THE two started bravely in the fine morning sunshine. There were long
and laborious miles ahead, and only a short day in which to overcome
them and their difficulties. In his heart the young man believed that
it would be impossible for them to complete the task that day, and he
dreaded the shelterless night that would overtake them. But should he
break down, the day’s work would have hardened his companion for the
rest of the journey alone. There was a chance that they would find help
on the way, for surely efforts would be making to clear the roads. The
snow had disappeared from all exposed places.
They descended the shaly, slippery trail to the road, and here he was
gratified to see that the avalanche had cleared away the fallen tree
and the wreck of the wagon. He led the way up the canon, for in that
direction were the nearest houses.
He found the road even worse than he had expected. Being a narrow way,
cut into the steep slope of the canon, to leave it in rounding fallen
trees and breaches left by the storm was a slow and laborious task, and
time was precious for a number of reasons. Each had a load to bear,--he
some covering against the night, and she some articles of her own. These
soon became very burdensome to both.
On they plodded. While a heaviness appeared in his manner, her bearing
was cheerful and spirited. A sadness that he made no effort to conceal
and that she bravely hid oppressed them both. To find him sad was
sufficient to tinge her sadness with happiness. They rested at short
intervals, for the exertion soon began to tell upon them, but upon
him the more. They slaked their thirst from the river. To the woman it
seemed a spring-time stroll through flowering fields, softened by the
sweet sadness of May. To him it was a task that brought them step by
step nearer to the end, where he must deal her the crudest blow of her
life. For at the end she expected news of her father. She would hear it,
and from the one who would have been the most glad to spare her. But she
must not know yet. All her strength was needed for the task before
her. It is time to break hearts when their breaking can be no longer
deferred.
He had been trudging ahead. He must have suspected that she observed the
labor with which he walked, the uncontrollable tendency of his knees to
give way, the reeling that now would send him against the bank, and then
upon the outer edge of the grade; for presently he asked her to walk
ahead. She complied.
Their slow and laborious work presently made it impossible for them to
talk. They went on in silence. After they had proceeded thus for some
hours, a thing occurred that struck dismay to her soul. Her companion
suddenly became voluble. At first he was coherent, although he talked
about matters to which she was a total stranger. This showed an alarming
unconsciousness of her presence. As he talked, he became more and more
incoherent, and at times laughed inanely. Presently, with awe in his
voice, he said,--
“She was the woman I loved. She’s dead, boys, she’s dead; and by God!
they killed her.”
Her spirit sank. After all that she had hoped and yearned for, there now
had come back the most terrible of the ghosts of the bitter past. After
all the seeming bridging of the chasm that had separated them, it opened
now all the wider and deeper and darker.
“Do you know what a murderer is?” he exclaimed in a loud voice, as he
swung his arm threateningly aloft. “A she-wolf, the slyest and most
dangerous of beasts. She comes whining and fawning; she licks your hand;
she wins your trust. And then, when you have warmed her, and patched her
torn skin, and mended her broken bones, she turns upon you and tears out
your heart with her fangs.”
Stifling, faint, barely able to stand, the young woman stood aside, and
he passed her without seeing her.
“Yes,” he resumed in great excitement, “I must be a man,--always a
man. What! kill a woman? No, no, no! Not that. That would be terrible,
brutal, cowardly. Yes, I must be a man. She needs me; I will help her.
Is that door locked? She must never know--never know so long as she
lives. Ah, that is beautiful, wonderful, savory,--a feast for gods and
angels! Yes, I will do my duty. She needs me. She despises me. Very
good; I will do my duty. She scorns my poor food--secretly, but I know!
She is getting well. Thank God for that! She shall eat all she can.
Me? No, no. I don’t want anything. No; I don’t want a thing. I have no
appetite!”
He burst into laughter, and the echo of it came back from the opposite
wall of the canon.
“Oh, my love, my love!” he cried, suddenly becoming sad, “how could you
cast me off, when all had been so true and trusting between us? But I
know it was better so. It was not right for me to stand in the way.” He
paused, and his voice sank into an awed whisper as he said, “She’s dead,
boys, she’s dead; and by God! they killed her.”
He pushed rapidly on, muttering things that she could not hear, that she
did not want to hear. Not a word of kindness for her had come from him
in his delirium, and her heart was breaking.
“When it is all over,” he said aloud, “I will go to my old friend, and
he will nurse me back to health and strength, and I will begin the
fight again. I will be a man--always a man. I will do my duty. And the
she-wolf--no, no, no! She will not tear out my heart with her claws and
fangs. No! There is no she-wolf! I say, there is no she-wolf. No! She
is kind to me. I know it, I know it! She is gentle and thoughtful and
unselfish. She is very, very beautiful. She won’t leave me, will she?
She won’t leave me alone! But she is unmanning me! I must not let her
do that! I must be a man and do my duty. No, you must not take off my
shoes. I can do that. I have no pain--none whatever. Yes, I will be
calm. Your voice is sweet; it is music; it fills me with peace and
comfort; and your hand on my face--how soft and pleasant it is! I wish
I could tell you; but no, I must do my duty; I must be a man! I will not
listen to your voice. I will not let you touch me. That would keep me
from my duty.”
These words raised her from despair to bliss. And so he had fought his
inclinations,--he needed her, he wanted her!
Still he kept on. She strained every hearing faculty for his slightest
word. For what he had already said, she could bear his forgetting her
presence. Still they pushed on, he muttering and laughing; but for all
his madness, he was wise and cautious amid the dangers and hardships of
the road. No longer did he advise her, guide her, assist her, and show
her the innumerable unobtrusive attentions to which she had become
accustomed.
