LAC TREMBLANT
"Across the ice that never froze
The snow that never bore,
My love ran out to follow me--
To follow to the shore."
_The Day the World Went Mad._
It may be true that I swore aloud; but what I meant by it was more like
praying. Over me was the blue winter sky and the gold sun; under me the
treacherous spread of the lake that was no lake, that one misstep might
send me through, to God knew what hideous depth of unfrozen water, or
bare, bone-shattering stone; behind me were Macartney and Macartney's
men; and close up to me, nearer every second, my Paulette, my dream girl
who had never been mine. There was nothing to do for both of us but to
keep on crossing Lac Tremblant. Missteps might be death, but turning
back was worse--for her, anyway.
I yelled, "Keep wide! Get abreast of me--don't take any direction you
don't see me take. But _keep wide_!" Because what held one of us would
never hold two, and behind me, running in my tracks----Well, even a
light girl would not run long!
Paulette only screamed, "Yes. Keep on! They're coming!" She may have
needed her breath, I don't know; but she didn't run like it. She ran
like a deer, with my own flat, heel-dragging stride on the snowshoes I
had not thought she knew how to use. One more shot came after us. I
yelled again to her to keep wide and heard her sheer off a little to
obey me; but she still ran behind me. God knows I didn't realize, till
afterwards, that it was to keep Macartney from shooting me. I didn't
even wonder why Collins and Dunn weren't firing into the brown of
Macartney's men with Marcia's rifle and popgun. I was too busy watching
the snow surfaces before me.
There was a difference in them. I can't explain what, but a difference
between where there was water to buoy the snow, and where it lay on
shell ice. The open black holes where there was nothing at all any one
could see, and I didn't worry over them. I only knew we must run over
water, or the light stuff under us would let us through. I kept moving
my hand in infinitesimal signals to Paulette, and God knows she was
quick at understanding. My heart was in my mouth for her, but she never
made a mistake, or a stumble where a stumble would have meant the end.
She called to me suddenly; something that sounded like, "They're
coming!"
I turned my head and saw out of the tail of my eye, as a man sees when
he's riding a race. They _were_ coming! Macartney's men, and--I
thought--Macartney; but I knew better than to look long enough to make
sure. His men, anyhow, had raced out on the lake as we had raced, and
there was no need to watch what became of them. Their dying screams came
to us, as they floundered and sank in their heavy boots through snow and
frazil ice, to depths they would never get out of. I might have been
sick anywhere else. I was fierce with joy out there in Lac Tremblant,
running with a girl over the thin crust under which death lurked to
snatch at us, as it had snatched at Macartney's men. Neither of us
spoke. I was thinking too hard. I could have run indefinitely as we were
running, but Paulette was just a girl. What of Paulette if she slackened
with weariness, if I led her wrong by six inches, or missed a single
threatening sign on the stuff we fled over?
If I had been sure Macartney was drowned with his men, I might have
taken her back to La Chance; but I was not sure. And, Macartney or no
Macartney, the track I had led her out on the lake by was the only one I
would have dared trust to return on,--and it was all lumps of snowy
lolly and blue water, where Macartney's men had broken through. I looked
ahead of me with my mind running like a mill. We had done about half the
five-mile crossing; we might do the rest if we could stop and breathe
for ten minutes, for five, even for two. Only, in all the width of the
lake that lay like cake icing in front of us, there was not one place
where we could dare to stand. The water under us was higher than I had
ever known it. Not one single dagger-toothed rock showed as they had
showed when I crossed it in a canoe the night before it froze to the
thick slush that was all it ever froze to. There was not one single
place to----But violently, out of the back of my memory, something came
to me. There was one place in Lac Tremblant where, high water or low, a
man might always stand--if I could hit it in the smothering, featureless
snow.
"The island!" I gasped out loud. Because there was one--a high, narrow
island without even a bush on it--rising gradually, not precipitately
like the rest of the rocks in Lac Tremblant, out of the uncertain water.
