you try to make both ends meet with Banks Bowen. I suppose he will go
through the form of speaking to me?”
“Mother dear! He has only just spoken to me. How fast you go!”
“Not fast enough to keep up with my children, it seems. Was it you,
Christine, who asked them to come here?”
Christine was silent.
“Where did you learn such ways?--such want of frankness, of delicacy, of
the commonest consideration for others? To be looking out for your own
little schemes at a time like this!” Mrs. Bogardus saw now what must
have been Paul's reason for doing what, with all her forced explanations
of the hunting-trip, she had never until now understood. He had taken
the alarm before she had, and done what he could to postpone this family
catastrophe.
Christine retreated to a deep-cushioned chair, and threw herself into
it, her slender hands, palm upwards, extended upon its arms. Total
surrender under pressure of cruel odds was the expression of her pointed
eyebrows and drooping mouth. She looked exasperatingly pretty and
irresponsibly fragile. Her blue-veined eyelids quivered, her breath came
in distinct pants.
“Perhaps you will not be troubled with my 'ways' for very many years,
mother. If you could feel my heart now! It jumps like something trying
to get out. It will get out some day. Have patience!”
“That is a poor way to retaliate upon your mother, Christine. Your
health is too serious a matter to trifle with. If you choose to make it
a shield against everything I say that doesn't please you, you can cut
yourself off from me entirely. I cannot beat down such a defense as
that. Anger me you never can, but you can make me helpless to help you.”
“I dare say it's better that I should never marry at all,” said
Christine, her eyes closed in resignation. “You never would like anybody
I like.”
“I shall say no more. You are a woman. I have protected you as far as
I was able on account of your weakness. I cannot protect you from the
weakness itself.”
Mrs. Bogardus rose. She did not offer to comfort her child with
caresses, but in her eyes as she looked at her there was a profound,
inalienable, sorrowing tenderness, a depth of understanding beyond
words.
“I know so well,” the dark eyes seemed to say, “how you came to be the
poor thing that you are!”
The constraint which she felt towards her mother threw Chrissy back upon
Moya. Being a lesser power, she was always seeking alliances. Moya had
put aside their foolish tiff as unworthy of another thought; she was
embarrassed when at bedtime Christine came humbly to her door, and
putting her arms around her neck implored her not to be cross with
her “poor pussy.” It was always the other person who was “cross” with
Christine.
“Nobody is cross with anybody, so far as I know,” said Moya briskly. A
certain sort of sentimentality always made her feel like whistling or
singing or asserting the commonplace side of life in some way.
X
THE WHITE PERIL
Mrs. Bogardus received many letters, chiefly on business, and these she
answered with manlike brevity, in a strong, provincial hand. They took
up much of her time, and mercifully, for it was now the last week in
November and the young men did not return.
The range cattle had been driven down into the valleys, deer-tracks
multiplied by lonely mountain fords; War Eagle and his brethren of the
Owyhees were taking council under their winter blankets. The nights were
still, the mornings rimy with hoarfrost. Fogs arose from the river and
cut off the bases of the mountains, converting the valley before sunrise
into the likeness of a polar sea.
“You have let your fire go out,” said the colonel briskly. He had
invaded the sitting-room at an unaccustomed hour, finding the lady at
her letters as usual. She turned and held her pen poised above her paper
as she looked at him.
“You did not come to see about the fire?” she said.
“No; I have had letters from the north. Would you step into my study a
moment?”
Moya was in her father's room when they entered. She had been weeping,
but at sight of Paul's mother she rose and stood picking at the
handkerchief she held, without raising her eyes.
“Don't be alarmed at Moya's face,” said the colonel stoutly. “Paul was
all right at last accounts. We will have a merry Christmas yet.”
“This is not from Paul!” Mrs. Bogardus fixed her eyes upon a letter
which she held at arm's length, feeling for her glasses. “It's not for
me--'_Miss_ Bogardus.'”
“Ah, well. I saw it was postmarked Lemhi--Fort Lemhi, you know. Sit
down, madam. Suppose I give you Mr. Winslow's report first--Lieutenant
Winslow. You heard of his going to Lemhi?”
“She doesn't know,” whispered Moya.