At last he suddenly stopped in a stretch of good road and looked about,
bewildered.
“Where is this?” he whispered; then aloud, “Oh, it is the trail of the
wolves! After them will come the she-wolf, and her fangs----” He dropped
his parcel and clutched his breast. “Her fangs!” he gasped. He looked
about and picked up a stick, which he swung as a club about him. “The
she-wolf is here!” he cried.
His glance fell upon his companion, standing in awe and pity and love
before him. Instantly a fearful malignity hardened his face, and
his eyes blazed with the murder that had filled them once before. He
clutched the stick more fiercely, and glared at her with a mixture of
terror and ferocity. But she stood firm, and gently said,--
“My friend!”
His face instantly softened. She stood smiling, her glance caressing,
her whole bearing bespeaking sympathy and affection.
“My dear friend,” she said, in a voice whose sweetness sank deep within
him, “you know me!”
A look of joyous recognition swept over his face.
“I am so glad!” he breathlessly said. “I thought you had left me alone!”
Saying this, he sank to the ground, smiling upon her as he fell.
She knelt beside him, placed a soothing hand upon his cheek, and spoke
comforting words. His face showed the profound gratification that filled
him, and her soul spread its wings in the sunshine that filled the day
with its glories.
He lay limp and helpless, but she knew that he must be going forward if
he could. She caressed him, she coaxed him, she raised him to a sitting
posture, she put her arms under his and lifted him to his feet; but his
breathing was short and distressed, his head rolled listlessly, and his
legs refused their offices. Then she realized that the last remnant of
his strength, both of body and spirit, was gone; and her heart sank to
the uttermost depths.
“Lay me down,” he said, very gently, but clearly, and with perfect
resignation. “Lay me down, my friend, and go on alone. I am very tired,
and must sleep. Keep to the road. I don’t think it is far to the nearest
house. You are sure to find some one. Be brave and keep on.”
She laid him down and turned away. A cruel choking had throttled her
power of speech. With tears so streaming from her eyes that she went
about her purpose half blind, she found a drier place in the road,
gathered pine-needles less soaked than the rest, made a bed for him
there, and spread upon it the blankets that he had been carrying.
When she looked again into his face he was sleeping lightly, and his
breathing betrayed great physical distress. As gently as a mother
lifting her sleeping babe, she took him up in her arms, bore him to the
bed, and with infinite care and tenderness laid him upon it. Then with
some twigs and handkerchiefs she fashioned a canopy that shielded his
head from the sun. She covered him with a free part of the blanket; but
fearing that it would prove insufficient, she removed her outer skirt
and covered him with that; these covers she tucked about him, that he
might not easily throw them off.
He had not been roused by these attentions. She knelt beside him and
gently kissed his hands, his cheeks, his forehead, his lips, and wiped
away her streaming tears as they fell upon his face. He moved slightly,
opened his eyes, looked into her face, and smiled. Very feebly he took
her hand, brought it to his lips, kissed it, smiled again, closed his
eyes, and with a sigh of weariness fell asleep. She knelt thus and
watched him for a little while, seeing him sink deeper and deeper
into slumber. Then she rose. And now may the great God give heart and
strength for the mighty task ahead!
Not trusting herself to look back upon him, she gathered up her courage
and started. On she went, her head high, her eyes aflame, her cheeks
aglow. A suffocating, heart-aching loneliness haunted her, dogged her,
gnawed at her spirit. More than once she wavered, weak and trembling,
under the backward strain upon her heart-strings. More than once she
cried aloud, “I can’t leave him! I can’t leave him! I must go back!” And
then she would summon all her strength again, and cry, “It is for his
sake that I go! It is to save him that I leave him!”
Thus, rended by contending agonies, she went on and on. With incredible
self-torturings she pictured the dangers to which she had left him
exposed. What had he meant by the wolves? Was there really danger from
that source? Often in his sleep in the hut, and again when his mind
would wander, he had spoken of the wolves, and always in terror; but
most dreadful of all things to him was the she-wolf. Yet during all the
time that she had been imprisoned with him in the hut there had not been
the least sign of a wolf, not the most distant howl of one. Why had this
hallucination been so persistent with him, so terrifying to him?
The miles seemed interminable. She kept her eyes and ears strained for
signs and sounds of human life. At intervals she would call aloud with
all her might, and after hearing the echo of her voice die away in the
canon, wait breathlessly for a response that never came. With eager
haste she pushed on. Clambering over fallen trees, heading gullies that
she could not leap, wading swift rivulets with which the rapidly melting
snow was still ploughing the road, she came at length within view
of some men who were clearing the road with axes and mending it with
shovels,--the rough, strong, silent, capable men of the mountains. She
frantically waved her handkerchief and called as she went. They stopped
their work and stood gazing at her in wondering silence. They saw that
she was not of their kind; but their trained sensibilities informed them
that the great mountains had been working their terrible will upon human
helplessness, and they stood ready to put the strength of their arms and
hearts into the human struggle.
Imperfectly clad as she was, her form and bearing suggesting a princess,
her beauty, enhanced by her joy at finding help, radiant and dazzling,
their wonder and shyness held them stolid and outwardly unresponsive,
and they silently waited for her to speak. She went straight to them,
and, looking at them one after another as she spoke, she said,--
“Will you help me, men? I left a man exhausted in the road some miles
down the canon. I fear he is dying. Will you go with me and help me
bring him up? Is there a doctor anywhere near? Is there a house to
which we may take him?”
There was a moment of silence,--these men are slow, but all the surer
for that.