But for half an hour I thought it might as well be non-existent. Stare
as I might I could see no sign of it--and suddenly I all but fell with
blessed shock. I was on it; on the highest end of it, with solid ground
under my feet; solid ground and safety, breath and rest. I yelled to
Paulette, "Jump to me!" and she jumped. That was all there was to it,
except a man and a girl, panting, staggering, clinging together, till
sense came to them, and they dropped flat in the snow.
I said sense, but I don't know that I had any. I lay there staring at
Paulette and her long bronze hair that had come down as she ran, till it
was like a mantle over her and the snow round her. I had never thought
women had hair like that. I cried out, "My God, Paulette, why did you
come?"
I may have sounded angry. I was, as a man always is angry when he has
dragged a woman into his danger. Paulette panted without looking at me.
"I--had to! The tunnel--caved in!"
"I told you to get out of it!" I sat up where I had flung myself down
and stared at her. She sat up, too, both of us crimson-faced and
dishevelled. But neither of us thought of that. I stormed like a fool.
"What possessed you to stay in the tunnel--or to follow me? I told you
to jump for the cave!"
"Well, I didn't!" Paulette stiffened as if she froze. "I hadn't time. I
would have had to cross the tunnel. And I hadn't _time_ to do anything
but jump to you and Collins before your stuff blew up. I'd just got on
your shelf when it went off, and it stunned me till I had just sense
enough left to lie still and hold on. But afterwards, when I saw what
you were going to do, I put on the snowshoes you'd left by the tunnel
entrance and came after you. I'm sorry I did, now!"
"But Collins----" I looked blankly across the two miles of quivering
death trap we still had to cross before we gained what safety there
might be in the Halfway shore and the neighborhood of Macartney's
picket, and my thoughts were not of Collins--"Why, in heaven's name,
didn't Collins have sense enough to lug you back into his cave with him
and Charliet, instead of letting you take a chance like this?"
"Collins couldn't get back himself," Paulette retorted, as if I were
unbearably stupid. "Nobody could get back! I told you the tunnel _caved
in_, till it was solid between us and the others. Collins saw I had to
follow you. In two more minutes Dick would have come to hunt Thompson's
stope for me, and we had no guns to stave him off. You and Collins left
them in the tunnel!" It was just what we had done, and I wasted good
time in remembering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and twisted back her
streaming cloud of hair. "So, as I had to come with you," she resumed
without looking at me, "don't you think we'd better get on? If you're
waiting for me to rest, you needn't."
I wasn't, altogether. I stared back over the perilous way we had come.
There was no black speck of any one following us on its treacherous
face; no sound of shots; no anything from the shore we had left. Yet,
"Where do you suppose Macartney is?" I asked involuntarily.
"Dead." Her voice was almost indifferent, but she shivered. "Or he'd
have gone on shooting at us."
I nodded, but I would have felt easier if I had thought so. Somehow I
didn't, I don't know why. I know nothing would have induced me to take
Paulette back to La Chance, even if the trodden lolly would have borne
us again. I had a pang about Collins, left alone there; but Collins
could take care of himself, and Paulette's shiver had reminded me we
should freeze to death if we loitered where we were. I pointed to the
snowy lake between us and the Halfway shore. "Can you do two more miles
of running, over that?"
"Yes," she glanced down at her slim, trained body, rather superbly.
"Only--there's no one following us! Have we got to be quite so quick?"
"Quicker! We don't know about Macartney. If he's alive he has a stable
full of horses, and he knows where we're running to. He may try to cut
us off." I half lied; he could not cut us off, since horses would be of
no use to him in the heavy snow, and on foot it would take him two days
to go round Lac Tremblant to the Halfway, where crossing the lolly could
bring us in two hours. But I had no mind to air my real reason for
haste.
I should have known Paulette was too shrewd for me. "I'm a fool--Lac
Tremblant never bears, of course," she said quite quietly. "Go on, Mr.
Stretton. Only--don't stop, if anything goes wrong with me!"