“True. Well, two weeks ago I gave Mr. Winslow a hunter's leave, as we
call it in the army, to beat up the trail of those boys. I thought it
was time we heard from them, but it wasn't worth while to raise a hue
and cry. He started out with a few picked men from Lemhi, the Indian
Reservation, you know. I couldn't have sent a better man; the thing
hasn't got into the local papers even. My object, of course, has been
to save unnecessary alarm. Mr. Winslow has just got back to Challis. He
rounded up the Bowen youths and the cook and the helper, in bad shape,
all of them, but able to tell a story. The details we shall get
later, but I have Mr. Winslow's report to me. It is short and probably
correct.”
“Was Paul not with them?” his mother questioned in a hard, dry voice.
“Where is he then?”
“He is in camp, madam, in charge of the wounded.”
“Dear father! if you would speak plain!” Moya whispered nervously.
“Certainly. There is nothing whatever to hide. We know now that on their
last day's hunt they met with an accident which resulted in a division
of the party. A fall of snow had covered the ice on the trails, and
the guide's horse fell and rolled on him--nature of his injuries not
described. This happened a day's journey from their camp at Ten-Mile
cabin, and the retreat with the wounded man was slow and of course
difficult over such a trail. They put together a sort of horse-litter
made of pine poles and carried him on that, slung between two mules
tandem. A beastly business, winding and twisting over fallen timber,
hugging the cañon wall, near a thousand feet down--'Impassable' the
trail is marked, on the government military maps. This first day's march
was so discouraging that at Ten Mile they called a council, and the
packer spoke up like a man. He disposed of his own case in this way. If
he were to live, they could send back help to fetch him out. If not,
no help would be needed. The snows were upon them; there was danger in
every hour's delay. It was insane to sacrifice four sound men for one,
badly hurt, with not many hours perhaps to suffer.”
A murmur from the mother announced her appreciation of the packer's
argument.
“It was no more than a man should do; but as to taking him at his word,
why, that's another question.” The colonel paused and gustily cleared
his throat. “They were up against it right then and there, and the party
split upon it. Three of them went on,--for help, as they put it,--and
Paul stayed behind with the wounded man.”
“Paul stayed--alone?” Mrs. Bogardus uttered with hoarse emphasis. “Was
not that a very strange way to divide? Among them all, I should think
they might have brought the man out with them.”
“Their story is that his injuries were such that he could not have borne
the pain of the journey. Rather an unusual case,” the colonel added
dryly. “In my experience, a wounded man will stand anything sooner than
be left on the field.”
“I cannot understand it,” Mrs. Bogardus repeated, in a voice of
indignant pain. “Such a strange division! One man left alone--to nurse,
and hunt, and cook, and keep up fires! Suppose the guide should die!”
“Paul was not _left_, you know,” the colonel said emphatically. “He
_stayed_. And I should be thankful in your place, madam, that my son was
the man who made that choice. But setting conduct aside, for we are not
prepared to judge, it is merely a matter of time our getting in there,
now that we know where he is.”
“How much time?” Mrs. Bogardus opened her ashen lips to say.
The colonel's face fell. “Mr. Winslow reports heavy snows for the past
week,--soft, clogging snow,--too deep to wade through and too soft to
bear. A little later, when the cold has formed a crust, our men can get
in on snowshoes. There is nothing for it but patience, Mrs. Bogardus,
and faith in the boy's endurance. The pluck that made him stay behind
will help him to hold out.”
Moya gave a hurt sob; the colonel stepped to the desk and stood there a
moment turning over his papers. Behind his back the mother sent a glance
to Moya expressive of despair.
“Do you know what happened to his father? Did he ever tell you?” she
whispered.
Moya assented; she could not speak.
“Twice, twice in a lifetime!” said the older woman.
With a gesture, Moya protested against this wild prophecy; but as Paul's
mother left the room she rushed upon her father, crying: “Tell _me_ the
truth! What do you think of it? Did you ever hear of such a dastardly
thing?”
“It was a rout,” said the colonel coolly. “They were in full flight
before the enemy.”
“What enemy? They deserted a wounded comrade, and a servant at that!”
“The enemy was panic,--panic, my dear. In these woods I've seen strong
men go half beside themselves with fear of something--the Lord knows
what! Then, add the winter and what they had seen and heard of that.
Anyway, you can afford to be easy on the other boys. The honors of the
day are with Paul--and the old packer, though it's all in the day's work
to him.”
