DIANA
Still no speech came to either of them. After a while Marion rose
silently, and went about her work. First, however, she sought the
revolver in the grass, and carried it, with her rifle, to the clump of
willows by the brook, where both weapons were safely beyond the
present limits of Philip's powers. Then she returned to him with her
towel, one end of it wetted and soaped.
"May I, please?" she asked, smiling down at him.
"If you wish," he answered.
She knelt, and began to wash the grime from his face, to cleanse the
wound on his head, and readjust the bandage. Then his hands, after
another trip to the stream to rub out the soiled end of the towel; and
she was still busy with one of them, when she started back with a cry.
His coat had opened wider, and she saw that his shirt was stained with
blood. She had forgotten the revolver-shot!
"It's nothing," said Haig. "Only a flesh wound, I think."
"But why didn't you tell me!" she cried, almost with anger in her
alarm.
"It doesn't matter, does it?"
"Let me see it, quick!" she commanded.
He looked at her a moment, then opened the front of his flannel shirt
and of the undershirt, and disclosed a flesh wound where the bullet
had cut a streak across his chest. Marion bent close, and touched it
with her fingers.
"Oh!" she sighed at last, in deep relief.
Haig's reply was a laugh of which the irony did not escape her.
"Philip!" she cried reproachfully.
"Well, isn't it rather droll--and ludicrous, when you come to think of
it? First, Sunnysides' punch in my stomach. And now, with my head cut
open by a stone, and a broken leg, and two bullet-wounds--I've still
got a splendid appetite. I ought to be on exhibition somewhere!"
His sardonic humor hurt her worse than his anger; and she went quickly
to the brook to cleanse the towel again. Returning presently, she
washed the new wound, and bandaged it; then examined the splints on
the broken leg to assure herself that, as nearly as she could
determine, no serious damage had been done to it by his reckless
crawl; and finally brought his blankets, and insisted on making a sort
of bed for him. After that she cooked two slices of bacon, and on
this, with a little bread, they made their first meal of the day. And
this brought her to the next and most pressing problem.
"Will you help me think, Philip?" she asked, when they had eaten.
"About what?"
"Food."
"What's in the larder?"
She smiled at his tone, in spite of her own seriousness.
"Bacon--perhaps enough for three days, with the bread, if we don't eat
much; and chocolate for four or five breakfasts. That's all."
"And then?"
"Are there deer in those forests, do you think?"
"Very likely. This is an un-hunted country, I imagine."
"Great!" she cried.
"What do you propose to do? Whistle for them?"
She could afford to smile at that.
"Didn't you see my rifle?"
"Just now--yes. What's it for?"
"You'll see."
"Diana of Thunder Mountain, eh? Well, I'm ready to admit you're some
huntress. But deer! That's another thing."
The color flooded her cheeks.
"Cousin Seth taught me to shoot," she answered, turning her face away.
"I killed a deer on Mount Avalanche."
"But where did Cousin Seth learn to shoot? The last time he--"
"Please, Philip!"
"Well, when you've brought down your deer, what will you do with it?"
The color deserted her face at that.
"I watched him do it," she said, shuddering at the recollection.
"But you can't do that alone."
"I've got to," she replied simply. And then, on a sudden thought:
"There should be grouse too, shouldn't there?"
"Perhaps."
"I learned to kill grouse with my rifle."
He looked at her with a wicked grin. This time he had her!
"How many cartridges have you?" he asked.
She ran for her belt, and counted the cartridges.
"Twenty-seven."
"So. If you never miss, you'll get twenty-seven grouse. That would
mean twenty-seven, meals. One meal a day, twenty-seven days. I'd still
be on my back, our ammunition would be gone, and--"
"Don't!" she cried, in tears. "I wasn't thinking."
"Never mind!" he replied, almost gently. "But we'll deny ourselves the
grouse."
"Yes, it's got to be the deer. I'll begin now."
"No, there's something else that must be done first."
"What is it?"
"We've got to move."
"For shelter, you mean?"
"Partly. But look there!"
He pointed to the dead body of Trixy.
"It will be easier--and perhaps even nicer--to move me than poor
Trixy. See that big pine yonder--the one that stands out from the
forest? Well, you and Tuesday must drag me there."
