IX
There is a certain capacity in young and sturdy human beings for accepting the inevitable. When Virginia wakened the next morning, her physical distress was largely past and she was in a much better frame of mind. She pulled herself together, stiffened her young spine, and prepared to make the best of a deplorable situation. She had come up here to find her lost beloved, and she wasn't defeated yet. This very development might bring success.
She realized that the fact that she had thus found a measure of compensation for the disaster would have been largely unintelligible to most of the girls of her class,—the girls she knew in the circle in which she had moved. It was not the accustomed thing to remain faithful to a fiance who had been silent an missing for six years, or to seek him in the dreary spaces of the North. The matter got down to the simple fact that these girls were of a different breed. Culture and sophistication and caste had never destroyed an intensity and depths of elemental passion that might have been native to these very wildernesses in which she was imprisoned. Cool an self-restrained to the finger tips, she knew the full meaning of fidelity. Orphaned almost in babyhood, she had lived a lonely life: this girlhood love affair of hers had been her single, great adventure. She had been sure that her lover still lived when all her friends had judged him dead. Months and years she had dreamed of finding him, of sheltering again in his arms, and proving to all the world that her faith was justified.
Bill was already up, and the room warmed from the fire. The noise of his ax blows had wakened her. And she took advantage of his absence to dress.
"You up?" he cried in delight when she entered. His arms were heaped with wood. "I'm not sure that you hadn't ought to rest another day. How do you feel?"
"As good as ever, as far as I can tell. And pretty well ashamed of being such a baby yesterday."
But his smile told her that he held no resentment. "I trust you'll be able to eat to-day?"
"Eat? Bill, I am famished. But first"—and her face grew instantly sober—"I want to know just how we stand, and what our chances are. I remember what you told me yesterday about getting out. But we can't live here on nothing. What about supplies?"
"That's what we've got to see about right now. It's an important matter, true enough. For a certain very good reason I couldn't make a real investigation till you got up. You'll see why in a minute. Well, we have a gun at least; you can see it behind the stove. It's an old thing, but it will still shoot. And we've got at least one box of shells for it—and not one of them must be wasted. They mean our meat supply. I'm still wearing my pistol, and I've got two boxes of shells for it in my pocket—it's a small caliber, and there's fifty in each box. There are plenty of blankets and cooking utensils, magazines for idle hours and, Heaven bless us, an old and battered phonograph on the table. Don't scorn it—anything that has to be packed on a horse this far mustn't be scorned. We can have music with our meals, if we like." He stopped and smiled.
"There's a cake of soap on the shelf," he went on, after the gorgeous fact of the phonograph had time to sink home, "and another among the supplies—but I'm afraid cold cream and toilet water are lacking. I don't even know how you'll comb your hair."
The girl smiled—really with happiness now—and fished in the pockets of a great slicker coat she had worn the night of the disaster. She produced a little white roll, and with the high glee opened it for him to see. Wrapped in a miniature face towel was her comb, a small brush, and a toothbrush!
They laughed with delight over the find. "But no mirror?" the man said solemnly.
"No. I won't be able to see how I look for weeks—and that's terrible. But where are your food supplies? I see those sacks hanging from the ceiling—but they certainly haven't enough to keep us alive. And there's nothing else that I can see."
"We'd have a hard time, if we had to depend on the contents of those sacks. Miss Tremont, can you cook?"
"Cook? Good Heavens—I never have. But I can learn, I suppose."
"You'd better learn. It will help pass away the time. I'll be busy getting meat and keeping the fires high, among other things."
"But what is there to cook?"
He walked, with some triumph, to the bunk on which she had slept the night before, and lifting it up, revealed a great box beneath. She understood, now, why he had not been able to make a previous investigation. They danced with joy at its contents,—bags of rice and beans, dried apples, marmalade and canned goods, enough for some weeks at least. Best of all, from Bill's point of view, there were a few aged and ripened plugs of tobacco, for cutting up for his pipe.
"The one thing we haven't got is meat," Bill told her, "except a little jerky; but there's plenty of that in the woods if we can just find it. And I don't intend to delay about that. If the snow gets much deeper, we'd have to have snowshoes to hunt at all."
"You mean—to go hunting to-day?"
"As soon as we can stir up a meal. How would pancakes taste?"
"Glorious! I'll cook breakfast myself."
"Not breakfast—lunch," he corrected. "It's already about noon. But it would be very nice if you'd do the cooking while I cut the night's fuel. You know how—dilute a little canned milk, and a little baking powder, stir in your flour—and it's wheat mixed with rye, and bully flour for flapjacks—and fry 'em thick. Set water to boil and we'll have coffee, too."
