An hour later the fighting forces in his body dragged Kent back into
existence. He opened his eyes. The shock of what had happened did not
at once fall upon him. His first sensation was of awakening from a
sleep that had been filled with pain and horror.
Then he saw a black rock wall opposite him; he heard the sullen roar of
the stream; his eyes fell upon a vivid patch of light reflected from
the setting sun. He dragged himself up until he was on his knees, and
all at once a thing that was like an iron hoop--choking his
senses--seemed to break in his head, and he staggered to his feet,
crying out Marette's name. Understanding inundated him with its horror,
deadening his tongue after that first cry, filling his throat with a
moaning, sobbing agony. Marette was gone. She was lost. She was dead.
Swiftly, as reason came, his eyes took in his environment. For a
quarter of a mile above him he could see the white spume between the
chasm walls, darkening with the approach of night. He could hear more
clearly the roar of the death-floods. But close to him was smooth
water, and he stood now on a shelving tongue of rock and shale, upon
which the current had flung him. In front of him was a rock wall.
Behind him was another. There was no footing except where he stood. And
Marette was not with him.
Only the truth could batter at his brain as he stood there. But his
physical self refused to accept that truth. If he had lived, she must
live! She was there--somewhere--along the shore--among the rocks--
The moaning in his throat gave way to the voicing of her name. He
shouted, and listened. He swayed back along the tongue of rock to the
boulder-strewn edge of the chasm wall. A hundred yards farther on was
the opening of the Chute. He came out of this, his clothes torn from
him, his body bleeding, unrecognizable, half a madman,--shouting her
name more and more loudly. The glow of the setting sun struck him at
last. He was out from between the chasm walls, and it lighted up the
green world for him. Ahead of him the river widened and swept on in
tranquil quiet.
And now it was no longer fear that possessed him. It was the horrible,
overwhelming certainty of the thing. The years fell from him, and he
sobbed--sobbed like a boy stricken by some great childish grief, as he
searched along the edge of the shore. Over and over again he cried and
whispered Marette's name.
But he did not shout it again, for he knew that she was dead. She was
gone from him forever. Yet he did not cease to search. The last of the
sun went out. Twilight came, and then darkness. Even in that darkness
he continued to search for a mile below the Chute, calling her name
more loudly now, and listening always for the answer which he knew
would never come. The moon came out after a time, and hour after hour
he kept up his hopeless quest. He did not know how badly the rocks had
battered and hurt him, and he scarcely knew when it was that exhaustion
dropped him like a dead man in his tracks. When dawn came, it found him
wandering away from the river, and toward noon of that day, he was
found by Andre Boileau, the old white-haired half-breed who trapped on
Burntwood Creek. Andre was shocked at the sight of his wounds and half
dragged and half carried him to his shack hidden away in the forest.
For six days thereafter Kent remained at old Andre's place, simply
because he had neither the strength nor the reason to move. Andre
wondered that there were no broken bones in him. But his head was
terribly hurt, and it was that hurt that for three days and three
nights made Kent hover with nerve-racking indecision between life and
death. The fourth day reason came back to him, and Boileau fed him
venison broth. The fifth day he stood up. The sixth he thanked Andre,
and said that he was ready to go.
Andre outfitted him with old clothes, gave him a supply of food and
God's blessing. And Kent returned to the Chute, giving Andre to
understand that his destination was Athabasca Landing.
Kent knew that it was not wise for him to return to the river. He knew
that it would have been better for him both in mind and body had he
gone in the opposite direction. But he no longer had in him the desire
to fight, even for himself. He followed the lines of least resistance,
and these led him back to the scene of the tragedy. His grief, when he
returned, was no longer the heartbreaking agony of that first night. It
was a deep-seated, consuming fire that had already burned him out,
heart and soul. Even caution was dead in him. He feared nothing,
avoided nothing. Had the police boat been at the Chute, he would have
revealed himself without any thought of self-preservation. A ray of
hope would have been precious medicine to him. But there was no hope.
Marette was dead. Her tender body was destroyed. And he was alone,
unfathomably and hopelessly alone.
And now, after he had reached the river again, something held him
there. From the head of the Chute to a bend in the river two miles
below, his feet wore a beaten trail. Three or four times a day he would
make the trip, and along the path he set a few snares in which he
caught rabbits for food. Each night he made his bed in a crevice among
the rocks at the foot of the Chute. At the end of a week the old Jim
Kent was dead. Even O'Connor would not have recognized him with his
shaggy growth of beard, his hollow eyes, and the sunken cheeks which
the beard failed to hide.
And the fighting spirit in him also was dead. Once or twice there
leaped up in him a sudden passion demanding vengeance upon the accursed
Law that was accountable for the death of Marette, but even this flame
snuffed itself out quickly.
