Dorothy found, to her great surprise, that the days of waiting passed
rather swiftly. She slept long in the mornings on the comfortable,
rudely contrived grass mattress that Pete had made for her; she played
cards with Ivan, and made many little adventurous excursions into the
wild with one or both of the two white men. Ivan was consideration
itself, always willing to beguile her with his marvelous music, wooing
her with his finesse of ardor, fascinating her in hours of talk with the
intricacies of his brilliant intellect and of his complex, marvelously
attractive personality. Work on the grave was postponed until such a
time as the casket could be cared for.
Yet she owed a great deal to the head guide, too. In particular he
watched out for her material comfort, superintending the preparation of
her meals so that every cup of coffee, every succulent breast of
ptarmigan was exactly to her taste, keeping her ever warm and dry,
refilling her mattress every day with freshly cut grass and keeping the
fire bright every morning in the camp stove for her to dress by. She
could not deny to herself the comfort he was to her; but she attributed
it merely to the fact that he was a strong arm in a savage land, a
protection against the crude forces of the wilderness that might easily
overwhelm her.
It was not so easy to explain the instinctive comradeship she felt for
him. Of course he was the one man of her own race in the entire company,
and here—far from the cities of men—bonds of race were revealed as of
surprising strength. She was down to essentials, and here, at the
continent’s end, race ties mattered quite as much as those of class,
such as in any clime she would have established with Ivan. Race ties are
basic, those of class insubstantial at best; and only realities could
exist here where the storms swept in from the sea and the barrens were
green under the gray sky. She did not believe for a moment that, had she
met him in her own sphere, she would have taken any real personal
interest in the head guide. Surely where class lines mattered at all he
would have been merely a servant or else one of the great world of toil
such as had always been beyond the restricted vista of her life. Surely
in her own, well-ordered, graceful civilization—of which there was no
finer in the entire world—she would have never concerned herself about
him. Yet he lingered in her thoughts more than her class pride liked her
to admit. It was stretching race ties rather far to attribute to them
solely the pleasure she took in his slow, courteous speech, in the
unfaltering brilliance of his smile. She was not a snob and she was glad
to admit at last that he had qualities of courage and strength,
manliness and chivalry that would carry him far in any land. Perhaps he
lacked in superficial polish—though of this she saw little
evidence—but not in the basic traits that make for superiority.
From Pete’s point of view the days went by in a single flash between the
curtains of night; and he dreaded to his heart’s depth the hour certain
to come when the _Warrior_ would roll in on the waves and carry Dorothy
out of his life. His belief in her never faltered for an instant; she
was and always had been the star of his East, the guiding beacon of his
life.
His attitude toward Ivan was too complex ever to completely straighten
out in his mind. In the first place he had deep admiration and
unfaltering respect for this genius from the East. He was pleased and
gratified by the man’s attitude toward Dorothy; his own most chivalrous
instincts seemed reflected in the Russian. Yet sometimes a sudden, white
flame, strange to his sight and puzzling to his heart, mounted and paled
in the thin, almost-beautiful face; sometimes he was appalled and
estranged by a spark in the almond eyes, a gesture of the white hands;
and sometimes he caught a fleeting expression on the classic countenance
that wakened, in his own heart, a sullen, almost a murderous rage. For
all that this was his dream—a consummation for which he had scarcely,
indeed, ever dared to dream—he had hours so bitter, so lightless, that
it seemed the very vital processes of his life must falter and cease.
Once, on bringing fresh fuel to the little camp stove in Dorothy’s tent,
he found the girl in the Russian’s arms.
She had just yielded to his lips, and she was convinced—at the instant
that Pete appeared at the threshold—that in Ivan her destiny of
happiness was secure. The dark-red hue in her cheeks had been
accentuated by the swift leap of the red wine of her veins, she was
breathless and enraptured, and she turned in swift resentment as the
flap of the tent was drawn aside. But she was instantly cold,
inexplicably appalled, as she looked into Pete’s face.
