With thick smoke in his throat and the roar of flame in his ears, Pete
Noel awoke, shaking as if in the grip of a nightmare. He sat straight
up in his bunk. Instantly he felt his face scorching. The whole cabin
was ablaze. Leaping from his bunk, and dragging the blankets with him,
he sprang to the door, tore it open, and rushed out into the snow.
But being a woodsman, and alert in every sense like the creatures
of the wild themselves, his wits were awake almost before his body
was, and his instincts were even quicker than his wits. The
desolation and the savage cold of the wilderness had admonished him
even in that terrifying moment. As he leaped out in desperate
flight, he had snatched with him not only the blankets, but his
rifle and cartridge-belt from where they stood by the head of the
bunk, and also his larrigans and great blanket coat from where they
lay by its foot. He had been sleeping, according to custom, almost
fully clothed.
Outside in the snow he stood, blinking through scorched and smarting
lids at the destruction of his shack. For a second or two he stared
down at the things he clutched in his arms, and wondered how he had
come to think of them in time. Then, realizing with a pang that he
needed something more than clothes and a rifle, he flung them down on
the snow and made a dash for the cabin, in the hope of rescuing a hunk
of bacon or a loaf of his substantial woodsman's bread. But before he
could reach the door a licking flame shot out and hurled him back,
half blinded. Grabbing up a double handful of snow, he buried his face
in it to ease the smart. Then he shook himself, coolly carried the
treasures he had saved back to a safe distance from the flames, and
sat down on the blankets to put on his larrigans.
His feet, clothed only in a single pair of thick socks, were almost
frozen, while the rest of his body was roasting in the fierce heat of
the conflagration. It wanted about two hours of dawn. There was not a
breath of air stirring, and the flames shot straight up, murky red and
clear yellow intertwisting, with here and there a sudden leaping
tongue of violet white. Outside the radius of the heat the tall woods
snapped sharply in the intense cold. It was so cold, indeed, that as
the man stood watching the ruin of his little, lonely home, shielding
his face from the blaze now with one hand then with the other, his
back seemed turning to ice.
The man who lives alone in the great solitude of the forest has every
chance to become a philosopher. Pete Noel was a philosopher. Instead
of dwelling upon the misfortunes which had smitten him, he chose to
consider his good luck in having got out of the shack alive. Putting
on his coat, he noted with satisfaction that its spacious pockets
contained matches, tobacco, his pipe, his heavy clasp-knife, and his
mittens. He was a hundred miles from the nearest settlement, fifty or
sixty from the nearest lumber-camp. He had no food. The snow was four
feet deep, and soft. And his trusty snowshoes, which would have made
these distances and these difficulties of small account to him, were
helping feed the blaze. Nevertheless, he thought, things might have
been much worse. What if he had escaped in his bare feet? This thought
reminded him of how cold his feet were at this moment. Well, the old
shack had been a good one, and sheltered him well enough. Now that it
would shelter him no longer, it should at least be made to contribute
something more to his comfort. Piling his blankets carefully under the
shelter of a broad stump, he sat down upon them. Then he filled and
lighted his pipe, leaned back luxuriously, and stretched out his feet
to the blaze. It would be time enough for him to "get a move on" when
the shack was quite burned down. The shack was home as long as it
lasted.
When the first mystic greyness, hard like steel and transparent like
glass, began to reveal strange vistas among the ancient trees, the
fire died down. The shack was a heap of ashes and pulsating, scarlet
embers, with here and there a flickering, half-burned timber, and the
red-hot wreck of the tiny stove sticking up in the ruins. As soon as
the ruins were cool enough to approach, Pete picked up a green pole,
and began poking earnestly among them. He had all sorts of vague
hopes. He particularly wanted his axe, a tin kettle, and something to
eat. The axe was nowhere to be found, at least in such a search as
could then be made. The tins, obviously, had all gone to pieces or
melted. But he did, at least, scratch out a black, charred lump about
the size of his fist, which gave forth an appetizing smell. When the
burnt outside had been carefully scraped off, it proved to be the
remnant of a side of bacon. Pete fell to his breakfast with about as
much ceremony as might have sufficed a hungry wolf, the deprivation of
a roof-tree having already taken him back appreciably nearer to the
elemental brute. Having devoured his burnt bacon, and quenched his
thirst by squeezing some half-melted snow into a cup of birch-bark, he
rolled his blankets into a handy pack, squared his shoulders, and took
the trail for Conroy's Camp, fifty miles southwestward.
