In the weeks they had been together, Bill had always been careful never
to try to show Harold in a bad light. It was simply an expression of
the inherent decency of the man: he knew that Virginia loved him, that
she had plighted her troth to him, and as long as that love endured and
the engagement stood, he would never try to shatter her ideals in regard
to him. He knew it meant only heartbreak for her to love and wed a man
she couldn't respect. He knew enough of human nature to realize that
love often lives when respect is dead, and no possible good could come
of showing up the unworthiness that he beheld in Harold. He had never
tried to embarrass him or smirch his name. For all his indignation now,
his voice was wholly cheerful and friendly when he answered.
"We're quite all right, thanks," he said. "The only casualty was the
bear. A little snow on our clothes, but it will brush off. And by the
way----"
He paused, and for all his even tones, Harold had a sickening and
ghastly fear of the sober query in Bill's eyes. "Why did you give me an
unloaded gun and tell me it was full?" he went on. "Except for a good
deal of luck there'd been a smile on the face of the grizzly--but no
Bill!"
He thought it only just that, in spite of Virginia's presence, Harold
explain this grave omission. He felt that Virginia was entitled to an
explanation too, and Harold knew, from her earnest eyes, that she was
waiting his answer. He might have been arrogant and insulting to Bill,
but he cared enough for Virginia's respect to wish to justify himself.
He studied their faces; it was plain that they did not accuse him, even
in their most secret thoughts, of evil intent in handing Bill an almost
empty gun. But by the stern code of the North sins of carelessness are
no less damning than intentional ones and Harold knew that he had a
great deal to answer for.
"And by the way," Bill went on, as he waited for his reply, "I don't
remember hearing my gun off during the fray. You might explain that,
too."
"I didn't shoot because I couldn't," Harold replied earnestly. "At
first you were between me and the bear--and then Virginia was. It
all happened so quickly that there was nothing I could do. I can't
imagine why I forgot to reload the rifle. A man can't always
remember--everything. I thought I had. Thank God that it didn't turn
out any worse than it did."
Bill nodded; the girl's face showed unspeakable relief. She was glad
that this lover of hers had logical and acceptable reasons for his
omissions. The incident was past, the issue dead. They gathered about
the gray grizzled form in the snow.
"Does this--help our food problem any?" Virginia asked.
"Except in an emergency--no. Virginia, you ought to try to cut that
foreleg muscle." He lifted one of the front feet of the bear in his
hands. "You'd see what it would be like to try to bite it. He's an
old, tough brute--worse eating than a wolf. Strong as mink and hard
as rock. If we were starving, we'd cut off one of those hams in a
minute; but we can wait a while at least. If we don't pick up some more
game during the day, I'll hike over to my Twenty-three Mile cabin and
get the supplies I've left over there. There's a smoked caribou ham,
among other things. I'll bring back a backload, anyway." Then his
voice changed, and he looked earnestly into Virginia's eyes. "But you
won't want to hunt any more to-day. I forgot--what a shock this
experience would be to you."
She smiled, and the paleness about her lips was almost gone. "I'm
getting used to shocks. I feel a little shaky--but it doesn't amount
to anything. I want to climb up and look at the caribou trail, at
least."
"Sure enough--if you feel you can stand it. It's only a hundred yards
or so up the hill. I'd like to take old Bruin's hide, but I don't see
how we could handle it. I believe we'd better leave him with all his
clothes on, in the snow. And Heaven knows I'd like to find out what the
old boy was doing out--at a time when all the other bears are
hibernating."
They continued on up the creek until the grade of the hill was less,
then clambered slowly up. Fifty yards up the slope they encountered the
old caribou trail, but none of these wilderness creatures had been along
in recent days. They followed it a short distance, however, back in the
direction they had come and above the scene of their battle with the
bear.
"No profit here," Bill said at last. "We might as well go down to the
creek bed and find better walking."
They turned, and in an instant more came back to their own tracks. And
suddenly Bill stopped and stared at them in dumb amazement.