She could not have explained why. The man looked drawn, as in the last
stages of fatigue; but there was no conceivable excuse for her sense of
shame, her strange drawing-in to herself and inability to emerge again
into Ivan’s warmth. The mood was nothing that she would trace to Pete.
Pete was only a guide, soon to be left alone on these windy shores that
were his home. His coming had merely wakened her to a realization of
some curious, complex attitude toward Ivan of which heretofore she had
been unaware.
On leaving the tent Pete walked straight past the camp fire on to the
hills. He was profoundly shaken and unnerved, not from amazement at what
he had seen—he had realized that Ivan and Dorothy were virtually
engaged—but at the narrow margin by which the girl had missed
irrevocable disaster. It had not been by too wide a margin that he had
restrained a mad, tragic impulse to leap into the tent and shatter the
man’s life.
At that instant he had hated Ivan as he would hate a wolf that menaced
his child. He forgot that the Mongol was within his rights, that he had
shown himself a chivalrous gentleman in whom Dorothy had every chance of
finding the happiness that Pete had prayed she might find. Only a primal
hatred, a devouring, murderous wrath remained. He could only call it
jealousy; certainly he could not justify it by a manly impulse to
protect the girl from ravishment. She had gone into his arms because it
was her wish and her need, and surely it did not lie with him, from
henceforth, to stand guard over her kisses. He was of the dead past, and
Ivan of the living present.
The upshot of it was that some of his self-confidence was
shattered,—his belief that he could play this game through to its
ironic end. He would be afraid of himself henceforth. Jealousy had been
the direct cause of his downfall; he saw where it might easily shatter
all he had built. It was no longer easy for him to be charitable to
Ivan—not that the latter was in need of his charity—and the secret
resentment that had begun to smolder in him might easily, on some little
pretext, break into a murderous flame that would leave but ashes of the
girl’s hopes. Sometime he might be tried beyond his endurance; and he
was very mortal, after all.
Indeed he had already shown himself of murderous hue. Paul Sarichef
could rise from out the river’s depths and testify to that. He owed it
to Dorothy not to put too great trust in himself: the storm of his fatal
temper had all but wrecked her life once before, and it might now
destroy what little hope of the future he had left. In spite of the
restraints of civilization, of beautiful home ties and exalted position,
his brute passions had once carried him into murder. It was going a long
way to trust them in a land that brought out, rather than suppressed,
the lawless and the primitive, yet he had deliberately faced the most
dangerous temptation. Surely it was better that the _Warrior_ return at
once, and the last curtain fall on this drama beside the sea.
He spent a restless night after the incident, and his peace of mind had
departed from him. For all that this was his last dream on earth—the
only shadow of happiness that he dared to hope for—he felt that by all
conscience he must cut it short. His trust in himself was shattered, and
there was nothing for him now but to turn away from this camp where his
love was and vanish among the desolate hills. His star would soon set,
the tower of his only strength was tottering. Yet the hours passed, and
he lay in his bunk, unable to reach up to this sacrifice of self. But if
he had lost faith in himself, a higher, better faith had come to him in
these years in the wild, and the basic prayer, the first and last cry of
all mankind, came easily to his lips: “Oh, Lord, lead me not into
temptation, and deliver me from evil!”
Yet it was a higher wisdom that temptation should come to him, in an
unexpected form, before the day that he saw break over the eastern hills
sloped down again to darkness.
The party of five had made serious inroads in the small caribou he had
brought to camp, and partly with the idea of procuring fresh meat, and
partly because he wanted to be alone with his bitter thoughts, Pete
announced his intention of penetrating the interior on a hunting
expedition. He wanted the rugged hills to himself to-day, and since
Dorothy was lame from a stiff climb of the evening previous, it did not
surprise him when she declined his invitation to go. Ivan, however,
looked up from his book with heightened interest.
“I’m getting soft as mud from too much ease,” he said. “I believe I’ll
go with you this morning. I believe I can crack down one of those
caribou with my pistol.”
Pete stiffened slightly. “I don’t see how both of us can go, unless Mrs.
Newhall wants to go too,” he said quietly, so not to be overheard by the
two natives.