It was now that Pete Noel began to realize the perils that confronted
him. Without his snowshoes, he found himself almost helpless. Along
the trail the snow was from three to four feet deep, and soft.
There had been no thaws and no hard winds to pack it down. After
floundering ahead for four or five hundred yards he would have to
stop and rest, half reclining. In spite of the ferocious cold, he
was soon drenched with sweat. After a couple of hours of such work, he
found himself consumed with thirst. He had nothing to melt the snow
in; and, needless to say, he knew better than to ease his need by
eating the snow itself. But he hit upon a plan which filled him with
self-gratulation. Lighting a tiny fire beside the trail, under the
shelter of a huge hemlock, he took off his red cotton neckerchief,
filled it with snow, and held it to the flames. As the snow began
to melt, he squeezed the water from it in a liberal stream. But,
alas! the stream was of a colour that was not enticing. He realized,
with a little qualm, that it had not occurred to him to wash that
handkerchief since--well, he was unwilling to say when. For all the
insistence of his thirst, therefore, he continued melting the snow
and squeezing it out, till the resulting stream ran reasonably
clear. Then patiently he drank, and afterward smoked three pipefuls of
his rank, black tobacco as substitute for the square meal which his
stomach was craving.
All through the biting silent day he floundered resolutely on, every
now and then drawing his belt a little tighter, and all the while
keeping a hungry watch for game of some kind. What he hoped for was
rabbit, partridge, or even a fat porcupine; but he would have made a
shift to stomach even the wiry muscles of a mink, and count himself
fortunate. By sunset he came out on the edge of a vast barren,
glorious in washes of thin gold and desolate purple under the touch of
the fading west. Along to eastward ran a low ridge, years ago licked
by fire, and now crested with a sparse line of ghostly rampikes, their
lean, naked tops appealing to the inexorable sky. This was the head of
the Big Barren. With deep disgust, and something like a qualm of
apprehension, Pete Noel reflected that he had made only fifteen miles
in that long day of effort. And he was ravenously hungry. Well, he was
too tired to go farther that night; and in default of a meal, the best
thing he could do was sleep. First, however, he unlaced his larrigans,
and with the thongs made shift to set a clumsy snare in a rabbit track
a few paces back among the spruces. Then, close under the lee of a
black wall of fir-trees standing out beyond the forest skirts, he
clawed himself a deep trench in the snow. In one end of this trench he
built a little fire, of broken deadwood and green birch saplings
laboriously hacked into short lengths with his clasp-knife. A supply
of this firewood, dry and green mixed, he piled beside the trench
within reach. The bottom of the trench, to within a couple of feet of
the fire, he lined six inches deep with spruce-boughs, making a dry,
elastic bed.
By the time these preparations were completed, the sharp-starred
winter night had settled down upon the solitude. In all the vast there
was no sound but the occasional snap, hollow and startling, of some
great tree overstrung by the frost, and the intimate little whisper
and hiss of Pete's fire down in the trench. Disposing a good bunch of
boughs under his head, Pete lighted his pipe, rolled himself in his
blankets, and lay down with his feet to the fire.
There at the bottom of his trench, comforted by pipe and fire, hidden
away from the emptiness of the enormous, voiceless world outside, Pete
Noel looked up at the icy stars, and at the top of the frowning black
rampart of the fir-trees, touched grimly with red flashes from his
fire. He knew well--none better than he--the savage and implacable
sternness of the wild. He knew how dreadful the silent adversary
against whom he had been called, all unprepared, to pit his craft.
There was no blinking the imminence of his peril. Hitherto he had
always managed to work, more or less, _with_ nature, and so had come
to regard the elemental forces as friendly. Now they had turned upon
him altogether and without warning. His anger rose as he realized that
he was at bay. The indomitable man-spirit awoke with the anger.