He looked so astonished, so inexpressibly baffled, that for a moment his
two companions were stricken silent. Virginia's heart leaped in her
throat. Yet the tracks contained no message for her.
"What's the matter?" Harold asked. "What do you see?"
Bill caught himself and looked up. "Nothing very important--but
mighty astonishing at that. We've just walked in a two-hundred-yard
circle, up the creek to where we climbed the hill, back along the hill
in this direction, and then down. And we haven't crossed that grizzly's
tracks anywhere."
"Well, what of it?"
"Man, this snow has been here for weeks, with very little change. Do
you mean to tell me that a lively, hungry bear is going to stay that
long in one place unless he's asleep? Virginia, as sure as you live
we--or somethin'--wakened that bear out of hibernation. And his den
is somewhere in that two-hundred-yard circle."
"There's probably a cave in the rock," Harold suggested. "And I'm more
interested in the cabin and dinner than I am in it."
"Nevertheless, I've never looked into a den of hibernation, and I've
always wanted to know what they're like. It will only take a minute.
Come on--it will be worth seeing."
But Harold had very special and particular reasons why such a course
appealed to him not at all. "Yes--and maybe find a couple of other
bears in there, in the dark and no chance to fight. I'm not interested,
anyway. Go and look, if you like."
"I will, if you don't mind. Do you want to come too, Virginia? There's
no danger--really there isn't. If this had been an old she-bear we
might have found some cubs, but these old males travel around by
themselves."
"I certainly wouldn't stay away," the girl replied. And her interest
was real: the study of the forest life about her had been an ever
increasing delight. She felt that she would greatly like to peer into
one of those dark, mysterious dens where that most mysterious American
animal, the grizzly, lies in deep coma through the long, winter months.
"It will only take a minute. We haven't got to back-track him more than
a hundred yards at most. We'll be back in a minute, Harold. And if you
don't mind--I'll take my own gun."
They exchanged rifles, and Virginia and Bill started back toward the
fallen grizzly. But the exploration of the winter lair had not been the
only thing Bill had in view. He also had certain words to say to
Virginia,--words that he could scarcely longer repress, and which he
couldn't have spoken with ease in Harold's presence. But now that they
were alone, the sentences wouldn't shape on his lips.
He mushed a while in silence. "I suppose I haven't got to tell you,
Virginia," he said at last. "That you--your own courage--saved my
life."
She looked up to him with lustrous eyes. The man thrilled to the last
little nerve. In her comradeship for him their luster was almost like
that of which he had dreamed so often. "I know it's true," she answered
frankly. "And I'm glad that--that it was mine, and not somebody
else's." She too seemed to be having difficulty in shaping her
thoughts. "I've never been happier about any other thing. To
pay--just a little bit of debt. But in paying it, I incurred another--so
the obligation is just as big as ever. You know--you saved my life,
too."
He nodded. This was no time for deception, for pretty lies.
"I saw you throw yourself in front of me," she went on. "I can
never forget it. I'll see that picture, over and over again, till I
die--how you plunged through the snow and got in front. So since we
each did for the other--the only thing we could do--there's nothing
more to be said about it. Isn't that so, Bill?"
The man agreed, but his lips trembled as they never did during the
charge of the grizzly.
"I've learned a lesson up here--that words aren't much good and don't
seem to get anywhere." The girl spoke softly. "Only deeds count.
After they're done, there is nothing much--that one can say."
So they did not speak of the matter again. They came to the bear's body
and back-tracked him through the snow. They pushed through the young
spruce from whose limbs the grizzly had knocked the snow. They they
came out upon the cavern mouth.
Instantly Bill understood how the fall of the tree had knocked away the
snow from the maw. "There's been a landslide here too, or a snowslide,"
he said. "You see--only the top of the cave mouth is left open. The
dirt's piled around the bottom."
He crawled up over the pile of rocks and dirt and, stooping, stepped
within the cavern. The girl was immediately behind him. Back five feet
from the opening the interior was dark as night: the cavern walls, gray
at the mouth, slowly paled and faded and were obliterated in the gloom.
