara avis, the silver fox. Around twelve
hundred dollars, Bill estimated, with four months yet to trap. And the
labor of tending the trap lines, of skinning and stretching the catch,
served to keep them both occupied--Hazel as much as he, for she went
out with him on all but the hardest trips. So that their isolation in
the hushed, white world where the frost ruled with an iron hand had not
so far become oppressive. They were too busy to develop that dour
affliction of the spirit which loneliness and idleness breed through
the long winters of the North.
A day or two after the first of the year Roaring Bill set out to go
over one of the uttermost trap lines. Five minutes after closing the
door he was back.
"Easy with that fire, little person," he cautioned. "She's blowing out
of the northwest again. The sparks are sailing pretty high. Keep your
eye on it, Hazel."
"All right, Billum," she replied. "I'll be careful."
Not more than fifty yards separated the house and stable. At the
stable end stood the stack of hay, a low hummock above the surrounding
drift. Except for the place where Bill daily removed the supply for
his horses there was not much foothold for a spark, since a thin coat
of snow overlaid the greater part of the top. But there was that
chance of catastrophe. The chimney of their fireplace yawned wide to
the sky, vomiting sparks and ash like a miniature volcano when the fire
was roughly stirred, or an extra heavy supply of dry wood laid on.
When the wind whistled out of the northwest the line of flight was fair
over the stack. It behooved them to watch wind and fire. By keeping a
bed of coals and laying on a stick or two at a time a gale might roar
across the chimney-top without sucking forth a spark large enough to
ignite the hay. Hence Bill's warning. He had spoken of it before.
Hazel washed up her breakfast dishes, and set the cabin in order
according to her housewifely instincts. Then she curled up in the
chair which Bill had painstakingly constructed for her especial comfort
with only ax and knife for tools. She was working up a pair of
moccasins after an Indian pattern, and she grew wholly absorbed in the
task, drawing stitch after stitch of sinew strongly and neatly into
place. The hours flicked past in unseemly haste, so completely was she
engrossed. When at length the soreness of her fingers warned her that
she had been at work a long time, she looked at her watch.
"Goodness me! Bill's due home any time, and I haven't a thing ready to
eat," she exclaimed. "And here's my fire nearly out."
She piled on wood, and stirring the coals under it, fanned them with
her husband's old felt hat, forgetful of sparks or aught but that she
should be cooking against his hungry arrival. Outside, the wind blew
lustily, driving the loose snow across the open in long, wavering
ribbons. But she had forgotten that it was in the dangerous quarter,
and she did not recall that important fact even when she sat down again
to watch her moose steaks broil on the glowing coals raked apart from
the leaping blaze. The flames licked into the throat of the chimney
with the purr of a giant cat.
No sixth sense warned her of impending calamity. It burst upon her
with startling abruptness only when she opened the door to throw out
some scraps of discarded meat, for the blaze of the burning stack shot
thirty feet in the air, and the smoke rolled across the meadow in a
sooty manner.
Bareheaded, in a thin pair of moccasins, without coat or mittens to
fend her from the lance-toothed frost. Hazel ran to the stable. She
could get the horses out, perhaps, before the log walls became their
crematory. But Bill, coming in from his traps, reached the stable
first, and there was nothing for her to do but stand and watch with a
sickening self-reproach. He untied and clubbed the reluctant horses
outside. Already the stable end against the hay was shooting up
tongues of flame. As the blaze lapped swiftly over the roof and ate
into the walls, the horses struggled through the deep drift, lunging
desperately to gain a few yards, then turned to stand with ears pricked
up at the strange sight, shivering in the bitter northwest wind that
assailed their bare, unprotected bodies.
Bill himself drew back from the fire, and stared at it fixedly. He
kept silence until Hazel timidly put her hand on his arm.
"You watched that fire all right, didn't you?" he said then.
"Bill, Bill!" she cried. But he merely shrugged his shoulders, and
kept his gaze fixed on the burning stable.
