In a little while Ned stripped the pelt from the warm body of the wolf
and continued down his line of traps. He was able to think more
coherently now and consider methods and details. And by the same token
of clear thought, he was brought face to face with the fact of the
almost insuperable obstacles in his path.
For all he could see now, Doomsdorf had surrounded them with a stone
wall. He had seemingly thought of everything, prepared for every
contingency, and left them not the slightest gateway to hope.
Plans for freedom first of all seemingly had to include Doomsdorf’s
death. That was the first essential, and the last. Could they succeed in
striking the life from their master, they could wait in the cabin until
the trader _Intrepid_ should touch their island in the spring. It can be
said for Ned that he conjectured upon the plan without the slightest
whisper of remorse, the least degree of false sentiment. The fact that
their master was, more or less, a human being did not change the course
of his thought whatever. He would hurl that wicked soul out of the world
with never an instant’s pity, and his only prayer would be that it might
fall into the real hell that he had tried to imitate on earth. There
could be no question about that. If, through some mercy, the brute lay
helpless for a single second at his feet, it would be time enough for
the deed Ned had in mind. His arm would never falter, his cruel axe
would shatter down as pitilessly as upon some savage beast of the
forest. He had not forgotten what the three of them had endured.
The difficulty lay in finding an opening of attack. Doomsdorf’s rifle
was never loaded except when it was in his arms, and he wore his pistol
in his belt, day and night. For all his hopelessness, Ned had noticed,
half inadvertently, that he always took precautions against a night
attack. The squaw slept on the outside of their cot and would be as
difficult to pass without arousing as a sleeping dog. The cabin itself
was bolted, not to be entered without waking both occupants; and the
three prisoners of course slept in the newer cabin.
Bess had told him of Doomsdorf’s encounter with Knutsen, describing with
particular emphasis the speed with which the murderer had whipped out
his pistol. He could get it into action long before Ned could lay bare
his clasp knife. Indeed, mighty man that he was, he could crush Ned to
earth with one bound at the latter’s first offensive movement. And
Doomsdorf was always particularly watchful when Ned carried his axe.
Yet the fact remained that in his axe alone lay the only possible hope
of success. Some time Ned might see an opportunity to swing it down:
perhaps he could think of some wile to put Doomsdorf at a disadvantage.
It was inconceivable that they should try to escape without first
rendering Doomsdorf helpless to follow them. They could attempt neither
to conceal themselves on the island, or cross the ice straight to Tzar
Island without the absolute certainty of being hunted down and punished.
What form that punishment would take Ned dared not guess.
It was true that Doomsdorf kept but a perfunctory watch over Ned and
Bess while they plied their trap lines. But long ago he had explained to
them the hopelessness of attempting to load their backs with food and
strike off across the ice on the slim chance of encountering some
inhabited island. The plan, he had said, had not been worth a thought,
and even now, in spite of his new courage, Ned found that it promised
little. In the first place, to venture out into that infinity of ice,
where there was not a stick of fuel and the polar wind was an icy demon
day and night, meant simply to die without great question or any
considerable delay. The islands were many, but the gray ice between them
insuperably broad and rough. As Doomsdorf had said, they could not get
much of a start; scarcely a day went by but that Doomsdorf, from some
point of vantage where his daily hunting excursions carried him,
discerned the distant forms of one or both of his two trappers across
the snowy barrens; and he would be quick to investigate if they were
missing. His powerful legs and mighty strength would enable him to
overtake the runaways in the course of a few hours. But lastly, settling
the matter once and for all, there was the subject of Lenore. He could
neither smuggle her out nor leave her to Doomsdorf’s vengeance.
The plan might be worth considering, except for her. Of course, the odds
would be tragically long on the side of failure; but all he dared pray
for was a fighting chance. As matters lay, it was wholly out of the
question.
Seemingly the only course was to lie low, always to be on the watch for
the moment of opportunity. Some time, perhaps, their master’s vigilance
would relax. Just one little instant of carelessness on his part might
show the way. Perhaps the chance would come when the _Intrepid_ put into
the island to buy the season’s furs, if indeed life dwelt in his own
body until that time. Ned didn’t forget that long, weary months of
winter still lay between.