"Nothing will go wrong," said I, just as if I believed it. If she had
called me Nicky, as she had done by mistake the night before, when she
slept with her hand clasping mine, if she'd even looked at me, I must
have burst out that I loved her, past life and death, and out to the
world to come. But it was no time to force love-making on a girl who had
seen the man she meant to marry lie dead before her eyes. If she turned
shaky, or cried, I could never save her. For the bit of lake in front of
us was ten times worse than what we'd crossed. I knew that when I
tightened up the snowshoes silently and led my dream girl out on it. I
would have given half my life for a rope, such as people have on
glaciers. But I had no rope, and each of us would have to run, or sink,
alone.
I meant, of course----But that's no matter. I got Paulette off the
island and, inch by inch, feeling my way, back to the channel where
buoyant water, at least, lay under us. I twisted and turned like a
corkscrew, but I dared not leave it. Once I cautioned Paulette never to
try a short cut, just to keep abreast of me; and twice my heart was in
my mouth at a hollow, instant-long clatter under our shoes. But we got
on over the stuff somehow, leaving holes of blue water in our tracks,
with great gobbets of snow floating in them. The shore lay close in
front of us, with a hard distinct edge of shell ice showing where the
water stopped. I was just going to call out that in ten feet more we'd
be safe over the lolly, when--smash--both of us went through! I thought
I fell a mile before I hit the water that was going to drown us; hit it
knees first, just as I'd gone through, and--I sprawled in icy slush that
rose no higher than my waist. I was in a sort of pocket between two
rocks that were holding up the lolly. There was an avalanche of caving
snow and ice all round me, but I was not drowned or likely to be,--only
I barely thought of it. For I could not see Paulette. Suddenly, past
belief, I heard her scream: "Nicky!"
I fought blindly to the sound of her voice, wormed between my screening
rocks, and shouted as I stood up. She was not even in slush! She had
gone through shell ice to bare ground, a long strip of bare ground that
led straight to the Halfway shore; roofed, high above my head, with
shell ice and lolly that filtered a silver-green light. My dream girl
lay there in her little blue sweater with the wind knocked out of
her--and that was all. I kicked off my snowshoes that were not even
broken and carried her under the ice roof to the Halfway shore. I may
have thanked God aloud; I don't know. Only I carried her, with my face
close to hers, and the slush and snow from her falling over me as I
stumbled under the ice roof to the blessed shore. I had just sense
enough to drop her in the blinding daylight, and drop myself beside her.
I couldn't speak, from dead cold fear, now that I had saved her, of what
it would have been if I had not. For two gasping minutes we just lay
there.
Then Paulette said pantingly, "I'm so dreadfully sorry--I've been such a
trouble! But I couldn't do anything but come, and--I forgot you couldn't
want me!"
I sat up and saw her, sitting on a cold, bare, wind-swept rock that was
all the refuge I had to offer her. Half a mile farther on were food and
shelter in the Halfway shack--and it might as well have been in Heaven,
for with Macartney's men cached in it I naturally could not take her
there. Behind that, twenty-seven miles off, was Caraquet; but even a
girl with a trained body like Paulette's could never make twenty-seven
miles on top of all we'd done.
"It's no question of wanting you," I exclaimed angrily. "It is that I
don't know what to do. But want you--when do you suppose I haven't
wanted you, ever since the night I first saw you by Dudley's fire? What
do you suppose I'd ever have been in this game _for_, if I hadn't wanted
just you in all this world? My heart of hearts, don't you know I love
you?" I lost my head, or I never would have said it, for I saw her
flinch. That brought me back to myself in the snow and desolation round
us that stood for God's world as nothing else would have done. I burst
out in shame, "Oh, forgive me! I never meant to let that out. I know you
never cared a hang for me; that you were going to marry Dudley, if he
hadn't been killed!"