Sitting up suddenly, over the edge of the trench his deep eyes looked
out upon the shadowy spaces of the night with challenge and defiance.
Against whatever odds, he declared to himself, he was master. Having
made his proclamation in that look, Pete Noel lay down again and went
to sleep.
After the fashion of winter campers and of woodsmen generally, he
awoke every hour or so to replenish the fire; but toward morning he
sank into the heavy sleep of fatigue. When he aroused himself from
this, the fire was stone grey, the sky overhead was whitish, flecked
with pink streamers, and rose-pink lights flushed delicately the green
wall of the fir-trees leaning above him. The edges of the blankets
around his face were rigid and thick with ice from his breathing.
Breaking them away roughly, he sat up, cursed himself for having let
the fire out, then, with his eyes just above the edge of the trench,
peered forth across the shining waste. As he did so, he instinctively
shrank back into concealment. An eager light flamed into his eyes, and
he blessed his luck that the fire had gone out. Along the crest of the
ridge, among the rampikes, silhouetted dark and large against the
sunrise, moved a great herd of caribou, feeding as they went.
Crouching low in his trench, Pete hurriedly did up his blankets, fixed
the pack on his back, then crawled through the snow into the shelter
of the fir-woods. As soon as he was out of sight, he arose, recovered
the thongs of his larrigans from the futile snare, and made his way
back on the trail as fast as he could flounder. That one glance over
the edge of his trench had told his trained eye all he needed to know
about the situation.
The caribou, most restless, capricious, and far-wandering of all the
wilderness kindreds, were drifting south on one of their apparently
aimless migrations. They were travelling on the ridge, because, as
Pete instantly inferred, the snow there had been partly blown away,
partly packed, by the unbroken winds. They were far out of gunshot.
But he was going to trail them down even through that deep snow. By
tireless persistence and craft he would do it, if he had to do it on
his hands and knees.
Such wind as there was, a light but bitter air drawing irregularly
down out of the north-west, blew directly from the man to the herd,
which was too far off, however, to catch the ominous taint and take
alarm. Pete's first care was to work around behind the herd till this
danger should be quite eliminated. For a time his hunger was forgotten
in the interest of the hunt; but presently, as he toiled his slow way
through the deep of the forest, it grew too insistent to be ignored.
He paused to strip bark from such seedlings of balsam fir as he
chanced upon, scraping off and devouring the thin, sweetish pulp that
lies between the bark and the mature wood. He gathered, also, the
spicy tips of the birch-buds, chewing them up by handfuls and spitting
out the residue of hard husks. And in this way he managed at least to
soothe down his appetite from angry protest to a kind of doubtful
expectancy.
At last, after a couple of hours' hard floundering, the woods thinned,
the ground sloped upward, and he came out upon the flank of the ridge,
a long way behind the herd, indeed, but well around the wind. In the
trail of the herd the snow was broken up, and not more than a foot and
a half in depth. On a likely-looking hillock he scraped it away
carefully with his feet, till he reached the ground; and here he found
what he expected--a few crimson berries of the wintergreen, frozen,
but plump and sweet-fleshed. Half a handful of these served for the
moment to cajole his hunger, and he pressed briskly but warily along
the ridge, availing himself of the shelter of every rampike in his
path. At last, catching sight of the hindmost stragglers of the herd,
still far out of range, he crouched like a cat, and crossed over the
crest of the ridge for better concealment.
On the eastern slope the ridge carried numerous thickets of
underbrush. From one to another of these Pete crept swiftly, at a rate
which should bring him, in perhaps an hour, abreast of the leisurely
moving herd. In an hour, then, he crawled up to the crest again, under
cover of a low patch of juniper scrub. Confidently he peered through
the scrub, his rifle ready. But his face grew black with bitter
disappointment. The capricious beasts had gone. Seized by one of
their incomprehensible vagaries--Pete was certain that he had not
alarmed them--they were now far out on the white level, labouring
heavily southward.
