THE MAN WHO DID NOT FORGET
Out of the tempest came the answering halloo; and Haig redoubled his
outcries. Twice it came, whipped and broken by the wind; and then
there was but the wind itself. Exhausted by his efforts, and sick of
desperation and despair, Haig sank back weakly against the rock.
Round and round him whirled the snow; across his face the wind cut
him with savage lashes; in his ears there was nothing, nothing but
the storm. Then, all grew black before him. After all, it had been
an hallucination; he had been as mad as Marion in her delirium; he
had peopled the storm with imaginary beings, had given the wind a
voice it did not know. Crushed by disappointment, acknowledging the
end, he was sinking down upon the snow-covered platform, when,
suddenly--
"Hal-lo-o-o!"
It was nearer and louder than before. Haig straightened up, and again
filled the tumultuous air with hoarse cries. Once more the voice came;
and then out of the white chaos at the right of the cave, almost level
with the platform, a dark form appeared, striding forward with a
peculiar swinging motion, clumsily but sure.
Haig uttered one more call that dribbled into a sobbing cry.
"All--right!" answered the figure, in a smothered tone.
Huge, hunchbacked and cumbersome, the figure shuffled up the slight
slope between the level of the snow and the snowy platform, and
halted. A mittened hand went up to its head, and brushed the snow from
the face.
"Pete!" cried Haig.
He attempted to move forward, stumbled, lunged toward the Indian, and
collapsed in his arms. Pete, holding him, looked around until he saw
the opening of the cave, and fairly carried Haig inside. For a few
seconds, seeing nothing in the sudden change from the dazzling
whiteness of the snow to the dim red light of the cavern, Pete stood
still. Then Haig stiffened, stood erect, and pushed the Indian from
him.
"There! Look!" he gasped, pointing to where Marion lay, wild-eyed on
the bed, wrapped in her blankets. Then he sank down on the floor, with
his back against the wall, and gave himself up to dizziness and
exhaustion.
Pete quickly removed his thick mittens, unstrapped the bundle that
rested on his back, and took off the snowshoes that had caused his
approach over the snow to appear so like a lumbering animal's.
Flinging all these on the floor, he went swiftly to Marion's side, and
knelt there.
"Sick?" he asked.
She did not answer, but stared at him, and smiled.
"Listen!" she whispered. "Somebody--coming!"
Pete stood up, and looked at Haig.
"How long like this?" he asked.
"I forget. Three or four days."
"You well?"
"Yes," Haig answered weakly.
Pete came closer, and pointed to the leg that Haig kept thrust stiffly
out before him.
"Broke?"
"Yes."
"How long?"
"Six weeks."
The Indian asked no more questions just then, but hastened to open his
pack. First he found a bottle of whisky, and made Haig take a long
drink. Pete believed in two remedies for all human ills. He had a brew
of herbs that he had inherited from his tribal ancestors, his sole
inheritance besides his iron body. This brew was good for fevers; and
whisky was good for everything else. Having doctored Haig with the
whisky, he now turned to Marion with the brew. From a flask he poured
some of the dark brown liquid into a cup, let it come just to a boil
among the embers of the fire, and when it had cooled a little placed
it to Marion's lips. It was bitter, and she tried to draw away from
it, but Pete forced her gently to drain the cup.
Whatever the brew might be worth, the whisky certainly was efficacious.
Haig sat erect, and began hurling questions at the Indian.
"How did you get in here--in God's name?" was the first.
"Black Lake country."
"But how did you get in there?"
"Simpson's Pass."
Haig stared at him. He knew that to reach Simpson's Pass the Indian
must have gone far south below the canyon of the Big Bear, made a wide
detour over the lower range, and ascended to the Pass around the
shoulder of Big Bear Mountain. He had never heard of the Pass being
crossed in winter, and it was almost unbelievable.
"But the snow!" he exclaimed.
Pete pointed to the snowshoes.
"But the Pass doesn't let into the Black Lake country," said Haig.
"There's another range of mountains."
"Yes. I come over them."
"How long did it take you?"
"I been four weeks. But most of time looking in forest down there."
"But how did you find us?"