But there was no stir of life in the darkness, no sign of any other
habitant. But the walls themselves, where the light from without
revealed them, held Bill's fascinated gaze.
The girl stood behind him, silent, wondering what was in his mind.
"This cave--I've never seen a cave just like this. Virginia----"
The man stepped forward and scratched a match on the stone. It flared;
the shadows raced away. Then Bill's breath caught in a half-sob.
Instantly he smothered the match. The darkness dropped around them like
a curtain. But in that instant of light Bill beheld a scene that tore
at his heart. Against the cavern wall, lost in the irremediable
darkness, he had seen a strange, white shape--a ghostly thing that lay
still and caught the match's gleam--a grim relic of dead years.
He turned to the girl, and his voice was almost steady when he spoke.
"You'd better go out, Virginia--into the light," he advised.
"Why? Is it--_danger?_"
"Not danger." His voice in the silence thrilled her and moved her.
"Only wickedness. But it isn't anything you'd like to see."
The single match-flare had revealed him the truth. For one little
fraction of an instant he had thought that the white form, so grim
and silent against the stone, revealed some forest tragedy of years
ago,--a human prey dragged to a wild beast's lair. But the shape of the
cavern, the character of its walls, and a thousand other clews told the
story plainly. The thing he had seen was a naked skeleton, flesh and
garments having dropped away in the years; and the grizzly had simply
made his lair in the old shaft of his father's mine. Bill had found his
father's sepulcher at last!
* * * * *
For a moment he stood dreaming in the gloom. He understood, now, why
his previous search had never revealed the mine. He had supposed that
his father had operated along some stream, washing the gold from its
gravel: it had never occurred to him that he had dug a shaft. In all
probability, considering the richness of their content, they had
burrowed into the hill and had found an old bed of the stream, had
carried the gravel to the water's edge in buckets, and washed it out.
He had never looked for tunnels and shafts: if he had done so, it was
doubtful if he could have found the hidden cavern. The snowslide of
some years before had covered up all outward signs of their work, struck
down the trees they had blazed, and covered the ashes of their own camp
fires. The girl's voice in the darkness called him from his musings.
"I believe I understand," she said. "You've found your mine--and your
father's body."
"Yes. Just a skeleton."
"I'm not afraid. Do you want me to stay?"
"I'd love to have you, if you will. Some way--it takes away a lot of
my bitterness--to have you here."
It was true. It seemed wholly fitting that she should be with him as he
explored the cavern. It was almost as if the tragedy of his father's
death concerned her, too.
"I can hold matches," she told him. She came up close, and for a moment
her hand, groping, closed on his,--a soft, dear pressure that spoke
more than any words. When it was released he lighted another match.
They stood together, looking down at the skeleton. But she wasn't quite
prepared for what she saw. A little cry of horror rang strangely in the
dark shaft.
This had been no natural death. Undoubtedly the elder Bronson had been
struck down from behind, as he worked, and he lay just as he fell.
There was one wound in the skull, round and ghastly, and in a moment
they saw the weapon that made it. A rusted pick, such as miners use,
lay beside the body.
"I won't try to do much to-day," the man told her, "except to see up one
of my cornerposts and erect a claim notice. My father's notice has of
course rotted away in the years and the monument that probably stood out
there beyond the creek bed was covered in snowslide. You see, a claim
is made by putting up four stone monuments--one at each corner of the
area claimed. We'll be starting down in a day or two, and I'll register
the claim. Then I'll come back--and give these poor bones decent
burial."
From there he walked back to the end of the shaft, scratching another
match. It was wholly evident that the mine was only scratched. He held
the light close, studying the rear wall of the cave. It was simply a
gravel bed, verifying his guess that here lay an old bed of the creek.
In the first handful of stone he scraped out he found a half-ounce
nugget.
"It's rich?" she asked.
"Beyond what I ever dreamed. But there's nothing more we can do now.
I've made my find at least--but it doesn't seem to make me--as happy
as it ought to. Of course that man--there against the wall--would
naturally keep a man from being very happy. Of, if I could only find
and kill the devil who did it!"