Pete set his jaws resolutely. Hunger and cold, each the mightier from
their alliance, were now assailing him savagely. His first impulse was
to throw off all concealment and rush straight down the broad-trodden
trail. But on second thought he decided that he would lose more than
he would gain by such tactics. Hampered though they were by the deep,
soft snow, he knew that, once frightened, they could travel through it
much faster than they were now moving, and very much faster than he
could hope to follow. Assuredly, patience was his game. Slipping
furtively from rampike to rampike, now creeping, now worming his way
like a snake, he made good time down to the very edge of the level.
Then, concealment no more possible, and the rear of the herd still
beyond gunshot, he emerged boldly from the covert of a clump of
saplings and started in pursuit. At the sight of him, every antlered
head went up in the air for one moment of wondering alarm; then,
through a rolling white cloud the herd fled onward at a speed which
Pete, with all his knowledge of their powers, had not imagined
possible in such a state of the snow. Sullen, but not discouraged, he
plodded after them.
Noel was now fairly obsessed with the one idea of overtaking the herd.
Every other thought, sense, or faculty was dully occupied with his
hunger and his effort to keep from thinking of it. Hour after hour he
plodded on, following the wide, chaotic trail across the white silence
of the barren. There was nothing to lift his eyes for, so he kept them
automatically occupied in saving his strength by picking the easiest
steps through the ploughed snow. He did not notice at all that the sun
no longer sparkled over the waste. He did not notice that the sky had
turned from hard blue to ghostly pallor. He did not notice that the
wind, now blowing in his teeth, had greatly increased in force.
Suddenly, however, he was aroused by a swirl of fine snow driven so
fiercely that it crossed his face like a lash. Lifting his eyes from
the trail, he saw that the plain all about him was blotted from sight
by a streaming rout of snow-clouds. The wind was already whining its
strange derisive menace in his face. The blizzard had him.
As the full fury of the storm swooped upon him, enwrapping him, and
clutching at his breath, for an instant Pete Noel quailed. This was a
new adversary, with whom he had not braced his nerves to grapple. But
it was for an instant only. Then his weary spirit lifted itself, and
he looked grimly into the eye of the storm. The cold, the storm, the
hunger, he would face them all down, and win out yet. Lowering his
head, and pulling a flap of his blanket coat across his mouth to make
breathing easier, he plunged straight forward with what seemed like a
new lease of vigour.
Had the woods been near, or had he taken note of the weather in time,
Pete would have made for the shelter of the forest at once. But he
knew that, when last he looked, the track of the herd had been
straight down the middle of the ever-widening barren. By now he must
be a good two miles from the nearest cover; and he knew well enough
that, in the bewilderment of the storm, which blunted even such
woodcraft as his, and blurred not only his vision, but every other
sense as well, he could never find his way. His only hope was to keep
to the trail of the caribou. The beasts would either lie down or
circle to the woods. In such a storm as this, as he knew well enough,
no animal but man himself could hunt, or follow up the trail. There
was no one but man who could confront such a storm undaunted. The
caribou would forget both their cunning and the knowledge that they
were being hunted. He would come upon them, or they would lead him to
shelter. With an obstinate pride in his superiority to the other
creatures of the wilderness, he scowled defiantly at the storm, and
because he was overwrought with hunger and fatigue, he muttered to
himself as he went, cursing the elements that assailed him so
relentlessly.
For hours he floundered on doggedly, keeping the trail by feeling
rather than by sight, so thick were the cutting swirls of snow. As the
drift heaped denser and denser about his legs, the terrible effort, so
long sustained, began to tell on him, till his progress became only a
snail's pace. Little by little, in the obstinate effort to conserve
strength and vitality, his faculties all withdrew into themselves, and
concentrated themselves upon the one purpose--to keep going onward. He
began to feel the lure of just giving up. He began to think of the
warmth and rest he could get, the release from the mad chaos of the
wind, by the simple expedient of burrowing deep into the deep snow. He
knew well enough that simple trick of the partridge, when frost and
storm grow too ferocious for it. But his wiser spirit would not let
him delude himself. Had he had a full stomach, and food in his
pockets, he might, perhaps, safely have emulated this cunning trick of
the partridge. But now, starving, weary, his vitality at the last ebb,
he knew that if he should yield to the lure of the snow, he would be
seen no more till the spring sun should reveal him, a thing of horror
to the returning vireos and blackbirds, on the open, greening face of
the barren. No, he would not burrow to escape the wind. He laughed
aloud as he thought upon the madness of it; and went butting and
plunging on into the storm, indomitable.
