There was plenty of heart-breaking work to do when Bill finally reached
the little cabin. The snow had banked up to the depth of several feet
around it and had blown and packed against the door. He took off one of
his snowshoes to use as a shovel and stolidly began the work of removing
the barricade. There was no opening the door against the pressure of
the snow. Besides, the bolt was solidly rusted.
But after a few weary strokes it occurred to him that the easiest way
would be to cut some sort of an opening in the top of the door, just
large enough for his body to crawl through. As the cabin was abandoned
there would be no possible disadvantage to such an opening: and since
the fire had to be built outside the cabin, against the backlogs, the
door would have to be left open anyway, to admit the heat. With a few
strokes of his sharp little camp ax he cut away the planks, leaving a
black hole in the door. He lighted a match and peered in.
The interior was unchanged since his previous visit, years before. The
cabin had no floor, not the least vestige of furniture, and rodents had
littered the ground with leaves.
He turned to his toil of making a fire. First he cut down a spruce--a
heart-breaking task with his little ax--then laboriously hacked it
into lengths. These he bore to the cabin, staggering with the load. He
split the logs, cutting some of them into firewood for kindling. Then
he made a pile of shavings.
He tested the wind and found it blowing straight west and away from the
cabin. He felt oddly tired and dull, much too tired to strain and
listen for some whispered message of an inner voice that seemed to be
trying hard to get his attention, a few little, vague misgivings that
haunted him. His comfort depended, he told himself, on the heat of the
fire beating in through the little opening of the cabin door, so he
placed the backlog just as close as he dared in front. Then he laid
down split pieces for frame of his fire and erected his heap of
kindling.
He entered through the opening and stood on the ground below to light
the fire. He didn't desire to crawl through the flames to enter the
cabin. Reaching as far as he could, he was just able to insert the
candle. The wind caught it, the kindling flames. Then he stood
shivering, waiting for the room to warm.
He had a sweeping flood of thoughts as he watched the leaping flame.
Its cheerful crackle, its bright color in the gloom was almost too good
to be true. In these dark forests he had learned to be wary and on
guard at too great fortune. Quite often it was only a prank of perverse
forest gods, before they smote him with some black disaster. It seemed
to him that there was a wild laughter, a Satanic mocking in the joyous
crackle that was vaguely but fearfully ominous. The promise in the
rainbow, the siren's song to the mariners, the little dancing light in
the marsh--promising warmth and safety but only luring the weary
traveler to this death--had this same quality: the cheer, the hope,
the beauty only to be blasted by misfortune.
The warmth flooded in, and he looked about for something to sit on. He
wished he had brought in one of the spruce logs he had cut. But it was
too late to procure one now. The flames leaped at the opening of the
cabin: he would be obliged to crawl laboriously through them to get into
the open. Tired out, he lay down in the dry dirt, putting his arm under
his head. He would soon go to sleep.
But his ragged, exhausted nerves would not find rest in sleep at once.
His thoughts were troubling and unpleasant. The pale firelight filled
the cabin, dancing against the walls. The glare reflected wanly on the
ground where he lay.
All at once he was aware that his eyes were fastened upon an old cigar
box on a shelf against the wall. He seemed to have a remembered
interest in it,--as if long ago he had examined its contents with
boyish speculations. But he couldn't remember what it contained.
Likely enough it was empty.
The hours were long, and the wind wailed and crept like a housebreaker
about the cabin; and at last--rather more to pass the time than for
any other reason--he climbed to his feet and stepped to the shelf on
which the box lay.
As he reached to seize it, he had a distinct premonition of misfortune.
It was as if some subtle consciousness within him, knowing and
remembering every detail of his past and its infinite and exact
relations with his present, was warning him that to open the box was to
receive knowledge that would be hateful to him. Yet he would not be
cowed by such a visionary danger. He was tired out, his nerves were
torn, and he was prey to his own dark imaginings. Likely enough the box
was empty.
It was not, however. It contained a single photograph.
His eye leaped over it. He remembered now; he had looked at it during
his former visit to the cabin, years before. It was a typical
old-fashioned photograph--two men standing in stiff and awkward poses
in an old-fashioned picture gallery--printed in the time-worn way. No
modern photographer, however, could have caught a better likeness or
made a more distinct picture. It had obviously been one of his father's
possessions and had been left in the cabin.
One of the men was his own father. He had seen his photograph often
enough to recognize it; besides, he remembered the man in the flesh.
And he stared at the other face--a rather handsome, thin-lipped,
sardonic-eyed face--as if he were looking at a ghost.
"Great God," he cried. "It's Harold Lounsbury!"
But instantly he knew it could not be Harold Lounsbury. The picture was
fully twenty-five years old and the face was that of a mature man,
probably aged thirty. Harold Lounsbury himself was only thirty. And
now, looking closer, he saw that the features were not quite the same.
There was more breeding, more sensitiveness in Harold's face. And there
was also, dim and haunting, some slight resemblance to Kenly Lounsbury,
whom he had brought up into Clearwater and who had gone back with
Vosper.
