The snow began to fall in earnest at midnight,--great, white flakes that
almost in an instant covered the leaves. It was the real beginning of
winter, and all living creatures knew it. The wolf pack sang to it from
the ridge,--a wild and plaintive song that made Bert Cranston, sleeping
in a lean-to on the Umpqua side of the Divide, swear and mutter in his
sleep. But he didn't really waken until Jim Gibbs, one of his gang,
returned from his secret mission.
They wasted no words. Bert flung aside the blankets, lighted a candle,
and placed it out of the reach of the night wind. It cast queer shadows
in the lean-to and found a curious reflection in the steel points of his
eyes. His face looked swarthy and deep-lined in its light.
"Well?" he demanded. "What did you find?"
"Nothin'," Jim Gibbs answered gutturally. "If you ask me what I found
_out_, I might have somethin' to answer."
"Then--" and Bert, after the manner of his kind, breathed an oath--"what
did you find out?"
His tone, except for an added note of savagery, remained the same. Yet
his heart was thumping a great deal louder than he liked to have it. He
wasn't amused by his associate's play on words. Nor did he like the
man's knowing tone and his air of importance. Realizing that the snows
were at hand, he had sent Gibbs for a last search of the body, to find
and recover the evidence that Hildreth had against him and which had not
been revealed either on Hildreth's person or in his cabin. He had become
increasingly apprehensive about those letters he had written Hildreth,
and certain other documents that had been in his possession. He didn't
understand why they hadn't turned up. And now the snows had started, and
Jim Gibbs had returned empty-handed, but evidently not empty-minded.
"I've found out that the body's been uncovered--and men are already
searchin' for clues. And moreover--I think they've found them." He
paused, weighing the effect of his words. His eyes glittered with
cunning. Rat that he was, he was wondering whether the time had arrived
to leave the ship. He had no intention of continuing to give his
services to a man with a rope-noose closing about him. And Cranston,
knowing this fact, hated him as he hated the buzzard that would claim
him in the end and tried to hide his apprehension.
"Go on. Blat it out," Cranston ordered. "Or else go away and let me
sleep."
It was a bluff; but it worked. If Gibbs had gone without speaking,
Cranston would have known no sleep that night. But the man became more
fawning.
"I'm tellin' you, fast as I can," he went on, almost whining. "I went to
the cabin, just as you said. But I didn't get a chance to search it--"
"Why not?" Cranston thundered. His voice reechoed among the snow-wet
pines.
"I'll tell you why! Because some one else--evidently a cop--was already
searchin' it. Both of us know there's nothin' there anyway. We've gone
over it too many times. After a while he went away--but I didn't turn
back yet. That wouldn't be Jim Gibbs. I shadowed him, just as you'd want
me to. And he went straight back to the body."
"Yes?" Cranston had hard work curbing his impatience. Again Gibbs' eyes
were full of ominous speculations.
"He stopped at the body, and it was plain he'd been there before. He
went crawling through the thickets, lookin' for clues. He done what you
and me never thought to do--lookin' all the way between the trail and
the body. He'd already found the brass shell you told me to get. At
least, it wasn't there when I looked, after he'd gone. You should've
thought of it before. But he found somethin' else a whole lot more
important--a roll of papers that Hildreth had chucked into an old pine
stump when he was dyin'. It was your fault, Cranston, for not gettin'
them that night. You needn't 've been afraid of any one hearin' the shot
and catching you red-handed. This detective stood and read 'em on the
trail. And you know--just as well as I do--what they were."
"Damn you, I went back the next morning, as soon as I could see. And the
mountain lion had already been there. I went back lots of times since.
And that shell ain't nothing--but all the time I supposed I put it in my
pocket. You know how it is--a fellow throws his empty shell out by
habit."
Gibbs' eyes grew more intent. What was this thing? Cranston's tone,
instead of commanding, was almost pleading. But the leader caught
himself at once.
"I don't see why I need to explain any of that to you. What I want to
know is this: why you didn't shoot and get those papers away from him?"
For an instant their eyes battled. But Gibbs had never the strength of
his leader. If he had, it would have been asserted long since. He sucked
in his breath, and his gaze fell away. It rested on Cranston's rifle,
that in some manner had been pulled up across his knees. And at once he
was cowed. He was never so fast with a gun as Cranston.
"Blood on my hands, eh--same as on yours?" he mumbled, looking down.
"What do you think I want, a rope around my neck? These hills are big,
but the arm of the law has reached up before, and it might again. You
might as well know first as last I'm not goin' to do any killin's to
cover up your murders."
"That comes of not going myself. You fool--if he gets that evidence down
to the courts, you're broken the same as me."
