JACK FROST WITHDRAWS
All through the month of January each evening, as dusk folded its
somber mantle about the meadow, the wolves gathered to feast on the
dead horses, till Hazel's nerves were strained to the snapping point.
Continually she was reminded of that vivid episode, of which she had
been the unwitting cause. Sometimes she would open the door, and from
out the dark would arise the sound of wolfish quarrels over the feast,
disembodied snappings and snarlings. Or when the low-swimming moon
shed a misty glimmer on the open she would peer through a thawed place
on the window-pane, and see gray shapes circling about the half-picked
skeletons. Sometimes, when Bill was gone, and all about the cabin was
utterly still, one, bolder or hungrier than his fellows, would trot
across the meadow, drawn by the scent of the meat. Two or three of
these Hazel shot with her own rifle.
But when February marked another span on the calendar the wolves came
no more. The bones were clean.
There was no impending misfortune or danger that she could point to or
forecast with certitude. Nevertheless, struggle against it as she
might, knowing it for pure psychological phenomena arising out of her
harsh environment. Hazel suffered continual vague forebodings. The
bald, white peaks seemed to surround her like a prison from which there
could be no release. From day to day she was harassed by dismal
thoughts. She would wake in the night clutching at her husband. Such
days as he went out alone she passed in restless anxiety. Something
would happen. What it would be she did not know, but to her it seemed
that the bleak stage was set for untoward drama, and they two the
puppets that must play.
She strove against this impression with cold logic; but reason availed
nothing against the feeling that the North had but to stretch forth its
mighty hand and crush them utterly. But all of this she concealed from
Bill. She was ashamed of her fears, the groundless uneasiness. Yet it
was a constant factor in her daily life, and it sapped her vitality as
surely and steadily as lack of bodily nourishment could have done.
Had there been in her make-up any inherent weakness of mentality, Hazel
might perhaps have brooded herself into neurasthenia. Few save those
who have actually experienced complete isolation for extended periods
can realize the queer, warped outlook such an existence imposes on the
human mind, if that mind is a trifle more than normally sensitive to
impressions, and a nature essentially social both by inclination and
habit. In the first months of their marriage she had assured herself
and him repeatedly that she could be perfectly happy and contented any
place on earth with Bill Wagstaff.
Emotion has blinded wiser folk, and perhaps that is merely a little
device of nature's, for if one could look into the future with too
great a clarity of vision there would be fewer matings. In the main
her declaration still held true. She loved her husband with the same
intensity; possibly even more, for she had found in him none of the
flaws which every woman dreads that time and association may bring to
light in her chosen mate.
When Bill drew her up close in his arms, the intangible menace of the
wilderness and all the dreary monotony of the days faded into the
background. But they, no more than others who have tried and failed
for lack of understanding, could not live their lives with their heads
in an emotional cloud. For every action there must be a corresponding
reaction. They who have the capacity to reach the heights must
likewise, upon occasion, plumb the depths. Life, she began to realize,
resolved itself into an unending succession of little, trivial things,
with here and there some great event looming out above all the rest for
its bestowal of happiness or pain.
Bill knew. He often talked about such things. She was beginning to
understand that he had a far more comprehensive grasp of the
fundamentals of existence that she had. He had explained to her that
the individual unit was nothing outside of his group affiliations, and
she applied that to herself in a practical way in an endeavor to
analyze herself. She was a group product, and only under group
conditions could her life flow along nonirritant lines. Such being the
case, it followed that if Bill persisted in living out of the world
they would eventually drift apart, in spirit if not in actuality. And
that was an absurd summing-up.
She rejected the conclusion decisively. For was not their present
situation the net result of a concrete endeavor to strike a balance
between the best of what both the wilderness and the humming cities had
to offer them? It seemed treason to Bill to long for other voices and
other faces. Yet she could not help the feeling. She wondered if he,
too, did not sometimes long for company besides her own. And the
thought stirred up a perverse jealousy. They two, perfectly mated in
all things, should be able to make their own little world complete--but
they could not, she knew. Life was altogether too complex an affair to
be solved in so primitive a fashion. She felt that continued living
under such conditions would drive her mad; that if she stayed long
enough under the somber shadow of the Klappan Range she would hate the
North and all it contained.
That would have been both unjust and absurd, so she set herself
resolutely to overcome that feeling of oppression. She was too
well-balanced to drift unwittingly along this perilous road of thought.
She schooled herself to endure and to fight off introspection. She had
absorbed enough of her husband's sturdy philosophy of life to try and
make the best of a bad job. After all, she frequently assured herself,
the badness of the job was mostly a state of mind. And she had a
growing conviction that Bill sensed the struggle, and that it hurt him.
For that reason, if for no other, she did her best to make light of the
grim environment, and to wait patiently for spring.
February and March stormed a path furiously across the calendar.
Higher and higher the drifts piled about the cabin, till at length it
was banked to the eaves with snow save where Bill shoveled it away to
let light to the windows. Day after day they kept indoors, stoking up
the fire, listening to the triumphant whoop of the winds.
"Snow, snow!" Hazel burst out one day. "Frost that cuts you like a
knife. I wonder if there's ever going to be an end to it? I wish we
were home again--or some place."
"So do I, little person," Bill said gently. "But spring's almost at
the door. Hang on a little longer. We've made a fair stake, anyway,
if we don't wash an ounce of gold."
Hazel let her gaze wander over the pelts hanging thick from ridge log
and wall. Bill had fared well at his trapping. Over two thousand
dollars he estimated the value of his catch.
"How are we going to get it all out?" She voiced a troublesome thought.
"Shoulder pack to the Skeena," he answered laconically. "Build a
dugout there, and float downstream. Portage the rapids as they come."
"Oh, Bill!" she came and leaned her head against him contritely. "Our
poor ponies! And it was all my carelessness."
"Never mind, hon," he comforted. "They blinked out without suffering.
And we'll make it like a charm. Be game--it'll soon be spring."
As if in verification of his words, with the last breath of that
howling storm came a sudden softening of the atmosphere. The sharp
teeth of the frost became swiftly blunted, and the sun, swinging daily
in a wider arc, brought the battery of his rays into effective play on
the mountainsides. The drifts lessened, shrunk, became moisture
sodden. For ten days or more the gradual thaw increased. Then a
lusty-lunged chinook wind came booming up along the Klappan Range, and
stripped it to a bare, steaming heap. Overhead whistled the first
flight of the wild goose, bound for the nesting grounds. Night and day
the roar of a dozen cataracts droned on all sides of the basin, as the
melting snow poured down in the annual spring flood.
By April the twentieth the abdication of Jack Frost was complete. A
kindlier despot ruled the land, and Bill Wagstaff began to talk of gold.