Yet already his inner consciousness was screaming in his ear the
identity of this man. Already he knew. It was no other than Rutheford,
the man who later, in the cavern darkness, had struck his father down.
His deductions followed with deadly and remorseless certainty. He knew
now why Harold Lounsbury had come into Clearwater. Virginia had told
Bill that her lover seemed to have some definite place in view for his
prospecting: he had simply come to search for the same lost mine that
Bill had discovered the previous day. He knew now why Kenly Lounsbury
had been willing to finance Virginia's trip into the North,--not in
hopes of finding his lost nephew, but to find the mine of which he also
had some knowledge and thus repair the broken remnants of his fortune.
In the same sweep of realization he knew why Harold Lounsbury's face had
always haunted him and filled him with hazy, uncertain memories. He had
never seen Harold before; but he had seen this photograph in his own
boyhood, and Harold's face had so resembled the one in the picture that
it had haunted and disturbed him.
Only too well he knew the truth. Harold Lounsbury was Rutheford's
son,--the son of his father's murderer. Kenly Lounsbury was Rutheford's
brother. Both had come to Clearwater to repair their broken fortunes
from the mine of which they both had knowledge. Whether it was guilty
knowledge or not no man could tell.
Such directions as Rutheford had given his son had been unavailing
because of the snowslide that had changed the contour of the little
valley where the mine lay. He understood now Harold's disappointment
and emotion when Bill had discovered the mine. Likely his own name was
Harold Rutheford, or else Rutheford's true name had been Lounsbury.
Bill stood shivering all over with rage and hate.
Now he knew the road of vengeance! He had only to trace Harold
Lounsbury back to his city--there to find his father's murderer. His
eyes were glittering and terrible to see at the potentialities of that
finding. Yet in an instant he knew that death had likely already
claimed the elder Rutheford. Otherwise he himself would have come
back, long since, to recover the mine. He would be financing the
expedition, rather than his brother Kenly.
But by that stern old law, the law that goes down to the roots of the
earth and whose justice lies in mystic balances beyond the sight of men,
has it not been written that the sins of the father shall be visited
upon the son? It wasn't too late yet to command some measure of
payment. In Virginia's own city lived the Lounsburys,--a proud and
wealthy family, moving in the most haughty circles, patronizing the
humble, flattered and honored and exalted. But oh, he could break them
down! He could stamp their name with shame. He could not pay eye for
eye and tooth for tooth, because Rutheford was likely already dead. He
could not pay for his father's murder by striking down his murderer.
But he could make Harold pay for his own wrongs. He could make him
atone for the bitter moments of his youth and manhood, that irremediable
loss of his boyhood. If Rutheford had left a widow he could make her
pay for his own mother's sufferings.
As he stood in that bleak and lonely cabin, lost in the desolate wastes
of snow, he was simply the clansman--the feudist--the primitive
avenger. Virginia too should know the crime, and the haunting sight of
those pitiful bones in the dark cavern would rise before her eyes
whenever she sought Harold's arms. He would show her the picture; she
could see the murderer's face in her own lover's. She could never yield
to him then----
Virginia! Soft above the wail and complaint of the wind, he spoke her
name. His star, his universe, the gracious, beautiful girl whose
happiness had been his one aim! And could he change that aim now?
The wind wept, the snow was swept before it in great, unearthly clouds
of white, the fire crackled and leaped at the opening in the cabin door.
The northern winter night closed down, ever deeper, ever darker, ever
more fraught with those mighty passions of the human soul. But he
responded no more to the wild music of the wind. The wilderness
passions no longer found an echo in his own heart. He had suddenly
remembered Virginia.
His face was like clay in the dancing light. His eyes were sunken and
were dark as night. He knew now where his course would lie. All at
once he knew by a knowledge true as life that this dark cabin, in the
dark forest, must keep its secrets.
He could not wreak vengeance upon the man Virginia loved. He could not
take payment from her. The same law that had governed him before was
still the immutable voice of his being, the basic and irrevocable law of
his life. He could not blast her happiness with such a revelation as
this. His boyhood dream of vengeance would go the way of all his other
dreams,--like the smoke of a camp fire lost in the unmeasured spaces
of the forest. The shadow that the dark woods had cast upon his spirit
seemed to grow and deepen.
But he must act now, while his strength was upon him. To look again
into Harold's face might cost him his own resolve. To think of Virginia
in his arms, her lips against his, the wicked blood of the man pulsing
so close that she could thrill at it and hear it, might set him on fire
again. He must destroy the evidence. The night might bring his own
death--he had a vague presentiment of disaster--and this photograph
must never be found beside his body. She knew his father's story; her
quick mind would leap to the truth at once. Besides, the destruction of
the photograph--so that he could never look at it again--might
lessen his own bitterness and give him a little peace. He crumpled it
in his hand, and turning, gave it to the flames at the cabin mouth.
And from the savage powers of Nature there came a strange and incredible
response. The wind shrieked, then seemed to ship about in the sky,
completely changing direction. And all at once the smoke from the fire
began to pour in upon him, choking his lungs and filling his eyes with
tears.