To Hazel, shivering with the cold, even close as she was to the intense
heat, it seemed an incredibly short time till a glowing mound below the
snow level was all that remained; a black-edged pit that belched smoke
and sparks. That and five horses humped tail to the driving wind,
stolidly enduring. She shuddered with something besides the cold. And
then Bill spoke absently, his eyes still on the smoldering heap.
"Five feet of caked snow on top of every blade of grass," she heard him
mutter. "They can't browse on trees, like deer. Aw, hell!"
He had stuck his rifle butt first in the snow. He walked over to it;
Hazel followed. When he stood, with the rifle slung in the crook of
his arm, she tried again to break through this silent aloofness which
cut her more deeply than any harshness of speech could have done.
"Bill, I'm so sorry!" she pleaded. "It's terrible, I know. What can
we do?"
"Do? Huh!" he snorted. "If I ever have to die before my time, I hope
it will be with a full belly and my head in the air--and mercifully
swift."
Even then she had no clear idea of his intention. She looked up at him
pleadingly, but he was staring at the horses, his teeth biting
nervously at his under lip. Suddenly he blinked, and she saw his eyes
moisten. In the same instant he threw up the rifle. At the thin,
vicious crack of it, Silk collapsed.
She understood then. With her hand pressed hard over her mouth to keep
back the hysterical scream that threatened, she fled to the house.
Behind her the rifle spat forth its staccato message of death. For a
few seconds the mountains flung whiplike echoes back and forth in a
volley. Then the sibilant voice of the wind alone broke the stillness.
Numbed with the cold, terrified at the elemental ruthlessness of it
all, she threw herself on the bed, denied even the relief of tears.
Dry-eyed and heavy-hearted, she waited her husband's coming, and
dreading it--for the first time she had seen her Bill look on her with
cold, critical anger. For an interminable time she lay listening for
the click of the latch, every nerve strung tight.
He came at last, and the thump of his rifle as he stood it against the
wall had no more than sounded before he was bending over her. He sat
down on the edge of the bed, and putting his arm across her shoulders,
turned her gently so that she faced him.
"Never mind, little person," he whispered. "It's done and over. I'm
sorry I slashed at you the way I did. That's a fool man's way--if he's
hurt and sore he always has to jump on somebody else."
Then by some queer complexity of her woman's nature the tears forced
their way. She did not want to cry--only the weak and mushy-minded
wept. She had always fought back tears unless she was shaken to the
roots of her soul. But it was almost a relief to cry with Bill's arm
holding her close. And it was brief. She sat up beside him presently.
He held her hand tucked in between his own two palms, but he looked
wistfully at the window, as if he were seeing what lay beyond.
"Poor, dumb devils!" he murmured. "I feel like a murderer. But it was
pure mercy to them. They won't suffer the agony of frost, nor the slow
pain of starvation. That's what it amounted to--they'd starve if they
didn't freeze first. I've known men I would rather have shot. I
bucked many a hard old trail with Silk and Satin. Poor, dumb devils!"
"D-don't, Bill!" she cried forlornly. "I know it's my fault. I let
the fire almost go out, and then built it up big without thinking. And
I know being sorry doesn't make any difference. But please--I don't
want to be miserable over it. I'll never be careless again."
"All right; I won't talk about it, hon," he said. "I don't think you
will ever be careless about such things again. The North won't let us
get away with it. The wilderness is bigger than we are, and it's
merciless if we make mistakes."
"I see that." She shuddered involuntarily. "It's a grim country. It
frightens me."
"Don't let it," he said tenderly. "So long as we have our health and
strength we can win out, and be stronger for the experience. Winter's
a tough proposition up here, but you want to fight shy of morbid
brooding over things that can't be helped. This ever-lasting frost and
snow will be gone by and by. It'll be spring. And everything looks
different when there's green grass and flowers, and the sun is warm.
Buck up, old girl--Bill's still on the job."
"How can you prospect in the spring without horses to pack the outfit?"
she asked, after a little. "How can we get out of here with all the
stuff we'll have?"
"We'll manage it," he assured lightly. "We'll get out with our furs
and gold, all right, and we won't go hungry on the way, even if we have
no pack train. Leave it to me."