The addition of Harold to their number did not influence, for long,
Virginia's old relations with Bill. They were comrades as ever; they
talked and chatted around the little stove in the hushed nights; they
played their favorite melodies on the battered phonograph, and they took
the same joyous, exciting expeditions into the wild. These latter
diversions were looked upon with no favor by Harold, but he couldn't see
how he could reasonably interfere. Nor did he care, at first, to
accompany them. He had no love for the snow-swept wastes.
The crust on the snow was steadily strengthening; most the days were
clear and excessively cold. The journey could be undertaken soon. Only
a few more days of the adventure remained.
Their excursions at first were a matter of pleasure only, but by one
unexpected stroke from the sinister powers of the wild they were
suddenly made necessary. Her first knowledge of the blow came when Bill
entered her cabin to build the morning fire.
She had not yet risen. It had always been her practice to wait till the
room was snug and warm before she dressed. She was asleep when Bill
came in, and aroused by his footsteps, she was aware of the fleeting
memory of unhappy dreams. She couldn't have told just what they
were. It seemed to her that some unseen danger had been menacing her
security,--that evil and dangerous forces were conspiring and making
war against her. Hidden foes were in ambush, ready to pounce forth.
The danger seemed different and beyond that which she had faced every
day: snow and cold and the other inanimate forces of the wild. And she
was vastly relieved to hear Bill's voice calling her from sleep.
But the next instant her fears returned--not the ghastly fear of evil
dreams but of actual and real disaster. It wasn't Bill's usual custom
to waken her. He wanted her to spend as many as possible of the
monotonous hours in sleep. There was a subdued quality in his voice,
too, that once or twice she had heard before. She drew aside the
curtain, far enough to see his face. There was no paleness, however,
nor no fear, for all that his eyes were sober.
"You'd better get up as soon as you can, Virginia," he said. "We've got
to take a real hunt to-day."
"Hunt? After meat?"
"Yes. We're face to face with a new problem. The pack came by last
night--the wolf pack. As usual, when men are near, they didn't make a
sound. I didn't hear them at all. And they got away with the big moose
ham, hanging on the spruce. Stripped the bone clean."
"Then we're out of meat?"
"All except the little piece outside the door. We've been going through
it pretty fast."
Bill spoke true. Their meat consumption had practically doubled since
Harold had come. For all his lack of physical exercise, the latter was
an unusually heavy eater.
"But we won't be able to find any now. The moose are gone----"
"We're not very likely to, that's certain; but it won't be a tragedy if
we don't. It would only be an annoyance. It's true that we've got to
have more supplies to start down--I don't believe we could make it
through with what we have, considering the loss of this ham--but if
it's necessary I can mush over to me Twenty-three Mile cabin and get the
supplies I left over there. Harold tells me he hasn't a thing in his
old place. However, I can do it, if we don't happen to pick up some
meat to-day."
"We might track down the wolves, and get one of those----"
"Wolf meat hasn't a flavor you'd care for, I'm afraid. The Indians have
been known to eat it, but they can but away beaver and tough old grizzly
bear. Those things are starvation meats only. But if you care to, we
can dash out and see if we can pick up a young caribou or a left-over
moose. It's pleasant out to-day, anyway. It's rather warm--I believe
there's going to be a change of weather."
"Good or bad?" the girl asked.
"Haven't had any government bulletins on that point, this morning.
Probably bad. The weather in the North, Virginia, goes along the way it
is a while, and then it gets worse."
She dressed, and at breakfast their exultation over their trip grew
painful to Harold's ears. He announced his intention of going along.
Curiously, even Virginia did not receive this announcement with
particular enthusiasm. It was not that her regard for Bill was any kin
to that she held for Harold. Rather, it was a fear that Harold's
presence might blunt the edge of the fine companionship she enjoyed with
the woodsman. It would throw a personal element into an otherwise
care-free and adventurous day. But she smiled at him, rather fondly.
"Just as you like, Harold."
They put on their snowshoes, their warmest wraps, and started gayly
forth. Bill took rather a new course to-day. He bent his steps toward
a stream that he called Creek Despair,--named for the fact that he had
once held high hopes of finding his lost mine along its waters, only to
meet an utter and hopeless failure. From the map he had judged that the
lost claim lay somewhere along its course, but he had washed it from its
mother springs clear to its mouth, finding scarcely the faintest traces
in the pan. Because he had made such a tireless search in this
particular section in previous years he had completely avoided it in the
present adventure. Even on his pleasure trips with Virginia he had
never forgotten his search: thus he had led her into more favorable
regions where he might reasonably keep his eyes over for clews. Now
that he had given up finding the claim--for this season, at least, and
perhaps forever--one way was as good as another. And he remembered
that an old caribou trail lay just beyond the stream on the steep
hillside.
Bill led the way, mushing quietly an swiftly, and Virginia sped after
him. The cold had brought a high color to her cheeks and a luster to
her eyes; her nerves and muscles tingled with life. She was in
wonderful spirits. Never she took a hundred paces without experiencing
some sort of a little, heart-gladdening adventure.
Every manifestation of the forest life about her filled her with
delight. The beauty of the winter woods, the absorbing record that the
wild creatures had left in the snow, the long sweep of range and valley
that she could glimpse from a still hilltop, all had their joy for her.