"But I wouldn't get more'n a year or so, at most--and that's a heap
different from the gallows. I did aim at him--"
"But you just lacked the guts to pull the trigger!"
"I did, and I ain't ashamed of it. But besides--the snows are here now,
and he won't be able to even get word down to the valleys in six
months. If you want him killed so bad, do it yourself."
This was a thought indeed. On the other hand, another murder might not
be necessary. Months would pass before the road would be opened, and in
the meantime Cranston could have a thousand chances to steal back the
accusing letters. Perhaps they would be guarded closely at first, but by
the late winter months they would be an old story, and a single raid on
the house might turn the trick. He didn't believe for an instant that
the man Gibbs had seen a detective. He had kept too close watch over the
roads for that.
"A tall chap, in outing clothes--dark-haired and clean-shaven?"
"Yes?"
"Wears a tan hat?"
"That's the man."
"I know him--and I wish you'd punctured him. Why, you could've taken
those papers away from him and slapped his face, and he wouldn't have
put up his arms. And now he'll hide 'em somewhere--afraid to carry 'em
for fear he meets me. That's Failing--the tenderfoot that's been staying
at Lennox's. He's a lunger."
"He didn't look like no lunger to me."
"But no matter about that--it's just as I thought. And I'll get 'em
back--mark my little words."
In the meantime the best thing to do was to move at once to his winter
trapping grounds,--a certain neglected region on the lower levels of the
North Fork. If at any time within the next few weeks, Dan should attempt
to carry word down to the settlements, he would be certain to pass
within view of this camp. But he knew that the chance of Dan starting
upon any such journey before the snow had melted was not one in a
thousand. To be caught in the Divide in the winter means to be snowed in
as completely as the Innuits of upper Greenland. No word could pass
except by a man on snowshoes. Really there was no urgency about this
matter of the evidence.
Yet if the chance did come, if the house should be left unguarded, it
might play Cranston to make an immediate search. Dan would have no
reason for supposing that Cranston suspected his possession of the
letters; he would not be particularly watchful, and would probably
pigeonhole them until spring in Lennox's desk.
And the truth was that Cranston had reasoned out the situation almost
perfectly. When Dan wakened in the morning, and the snow lay already a
foot deep over the wilderness world, he knew that he would have no
chance to act upon the Cranston case until the snows melted in the
spring. So he pushed all thought of it out of his mind and turned his
attention to more pleasant subjects. It was true that he read the
documents over twice as he lay in bed. Then he tied them into a neat
packet and put them away where they would be quickly available. Then he
thrust his head out of the window and let the great snowflakes sift down
upon his face. It was winter at last, the season that he loved.
He didn't stir from the house, that first day of the storm. Snowbird and
he found plenty of pleasant things to do and talk about before the
roaring fire that he built in the grate. He was glad of the great pile
of wood that lay outside the door. It meant life itself, in this season.
Then Snowbird led him to the windows, and they watched the white drifts
pile up over the low underbrush.
When finally the snowstorm ceased, five days later, the whole face of
the wilderness was changed. The buckbrush was mostly covered, the fences
were out of sight; the forest seemed a clear, clean sweep of white,
broken only by an occasional tall thicket and by the great, snow-covered
trees.
When the clouds blew away, and the air grew clear, the temperature
began to fall. Dan had no way of knowing how low it went. Thermometers
were not considered essential at the Lennox home. But when his eyelids
congealed with the frost, and his mittens froze to the logs of firewood
that he carried through the door, and the pine trees exploded and
cracked in the darkness, he was correct in his belief that it was very,
very cold.
But he loved the cold, and the silence and austerity that went with it.
The wilderness claimed him as never before. The rugged breed that were
his ancestors had struggled through such seasons as this and passed a
love of them down through the years to him.
When the ice made a crust over the snow, he learned to walk on
snowshoes. At first there were pained ankles and endless floundering in
the drifts. But between the fall of fresh snow and the thaws that
softened the crust, he slowly mastered the art. Snowbird--and Dan never
realized the full significance of her name until he saw her flying with
incredible grace over the snow--laughed at him at first and ran him
races that would usually end in his falling head-first into a ten-foot
snowbank. She taught him how to ski and more than once she would stop in
the middle of an earnest bit of pedagogy to find that he wasn't
listening at all. He would seem to be fairly devouring her with his
eyes, delighting in the play of soft pinks and reds in her cheeks, and
drinking, as a man drinks wine, the amazing change of light and shadow
in her eyes.
She seemed to blossom under his gaze. Not one of those short winter days
went by without the discovery of some new trait or little vanity to
astonish or delight him,--sometimes an unlooked-for tenderness toward
the weak, often a sweet, untainted philosophy of life, or perhaps just a
lowering of her eyelids in which her eyes would show lustrous through
the lashes, or some sweeping, exuberant gesture startlingly graceful.