“And you are satisfied with Paul, father?”
“He didn't desert his command to save his own skin.” The colonel smiled
grimly.
“When the men of the Fourth discovered those other fellows they had
literally sat down in the snow to die. Not a man of them knew how to
pack a mule. Their meat pack slipped, going along one of those high
trails, and scared the mule, and in trying to kick himself free the
beast fell off the trail--mule and meat both gone. They got tired of
carrying their stuff and made a raft to float it down the river, and
lost that! Paul has been much better off in camp than he would have been
with them. So cheer up, my girl, and think how you'd like to have your
bridegroom out on an Indian campaign!”
“Ah, but that would be orders! It's the uselessness that hurts. There
was nothing to do or to gain. He didn't want to go. Oh, daddy dear, I
made fun of his shooting,--I did! I laughed at his way with firearms.
Wretched fool and snob that I was! As if I cared! I thought of what
other people would say. You remember,--he went shooting up the gulch
with Mr. Lane, and when he hit but didn't kill he wouldn't--couldn't put
the birds out of pain. Jephson had to do it for him, and he told it in
barracks and the men laughed.”
“How did you know that! And what does it all amount to! Blame yourself
all you like, dear, if it does you any good, but don't make him out a
fool! There's not much that comes to us straight in this world--not
even orders, you'll find. But we have to take it straight and leave the
muddles and the blunders as they are. That's the brave man's courage and
the brave woman's. Orders are mixed, but duty is clear. And the boy
out there in the woods has found his duty and done it like a man. That
should be enough for any soldier's daughter.”
An hour passed in suspense. Moya was disappointed in her expectation of
sharing in whatever the letter from Fort Lemhi might contain. Christine
was in bed with a headache, her mother dully gave out, with no apparent
expectation that any one would accept this excuse for the girl's
complete withdrawal. The letter, she told Moya, was from Banks Bowen.
“There was nothing in it of consequence--to us,” she added, and
Moya took the words to mean “you and me” to the unhappy exclusion of
Christine.
Mrs. Bogardus's face had settled into lines of anxiety printed years
before, as the creases in an old garment, smoothed and laid away, will
reappear with fresh wear. Her plan was to go back to New York with
Christine, who was plainly unfit to bear a long siege of suspense. There
she could leave the girl with friends and learn what particulars could
be gathered from the Bowens, who would have arrived. She would then
return alone and wait for news at the garrison. That night, with Moya's
help, she completed her packing, and on the following day the wedding
party broke up.
XI
A SEARCHING OF HEARTS
Fine, dry snowflakes were drifting past the upper square of a window
set in a wall of logs. The lower half was obscured by a white bulk
that shouldered up against the sash in the likeness of a muffled figure
stooping to peer in.
Lying in his bunk against the wall, the packer watched this sentinel
snowdrift grow and become human and bold and familiar. His deep-lined
visage was reduced to its bony structure. The hand was a claw with
which he plucked at the ancient fever-crust shredding from his lips: an
occupation at once so absorbing and so exhausting that often the hand
would drop and the blankets rise upon the arch of the chest in a sigh of
retarded respiration. The sigh would be followed by a cough, controlled,
as in dread of the shock to a sore and shattered frame. The snow came
faster and faster until the dim, wintry pane was a blur. Millions of
atoms crossed the watcher's weary vision, whirling, wavering, driven
with an aimless persistence, unable to pause or to stop. And the blind
white snowdrift climbed, fed, like human circumstance, from disconnected
atoms impelled by a common law.
There were sounds in the cabin: wet wood sweating on hot coals; a step
that went to and fro. Outside, a snow-weighted bough let go its load and
sprang up, scraping against the logs. Some heavy soft thing slid off
the roof and dropped with a _chug_. Then the door, that hung awry like a
drooping eyelid, gave a disreputable wink, and the whole front gable of
the cabin loomed a giant countenance with a silly forehead and an evil
leer. Now it seemed that a hand was hurling snow against the door, as
a sower scatters grain,--snow that lay like beach sand on the floor, or
melted into a crawling pool--red in the firelight, red as blood!
These and other phantasms had now for an unmeasured time been tenants
of the packer's brain, sharing and often overpowering the reality of
the human step that went to and fro. To-day the shapes and relations of
things were more natural, and the step aroused a querulous curiosity.
