XII
Virginia found the days much happier than she had hoped. She took a real interest in caring for their little cabin, cooking the meals, even mending Bill's torn clothes. She had a natural fine sense of flavors, and out of the simple materials that they had in store she prepared meals that in Bill's opinion outclassed the finest efforts of a French chef. He would exult over them boyishly, and she found an unlooked-for joy in pleasing him. She had made delicious puddings out of rice and canned milk and raisins, she knew just the identical number of minutes it required to broil a moose porterhouse just to his taste, and she could fry a grouse to surpass the most succulent fried chicken ever served in a southern home. All these things pleased her and occupied the barren hours. She learned to sew on buttons, wash her own clothes, and keep the cabin clean and neat as a hospital ward.
She liked the hours of sober talk in the evenings. Sometimes they would play through the records, and so well had Bill made his selections that she never tired of them. His preference tended toward melodies in the minor, wailing things that to him vaguely reflected the voices of the wild things and the plaintive utterances of the forest: she liked the soul-stirring, emotional melodies. They worked up a rare comradeship before the first week was done. She had never known a human being to whom she opened her thoughts more freely.
She had her lonesome hours, but not so many as she had expected. When time hung heavy on her hands she would take out one of the old magazines that Bill had brought up to read on the winter nights, and devour it from cover to cover. She had abundant health. The experience seemed to build her up, rather than injure her. Her muscles developed, she breathed deep of the cold, mountain air, and she had more energy than she could easily spend.
She fought away the tendency to grow careless in dress or appearance. She kept her few clothes clean and mended, she dressed her hair as carefully as in her city house. Her skin was clear and soft, but she didn't know how the wilderness life was affecting her beauty. What Bill observed he did not tell her. Often the words were at his lips, but he repressed them. In the first place he was afraid of speaking too feelingly and giving away his heart's secret; in the second he had a ridiculous fear that such a personal remark might tend to destroy the fine balance of their relationship. She had no mirror, but soon she became used to going without one. But one day, on one of their tramps, she caught a perfect image of herself in a clear spring.
She had stopped to drink, but for a few seconds she only regarded herself with speechless delight. She had had her share of beauty before; now perfect health had brought its marvelous and indescribable charm. Her hair was burnished and shimmering with life, her skin clear and transparent, her throat had filled out, and her eyes were bright and clear as she had never seen them. She felt no further need of cosmetics. Her lips were red, and Nature had brought a glow to her cheeks that no human skill could equal.
"Good Heavens, Bill!" she cried. "Why didn't you tell me that I was getting prettier every day?"
"I didn't know you wanted me to," he replied. "But you are. I've been noticing it a long time."
"You're a cold, impersonal person!" But at once her talk tripped on to less dangerous subjects.
Their cabin life was redeemed by their frequent excursions into the wild. The study of Nature was constantly more absorbing to the girl. Although the birds had all gone south—except such hardy fowl as the ptarmigan, that seemed to spend most of their time buried in the snow—there was still mammalian life in plenty in the forest. The little furred creatures still plied, nervous and scurrying as ever, their occupations; and the caribou still wandered now and then through their valley as they moved from ridge to ridge. The moose, however, had mostly pushed down to the lower levels.
The grizzlies had gone into hibernation, and their tracks were no longer to be seen in the snow; but the wolf pack still ran the ridges. And one day they had a miniature adventure that concerned the gray band.
They were climbing a ridge one wintry day, unappalled by the three feet or more of snow, when the girl suddenly touched his arm.
"First blood on caribou," she cried.
His eyes lighted, and he followed her gaze. Lately they had been having a friendly contest as to who would get the first glimpse of any living creature that they encountered in their tramps, and Bill was pleased to admit that he had been barely holding his own. The girl's eyes were practically as quick as his and better at long distances, and always there was high celebration when she saw the game first. But to-day they were fated for more exciting business.
The caribou were plunging as fast as they could through the snow. They came, in caribou fashion, in a long file, each stepping into the tracks of the other, and it was a good woodsman, coming along behind them, that could tell whether there were two or ten in the band. An old bull with sweeping horns led the file.
When going is at all easy, the caribou can travel at an incredible pace. Even their swinging trot can carry them from range to range in a single day; but when they choose to run their fastest, they seem to have wings. To-day, however, the soft snow impeded their speed. They seemed to be running freely enough, in great bounds, but Bill could tell that they were hard pressed. He would have liked to have taken one of the young cows to add to his larder, but they were too far to risk a shot. Then he seized the girl by the hand.
"Plow fast as you can up hill," he urged. "I think we'll see some action."
For he had guessed the impulse behind the wild race. They plunged through the snow as fast as they could, then sank almost out of sight in the drifts. And in a moment Bill pointed to a gray, shadowy band that came loping toward them out of the haze.
It was the wolf pack, and they were deep in the hunt. They were great, shaggy creatures, lean and savage, and Virginia felt glad that this stalwart form was beside her. The wolves of the North, when the starvation time is on, are not always to be trusted. They looked ghostly and incredibly large through the flurries.