The Indian drew from his pocket a ragged and soiled piece of paper,
and spread it out on the floor. It was a crude map, with Paradise Park
outlined at one side, and at the other a labyrinth of lines and stars
and crosses. The stars were peaks, the crosses were foothills, and the
lines were creeks and valleys. Through the maze ran one heavier line
that indicated the trail through the Black Lake country up to the
cliff at the back of Thunder Mountain.
"Old Parker made it," said Pete.
"Tell me all!" commanded Haig. "But wait!" He pointed to Marion.
Marion's babbling had slowly subsided, and ceased. Pete rose and went
to her noiselessly on his moccasined feet; and after looking at her a
moment stepped cautiously back.
"She quiet now. Sleep soon," he said.
And it was so. The next time he slipped over to her, the girl's eyes
were closed, and soon she had sunk into a profound slumber from which
she did not awake until late the next morning.
Meanwhile Pete took up his story. Smythe had delivered Marion's
message, and had told them what he feared. Claire's knowledge of the
state of Marion's heart and mind enabled her to guess the worst, but
Seth scouted the idea of her trying to reach the top of Thunder
Mountain, or of Murray permitting her to try it. So two days were lost
before the alarm was sounded by Murray, who, after two attempts to
reach the top of the mountain, had given up and ridden to the Park for
help.
The whole valley responded to the call, and the most desperate efforts
were made to reach the plateau, but the storms that Haig and Marion
had heard in their sheltered gulch were of such fury and continuity
that the hardiest of the ranchmen were unable to prevail against them.
Huntington, half-crazed by the thought of the two days he had allowed
to be lost, had gone farther than any of the others, and had been
rescued with difficulty by some of his neighbors, who found him lying
senseless at the foot of the ascent to the Devil's Chair, where the
wind had hurled him back down the slope. Smythe was among those who
saved him, for the little tutor had let the last stage go without him,
and was one of the most reckless in the attacks on the mountain.
All these efforts having failed, and the winter having fallen with
exceptional suddenness and severity, even. Huntington was forced to
accept the general opinion that nothing more could be done; that they
could only wait for summer, when they could go to the mountain top and
bring back Marion's body--and doubtless Haig's too. And so, said
Huntington, the feud was ended.
One person alone in the Park refused to admit all this. Pete was
forced indeed to admit it in theory, but he was resolved to prove it
or disprove it on his own account. He had studied Thunder Mountain
from the ridge above the ranch house all that day of Sunnysides'
escape, and the next. And he remembered now that a period of calm had
followed the storm on that second day. If Haig or Marion, or both of
them, had by chance reached the flat top in that interval, they might
have crossed, and might be now somewhere in the forests on the other
side.
He went to Parker, talked with him long about the character of the
Black Lake country, induced him to draw the crude map, and then
visited Seth and Claire. Seth shook his head gloomily, but Claire
eagerly proceeded to assemble enough supplies to have loaded down a
pack horse. There followed a pitifully comical struggle with her
before her "first aid" was reduced to what Pete could carry in his
canvas knapsack,--a small roll of underwear, needles and thread,
bandages and a packet of household medicines in addition to Pete's own
selection of a strip of bacon, a dozen onions, two score of vegetable
soup tablets, two cans of condensed milk, small quantities of coffee
and tea, salt and pepper, two cakes of soap and (especially insisted
on by Pete) a plug of black tobacco and a pipe.
All these supplies Pete had saved untouched, living himself on game
shot on the long journey. For nearly five weeks he had struggled
against unbelievable hardships, fighting like primitive man against
the fiercest enmity of nature; had searched the whole Black Lake
country; and that day, slowly following the direction of the trail up
through the narrowing gulch among the tree tops, the smell of smoke
was brought to his nostrils on the wind, and he traced it along the
foot of the cliff.
"But did you really expect to find us alive?" asked Haig.
"No."
"Then why did you do all this?"
"All I could do. Indian never forgets."
Thereupon he brought out Haig's pipe and his own, and they smoked over
it in silence, late into the night.
Marion awoke the next morning with another look in her eyes. Her fever
was still high, but she was no longer delirious. Too feeble to ask
questions, she only smiled, and took obediently the remainder of the
potion that Pete poured from his flask and heated in the tin-cup among
the embers. On her wakening again it was seen that the fever was
broken. But life in her was only a tiny flame, at times the merest
spark that every gust of wind through the cavern threatened to
extinguish. Hour after hour Haig and the Indian watched it, the one in
such anguish as the repentant murderer suffers as he kneels over the
poor victim of his rage, the other in stolid resignation, seeing that
perhaps he had come too late.