“Who's there?” the sick man imagined himself to have said. A croaking
sound in his throat, which was all he could do by way of speech, brought
the step to his bedside. A young face, lightly bearded, and gaunt almost
as his own, bent over him. Large, black eyes rested on his; a hand with
womanish nails placed its fingers on his wrist.
“You are better to-day. Your pulse is down. I wouldn't try to talk.”
“Who's that--outside?”
“There is no one outside,” Paul answered, following the direction of his
patient's eyes. “That? That is only a snowdrift. It grows faster than I
can shovel it away.”
The packer had forgotten his own question. He dozed off, and presently
roused again as suddenly as he had slept. His utterance was clearer, but
not his meaning.
“What--you want to fetch me back for?”
“Back?” Paul repeated.
“I was most gone, wa'n't I?”
“Back to life, you mean? You came back of yourself. I hadn't much to do
with it.”
“What's been the matter--gen'ly speaking?”
“You were hurt, don't you remember? Something like wound fever set in.
The altitude is bad for fevers. You have had a pretty close call.”
“Been here all the time?”
“Have I been here?--yes.”
“'Lone?”
“With you. How is your chest? Does it hurt you still when you breathe?”
The sick man filled his lungs experimentally. “Something busted inside,
I guess,” he panted. “'Tain't no killing matter, though.”
Nourishment, in a tin cup, warm from the fire was offered him, refused
with a gesture, and firmly urged upon him. This necessitated another
rest. It was long before he spoke again--out of some remoter train of
thought apparently.
“Family all in New York?”
“My family? They were at Bisuka when I left them.”
“You don't _live_ West!”
“No. I was born in the West, though. Idaho is my native state.”
The patient fell to whimpering suddenly like a hurt child. He drew up
the blanket to cover his face. Paul, interpreting this as a signal for
more nourishment, brought the sad decoction,--rinds of dried beef cooked
with rice in snow water.
“Guess that'll do, thank ye. My tongue feels like an old buckskin
glove.”
“When I was a little fellow,” said the nurse, beguiling the patient
while he tucked the spoonfuls down, “I was like you: I wouldn't take
what the doctor ordered, and they used to pretend I must take it for
the others of the family,--a kind of vicarious milk diet, or gruel, or
whatever it was. 'Here's a spoonful for mother, poor mother,' they would
say; and of course it couldn't be refused when mother needed it so much.
'And now one for Chrissy'”--
“Who?”
“My sister, Christine. And then I'd take one for 'uncle' and one for
each of the servants; and the cupful would go down to the health of the
household, and I the dupe of my sympathies! Now you are taking this for
me, because it's nicer to be shut up here with a live man than a dead
one; and we haven't the conveniences for a first-class funeral.”
“You never took a spoonful for 'father,'--eh?”
Paul answered the question with gravity. “No. We never used that name in
common.”
“Dead was he?”
“I will tell you some time. Better try to sleep now.”
Paul returned the saucepan to the fire, after piecing out its contents
with water, and retired out of his patient's sight.
Again came a murmur, chiefly unintelligible, from the bunk.
“Did you ask for anything?”
The sick man heaved a worried sigh. “See what a mis'rable presumptuous
piece of work!” he muttered, addressing the logs overhead. “But that
Clauson--he wa'n't no more fit to guide ye than to go to heaven!
Couldn't 'a' done much worse than this, though!”
“He has done worse!” Paul came over to the bunk-side to reason on this
matter. “They started back from here, four strong men with all the
animals and all the food they needed for a six weeks' trip. We came in
in one. If they got through at all, where is the help they were to send
us?”
“Help!” The packer roused. “They helped themselves, and pretty frequent.
I said to them more than once--they didn't like it any too well: 'We
can't drink up here like they do down to the coast. The air is too
light. What a man would take with his dinner down there would fit him
out with a first-class jag up here, 'leven thousand above the sea!'”
“It's a waste of breath to talk about them--breath burns up food and we
haven't much to spare. We rushed into this trouble and we dragged you in
after us. We have hurt you a good deal more than you have us.”
The sick man groaned. He flung one hand back against the logs,
dislodging ancient dust that fell upon his corpse-like forehead. It was
carefully wiped away. Helpless tears stole down the rigid face.
“John,” said Paul with animation, “your general appearance just now
reminds me of those worked-out placer claims we passed in Ruby Gulch,
the first day out. The fever and my cooking have ground-sluiced you to
the bone.”
