TO THE LUMBER CAMP
The gray morning mist rolled slowly up the hillsides from the bosom of
the warming valley below. Great billows mounted, swelling in volume
till, overweighted, they toppled, surging like the breaking rollers of
a wind-swept ocean. Here and there the rosy sunlight brushed the
swirling sea with a tenderness of color no painter's brush could ever
hope to produce. A precocious sunbeam shot athwart the leaden prospect.
It bored its way through the churning fog searching the depths of some
benighted wood-lined hollow, as though to rouse its slumbering world.
Dense spruce and hemlock forests grew out of the mists. The spires of
gigantic pines rose, piercing the gray as though gasping for the
warming radiance above. A perching eagle, newly roused from its
slumbers, shrieked its morning song till the rebounding cries, echoing
from a thousand directions, suggested the reveille of the entire
feathered world. The mournful whistle of a solitary marmot swelled the
song from many new directions, and the raucous chorus had for its
accompaniment the thundering chords of hidden waters, seething and
boiling in the mighty canyons below.
The long-drawn, sibilant hush of night was gone; the leaden mountain
dawn had passed; day, glorious in its waking splendor, had routed the
grim shadows from the mystic depths of canyon, from the leaden-hued
forest-laden valleys. The sunlight was upon the dazzling mountain-tops,
groping, searching the very heart of the Rocky Mountains.
Dave's buckboard, no more conspicuous than some wandering ant in the
vast mountain world, crawled from the depths of a wide valley and
slowly mounted the shoulders of a forest-clad ridge. It vanished into
the twilight of giant woods, only to be seen again, some hours later,
at a greater altitude, climbing, climbing the great slopes, or
descending to gaping hollows, but always attaining the higher lands.
But his speed was by no means a crawl in reality, only did it appear so
by reason of the vastness of the world about him. His horses were
traveling as fresh, mettlesome beasts can travel when urged by such a
man as Dave, with his nerves strung to a terrific tension by the
emergency of his journey. The willing beasts raced down the hills over
the uneven trail with all the sure-footed carelessness of the
prairie-bred broncho. They took the inclines with scarcely perceptible
slackening of their gait. And only the sharp hills served them for
breathing space.
Dave occupied the driving-seat while Mason sat guard over Jim Truscott
in the carryall behind. Those two days on the trail had been unusually
silent, even for men such as they were, and even taking into
consideration the object of their journey. Truscott and Mason were
almost "dead beat" with all that had gone before, and Dave--he was
wrapped in his own thoughts.
His thoughts carried him far away from his companions into a world
where love and strife were curiously blended. Every thread of such
thought sent him blundering into mires of trouble, the possibilities of
which set his nerves jangling with apprehension. But their
contemplation only stiffened his stern resolve to fight the coming
battle with a courage and resource such as never yet had he brought to
bear in his bid for success. He knew that before him lay the
culminating battle of his long and ardent sieging of Fortune's
stronghold. He knew that now, at last, he was face to face with the
great test of his fitness. He knew that this battle had always been
bound to come before the goal of his success was reached; although,
perhaps, its method and its cause may have taken a thousand other
forms. It is not in the nature of things that a man may march untested
straight to the golden pastures of his ambitions. He must fight every
foot of his way, and the final battle must ever be the sternest, the
crudest. God help the man if he has not the fitness, for Fate and
Fortune are remorseless foes.
But besides his native courage, Dave was stirred to even greater
efforts by man's strongest motive, be his cause for good or evil. Love
was the main-spring of his inspiration. He had desired success with a
passionate longing all his life, and his success was not all
selfishness. But now, before all things, he saw the sweetly gentle face
of Betty Somers gazing with a heartful appeal, beckoning him, calling
him to help her. Every moment of that long journey the vision remained
with him; every moment he felt might be the moment of dire tragedy for
her. He dared not trust himself to consider the nature of that tragedy,
or he must have turned and rended the man who was its cause. Only he
blessed each moment that passed, bringing him nearer to her side. He
loved her as he loved nothing and no one else on earth, and somehow
there had crept into his mind the thought of a possibility he had never
yet dared to consider. It was a vague ray of hope that the
impossibility of his love was not so great as he had always believed.
How it had stolen in upon him he hardly knew. Perhaps it was his
mother's persistent references to Betty. Perhaps it was the result of
his talk with the man who had brought her to the straits she was now
placed in. Perhaps it was one of these things, or both, coupled with
the memory of trifling incidents in the past, which had seemed to mean
nothing at the time of their happening.
Whatever it was, his love for the girl swept through him now in a way
that drove him headlong to her rescue. His own affairs of the mills,
the fate of his friends in Malkern, of the village itself; all these
things were driven into the background of his thoughts. Betty needed
him. The thought set his brain whirling with a wild thrilling
happiness, mazed, every alternate moment, with a horrible fear that
drove him to the depths of despair.
It was high noon when smoke ahead warned him that the journey was
nearly over. The buckboard was on the ridge shouldering a wide valley,
and below it was the rushing torrent of the Red Sand River. From his
position Dave had a full view of the dull green forest world rolling
away, east and west, in vast, undulating waves as far as the eye could
reach. Only to the south, beyond the valley, was there a break in the
dense, verdant carpet. And here it was he beheld the telltale smoke of
the lumber camp.
"That's the camp," he said, looking straight ahead, watching the slowly
rising haze with longing eyes. "Guess we haven't to cross the river.
Good."
Mason was looking out over his shoulder.
"No," he said after a moment's pause, while he tried to read the signs
he beheld. "We don't cross the river. Keep to the trail. It takes us
right past my shack."
"Where Parson Tom and----?"
"Yes, where they're living."
In another quarter of a mile they would be descending the hollow of a
small valley diverging from the valley of the Red Sand River. As they
drew near the decline, Dave spoke again.
"Can you make anything out, Mason?" he asked. "Seems to me that smoke
is thick for--for stovepipes. There's two lots; one of 'em nearer this
way."
Mason stared out for some moments, shielding his eyes from the dazzling
sun.
"I can't be sure," he said at last. "The nearest smoke should be my
shack."
A grave anxiety crept into Dave's eyes.
"It isn't thick there," he said, as though trying to reassure himself.
"That's your stovepipe?"
"Maybe."
Mason's reply expressed doubt.
Suddenly Dave leant over and his whip fell sharply across the horses'
backs. They sprang at their neck-yoke and raced down into the final dip.