For one solid minute Paulette never opened her mouth. She sat like a
colored statue, with rose-crimson cheeks and gold-bronze hair, under the
white January sun. Her eyes were so dark in her face that they looked
like blue-black ink. "I--I never was engaged to Dudley," she gasped at
last, more as if it were jerked out of her than voluntarily. "I didn't
think it was any business of yours, but I never was. We--Dudley and
I--only said so, because it seemed the simplest way to manage Marcia,
when Dudley brought me here to get me out of that emerald business. He
was good to me, if ever a man was good to a girl he was only sorry for;
I can't forget that brought him to his death. I'm sick with sorrow for
him,--but I never was going to marry Dudley! He didn't even want me to.
He----Oh, _Nicky_!"
Because I couldn't stand it; I'd seen her eyes. I had both her hands in
mine, I think I was telling her over and over how I had always loved
her, how I had stood out of Dudley's way, that I didn't expect, of
course, that she could care about an Indian-faced fool like me,
when--suddenly--I knew! Like roses and silver trumpets and shelter out
there in the homeless snow, _I knew_! All Paulette said was, "Oh,
Nicky," again. But the two of us were in each other's arms.
I don't know how long we clung or what we said. But at last I lifted my
Indian-dark head from her gold one and spoke abruptly out of Paradise.
"By gad, I have it!"
"Have what?" Paulette gasped. "Oh, you certainly have most of my hair;
it's all wound up in your coat buttons--if you mean that!"
I didn't. "I meant I knew where we could go, and that's to Skunk's
Misery," I harked back soberly, remembering the boy I had left there
with a fire and shelter anyhow, if not food.
"But you said it was a horrible place!"
"So it is, when you have anywhere else to go. But we can't try the
Halfway with Macartney's men in it, and neither of us could make
Caraquet to-night. We've got to have shelter, darling."
Paulette stopped plaiting her hair in a thick rope. "Say that again,"
she ordered curiously.
"What--Skunk's Misery?" But suddenly I understood, and used that word I
had never said aloud before:
"_Darling_ darling, Skunk's Misery is our only chance. Get up and come
on!"
But she answered without moving.
"Want to tell you something first. The tunnel falling in wasn't all the
reason I ran after you. I thought--thought Dick might not dare to shoot
at you if I were between you and him, so----Oh, Nicky, _don't_ kiss my
horrid, chapped hands!"
But I was glad to hide my humbled face on them, remembering how I had
stormed at her. I muttered, "Why didn't you tell me--out there on the
lake?"
"Well, you were pretty unpleasant, and"--as I kissed her, my dear love I
had never thought to touch--"oh, Nicky, how could I tell you? I said
everything to you last night but '_Nicholas Dane Stretton, I love
you!_'--and all the notice you took was to kneel perfectly silent, with
a face as long as your arm. You never even answered me, when I called
you Nicky by mistake!"
I hadn't dared. But it was no time to be talking of those things. Let
alone that my wet breeches had frozen till I felt as if my legs didn't
belong to me, we had landed exactly where old Thompson had been drowned.
I wanted to get away from there, quickly; leaving no more trail than was
necessary. I looked round me and saw how to do it.
In front of us was the hole in the shore ice and all the smash and
flurry where we had gone through. Where we had crawled on shore, from
under the intact ice roof, was bare rock, wind-swept clean. It struck me
that with a little management, and to a cursory inspector, it could look
as though Paulette and I were drowned like Thompson. The snow had not
piled on this side the lake as it had on ours. Detached rocks, few but
practicable stepping-stones, lifted their bare bulk out of it, between
us and the spruce bush we had to strike through to avoid the Halfway and
Macartney's picket. Some kind of a trail we must leave to Skunk's
Misery, but it need not begin here, in the first place Macartney would
look, if he were alive to look anywhere. Paulette's eyes followed mine
as I thought it, and she nodded. It was without a track of any sort,
after the lake trail ended, that she and I stopped in the thick spruces
and put on our snowshoes for the last lap of the way to Skunk's Misery.