They went to their respective tasks. And the pancakes and coffee, when at last they were steaming on the little, crude board-table, were really a very creditable effort. They were thick and rich as befits wilderness flapjacks, but covered with syrup they slid easily down the throat. Bill consumed three of them, full skillet size, and smacked his lips over the coffee. Virginia managed two herself.
He helped her wash the scanty dishes, then prepared for the hunt. "Do you want to come?" he asked. "It's a cool, raw day. You'll be more comfortable here."
"Do you think I'd stay here?" she demanded.
She didn't attempt to analyze her feelings. She only knew that this cabin, lost in the winter forest, would be a bleak and unhappy place to endure alone. The storm and the snow-swept marshes, with Bill beside her, were infinitely preferable to the haunting fear and loneliness of solitude. The change in her attitude toward him had been complete.
Dressing warmly, they ventured out into the snowy wastes. The storm had neither heightened nor decreased. The snow still sifted down steadily, with a relentlessness that was someway dreadful to the spirit. The drifts were about their knees by now; and the mere effort of walking was a serious business. The winter silence lay deep over the wilderness.
It was a curious thing not to hear the rustle of a branch, the crack of a twig; only the muffled sound of their footsteps in the snow. Bill walked in front, breaking trail. He carried the ancient rifle ready in his hands.
The truth was that Bill did not wish to overlook any possible chance for game. Each hour traveling was more difficult, the snow encroached higher, and soon he could not hunt at all without snowshoes. It was not good for their spirits or their bodies to try to live without meat in the long snowshoe-making process. This was no realm for vegetarians. The readily assimilated animal flesh was essential to keep their tissues strong.
Fortune had not been particularly kind so far on this trip—at least from Virginia's point of view—but he did earnestly hope that they might run into game at once. Later the moose would go to their winter feeding grounds, far down the heights. Every day they hunted, their chance of procuring meat was less.
He led her over the ridge to the marshy shores of Gray Lake,—a dismal body of water over which the waterfowl circled endlessly and the loons shrieked their maniacal cries. He noticed, with some apprehension, that many sea birds had taken to the lake for refuge,—gulls and their fellows. This fact meant to the woodsman that great storms were raging at sea, and they themselves would soon feel the lash of them. They waited in the shadow of the spruce.
"Don't make any needless motions," he cautioned, "and don't speak aloud. They've got eyes and ears like hawks."
It was not easy to stand still, in the snow and the cold, waiting for game to appear. Virginia was uncomfortable within half an hour, shivering and tired. In an hour the cold had gripped her; her hands were lifeless, her toes ached. Yet she stood motionless, uncomplaining.
It was a long wait that they had beside the lake. The short, snow-darkened afternoon had not much longer to last. Bill began to be discouraged; he knew that for the girl's sake he must leave his watch. He waited a few minutes more.
Then the girl felt his hand on her arm. "Be still," he whispered. "Here he comes."
They were both staring in the same directions, but at first Virginia could not see the game. Her eyes were not yet trained to these wintry forests. It was a strange fact, however, that the announcement was like a hot stimulant in her blood. The sense of cold and fatigue left her in an instant. And soon she made out a black form on the far side of the lake.
"He's coming toward us," the man whispered.
Although she had never seen such an animal before, at once she recognized its kind. The spreading horns, the great frame, the long, grotesque nose belonged only to the moose,—the greatest of American wild animals. Her blood began to race through her veins.
The animal was still out of range, but the distance between them rapidly shortened. He was following the lake shore, tossing his horns in arrogance. Once he paused and gazed a long time straight toward them, legs braced and head lifted; but evidently reassured he ventured on. Now he was within three hundred yards.
"Why don't you shoot?" the girl whispered.
"I'm afraid to trust this old gun at that range. I could get him with my thirty-five. Now don't make a motion—or a sound."
Now the creature was near enough so that she could receive some idea of his size and power. She knew something of the quagmires such as lay on the lake shore. She had passed some of them on the journey. But the bull moose took them with an ease and a composure that was thrilling to see. Where a strong horse would have floundered at the first step, he stretched out his hind quarters, and, striking with his long, powerful front legs, pulled through. Then she was aware that Bill was aiming.
At the roar of the rifle she cried out in excitement. The old bull had traversed the marches for the last time: he had fought the last fight with his fellow bulls in the rutting season. He rocked down easily, and Bill's racing fingers ejected the shell and threw another into the barrel, ready to fire again if need be. But no second bullet was required. The man's aim had been straight and true, and the bullet had pierced his heart.
The two of them danced and shouted in the snow. And Virginia did not stop to think that the stress of the moment had swept her back a thousand—thousand years, and that her joy was simply the rapture of the cave woman, mad with blood lust, beside her mate.