He concluded that he would not take Lenore into his confidence at once.
That would come later,—when he had something definite to propose.
Lately she had not shown great confidence in him, scorning his ability
to shelter her and serve her; and of course she would have only contempt
for any such vague hope as this. He had nothing to offer now but the
assurance of his own growing sense of power. As yet his hope lay wholly
in the realization of the late growth and development of his own
character. So far as material facts went, the barriers between her and
her liberty were as insuperable as ever. He would not be able to
encourage her: more likely, by her contempt, she would jeopardize his
own belief in himself. Besides, for all his great love for her, he could
not make himself believe that she was of fighting metal. He found, in
this moment of analysis of her soul, that he could not look to her for
aid. She was his morning star, all that he could ask in woman, and he
had chosen her for her worth and beauty, rather than for a helpmate, a
fortress at his side. Yes, coöperation with her might injure, rather
than increase, his chances for success.
He dismissed in an instant the idea of telling Bess. His loyalty to
Lenore demanded that, at least. She must not go where his own betrothed
was excluded. If the thought came that Bess, by light of courage and
fortitude, had already gone where in weakness and self-pity Lenore could
not possibly follow—the windy snow fields and the bitter crests of the
rugged hills—he pushed it sternly from him. The whole thing was a
matter of instinct with him, perhaps a wish to shield himself from
invidious comparisons of the two girls. He would have liked to convince
himself that Lenore could be his ally, but he was wholly unable to do
so. Realizing that, he preferred to believe that Bess was likewise
incompetent. But he knew he must not let his mind dwell to any great
length upon the subject. He might be forced to change his mind.
He must make a lone fight. He must follow a lone trail—like the old
gray pack leader whose sluts cannot keep pace.
Thereafter, day and night, Ned watched his chances. Never he climbed to
the top of the ridge but that he searched, with straining eyes, for the
glimpse of a dog-sledge on the horizon, or perhaps the faint line of a
distant island. On the nights that he spent at the home cabin, he made
an intense study of Doomsdorf’s most minor habits, trying to uncover
some little failing, some trifling carelessness that might give him his
opportunity. He made it a point to leave his axe in easy reaching
distance; his clasp knife, in a holster of fur, was always open in his
pocket, always ready to his hand. All day, down the weary length of his
trap line, he considered ways and means.
Simply because the wild continued to train him, he was ever stronger for
this great, ultimate trial. Not only his intent was stronger, his
courage greater, but his body also continued its marvelous development.
His muscles were like those of a grizzly: great bunches of tendons, hard
as stone, moving under his white skin. Every motion was lithe and
strong; his energy was a never-failing fountain; his eyes were vivid and
clear against the old-leather hue of his face.
There was no longer an unpleasant discoloration in the whites of his
eyes. They were a cold, hard, pale blue; and the little network of lines
that had once shown faintly at his cheek bones had completely faded. His
hands had killing strength; his neck was a brown pillar of muscle.
Health was upon him, in its full glory, to the full meaning of the word.
He found, to his great amazement, that his mental powers had similarly
developed. His thought was more clear, and it flowed in deeper channels.
It was no effort for him now to follow one line of thought to its
conclusion. The tendency to veer off in the direction of least
resistance had been entirely overcome. He could be of some aid, now, in
the fur house of Godfrey Cornet. He felt he would like to match wits
with his father’s competitors.
He would need not only this great physical strength, but also his
enhanced mental powers in the trial and stress that were to come.
Doomsdorf’s tyranny could not be endured forever; they were being borne
along toward a crisis as if on an ocean current. And for all his growth,
Ned never made the fatal mistake of considering himself a physical match
for Doomsdorf. Over and above the fact that the latter was armed with
rifle and pistol, Ned was still a child in his hands. It was simply a
case of intrinsic limitations. It was as if the wolf, chain-lightning
savagery that he is, should try to lay low the venerable grizzly bear.