My dream girl's trained young body served her well. As she stepped out
after me, I would never have guessed she had run a yard. It was easy
enough to avoid the Halfway, and unlikely that Macartney's men would
ever discover our devious track in the thick bush. Crossing the Caraquet
road was the only place where we had to leave a track in the open. I did
the best I could with it by picking up Paulette, and carrying her and
her shoes into thick bush again; but I could not honestly feel much
pleasure in the result. Any one with any sense would know my sunken shoe
marks had carried double, but it was the best I could do. It was no
pleasure to me either to hear Paulette exclaim sharply, as I set her
down:
"Nicky, I _forgot_! Dick can snowshoe after us, if he's alive. Charliet
made a lot of snowshoes at odd times, to sell in Quebec if he ever went
back there. They were piled up in the shed behind the kinty, and I
believe Dick knew--though he didn't remember it in time to save his men.
If he follows us I"--her lip curled in fear and hatred--"Oh, I hope he's
dead!"
So did I. Yet somehow I had never felt it. "Well, if he isn't," I said
roughly, "he'll have to do twenty-two miles to catch up to our five, and
then some to Skunk's Misery. He couldn't make good enough time round the
lake to catch us to-night, supposing he knew where we were going; even
on the chance of him, we've got to have one night's rest. And our only
place to find it is Skunk's Misery!"
Paulette nodded and stepped out after me once more. It was dead toil in
the soft snow, and it was slow; for Macartney or no Macartney, there was
no making time in the untrodden bush. I cut our way as short as I dared,
but do the best I could it was dark when we came to that forlorn, evil
hollow in the gap of desolate hills that Caraquet folk called Skunk's
Misery. That had its points though, considering we needed to reach
Macartney's old lean-to unseen, for the Skunk's Misery population was in
bed, and as I said before, they had no dogs to bark at us. In dead
silence, with Paulette holding to my coat and our snowshoes under our
arms, we went Indian file through the maze of winding tracks Skunk's
Misery used for roads, under rocks and around them; and on the
hard-trodden paths our feet left no trace. At least, I thought so: and
it was just where I slipped up! If I had looked behind me, when Paulette
would not let me carry her snowshoes, I would have seen the tails of
them dragging a telltale cut in the snow behind her, as they sagged from
her tired arm. But my eyes were straight before me, on the door of
Macartney's lean-to. It hung open, as it had always hung, but I only
glanced in to make sure it was empty. It was elsewhere I was going,
around the huge boulder that backed the place, and down a gully that
apparently brought up against blind rock--only I knew better. I found
the opening of the rocky passage I had wormed down once before with my
back scraping the living rock between me and the sky, and on my hands
and knees, with Paulette after me, I went down it again. It ended
without warning, just as I had known it would end, in an open cave. A
glow of fire was ahead of me; and, stooping over it--what I had never
imagined I should see with joy and gratitude--the boy I had left there,
toasting a raw rabbit on a stick. That was all I saw. And what possessed
me I don't know, but as I stood up I turned on Paulette with a sudden
wave of stale jealousy overwhelming me, and a question I had kept back
all the afternoon:
"Paulette, you're sure--_sure_--it's me, and not Dudley? That you didn't
love the poor chap best?"
Paulette scrambled to her feet beside me. "It's you," she said clearly.
"I told you Dudley never loved me, or I him. I'll mourn for him always,
for he met his death through me. But he never wanted to marry me, and if
he were alive, he'd be the first person to tell you so!"
There was a pause, definite, distinct, while you could count five. The
boy at the fire started to frozen attention at sight of us, as sharply
as his distorted body could start. But before he could speak, or I did,
another voice answered Paulette's from the dark of the cave behind the
fire,--an unexpected, mind-shattering voice, that took me toward it with
one bound. "By gad," it said, "he would, would he? Two things have to go
to that!"
I stood paralyzed where I had jumped. Paulette's snowshoes dropped
clattering on the cave floor. Dudley Wilbraham, whom the wolves had
eaten--little, fat, with a face more like an egg than ever, but whole
and _alive_--stood in the dimness of the cave behind the fire and my
Skunk's Misery boy!