"But how?"
He explained his plan to her, and she set herself at once to executing
it. And her spirits rose again; for she thought he had abandoned his
desperate resolution. So, indeed, he had--for the moment. But he had
deliberately beguiled her; their situation he knew to be quite
unchanged in its inevitable termination, since a food supply would
save them from starvation only to deliver them to the snow; and he
must disarm her of suspicion in order to find a way to send her back
on the trail. For he had reflected on the implication of tragic
finality in the speech that had surprised and disturbed him; and he
did not doubt that when the time should come, and she should find
herself alone, her high resolve would prove to have been mere
emotional exaggeration.
Mounted on Tuesday, Marion attacked the boughs of a small pine with
the hatchet until she had severed three large branches, to which she
tied Haig's rope, and hauled them back to the camp. Of these branches
Haig contrived a crude drag, on which he crawled, and lay flat; the
free end of the rope was hitched to the horn of Tuesday's saddle; and
the journey was begun. Twice the saddle slipped, and progress was
interrupted while Marion tightened the cinches. Once the drag itself
came to pieces, and Haig was left sprawling on the ground. But
eventually, with no more serious injury to Haig than a bruised elbow,
not counting his torn clothing, they reached the goal.
There Marion made a wide bed against the exposed top roots of the
tree, filling the spaces among the pine boughs with moss, and placing
the two saddles at the head for pillows. Night had come before she had
completed this labor, and gathered another supply of dead limbs and
rotted logs, and cooked their meager supper. Then she wrapped Haig in
his blankets, and rolled herself in her own, and lay down at his side.
What with watching and replenishing the fire, and listening to
night-cries heard or imagined, and waking from restless slumber
chilled to the bone, she slept as little as on the preceding night,
and was glad of the dawn, which came peacefully enough on the heels of
a storm that raged on Thunder Mountain and sent a cold and beating
rain upon the valley.
This day brought its own bitter disappointment. After her bath in the
clear pool among the willows, and their mere taste of bacon and bread
in the name of breakfast, and a promise exacted from Haig, as a
condition of her leaving him, that he would do nothing of which she
would disapprove, she set out to get her deer. Rifle on shoulder, and
eyes alert, she skirted the edge of the wood along the base of the
cliff, through tall grasses of a golden green, among yellowing aspen
groves, and under a fair blue sky. But presently she plunged into the
thick of the forest, of which the trees towered to a height exceeding
that of any she had ever seen before. In their tops the breeze was
singing sonorously, but among their massive boles the silence was so
tense that twigs cracking under her feet sounded like gun-shots
echoing through the dim aisles.
For some hours she wandered fruitlessly in that dark labyrinth, not
only mindful of Philip's warning that she must not penetrate too deep
into its depth, but fearful on her own account of an encounter with
some such wild beast as that whose cry had terrified her. In time the
hollow indifference of the woods began to weigh upon her spirits,
which had been high and hopeful on her setting out. Worn out at last,
she was just on the point of turning back toward the camp, defeated,
when she came upon an open space, a lovely little glade, in which the
grass grew rank and green, unripened by the sun. She started to cross
it, but stopped suddenly, staring straight ahead. In the very middle
of the lush and silent glade, a young doe rose swiftly to its feet,
and looked at her. Marion stood and looked at the doe. Then there was
a streak of pale yellow across the grass, the forest closed around it,
and the doe was gone. Thereupon, Marion remembered her rifle, and saw
with something like surprise, to begin with, that it was pointed
foolishly toward the ground. She gazed at it a moment, then sat plump
down on the mossy earth, and cried.
"Oh, what a fool!" she groaned. "What a poor, silly little fool! I
ought to starve, starve, starve!"
And on the words the hunger that she had bravely kept back rose and
punished her. To be hungry in a world of plenty, where she had only to
reach out and help herself! To think of Philip, hungry too, and
depending on her, on her boasted prowess! Humiliation scorched her
like a flame. And this was Marion Gaylord!