His voice in the gloom was charged with immeasurable feeling. She had
never seen this side of him before. Here was primeval emotion, the
desired for vengeance, filial obligation, hate that knew no mercy and
could never be forgotten. She understood, now, the savage feuds that
sometimes spring up among the mountain people, unable to forget a blow
or an injury. She had the first inkling of how deeply his father's
murder had influenced him.
But his face was calm when they emerged into the light. They walked
over to the creek, and beneath its overhanging banks there were the snow
had not swept, he found enough rocks for his monument. He gathered them,
carried them in armfuls to a place fifty yards beyond the creek and down
it, level with such a turn in the hillside above, beyond which the old
creek bed obviously could not lie; then heaped them into a moment. Then
he drew an old letter from his coat pocket, and searching farther, found
a stub of a pencil. Virginia looked over his shoulders as he wrote.
One hundred yards up the stream Harold watched them, dumbfounded as to
what they were doing. He saw Bill finish the writing, then place the
larger on the monument, fastening it down with a large stone. Then he
came mushing toward them.
So intent were they upon their work that they didn't notice him until he
was almost up to them. But both of them would have paused in wonder if
they had observed the curious mixture of emotions upon his lips. His
lips hung loose, his eyes protruded, and something that might have been
greed, or might have been jealousy or some other unguessed emotion drew
and harshened his features.
"You've found a mine?" he asked.
Virginia looked up, joyful at Bill's good fortune. "We've found his
father's mine--the old shaft where the bear was been sleeping. But
there's a dreadful side of it too."
"Show me where it is. I want to see it. Take me into it,
Virginia--right away----"
Bill had a distinct sensation of revulsion at the thought of this man
going into his father's sepulcher, and he didn't know why. It was an
instinct too deeply buried for him to trace. But he tried to force it
down. There was no reason why Virginia's fiance shouldn't view his mine.
Already, Virginia was pointing out the way.
"You can claim half to it," he was whispering into her ear. "You were
the one with him when he found it."
"I can--but I won't," she replied coldly. "He asked me to go with
him. The thought's unworthy of you, Harold."
But he was in no mood to be humbled by her disapproval. Curiously, he
was intensely excited. He mushed away toward the cavern mouth.
Two minutes later he stood in the darkness of the funnel, fumbling for a
match. "Gold, gold, gold," he whispered. "Heaps and heaps of it--what
I've always hunted. And Bill had to find it. That devil had to walk
right into it."
He was sickened by the thought that except for his own cowardice he
would have accompanied them into the den. At least he should have done
that much, he told himself, to atone for his conduct during the bear's
charge. Then he would have been in a position to claim half the
mine--and get it too. Dark thoughts, curiously engrossing and lustful,
thronged his mind.
He found a match at least and it flared in the darkness. And the white
skeleton lay just at his feet.
He drew back, startled, but instantly recognized his poise. He knelt
with unexplicable intentness. He too saw the ghastly wound and its grim
connection with the rusted pick. And he bent, slowly, like a man who is
trying to control an unwonted eagerness, lifted the pick in his arms.
His fingers seemed to curl around it, like those of a miser around his
gold. Some way, his grasp seemed caressing. Oh, it was easy to handle
and lift! How naturally it swung in his arms! What a deadly blow the
cruel point could inflict! Just one little tap had been needed.
Bronson had rocked and fallen, no longer to hold his share in the mine's
gold. If there were an enemy before him now, one tap, and one alone was
all that would be needed.
He could picture the scene of some twenty years before; the flickering
candles, the gray walls covered with dancing shadows, the yellow
gold,--beautiful in the light. He could see Bronson working,--always the
plodder, always the fool! Behind him Rutheford, his partner, the pick
in his arms and his brave intent in his brain. Then one swift
stroke----
Harold did not know that at the thought his muscles made involuntary
response. He swung the pick down, imagining the blow, with a ferocity
and viciousness that would have been terrible to see.
In the darkness his face was drawn and savage, and ugly fires glowed and
smoldered and flamed in his eyes.