“True enough. It had slipped my mind for a minute. We’ll take the
natives with us—I think it would be a good plan to kill several
caribou, if we run into them, and try to cure them—in preparation for
emergencies—and these men can help you carry the meat into camp. She’s
safe enough by herself, isn’t she?”
“As safe as she could be anywhere in the world. None of the wild beasts
of the region will come within miles of her, and there are no other
humans.”
“I’ll stay and struggle with your book then, Ivan,” Dorothy said. “You
four valiant hunters need not worry about me at all.”
Since Ivan insisted upon going, Pete welcomed the plan that the guides
should come too; and not only for Dorothy’s sake but for his own. He
could not tell what madness might be wakened in him should he venture
alone with his rival into the solitudes. He was nervous, distraught,
from the mental anguish of the night just gone; and the presence of the
two guides would serve to keep him in bounds. Soon they filed away into
the hills, Ivan leading with his pistol, then Pete, carrying his rifle,
and the two Indians, unarmed except for their hunting knives, bringing
up the rear.
They deployed like a squad of advancing infantrymen as they neared the
first alder thicket, the two Indians remaining at the extreme right and
following a deeply worn bear trail, like the ruts of an old road, that
conducted them easily through the heavy barrier of brush; and Pete and
Ivan seeking separate trails to the left. They were in file again when
they reached the more or less open hillside, but because of greater
skill at choosing the trail, the two natives were more than a hundred
yards ahead of Ivan, and Pete was thirty yards farther in the rear.
At that instant Peter caught the unmistakable thumping sound of running
caribou, and turning, he had a brief glimpse of a barren doe in the
brush thickets behind. She had evidently lain quietly while the four men
were passing, but catching the human smell that had streamed behind
them, had leaped up and was seeking safety in flight. The animal was
better than two hundred yards distant when Pete glimpsed her again,
running in a great arc up the hill. She made the poorest kind of a
target as she leaped through the scattered clumps of brush, but eager to
procure meat as near camp as possible and not to miss any chances, and
perhaps slightly startled and out of hand by the animal’s sudden
appearance, Pete fired vainly at every opportunity. Whether or not he
hit the animal at all he could not tell, for at the fourth shot she
disappeared in the thicket almost opposite Ivan.
The echo of the rifle report rolled, dimmed, and was still, and the men
stood in those queer, fixed attitudes that almost invariably follow any
excitement. Presently Ivan beckoned and pointed into the brush thicket
beside him.
“She’s right in here,” he called. “You must have got her that last shot.
I hear her thrashing around.”
It seemed entirely probable that the deer had swept through the brush
thicket unseen and had fallen wounded but a few yards from Ivan. Pete
started to grope for further shells; Ivan peered into the brush.
It seemed to the head guide that, as he paused, he could hear faintly
the rustle and stir in the brush that came so distinct to Ivan; and he
was not greatly surprised to see the latter draw his pistol and begin to
fire in evident excitement. He supposed, of course, that the man was
merely putting the finishing touches to the fallen caribou. No blame
could be laid on Pete that he did not call a warning; he did not
distinguish the real identity of the creature in the thickets until it
was too late.
It was not a dying caribou that thrashed the leafy branches back and
forth. The animal that suddenly bounded out of the thickets was a bear
cub of that season, and it was squealing in mortal agony from the pistol
lead. There was no danger in him; he was less than knee height and was
desperately seeking flight. But Pete knew, and the Indians, appalled on
the hill above, knew too that a squealing cub means an enraged mother
not far off.
And in the wink of an eye the great, shaggy dam came roaring out of the
thickets like an avalanche,—straight toward the hapless Russian.
Fear-ridden though she was, the she-bear could not seek flight when her
dying cub cried for help. This was simply the mother instinct, appearing
in all creatures high and low, but particularly developed in these high,
intelligent mammals, the grizzly bears. She charged with unspeakable
ferocity and power, ears laid back against the burly head, fangs
flashing, high shoulders rocking as the great, curved claws slashed
through the moss. She was a huge beast—weighing more than a thousand
pounds—and the power of those terrific muscles was beyond the wit of
man to estimate. One blow of the great forepaw would shatter the most
sturdy human body like an eggshell.