But the spark was the bravest little spark in the world; and it did
not go out. In time Pete dared to give Marion a little weakened milk;
and then, when she responded to the milk, a few sips of soup that was
scarcely thicker than water. And thus from day to day they nursed her
back to some recognizable shadow of what she had been two months
before.
There came an evening when they sat down to a veritable feast. Haig
had stubbornly refused to taste any of the delicacies in Pete's store,
excepting salt and pepper. Besides, with seasoning, the venison was no
longer quite repugnant to his palate; and he and the Indian did very
well on that until the feast was spread. And it was a feast
remembered. There was soup, to begin with, drunk from the two cups
they now possessed; then a rabbit stew, seasoned with SALT AND PEPPER,
and flavored with an ONION; and black coffee (very black indeed, to be
quite exact). Then Haig's and Pete's pipes were lighted; and the
Indian must tell them again the story of the rescue; and let the wind
howl its savagest!
"Poor Claire!" said Marion, with a tremulous little laugh, when Pete
told her how the knapsack was packed.
And Haig looked across at her dizzily, as if the fumes of the strong
tobacco had gone to his head.
* * * * *
Their situation was still miserable enough, but the Indian contrived
to make it less unendurable. He knew some knacks of cookery that
availed to make their venison and rabbit palatable; and the tea and
coffee cheered them beyond all possibility of expression. No longer
required to toil; with clean underwear; with soap for her blackened
face and hands, Marion recovered her strength, or much of it, with
amazing swiftness. Pete made a rough coat and even a skirt for her of
deerskin. The coat was of double thickness, and very warm indeed, and
so she gave back to Haig the remnant of the leather coat she had been
wearing, which was now needed to cover his ragged corduroy. Then came
moccasins, and better crutches for Haig; and so they settled down with
new courage for what they thought would be a long wait through the
implacable winter.
Haig kept his secret, or supposed he was keeping it. Marion did not
indeed remember how he had taken her in his arms in her delirium;
rather, if there was a faint but insistent recollection of the embrace
it was intangible and unreal. She had dreamed so often of that
longed-for embrace that the reality was inseparable from the imagined.
Nor was she aware of the revelation that had come to Haig, as if a
dazzling light had broken through the walls of the cavern. But though
he might keep his secret he could not conceal from her the change that
had come over him, the tenderness and wonder and humility that had
succeeded his hardness and scepticism and belligerency. She detected
that alteration in every look he gave her, in every movement he made
in waiting upon her, in every tone of his speech, though the words
were the most commonplace. And in her great faith she was not
surprised. But she was thrilled. The knowledge ran through her veins
like a living fire, a better nourishment than food, a more potent cure
than any medicine.
So the long days, not quite so long as they used to be, marched on.
Despite the skilful services of Pete they were still always cold,
always hungry, always weary for want of sleep, and always dirty and
unkempt. Then there came a day when Pete astonished them. He brought
in from the forest certain small limbs of tough wood, and began to
trim them and bend them into shapes that they were presently able to
recognize. Snowshoes!
"You don't mean--Can we do it?" cried Haig incredulously.
"Can't stay here," was Pete's short reply.
True; they could not stay there; it was just what Haig had been
thinking, or trying to avoid thinking. But how would Marion be able to
endure that terrible journey over Simpson's Pass? For her part she
said nothing, but her eyes met Philip's; she reached her hand to him,
and he clasped it tightly.
Three weeks after Pete's arrival he began gradually to inure Haig and
Marion to living and moving in the snow. He taught them to walk on
snowshoes, to climb steep slopes on them, to pick their way among the
trees. There were countless falls in deep drifts, and headlong
plunges, and ungraceful wallowings in the snow. But they knew their
lives depended on these labors, and they were even able to laugh at
some of their awkward performances. These exercises were, moreover,
very good for them. Ill-nourished though they were, the natural color
crept back into their cheeks, the blood flowed briskly again, through
their chilled veins, their muscles were strengthened by their
struggles with the winds and the snow that still came on with
unremitted vigor. Then Pete went a step farther in the preparations
for the crucial test. Not only must they spend the greater part of
the day outside the cave, but they must sleep, or try to sleep, a few
hours every night in the snow, wrapped in their blankets, in holes
scooped out under the lee of a snowbank, while the Indian stood guard
nearby.
