"Fate has stacked the cards against us," Lennox told them, after the
first moment's horror from the broken snowshoe.
But no one answered him. The girl, white-faced, kept her wide eyes on
Dan. He seemed to be peering into the shadows beside the trail, as if he
were watching for the gray forms that now and then glided from tree to
tree. In reality, he was not looking for wolves. He was gazing down into
his own soul, measuring his own spirit for the trial that lay before
him.
The girl, unable to step with the broken snowshoe, rested her weight on
one foot and hobbled like a bird with broken wings across to him. No
sight of all this terrible journey had been more dreadful in her
father's eyes than this. It seemed to split open the strong heart of the
man. She touched her hand to his arm.
"I'm sorry, Dan," she told him. "You tried so hard--"
Just one little sound broke from his throat--a strange, deep gasp that
could not be suppressed. Then he caught her hand in his and kissed
it,--again and again. "Do you think I care about that?" he asked her. "I
only wish I could have done more--and what I have done doesn't count.
Just as in my fight with Cranston, nothing counts because I didn't win.
It's just fate, Snowbird. It's no one's fault, but maybe, in this world,
nothing is ever any one's fault." For in the twilight of those winter
woods, in the shadow of death itself, perhaps he was catching
glimmerings of eternal truths that are hidden from all but the most
far-seeing eyes.
"And this is the end?" she asked him. She spoke very bravely.
"No!" His hand tightened on hers. "No, so long as an ounce of strength
remains. To fight--never to give up--may God give me spirit for it till
I die."
And this was no idle prayer. His eyes raised to the starry sky as he
spoke.
"But, son," Lennox asked him rather quietly, "what can you do? The
wolves aren't going to wait a great deal longer, and we can't go on."
"There's one thing more--one more trial to make," Dan answered. "I
thought about it at first, but it was too long a chance to try if there
was any other way. And I suppose you thought of it too."
"Overtaking Cranston?"
"Of course. And it sounds like a crazy dream. But listen, both of you.
If we have got to die, up here in the snow--and it looks like we
had--what is the thing you want done worst before we go?"
Lennox's hands clasped, and he leaned forward on the sled. "Pay
Cranston!" he said.
"Yes!" Dan's voice rang. "Cranston's never going to be paid unless we do
it. There will be no signs of incendiarism at the house, and no proofs.
They'll find our bodies in the snow, and we'll just be a mystery, with
no one made to pay. The evidence in my pocket will be taken by Cranston,
sometime this winter. If I don't make him pay, he never will pay. And
that's one reason why I'm going to try to carry out this plan I've got.
"The second reason is that it's the one hope we have left. I take it
that none of us are deceived on that point. And no man can die
tamely--if he is a man--while there's a chance. I mean a young man, like
me,--not one who is old and tired. It sounds perfectly silly to talk
about finding Cranston's winter quarters, and then, with my bare hands,
conquering him, taking his food and his blankets and his snowshoes and
his rifle to fight away these wolves, and bringing 'em back here."
"You wouldn't be barehanded," the girl reminded him. "You could have the
pistol."
He didn't even seem to hear her. "I've been thinking about it. It's a
long, long chance--much worse than the chance we had of getting out by
straight walking. I think we could have made it, if the wolves had kept
off and the snowshoe hadn't broken. It would have nearly killed us, but
I believe we could have got out. That's why I didn't try this other way
first. A man with his bare hands hasn't much of a chance against another
with a rifle, and I don't want you to be too hopeful. And of course, the
hardest problem is finding his camp.
"But I do feel sure of one thing: that he is back to his old trapping
line on the North Fork--somewhere south of here--and his camp is
somewhere on the river. I think he would have gone there so that he
could cut off any attempt I might make to get through with those
letters. My plan is to start back at an angle that will carry me between
the North Fork and our old house. Somewhere in there I'll find his
tracks, the tracks he made when he first came over to burn up the house.
I suppose he was careful to mix 'em up after once he arrived there, but
the first part of the way he likely walked straight toward the house
from his camp. Somewhere, if I go that way, I'll cross his
trail--within ten miles at least. Then I'll back-track him to his camp."
"And never come back!" the girl cried.
"Maybe not. But at least everything that can be done will be done.
Nothing will be left. No regrets. We will have made the last trial. I'm
not going to waste any time, Snowbird. The sooner we get your fire built
the better."
"Father and I are to stay here--?"
"What else can you do?" He went back to his traces and drew the sled one
hundred yards farther. He didn't seem to see the gaunt wolf that backed
off into the shadows as he approached. He refused to notice that the
pack seemed to be steadily growing bolder. Human hunters usually had
guns that could blast and destroy from a distance; but even an animal
intelligence could perceive that these three seemed to be without this
means of inflicting death. A wolf is ever so much more intelligent than
a crow,--yet a crow shows little fear of an unarmed man and is wholly
unapproachable by a boy with a gun. The ugly truth was simply that in
their increasing madness and excitement and hunger, they were becoming
less and less fearful of these three strange humans with the sled.