When she had recovered a little, she made directly for the open strip,
having no more heart for her task, and nerving herself to confess the
truth to Philip. Coming out upon the knoll through thick underbrush,
she was startled by the leap of a rabbit from under her very feet; and
before she was aware of what she was doing, she had thrown up her
rifle, and fired. There was really no aim; the action was a gesture
merely; and if she had tried to hit the rabbit she would have
undoubtedly missed it clean. But the unlucky little beast, happening
in the path of Marion's angry disgust, turned a somersault in the air,
and fell dead.
"Of course!" cried Marion. "Of course I can kill rabbits." Then
mercilessly: "A rabbit a day for twenty-seven days--" And rage choked
her.
But she picked up her rabbit, and walked on. In half an hour she
reached the camp, strode straight to the pine tree under which Haig
lay, and held up before him the puny prize.
"Now I know you're proud of me!" she exclaimed, while her face
crimsoned.
Haig smiled indulgently. It was a little better than he had expected.
"Don't be downcast!" he said. "I didn't think you'd get a deer the
first day. You didn't even see one, I suppose."
"But I did, though! I had one right under my eyes, not thirty feet
away. And what do you think I did?"
"Stood and looked at it, of course. That's buck fever."
"But it was only a tiny little doe!"
"Doe fever then, which is probably worse, if I know anything about--"
"That will do, Philip! You're laughing at me."
"Not at all. You've brought home something to eat, and that's more
than I can do. Bunny looks big and fat. He'll make a fine dinner, and
leave something for to-morrow."
"Thank you, Philip!" she said gratefully. "You make me feel as if I
were not such a failure after all."
"If you'll trust me with the knife," he said in a tone that took some
of the edge off her satisfaction, "I'll clean him for you."
She gave him the knife reluctantly, and did not leave his side until
he had finished cleaning and cutting up the rabbit, when he handed the
knife back to her with a gesture that made her blush again. Two things
she did not know: that he had a knife in his pocket much better suited
to his secret purpose; and that his purpose was a purpose no longer.
But even he was not yet aware of this last.
It was not the next day, but the third, when the rabbit had been eaten
to the bone, and the pangs of hunger prodded her, that Marion restored
herself in her own eyes. In the edge of the forest, not more than two
miles from the camp, she detected a mere brown patch in the browning
bush. This time she did not forget her rifle. The brown patch moved
just as she pulled the trigger; but when she reached the spot, in a
fever of anxiety, she fairly shrieked to the wilderness. For there in
the grass, still jerking spasmodically in its death agony, lay a doe,
a larger one than that she had seen in the glade. No more "one a day
for twenty-seven days!"
What followed haunted her dreams for many nights thereafter--a
repulsive and sickening ordeal. She had seen Huntington do it, but
then she had been able to turn her face away; and her hands--But
necessity, responsibility, and pride, and perhaps some primitive
instinct also, nerved her to the task. And she staggered back to camp,
and stood before Philip, white and trembling, but triumphant.
"Take a drink of whisky!" ordered Haig sharply.
She obeyed him, gulping down the last of the precious contents of her
flask.
"It's down there--covered with leaves!" she gasped out at length.
"Will anything--disturb it before I can--take Tuesday and the rope?"
"Do you mean you've cleaned the whole deer?" he asked curiously.
She nodded, still shuddering.
"Well, you're a brick!" he said heartily. Then he added: "I thought
perhaps a bobcat had stolen your--rabbit."
She laughed with him, and then was off with Tuesday to bring her
quarry home. She was not strong enough to lift and fasten the carcass
on the horse's back; but the route was through clean grass along the
cliff, and Tuesday made short work of that, with the deer dragged at
the end of the rope.
They had no salt, but there were a few rinds of bacon that Haig had
told Marion to keep, and these were made to serve for seasoning. That
venison, moreover, needed nothing to make it palatable; for they were
ravenously hungry. Sprawled before the fire like savages, they feasted
on a huge steak, broiled on two willow sticks, and well-browned on the
outside at the start so that the tenderness was retained; and for an
hour forgot. For so the stomach, at once the tyrant and the slave, has
sometimes its hour of triumph, when heart and soul and brain are its
willing captives, and the starkest fears and forebodings lose their
sway, and death itself, though visible and near, has no power to
ferment the grateful juices of the body.