Lennox wakened one morning with the realization that this was one of the
hardest winters of his experience. More snow had fallen in the night and
had banked halfway up his windows. The last of the shrubbery--except for
the ends of a few tall bushes that would not hold the snow--was covered,
and the roofs of some of the lower outbuildings had somewhat the
impression of drowning things, striving desperately to keep their heads
above water. He began to be very glad of the abundant stores of
provisions that overcrowded his pantry--savory hams and bacons, dried
venison, sacks of potatoes and evaporated vegetables, and, of course,
canned goods past counting. With the high fire roaring in the grate, the
season held no ills for them. But sometimes, when the bitter cold came
down at twilight, and the moon looked like a thing of ice itself over
the snow, he began to wonder how the wild creatures who wintered on the
Divide were faring. Of course most of them were gone. Woof, long since,
had grunted and mumbled his way into a winter lair. But the wolves
remained, strange gray shadows on the snow, and possibly a few of the
hardier smaller creatures.
More than once in those long winter nights their talk was chopped off
short by the song of the pack on some distant ridge. Sometime, when the
world is old, possibly a man will be born that can continue to talk and
keep his mind on his words while the wolf pack sings. But he is
certainly an unknown quantity to-day. The cry sets in vibration curious
memory chords, and for a moment the listener sees in his mind's eye his
ancient home in an ancient world,--Darkness and Fear and Eyes shining
about the cave. It carries him back, and he knows the wilderness as it
really is; and to have such knowledge dries up all inclination to talk,
as a sponge dries water. Of course the picture isn't entirely plain. It
is more a thing guessed at, a photograph in some dark part of an
under-consciousness that has constantly grown more dim as the centuries
have passed. Possibly sometime it will fade out altogether; and then a
man may continue to discuss the weather while the Song from the ridge
shudders in at the windows. But the world will be quite cold by then,
and no longer particularly interesting. And possibly even the wolves
themselves will then be tamed to play dead and speak pieces,--which
means the wilderness itself will be tamed. For as long as the wild
lasts, the pack will run through it in the winter. They were here in the
beginning, and in spite of constant war and constant hatred on the part
of men, they will be here in the end. The reason is just that they are
the symbol of the wilderness itself, and the idea of it continuing to
exist without them is stranger than that of a nation without a flag.
It wasn't quite the same song that Dan had listened to in the first days
of fall. It had been triumphant then, and proud with the wilderness
pride. Of course it had been sad then, too, but it was more sad now. And
it was stranger, too, and crept farther into the souls of its listeners.
It was the song of strength that couldn't avail against the snow,
possibly of cold and the despair and courage of starvation. These three
that heard it were inured to the wilderness; but a moment was always
needed after its last note had died to regain their gayety.
"They're getting lean and they're getting savage," Lennox said one
night, stretched on his divan before the fireplace. He was still unable
to walk; but the fractures were knitting slowly and the doctor had
promised that the summer would find him well. "If we had a dog, I
wouldn't offer much for his life. One of these days we'll find 'em in a
big circle around the house--and then we'll have to open up with the
rifles."
But this picture appalled neither of his two young listeners. No wolf
pack can stand against three marksmen, armed with rifles and behind
oaken walls.
Christmas came and passed, and January brought clear days and an
ineffective sun shining on the snow. These were the best days of all.
Every afternoon Dan and Snowbird would go out on their skis or on
snowshoes, unarmed except for the pistol that Snowbird carried in the
deep pocket of her mackinaw. "But why not?" Dan replied to Lennox's
objection. "She could kill five wolves with five shots, or pretty near
it, and you know well enough that that would hold 'em off till we got
home. They'd stop to eat the five. I have hard enough time keeping up
with her as it is, without carrying a rifle." And Lennox was content.
In the first place, the wolf pack has to be desperate indeed before it
will even threaten human beings; and knowing the coward that the wolf is
in the other three seasons, he couldn't bring himself to believe that
this point was reached. In the second, Dan had told the truth when he
said that five deaths, or even fewer, would repel the attack of any wolf
pack he had ever seen. There was just one troubling thought. He had
heard, long ago, and he had forgotten who had told him, that in the most
severe winters the wolves gather in particularly large packs; and a
quality in the song that they had heard at night seemed to bear it out.
The chorus had been exceptionally loud and strong, and he had been
unable to pick out individual voices.
The snow was perfect for skiing. Previously their sport had been many
times interrupted either by the fall of fresh snow or a thaw that had
softened the snow crust; but now every afternoon was too perfect to
remain indoors. They shouted and romped in the silences, and they did
not dream but that they had the wilderness all to themselves. The fact
that one night Lennox's keen eyes had seen what looked like the glow of
a camp fire in the distance didn't affect this belief of theirs at all.