Sooner or later the crisis would fall upon them,—a fit of savage anger
on Doomsdorf’s part, or a wrong that could not be endured, even if death
were the penalty for rebellion. Moreover, Ned could not escape the
haunting fear that such a crisis was actually imminent. Doomsdorf’s mood
was an uncertain thing at best; and lately it had taken a turn for the
worse. He was not getting the satisfaction that he had anticipated out
of Ned’s slavery; the situation had lost its novelty, and he was open to
any Satanic form of diversion that might occur to him. Ned had mastered
his trap lines, had stood the gaff and was a better man on account of
it; and it was time his master provided additional entertainment for
him. In these dark, winter days he remembered the Siberian prison with
particular vividness, and at such times the steely glitter was more
pronounced in his eyes, and certain things that he had seen lingered
ever in his mind. He kept remembering strange ghosts of men, toiling in
the snow till they died, and souls that went out screaming under the
lash; and such remembrances moved him with a dark, unspeakable lust. He
thought he would like to bring these memory-pictures to life. Besides,
his attitude toward Bess was ever more sinister. He followed her motions
with a queer, searching, speculative gaze; and now and then he offered
her little favors.
If he could only be held in restraint a few months more. Ned knew
perfectly that the longer the crisis could be averted, the better his
chance for life and liberty. He would have more opportunity to make
preparations, to lay plans. Besides, every day that he followed his trap
line he was better trained—in character and mind and body—for the test
to come. The work of bringing out Ned Cornet’s manhood had never ceased.
Every day he had learned more of those savage natural forces that find
clearest expression in the North. He knew the wind and the cold,
snow-slide and blizzard, but also he knew hunger and fear and travail
and pain. All these things taught him what they had to teach, and all of
them served to shape him into the man he had grown to be. And one still,
clear afternoon the North sent home a new realization of its power.
He was working that part of the line from his Twelve-Mile cabin over the
ridge toward the Forks cabin,—his old rendezvous with Bess. He was
somewhat late in crossing the range to-day. He had taken several of the
larger fur-bearers and had been obliged to skin them laboriously, first
thawing them out over a fire in the snow, so that midafternoon found him
just emerging from the thick copse where he had killed the white wolf.
The blazed trail took him around the shoulder of the ridge, clear to the
edge of a little, deeply seamed glacier such as crowns so many of the
larger hills in the far North.
Few were the wild creatures that traversed this icy desolation, so his
trap line had been laid out around the glacier, following the blazed
trail in the scrub timber. But to-day the long way round was
particularly grievous to his spirit. More than a mile could be saved by
leaving the timber and climbing across the ice, and only a few sets,
none of which had ever proved especially productive, would be missed. In
his first few weeks the danger of going astray had kept him close to his
line, but he was not obliged to take it into consideration now. He knew
his country end to end.
Without an instant’s hesitation he turned from the trail straight over
the snowy summit toward the cabin. The cut-off would save him the
annoyance of making camp after dark. And since he had climbed it once
before, he scarcely felt the need of extra caution.
The crossing, however, was not quite the same as on the previous
occasion. Before the ice had been covered, completely across, with a
heavy snowfall, no harder to walk on than the open barrens. He soon
found now that the snow prevailed only to the summit of the glacier, and
the descent beyond the summit had been swept clean by the winds.
Below him stretched a half-mile of glare ice, ivory white like the fangs
of some fabulous beast-of-prey. Here and there it was gashed with
crevices,—those deep glacier chasms into which a stone falls in
silence. For a moment Ned regarded it with considerable displeasure:
He was not equipped for ice scaling. Perhaps it was best not to try to
go on. But as he waited, the long way down and around seemed to grow in
his imagination. It was that deadly hour of late afternoon when the
founts of energy run low and the thought-mechanism is dulled by
fatigue;—and some way, he felt his powers of resistance slipping away
from him. He forget, for the moment, the _Fear_ that is the very soul of
wisdom.
He decided to take a chance. He removed his snowshoes and ventured
carefully out upon the ice.