Suddenly, however, he stopped short, with a great sinking at his
heart. He felt cautiously this way and that, first with his feet,
fumbling through the deep snow, and then with his hands. At last he
turned his back abruptly to the wind, cowered down with his head
between his arms to shut out the devilish whistling and whining, and
tried to think how or when it had happened. He had lost the trail of
the herd!
All his faculties stung to keen wakefulness by this appalling
knowledge, he understood how it happened, but not where. The drifts
had filled the trail, till it was utterly blotted off the face of the
plain; then he had kept straight on, guided by the pressure of the
wind. But the caribou, meanwhile, had swerved, and moved off in
another direction. Which direction? He had to acknowledge to himself
that he had no clue to judge by, so whimsical were these antlered
vagrants of the barren. Well, he thought doggedly, let them go! He
would get along without them. Staggering to his feet, he faced the
gale again, and thought hard, striving to remember what the direction
of the wind had been when last he observed it, and at the same time to
recall the lay of the heavy-timbered forest that skirted this barren
on two sides.
At length he made up his mind where the nearest point of woods must
be. He saw it in his mind's eye, a great promontory of black firs
jutting out into the waste. He turned, calculating warily, till the
wind came whipping full upon his left cheek. Sure that he was now
facing his one possible refuge, he again struggled forward. And as he
went, he pictured to himself the whole caribou herd, now half
foundered in the drift, labouring toward the same retreat. Once more,
crushing back hunger and faintness, he summoned up his spirit, and
vowed that if the beasts could fight their way to cover, he could.
Then his woodcraft should force the forest to render him something in
the way of food that would suffice to keep life in his veins.
For perhaps half an hour this defiant and unvanquishable spirit kept
Pete Noel going. But as the brief northern day began to wane, and a
shadow to darken behind the thick, white gloom of the storm, his
forces, his tough, corded muscles and his tempered nerves, again began
to falter. He caught himself stumbling, and seeking excuse for delay
in getting up. In spite of every effort of his will, he saw
visions--thick, protecting woods close at one side or the other, or a
snug log camp, half buried in the drifts, but with warm light flooding
from its windows. Indignantly he would shake himself back into sanity,
and the delectable visions would vanish. But while they lasted they
were confusing, and presently when he aroused himself from one that
was of particularly heart-breaking vividness, he found that he had let
his rifle drop! It was gone hopelessly. The shock steadied him for
some minutes. Well, he had his knife. After all, that was the more
important of the two. He ploughed onward, once more keenly awake, and
grappling with his fate.
The shadows thickened rapidly; and at last, bending with the insane
riot of the storm, began to make strange, monstrous shapes.
Unravelling these illusions, and exorcising them, kept Pete Noel
occupied. But suddenly one of these monstrous shapes neglected to
vanish. He was just about to throw himself upon it, in half delirious
antagonism, when it lurched upward with a snort, and struggled away
from him. In an instant Pete was alive in every faculty, stung with an
ecstasy of hope. Leaping, floundering, squirming, he followed, open
knife in hand. Again and yet again the foundered beast, a big caribou
bull, buried halfway up the flank, eluded him. Then, as his savage
scramble at last overtook it, the bull managed to turn half about, and
thrust him violently in the left shoulder with an antler-point.
Unheeding the hurt, Noel clutched the antler with his left hand, and
forced it inexorably back. The next moment his knife was drawn with
practised skill across the beast's throat.
Like most of our eastern woodsmen, Pete Noel was even finicky about
his food, and took all his meat cooked to a brown. He loathed
underdone flesh. Now, however, he was an elemental creature, battling
with the elements for his life. And he knew, moreover, that of all
possible restoratives, the best was at his hand. He drove his blade
again, this time to the bull's heart. As the wild life sighed itself
out, and vanished, Pete crouched down like an animal, and drank the
warm, red fluid streaming from the victim's throat. As he did so, the
ebbed tide of warmth, power, and mastery flooded back into his own
veins. He drank his fill; then, burrowing half beneath the massive
body, he lay down close against it to rest and consider.