It was not a good place for a camp. They worked a long time before they
cleared a little patch of ground of its snow mantle. Dan cut a number of
saplings--laboriously with his ax--and built a fire with the
comparatively dry core of a dead tree. True, it was feeble and
flickering, but as good as could be hoped for, considering the
difficulties under which he worked. The dead logs under the snow were
soaked with water from the rains and the thaws. The green wood that he
cut smoked without blazing.
"No more time to be lost," Dan told Snowbird. "It lies in your hands to
keep the fire burning. And don't leave the circle of the firelight
without that pistol in your hand."
"You don't mean," she asked, unbelieving, "that you are going to go out
there to fight Cranston--unarmed?"
"Of course, Snowbird. You must keep the pistol."
"But it means death; that's all it means. What chance would you have
against a man with a rifle? And as soon as you get away from this fire,
the wolves will tear you to pieces."
"And what would you and your father do, if I took it? You can't get him
into a tree. You can't build a big enough fire to frighten them. Please
don't even talk about this matter, Snowbird. My mind's made up. I think
the pack will stay here. They usually--God knows how--know who is
helpless and who isn't. Maybe with the gun, you will be able to save
your lives."
"What's the chance of that?"
"You might--with one cartridge--kill one of the devils; and the
others--but you know how they devour their own dead. That might break
their famine enough so that they'd hold off until I can get back. That's
the prize I'm playing for."
"And what if you don't get back?"
He took her hand in one of his, and with the other he caressed, for a
single moment, the lovely flesh of her throat. The love he had for her
spoke from his eyes,--such speech as no human vision could possibly
mistake. Both of them were tingling and breathless with a great, sweet
wonder.
"Never let those fangs tear that softness, while you live," he told her
gently. "Never let that brave old man on the sled go to his death with
the pack tearing at him. Cheat 'em, Snowbird! Beat 'em the last minute,
if no other way remains! Show 'em who's boss, after all--of all this
forest."
"You mean--?" Her eyes widened.
"I mean that you must only spend one of those three shells in fighting
off the wolves. Save that till the moment you need it most. The other
two must be saved--for something else."
She nodded, shuddering an instant at a menacing shadow that moved within
sixty feet of the fire. The firelight half-blinded them, dim as it was,
and they couldn't see into the darkness as well as they had before.
Except for strange, blue-yellow lights, close together and two and two
about the fire, they might have thought that the pack was gone.
"Then good-by, Dan!" she told him. And she stretched up her arms. "The
thing I said--that day on the hillside--doesn't hold any more."
His own arms encircled her, but he made no effort to claim her lips.
Lennox watched them quietly; in this moment of crisis not even
pretending to look away. Dan shook his head to her entreating eyes. "It
isn't just a kiss, darling," he told her soberly. "It goes deeper than
that. It's a symbol. It was your word, too, and mine; and words can't be
broken, things being as they are. Can't I make you understand?"
She nodded. His eyes burned. Perhaps she didn't understand, as far as
actual functioning of the brain was concerned. But she reached up to
him, as women--knowing life in the concrete rather than the
abstract--have always reached up to men; and she dimly caught the gleam
of some eternal principle and right behind his words. This strong man of
the mountains had given his word, had been witness to her own promise to
him and to herself, and a law that goes down to the roots of life
prevented him from claiming the kiss.
Many times, since the world was new, comfort--happiness--life itself
have been contingent on the breaking of a law. Yet in spite of what
seemed common sense, even though no punishment would forthcome if it
were broken, the law has been kept. It was this way now. It wouldn't
have been just a kiss such as boys and girls have always had in the
moonlight. It meant the symbolic renunciation of the debt that Dan owed
Cranston,--a debt that in his mind might possibly go unpaid, but which
no weight of circumstance could make him renounce.
His longing for her lips pulled at the roots of him. But by the laws of
his being he couldn't claim them until the debt incurred on the
hillside, months ago, had been paid; to take them now meant to dull the
fine edge of his resolve to carry the issue through to the end, to dim
the star that led him, to weaken him, by bending now, for the test to
come. He didn't know why. It had its font in the deep wells of the
spirit. Common sense can't reveal how the holy man keeps strong the
spirit by denying the flesh. It goes too deep for that. Dan kept to his
consecration.
He did, however, kiss her hands, and he kissed the tears out of her
eyes. Then he turned into the darkness and broke through the ring of the
wolves.