It was evidently just the phosphorus glowing in a rotten log from which
the winds had blown the snow.
Once or twice they caught glimpses of wild life: once a grouse that had
buried in the snow flushed from their path and blew the snow-dust from
its wings; and once or twice they saw snowshoe rabbits bounding away on
flat feet over the drifts. But just one day they caught sight of a wolf.
They were on snowshoes on a particularly brilliant afternoon late in
January.
He was a lone male, evidently a straggler from the pack, and he leaped
from the top of a tall thicket that had remained above the snow. The man
and the girl had entirely different reactions. Dan's first impression
was amazement at the animal's condition. It seemed to be in the last
stages of starvation: unbelievably gaunt, with rib bones showing plainly
even through the furry hide. Ordinarily the heavily furred animals do
not show signs of famine; but even an inexperienced eye could not make a
mistake in this case. The eyes were red, and they carried Dan back to
his first adventure in the Oregon forest--the day he had shot the mad
coyote. Snowbird thought of the beast only as an enemy. The wolves
killed her father's stock; they were brigands of the worst order; and
she shared the hatred of them that is a common trait of all primitive
peoples. Her hand whipped back, seized her pistol, and she fired twice
at the fleeing figure.
The second shot was a hit: both of them saw the wolf go to its side,
then spring up and race on. Shouting, both of them sped after him.
In a few moments he was out of sight among the distant trees, but they
found the blood-trail and mushed over the ridge. They expected at any
moment to find him lying dead; but the track led them on clear down the
next canyon. And now they cared not at all whether they found him: it
was simply a tramp in the out-of-doors; and both of them were young with
red blood in their veins.
But all at once Dan stopped in his tracks. The girl sped on for six
paces before she missed the sound of his snowshoes; then she turned to
find him standing, wholly motionless, with eyes fixed upon her.
It startled her, and she didn't know why. A companion abruptly freezing
in his path, his muscles inert, and his eyes filling with speculations
is always startling. When this occurs, it means simply that a thought so
compelling and engrossing that even the half-unconscious physical
functions, such as walking, cannot continue, has come into his mind. And
it is part of the old creed of self-preservation to dislike greatly to
be left out on any such thought as this. If danger is present, the
sooner it is identified the better.
"What is it?" she demanded.
He turned to her, curiously intent. "How many shells have you in that
pistol?"
She took one breath and answered him. "It holds five, and I shot twice.
I haven't any others."
"And I don't suppose it ever occurred to you to carry extra ones in your
pocket?"
"Father is always telling me to--and several times I have. But I'd shoot
them away at target practice and forget to take any more. There was
never any danger--except that night with a cougar. I did intend to--but
what does it matter now?"
"We're a couple of wise ones, going after that wolf with only three
shots to our name. Of course by himself he's harmless--but he's likely
enough to lead us straight toward the pack. And Snowbird--I didn't like
his looks. He's too gaunt, and he's too hungry--and I haven't a bit of
doubt he waited in that brush for us to come, intending to attack
us--and lost his nerve the last thing. That shows he's desperate. I
don't like him, and I wouldn't like his pack. And a whole pack might not
lose _its_ nerve."
"Then you think we'd better turn back?"
"Yes, I do, and not come out any more without a whole pocket of shells.
I'm going to carry my rifle, too, just as Lennox has always advised.
He's only got a flesh-wound. You saw what you did with two
cartridges--got in one flesh-wound. Three of 'em against a pack wouldn't
be a great deal of aid. I don't mean to say you can't shoot, but a
jumping, lively wolf is worse than a bird in the air. We've gone over
three miles; and he'd lead us ten miles farther--even if he didn't go to
the pack. Let's go back."
"If you say so. But I don't think there's the least bit of danger. We
can always climb a tree."
"And have 'em make a beautiful circle under it! They've got more
patience than we have--and we'd have to come down sometime. Your father
can't come to our help, you know. It's the sign of the tenderfoot not to
think there's any danger--and I'm not going to think that way any more."
They turned back and mushed in silence a long time.
"I suppose you'll think I'm a coward," Dan asked her humbly.
"Only prudent, Dan," she answered, smiling. Whether she meant it, he did
not know. "I'm just beginning to understand that you--living here only a
few months--really know and understand all this better than I do." She
stretched her arms wide to the wilderness. "I guess it's your
instincts."
"And I do understand," he told her earnestly. "I sensed danger back
there just as sure as I can see your face. That pack--and it's a big
one--is close; and it's terribly hungry. And you know--you can't help
but know--that the wolves are not to be trusted in famine times."
"I know it only too well," she said.
Then she paused and asked him about a strange grayness, like snow blown
by the wind, on the sky over the ridge.