John smiled faintly. “Don't look very fat yourself. Where'd you git all
that baird on your face?”
“We have been here some time, you know--or you don't know; you have been
living in places far away from here. I used to envy you sometimes. And
other times I didn't.”
“You mean I was off my head?”
“At times. But more of the time you were dreaming and talking in your
dreams; seeing things out loud by the flash-light of fever.”
“Talking, was I? Guess there wa'n't much sense in any of it?” The hazard
was a question.
“A kind of sense,--out of focus, distorted. Some of it was opium. Didn't
you coax a little of his favorite medicine out of the cook?”
Packer John apologized sheepishly, “I cal'lated I was going to be left.
You put it up on me--making out you were off with the rest. _That_ was
all right. But I wa'n't going to suffer it out; why should I? A gunshot
would have cured me quicker, perhaps. Then some critter might 'a' found
me and called it murder. A word like that set going can hang a man. No,
I just took a little to deaden the pain.”
“The whole discussion was rather nasty, right before the man we were
talking about,” said Paul. “I wanted to get them off and out of hearing.
Then we had a few words.”
At intervals during that day and the next, Paul's patient expended his
strength in questions, apparently trivial. His eyes, whenever they were
open, followed his nurse with a shrinking intelligence. Paul was on his
guard.
“What day of the month do you make it out to be?”
“The second of December.”
“December!” The packer lay still considering. “Game all gone down?”
“I am not much of a pot-hunter,” said Paul. “There may be game, but I
can't seem to get it. The snow is pretty deep.”
“Wouldn't bear a man on snowshoes?”
“He would go out of sight.”
“Snowing a little every day?”
“Right along, quietly, for I don't know how many days! I think the sky
is packed with it a mile deep.”
“How much grub have we got?”
Paul gave a flattering estimate of their resources. The patient was not
deceived.
“Where's it all gone to? You ain't eat anything.”
“I've eaten a good deal more than you have.”
“I was livin' on fever.”
“You can't live on fever any longer. The fever has left you, and you'll
go with it if you don't obey your doctor.”
“But where's all the stuff _gone_ to?”
“There were four of them, and they allowed for some delay in getting
out,” Paul explained, with a sickly smile.
“Well, they was hogs! I knew how they'd pan out! That was why”--He
wearied of speech and left the point unfinished.
On the evening following, when the two could no longer see each other's
faces in the dusk, Paul spoke, controlling his voice:--
“I need not ask you, John, what you think of our chances?”
“I guess they ain't much worth thinking about.” The fire hissed and
crackled; the soft subsidence of the snow could be heard outside.
“We are 'free among the dead,' how does it go? 'Like unto them that are
wounded and lie in the grave.' What we say to each other here will stop
here with our breath. Let us put our memories in order for the last
reckoning. I think, John, you must, at some time in your life, have
known my father, Adam Bogardus? He was lost on the Snake River plains,
twenty-one years ago this autumn.”
Receiving no answer, the pale young inquisitor went on, choosing his
words with intense deliberation as one feeling his way in the dark.
“Most of us believe in some form of communication that we can't explain,
between those who are separated in body, in this world, but closely
united in thought. Do I make myself clear?”
There was a sound of deep breathing from the bunk; it produced a similar
conscious excitement in the speaker. He halted, recovered himself, and
continued:--
“After my father's disappearance, my mother had a distinct
presentiment--it haunted her for years--that something had happened to
him at a place called One Man Station. Did you ever know the place?”
“I might have.” The words came huskily.
“Father had left her at this place, and to her knowledge he never came
back. But she had this intimation--and suffered from it--that he did
come back and was foully dealt with there--wronged in body or mind. The
place had most evil associations for her; it was not strange she should
have connected it with the great disaster of her life. As you lay
talking to yourself in your fever, you took me back on that lost
trail that ended, as we thought, in the grave. But we might have been
mistaken. Is there anything it would not be safe for you and me to speak
of now? Do you know any tie between men that should be closer than the
tie between us? Any safer place where a man could lay off the secret
burdens of his life and be himself for a little while--before the end
answers all? I know you have a secret. I believe that a share of it
belongs to me.”
“We are better off sometimes if we don't get all that belongs to us,”
said John gratingly.