It was near the end of December when Pete thought his charges had
become sufficiently hardened to undertake the long journey. The
weather, if it had not moderated (it would not begin to moderate there
until long after spring had brought out the flowers in the distant
Park), had settled a little after its first fury. The storms came with
less frequency, and the snow had assumed a certain stability with the
steadily added weight. Both Marion and Haig bad mastered their
snowshoes, and were able to travel slowly after Pete. Moreover, all
the delicacies that Pete had brought had been consumed, despite their
most careful husbanding, and even the meager supply of salt and pepper
would soon be exhausted, leaving only the unseasoned venison of odious
memory.
The night before the day set for their departure, Pete broiled strips
of venison sufficient for a week or more, and stowed them in his
knapsack. At dawn they were up, and eagerly making the final
preparations. Haig and Marion, in their impatience, would have eaten
nothing, but the Indian, true to his tribal habit of filling the
stomach before a march, insisted that breakfast should be a methodical
and leisurely business. From some recess he drew the last soup tablet,
the last onion, and the last of the ground coffee, which he had
clandestinely saved against this great event. The feast with which
they had celebrated Marion's recovery was now repeated in celebration
of their farewell to the cave,--the soup, the rabbit stew and the
black coffee.
Then, when Pete had fastened their snowshoes securely on their
moccasined feet, and had gone out to trample down the fresh snow on
the platform before the cave, Haig and Marion stood together for a
last look upon the scene of their sufferings. They looked at the dying
fire, at the flattened beds of boughs, at the long row of notches on
the wall, at the crutches lying among the firewood, at crumpled and
ragged boots and bits of worn-out clothing.
"Good-by--you!" cried Marion, laughing tremulously, very near to
tears.
"Yes, good-by!" said Haig.
That cave--what had it not meant for him! There was his Valley of the
Shadow, into which he had again descended to seek and find the better
part of him that he had left there long ago.
"Go on out, please!" he said presently. "I'll come in a minute."
She looked at him curiously, but obeyed. Haig waited till she had
gone, and then shuffled clumsily on his snowshoes across the floor to
where, beyond the fire, lay one of Marion's boots. It was a torn and
misshapen thing, the sole worn through, the leather curled up from the
open toe. He picked it up hastily, and with a swift glance at the
mouth of the cavern, thrust it into an inside pocket of his leather
coat.
* * * * *
It was a wonderful, thrilling, terrifying journey, filled with
hardships and perils. Caution and sheer toil of travel held them to
slow progress. They went through vast forests, among the very tops of
the tall pines; they climbed wide, bare slopes where the winds had
almost stripped the snow from the gaunt rocks; they descended into
sheltered valleys where the deer went scurrying at their approach;
they crossed deep gulches packed half-full of blown and drifted snow;
they passed close to the edges of precipices where a false step would
have sent them whirling down into white abysses spiked with pines.
Storms overtook them, and forced them to remain many hours in such
shelter as they could find. Sometimes they slept under overhanging
rocks with a fire blazing at their feet, but more often the night was
spent in burrows dug in the snow. Their supply of venison ran out, and
a day was lost while Pete hunted and killed a deer, and cooked strips
of its flesh, to be seasoned with the very last of their salt and
pepper, and kept in his knapsack. But even Marion did not lose courage
or once falter, though many times her heart was in her mouth and a
cold sweat on her forehead as they passed some formidable and
terrifying obstacle.
At length, on a bright and glittering day, when it seemed the storms
had finally abandoned their enmity, they climbed slowly up the long
slopes to Simpson's Pass, and stood at noon high above a wide and
wonderful world of snow, with white mountains succeeding one another,
range on range, as far as their eyes could reach before them and
behind. And that afternoon, as they toiled around the shoulder of Big
Bear Mountain, they stopped and gazed,--Marion with tears streaming
down her cheeks, and Haig with his hands clenched tightly at his
sides. For there, still far away below them, but _there_ beyond all
mistake, lay Paradise Park, very white and still and glittering in the
sun; and off at the right was Thunder Mountain, squatting among the
silver peaks, its sullen head half hidden by gray-black clouds.