It was easier than it looked. His moccasins clung very well. Steadily
gaining confidence, he walked at a faster pace. The slope was not much
on this side, the glacier ending in an abrupt cliff many hundred feet in
height, so he felt little need of especial precaution. It was, in fact,
the easiest walking that he had had since his arrival upon the island,
so he decided not to turn off clear until he reached the high ground
just to one side of the ice cliff. He crawled down a series of shelves,
picked his way about a jagged promontory, and fetched up at last at the
edge of a dark crevice scarcely fifty feet from the edge of the snow.
The crevice was not much over five feet wide at this point, and looking
along, he saw that a hundred yards to his right it ended in a snowbank.
But there was no need of following it down. He could leap it at a
standing jump: with a running start he could bound ten feet beyond.
He was tired, eager to get to camp,—and this was the zero hour. He drew
back three paces, preparatory to making the leap.
As he halted he was somewhat amazed at the incredible depth of silence
that enthralled this icy realm. It seemed to him, except for the beat of
his own heart, the absolute zero of silence,—not a whimper of wind or
the faintest rustle of whisking snow dust. All the wilderness world
seemed to be straining—listening. The man leaped forward.
At that instant the North gave him some sign of its power. His first
running step was firm, but at the second his moccasin failed to hold,
slipping straight back. He pitched forward on his hands and knees,
grasping at the hard, slippery ice.
But he had not realized his momentum. He experienced a strange instant
of hovering, of infinite suspense; and then the realization, like a
flash of lightning, of complete and immutable disaster. There was no
sense of fast motion. He slid rather slowly, with that sickening
helplessness that so often characterizes the events of a tragic dream;
and the wilderness seemed still to be waiting, watching, in unutterable
indifference. Then he pitched forward into the crevice.
To Ned it seemed beyond the least, last possibility of hope that he
should ever know another conscious second. The glacier crevices were all
incredibly deep, and he would fall as a stone falls, crushed at last on
the lightless floor of the glacier so far below that no sound might rise
to disturb this strange immensity of silence. It was always thus with
wilderness deaths. There is no sign that the Red Gods ever see. All
things remain as they were,—the eternal silence, the wild creatures
absorbed in their occupations; the trees never lifting their bowed heads
from their burdens of snow. Ned did not dream that mortal eyes would
ever rest upon his form again, vanishing without trace except for the
axe that had fallen at the edge of the crevice and the imprint of his
snowshoes on the trail behind. There was no reason in heaven or earth
for doubting but that this ivory glacier would be his sepulcher forever.
In that little instant the scope of his mind was incredibly vast. His
thought was more clear and true than ever before in his life, and it was
faster than the lightning in the sky. It reached back throughout his
years; it encompassed in full his most subtle and intricate relations
with life. There was no sense of one thought coming after another. The
focus of his attention had been immeasurably extended; and all that he
knew, and all that he was and had been, was before his eyes in one
great, infinite vista.
He still had time in plenty to observe the immensity of the silence; the
fact that his falling had not disturbed, to the least fraction of a
degree, the vast imperturbability of the stretching snow fields about
him. In that same instant, because of the seeming certainty of his end,
he really escaped from fear. Fear in its true sense is a relation that
living things have with the uncertainties of the future: a device of
nature by which the species are warned of danger, but it can serve no
purpose when judgment is signed and sealed. This was not danger but
seeming certainty; and the mind was too busy with other subjects to give
place to such a useless thing as fear.
By the same token he could not truly be said to hope. Hope also is the
handmaiden of uncertainty. Glancing back, there was no great sense of
regret. Seemingly dispatched irrevocably out of the world, in that flash
of an instant he was suddenly almost indifferent toward it. He
remembered Lenore clearly, seeing her more vividly than he had ever seen
her before, but she was like an old photograph found buried in a
forgotten drawer,—recalling something that was of greatest moment once,
but which no longer mattered. Perhaps, seemingly facing certain death,
he was as one of the dead, seeing everything in the world from an
indifferent and detached viewpoint.
All these thoughts swept him in a single fraction of an instant as he
plunged into darkness. And all of them were unavailing. The uncertainty
that shadows the lives of men held sway once more; and with it a ghastly
and boundless terror.
He was not to die at once. There was still hope of life. He fetched up,
as if by a miracle, on an icy shelf ten feet below the mouth of the
crevice,—with sheer walls rising on each side.