They came within a hundred yards, then their keen senses whispered a warning. Just for an instant they stood motionless in the snow, heads raised and fierce eyes grazing.
Bill raised his rifle. He took quick aim at the great leader, and the report rang far through the silences. But the entire pack sprang away as one.
"I can't believe that I missed," Bill cried. He started to take aim again.
But no second shot was needed. Suddenly the pack leader leaped high in the air and fell almost buried in the snow. His brethren halted, seemingly about to attack the fallen, but Bill's shout frightened them on. The great, gaunt creature would sing no more to the winter stars.
He was a magnificent specimen of the black wolf, head as large as that of a black bear, and a pelt already rich and heavy. "We'll add a few more from time to time," Bill told her, "and then you can have a coat."
In these excursions Virginia learned to use her pistol with remarkable accuracy. Her strength increased: she could follow wherever Bill led. Sometimes they climbed snowy mountains where the gales shrieked like demons, sometimes they dipped into still, mysterious glens; they tracked the little folk in the snow, and they called the moose from the thickets beside the lake.
They did not forget their graver business. Ever Virginia kept watch for a track that was not an animal track, a blaze on a tree that was not made by the teeth of a porcupine or grizzly, a charred cook rack over the ashes of a fire. But as yet they had found no sign of human wayfarers other than themselves. There were no cut trees, no blazed trails, no sign of a habitation. Yet she didn't despair. She had begun to have some knowledge of the great distances of the region: she knew there were plenty of valleys yet unsearched.
Bill never ceased to search for his mine. He looked for blazes too, for a sign of an old camp or a pile of washings beside a stream. When he found an open stream he would wash the gravel, and it seemed to him he combed the entire region between the two little tributaries of Grizzly River indicated on his map. But with the deepening snow search was ever more difficult. Unlike Virginia, he was almost ready to give up.
The spirit of autumn had never shown her face again: winter had come to stay. Every day the snow deepened, the cold in the long nights was more intense. Travel was no longer possible without snowshoes, but the hide stretched in the cabin was almost dry and ready to cut into thongs for the webs. The less turbulent stretches of Grizzly River were frozen fast: the actual crossing of the stream was no longer a problem. Beyond it, however, lay only wintry mountains, covered to a depth of five feet or more with soft and impassable snow; and until the snow crusted, the journey to Bradleyburg was as impossible as if they had been cast away on another sphere.
Even the rapids of the river had begun to freeze. Often the clouds broke away at nightfall and let the cold come in,—stabbing, incredible cold that meant death to any human being that was caught without shelter in its grasp. The land locked tight: no more could Bill hunt for his mine in the creek beds. The last of the moose went down to their yarding grounds, and even the far-off glimpse of a caribou was a rarity. The marmots had descended into their burros, the snowshoe rabbit hopped, a lonely figure in the desolation, through the drifts. Such of the other little people that remained—the weasel and the ptarmigan—had turned to the hue of the snow itself.
But now the snowshoe frames were done, wrought from tough spruce, and the moose hide cut into thongs and stretched across to make the webs. For a few days Bill and Virginia had been captives in the cabin, and they held high revels in celebration of their completion. Now they could go forth into the drifts again.
It did not mean, however, that the time was ripe for them to take their sled and mush into Bradleyburg. The snow was still too soft for long jaunts. They had no tent or pack animals, and they simply would have to wait for the most favorable circumstances to attempt the journey with any safety whatever. In the soft snow they could only make, at the most, ten miles a day; the sled was hard to drag; and the bitter cold of the nights would claim them quickly. It was not merely an alternative or a convenience with them to wait for the crust. It was simply unavoidable. Worst of all, the early winter storms were not done; and a severe blizzard on the trail would put a swift end to their journey.
But once more Virginia could search the snow for traces of her lover. And after the jubilant evening meal—held in celebration of the completion of the snowshoes—the girl stood in the cabin doorway, looking a long time into the snow-swept waste.
It was a clear, icy night, and the Northern Lights were more vivid and beautiful than she had ever seen them. Bill thought that she was watching their display; if he had known the real subject of her thoughts, he would not have come and stood in the doorway with her. He would have left her to her dreams.
The whole forest world was wan and ghostly in the mysterious light. The trees looked strange and dark, perspective was destroyed, the far mountain gleamed. The streamers seemed to come from all directions, met with the effect of collision in the sky, and filled the great dome with uncanny light. Sometimes the flood of radiance would spread and flutter in waves, like a great, gorgeous canopy stirred by the wind, and fragments and balls of fire would spatter the breadth of the heavens. As always, in the face of the great phenomena of nature, Bill was deeply awed.
"We're not the only ones to see it," Virginia told him softly. "Somewhere I think—I feel—that Harold is watching it too. Somewhere over this snow."
Bill did not answer, and the girl turned to him in tremulous appeal.
"Won't you find him for me, Bill?" she cried. "You are so strong, so capable—you can do anything, anything you try. Won't you find him and bring him back to me?"
The man looked down at her, and his face was ashen. Perhaps it was only the effect of the Northern Lights that made his eyes seem so dark and strange.