With Bill she found something to delight her, something to make her
laugh and quicken her blood, in every hundred yards of their course.
Sometimes when the snow record was obscure, Bill stopped and explained,
usually with a graphic story and unconscious humor that made the woods
tingle and ring with her joyous, rippling laughter. More than often,
however, she was able to piece our the mystery by herself.
Bill had a long and highly fanciful conversation with a little,
black-tailed ermine that tried to run under his feet; he imitated--to
Virginia's delight, the spectacle of a large and stiff cow moose pulling
herself through the mud; he repeated for her the demented cries of the
loons that they had sometimes heard from the still waters of Gray Lake.
But he didn't forget that the main purpose of their expedition was to
hunt. When at last they reached the caribou range he commanded silence.
Harold, silent in the others' gayety, immediately evinced a decided
inclination to talk. He had not particularly enjoyed the excursion so
far. In the first place he had no love either for the winter forest or
the creatures that inhabited it; he would have been much more
comfortable and at ease beside the cabin stove. He couldn't much with
comfort at Bill's regular pace: he was rather out of breath and
irritated after the first two hundred rods. Most of all, he was
savagely conscious of the fact that Virginia was not giving him a
rightful share of her attention. For the time being she seemed to have
forgotten his presence. He was resentful, wishing disaster upon the
hunt, eager to turn back.
"The rule is silence, from now on," Virginia answered his first remark.
"Bill says we're in a game country."
The answer didn't satisfy him. But his heart suddenly leaped when Bill
glanced back in warning and pointed to an entrancing wilderness picture,
a hundred yards in front.
In a little glade and framed by the forest stood a large bull caribou,
flashing and incredibly vivid against the snow. There is no animal in
all North American fauna, even the bull elk, that presents a more
splendid figure than that huge member of the deer family, Osburn's
caribou. His mane is snow white, his back and sides a glossy brown,
his eye flashes, and his antlers--in the season that he carries
them--stream back like young trees. The bull did not stir out of his
tracks, yet he gave the impression of infinite movement and pulsing,
quivering vitality. He shook and threw his head, he lifted his fore
foot nervously, and framed by the winter forest he was a sight never to
forget. Incidentally he made a first-class target,--one that seemed
impossible to miss.
"I'll take him," Harold shouted. "Let me take him."
In a flash Harold realized that here was his opportunity: in one stroke,
one easy shot, he could turn the day's ignominy into triumph. He could
focus Virginia's admiration upon himself. But the impulse had even
deeper significances. It was not the way of sportsmen, wandering in
file on mountain trails, to clamor for the first shot at game. Whatever
is said is usually in solicitation to a companion to shoot; and Virginia
felt oddly embarrassed. Harold's gun leaped to his shoulder.
But in the fields of sport there is always a penalty for extreme
eagerness. There is a retributive justice for those that attempt to
grasp opportunities. Harold was afraid that Bill might raise and shoot,
thus rubbing him of his triumph, and he pressed back against the trigger
just a fifth of a second too soon. The target looked too big to miss,
but his bullet flung up the snow behind the animal.
The caribou's powerful limbs pushed out a mighty leap. Frenzied, Harold
shot again; but his nerve was broken and his self-control blown to the
four winds. The animal had gained the shelter of the thickets by now,
and Harold's third and fourth shots went wild. Then he lowered his
weapon with a curse.
It is part of the creed of a certain type of hunter to never admit a
clean miss. "My sights are off," Harold shouted. "They didn't shoot
within three feet of where I aimed. Damn such a gun--but I think I
wounded him the third shot. You'll find him dead if you follow him long
enough."
Bill answered nothing, but went to see. In the firing he hadn't even
raised his own gun to his shoulder. There is a certain code among
hunters in regard to shooting another's game: an unwritten law that,
except in a case of life and death, one hunter does not interfere with
another's shooting. It was through no desire to embarrass Harold that
he didn't assist him in putting down his trophy. He was simply giving
the man full play. Bill stared at the caribou tracks in the snow,
followed them a hundred feet, and then came mushing back.
"You didn't seem to have put one in," he reported simply.
"I didn't, eh?" Harold answered angrily. "How could you tell, so soon?
I suppose you're woodsman enough to know that a wounded animal doesn't
always show blood. I'd be ready to bet that if we followed him far
enough we'd find him dead."
"We'd have to follow him till he died naturally of old age," was the
good-humored reply. "We can't always hit, Lounsbury. He began to trot
when he got into the trees--a perfectly normal gait. I think we'd
better look for something else."
"Then I want you to carry my gun awhile, and let me take yours. The
sights are off a mile. It's all ready, and here's a handful of extra
shells. You ought to be willing to do that, at least."
Harold had forgotten that this man was not his personal guide, subject
to his every wish. He held out gun and shells; and, smiling, Bill
received them, giving his own weapon in exchange. They mushed on down
the trail.
But Harold's miss had not been his greater sin. To miss is human; no
true sportsman holds it against his fellow. The omission that followed,
however, was by all the codes of the hunting trails unpardonable. He
supposed that he had refilled his rifle magazine with shells before he
put it in Bill's hands. In his confusion and anger, he had forgotten to
do so; and the only load that the gun contained was that in the barrel,
thrown in automatically when the last empty shell was ejected.