And then, on the eighth day, he saw the edge of a thing that was almost
hidden under an overhanging bank. He fished it out. It was Marette's
little pack, and for many minutes before he opened it Kent crushed the
sodden treasure to his breast, staring with half-mad eyes down where he
had found it, as if Marette must be there, too. Then he ran with it to
an open space, where the sun fell warmly on a great, flat rock that was
level with the ground, and with sobbing breath he opened it. It was
filled with the things she had picked up quickly in her room the night
of their flight from Kedsty's bungalow, and as he drew them out one by
one and placed them in the sun on the rock, a new and sudden rush of
life swept through his veins, and he sprang to his feet and faced the
river again, as if at last a hope had come to him. Then he looked down
again upon what she had treasured, and reaching out his arms to them,
he whispered,
"Marette--my little goddess--"
Even in his grief the overwhelming mastery of his love for the one who
was dead brought a smile to his haggard and bearded face. For Marette,
in filling her little pack on that night of hurried flight, had chosen
strange things. On the sunlit rock, where he had placed them, were a
pair of the little pumps which he had fallen on his knees to worship in
her room, and with these she had crowded into the pack one of the
billowing, sweet-smelling dresses which had made his heart stand still
for a moment when he first looked into their hiding-place. It was no
longer soft and cobwebby as it had been then, like down fluttering
against his cheeks, but sodden and discolored, as it lay on the rock
with little rivulets of water running from it.
With the shoes and the dress were the intimate necessities which
Marette had taken with her. But it was one of the pumps that Kent
picked up and crushed close to his ragged breast--one of the two she
had worn that first wonderful day she had come to see him at Cardigan's
place.
This hour was the beginning of another change in Kent. It seemed to him
that a message had come to him from Marette herself, that the spirit of
her had returned to him and was with him now, stirring strange things
in his soul and warming his blood with a new heat. She was gone
forever, and yet she had come back to him, and the truth grew upon him
that this spirit of her would never leave him again as long as he
lived. He felt her nearness. Unconsciously he reached out his arms, and
a strange happiness entered Into him to battle with grief and
loneliness. His eyes shone with a new glow as they looked at her little
belongings on the sunlit rock. It was as if they were flesh and blood
of her, a part of her heart and soul. They were the voice of her faith
in him, her promise that she would be with him always. For the first
time in many days Kent felt a new force within him, and he knew that
she was not quite gone, that he had something of her left to fight for.
That night he made his bed for a last time in the crevice between the
rocks, and his treasure was gathered within the protecting circle of
his arms as he slept.
The next day he struck out north and east. On the fifth day after he
left the country of Andre Boileau he traded his watch to a half-breed
for a cheap gun, ammunition, a blanket, flour, and a cooking outfit.
After that he had no hesitation in burying himself still deeper into
the forests.
A month later no one would have recognized Kent as the one-time crack
man of N Division. Bearded, ragged, long-haired, he wandered with no
other purpose than to be alone and to get still farther away from the
river. Occasionally he talked with an Indian or a half-breed. Each
night, though the weather was very warm, he made himself a small
camp-fire, for it was always in these hours, with the fire-light about
him, that he felt Marette was very near. It was then that he took out
one by one the precious things that were in Marette's little pack. He
worshipped these things. The dress and each of the little shoes he had
wrapped in the velvety inner bark of the birch tree. He protected them
from wet and storm. Had emergency called for it, he would have fought
for them. They became, after a time, more precious than his own life,
and in a vague sort of way at first he began to thank God that the
river had not robbed him of everything.
Kent's inclination was not to fight himself into forgetfulness. He
wanted to remember every act, every word, every treasured caress that
chained him for all time to the love he had lost. Marette became more a
part of him every day. Dead in the flesh, she was always at his side,
nestling close in the shelter of his arms at night, walking with her
hand in his during the day. And in this belief his grief was softened
by the sweet and merciful comfort of a possession of which neither man
nor fate could rob him--a beloved Presence always with him.
It was this Presence that rebuilt Kent. It urged him to throw up his
head again, to square his shoulders, to look life once more straight in
the face. It was both inspiration and courage to him and grew nearer
and dearer to him as time passed. Early Autumn found him in the Fond du
Lac country, two hundred miles east of Fort Chippewyan. That Winter he
joined a Frenchman, and until February they trapped along the edges of
the lower fingers of the Barrens.
He came to think a great deal of Picard, his comrade. But he revealed
nothing of his secret to him, or of the new desire that was growing in
him. And as the Winter lengthened this desire became a deep and abiding
yearning. It was with him night and day. He dreamed of it when he
slept, and it was never out of his thoughts when awake. He wanted to go
HOME. And when he thought of home, it was not of the Landing, and not
of the country south. For him home meant only one place in the world
now--the place where Marette had lived. Somewhere, hidden in the
mountains far north and west, was that mysterious Valley of Silent Men
where they had been going when her body died. And the spirit of her
wanted him to go to it now. It was like a voice pleading with him,
urging him to go, to live there always where she had lived. He began to
plan, and in this planning he found new joy and new life. He would find
her home, her people, the valley that was to have been their paradise.
So late in February, with his share of the Winter catch in his pack, he
said good-by to Picard and faced the River again.