Assured now of food to sustain him on the journey, assured of his own
ability to master all other obstacles that might seek to withstand
him, Pete Noel made up his mind to sleep, wrapping himself in his
blankets under the shelter of the dead bull. Then the old hunter's
instinct began to stir. All about him, in every momentary lull of the
wind, were snortings and heavy breathings. He had wandered into the
midst of the exhausted herd. Here was a chance to recoup himself, in
some small part, for the loss of his cabin and supplies. He could kill
a few of the helpless animals, hide them in the snow, and take the
bearings of the spot as soon as the weather cleared. By and by he
could get a team from the nearest settlement, and haul out the frozen
meat for private sale when the game warden chanced to have his eyes
shut.
[Illustration: "One of these monstrous shapes neglected to vanish."]
Getting out his knife again, he crept stealthily toward the
nearest heavy breathing. Before he could detect the beast in that
tumultuous gloom, he was upon it. His outstretched left hand fell
upon a wildly heaving flank. The frightened animal arose with a
gasping snort, and tried to escape; but utterly exhausted, it sank
down again almost immediately, resigned to this unknown doom which
stole upon it out of the tempest and the dark. Pete's hand was on
it again the moment it was still. He felt it quiver and shrink
beneath his touch. Instinctively he began to stroke and rub the
stiff hair as he slipped his treacherous hand forward along the
heaving flank. The heavings grew quieter, the frightened snortings
ceased. The exhausted animal seemed to feel a reassurance in that
strong, quiet touch.
When Pete's hand had reached the unresisting beast's neck, he began to
feel a qualm of misgiving. His knife was in the other hand, ready for
use there in the howling dark; but somehow he could not at once bring
himself to use it. It would be a betrayal. Yet he had suffered a
grievous loss, and here, given into his grasp by fate, was the
compensation. He hesitated, arguing with himself impatiently. But even
as he did so, he kept stroking that firm, warm, living neck; and
through the contact there in the savage darkness, a sympathy passed
between the man and the beast. He could not help it. The poor beasts
and he were in the same predicament, together holding the battlements
of life against the blind and brutal madness of storm. Moreover, the
herd had saved him. The debt was on his side. The caress which had
been so traitorous grew honest and kind. With a shamefaced grin Pete
shut his knife, and slipped it back into his pocket.
With both hands, now, he stroked the tranquil caribou, rubbing it
behind the ears and at the base of the antlers, which seemed to give
it satisfaction. Once when his hand strayed down the long muzzle, the
animal gave a terrified start and snort at the dreaded man smell so
violently invading its nostrils. But Pete kept on soothingly and
firmly; and again the beast grew calm. At length Pete decided that his
best place for the night, or until the storm should lift, would be by
the warmth of this imprisoned and peaceable animal. Digging down into
the snow beyond the clutches of the wind, he rolled himself in his
blankets, crouched close against the caribou's flank, and went
confidently to sleep.
Aware of living companionship, Noel slept soundly through the
clamour of the storm. At last a movement against his side disturbed
him. He woke to feel that his strange bedfellow had struggled up
and withdrawn. The storm was over. The sky above his upturned face
was sharp with stars. All about him was laboured movement, with
heavy shuffling, coughing, and snorting. Forgetful of their
customary noiselessness, the caribou were breaking gladly from
their imprisonment. Presently Pete was alone. The cold was still
and of snapping intensity; but he, deep in his hollow, and wrapped
in his blankets, was warm. Still drowsy, he muffled his face and
went to sleep again for another hour.
When he roused himself a second time he was wide awake and refreshed.
It was just past the edge of dawn. The cold gripped like a vice. Faint
mystic hues seemed frozen for ever into the ineffable crystal of the
air. Pete stood up, and looked eastward along the tumbled trail of the
herd. Not half a mile away stood the forest, black and vast, the trail
leading straight into it. Then, a little farther down toward the right
he saw something that made his heart leap exultantly. Rising straight
up, a lavender and silver lily against the pallid saffron of the east,
soared a slender smoke. That smoke, his trained eyes told him, came
from a camp chimney; and he realized that the lumbermen had moved up
to him from the far-off head of the Ottanoonsis.