Ivan had never been in greater danger, nor was such conceivable. The two
natives on the hill above instantly gave him up for lost and fled
desperately, lest the enraged bear should turn on them. And in Pete’s
mind two thoughts flashed like rockets,—one of the white, pure
brilliance of a star, the other so strange and sullen and red, like the
sun seen through the smoke of a forest fire, that it seemed beyond the
pale of heaven-born mankind. At that instant Pete knew surely that he
had only to hold his fire, and Ivan would be torn to pieces before his
eyes. In one little second this man he had hated in his heart would be
utterly destroyed, blasted and broken at the edge of the thicket; never
again to hold Dorothy in his caressing arms; never to claim her lips;
never to sail away with her back to the homeland, to light and love and
happiness. He would be lost to the world as Pete himself was lost. He
too would know the night’s cold, the storm yelling above him and the
cold light of the stars.
No blame could be laid on himself for failure to stop the charge. He had
but one shell in his gun, and he might have sore need of that in his own
defence. From the position in which he stood it was a doubtful shot at
best, not because he could not hit the great form of the bear, but
because likely he could not reach her vitals. Any other wound save to
the brain or vertebræ would only enrage her further: even a shot to the
heart would likely permit her some seconds of raging, slashing
destruction. Ivan was firing desperately with his pistol, and maddened
by many minor wounds, it was wholly probable that the bear would turn
toward Pete after she had struck her first enemy to the earth. In that
case the guide’s only hope would lie in saving his one shell for a shot
between the glowing eyes or into the throat at close range; there would
be no time or chance to procure other shells from his pocket and reload
his rifle.
Yet at the same instant that this knowledge came to him, his love for
Dorothy commanded him as never before. It was tried in the crucible of
his being, and the gold was left and the baser metals burned away. Her
happiness had been his pilot star until now, and he must follow it yet
even though it led him to his own destruction. Would he let his own base
passions blur his sight and blind him to its beauty, lead him from the
one course of manhood and decency over which it beckoned? Perhaps she
loved this man, and thus he must fight for him just as he would fight
for her.
These two opposing impulses, and all the thoughts that centered upon
them flashed to his consciousness in the twinkle of an eye. At such
times the brain moves like lightning, darting from cloud to cloud, at a
speed unguessed; and the bear had not completed one forward leap between
the time that Pete first saw her and that in which he knew his certain,
immutable course. The light and the shadow had battled in his being, for
one epochal instant of struggle; and then everything was suddenly clear
and bright as if the sun had come out and showed him a wide, straight
road. The infinite complexities of human existence were suddenly clear
as light. He wondered that he had ever been confused.
His gun sprang to his shoulder. He looked along the barrel. The bear had
reared up, preparing to strike, and at this range Pete could hardly miss
the huge form: the question was whether or not he could reach a vital
place. But at the crack of the rifle the roaring bear pitched forward,
in unearthly silence, in the moss.
Pete had shot somewhat to one side of where he had aimed, but by good
fortune the bullet had shattered the vertebræ and cut the spinal column.
A great wilderness power was laid low, and she would not rise again. The
rest was like a dream: Ivan shuddering, then pocketing his pistol; the
fleeing forms of the natives; the hills unchanged against the gray
clouds. This man was no coward—this son of Asia—and he was able to
smile faintly as he turned to his rescuer.
“That was a good shot, Pete,” he said in a voice that hardly trembled.
“I owe you some extra days’ pay for that. A few jumps more, and I’m
afraid we’d have had two handsome gentlemen to carry back to Georgia,
instead of one.”
But Pete scarcely heard. He was swept with exultation, not at the
successful shot he had made, but at his sudden freedom from the
dominance of his own passions. He need no longer fear his impulses. He
had escaped from himself and had come out beyond, true to his ideals and
his heritage of chivalry and manhood. He would not jeopardize Dorothy’s
happiness by any rash, selfish act; he could play the game through, gain
what happiness he could, and then wish her well as she sailed away and
left him to his waste places, the cruel passion of the elements and the
scourge of the storm.