XIII
One clear, icy night a gale sprang up in the east, and Virginia and Bill fell to sleep to the sound of its complaint. It swept like a mad thing through the forest, shattering down the dead snags, shaking the snow from the limbs of the spruce, roaring and soughing in the tree tops, and blustering, like an arrogant foe, around the cabin walls. And when Bill went forth for his morning's woodcutting he found that his snowshoes did not break through the crust.
The wind had blown and crusted the drifts during the night. But it did not mean that he and his companion could start at once down the settlements. The crust was treacherous and possibly only temporary. The clouds had overspread again, and any moment the snowfall might recommence. The fact remained, however, that it was the beginning of the end. Probably in a few more weeks, perhaps days, it would be safe to start their journey. Bill was desolated by the thought.
The morning, however, could not be wasted. It permitted him to make a dash over to a certain stream further down toward the Yuga River in search of any sign of the lost mine. The stream itself was frozen to blue steel, and the snow had covered it to the depth of several feet, but there might be blazes on the trees or the remnants of a broken cabin to indicate the location of the lost claim. He had searched this particular stream once before, but it was one of the few remaining places that he hadn't literally combed from the springs out of which it flowed to its mouth. He started out immediately after breakfast.
It was not to be, however, that Bill should make the search that day. When about two miles from the cabin he saw, through a rift in the distant trees, a distinct trail in the snow.
It was too far to determine what it was. Likely it was only the track of a wild animal,—a leaping caribou that cut deep into the drifts, or perhaps a bear, tardy in hibernating. No one could blame him, he thought, if he didn't go to investigate. It was a matter he would not even have to mention to Virginia. He stood a moment in the drifts, torn by an inner struggle.
Bill was an extremely sensitive man and his senses were trained even to the half-psychic, mysterious vibrations of the forest life, and he had a distant premonition of disaster. All of his fondest hopes, his dreams, all of the inner guardians of his own happiness told him to keep to his search, to journey on his way and forget he had seen the tracks. Every desire of Self spoke in warning to him. But Bill Bronson had a higher law than self. Long ago, in front of the ramshackle hotel in Bradleyburg, he had given a promise; and he had reaffirmed it in the gleam of the Northern Lights not many nights before. There was no one to hold him to his pledged word. There were none that need know; no one to whom he must answer but his own soul. Yet even while he stood, seemingly hesitating between the two courses, he already knew what he must do.
It was impossible for Bill to be false to himself. He could not disobey the laws of his own being. He would be steadfast. He turned and went over to investigate the tracks.
He was not in the least surprised at their nature. Those that had ordained his destiny had never written that he should know the good fortune of finding them merely the tracks of animals. The trail was distinctly that of snowshoes, and it led away toward the Yuga River.
Bill glanced once, then turned back toward his cabin. He mushed the distance quickly. Virginia met him with a look of surprise.
"I'm planning a longer dash than I had in mind at first," he told her. "It's important——" he hesitated, and a lie came to his lips. But it was not such a falsehood as would be marked, in ineffaceable letters, against him on the Book of Judgement. He spoke to save the girl any false hopes. "It's about my mine," he said, "and I'll not likely be back before to-morrow night. It might take even longer than that. Would you be afraid to stay alone?"
"There's nothing to be afraid of here," the girl replied. "But it will be awfully lonesome without you. But if you think you've got a real clew, I wouldn't ask you to stay."
"It's a real clew." The man spoke softly, rather painfully. She wondered why he did not show more jubilation or excitement. "You've got your pistol and you can bolt the door. I've got plenty of wood cut. There's kindling too—and you can light a fire in the morning. If you put a big log on to-night you'll have glowing coals in the morning. It will be cold getting up, and I wish I could be here to build your fire. But I don't think I can."
She gave him a smile and was startled sober in the middle of it. All at once she saw that the man was pale. He had, then, found a clew of real importance. "Go ahead, of course," she told him. "We'll fix some lunch for you right away."
He took a piece of dried moose meat, a can of beans and another of marmalade, and these, with a number of dried biscuits, would comprise his lunch. "Be careful of yourself," he told her at parting. "If I don't get back to-morrow, don't worry. And pray for me."
She told him she would, but she did not guess the context of the prayer his own heart asked. His prayer was for failure, rather than success.
Following his own tracks, he went directly back to the mysterious snowshoe trail. He followed swiftly down it, anxious to know his fate at the first possible instant. He saw that the trail was fresh, made that morning; he had every reason to think that he could overtake the man who had made it within a few hours.
He was not camped on the Yuga,—whoever had come mushing through the silences that morning. From the river to that point where he had found the tracks was too great a distance for any musher to cover in the few hours since dawn. There was nothing to believe but that the stranger's camp lay within a few miles of his own. He decided, from his frequent stops, that the man had been hunting; there was nothing to indicate that he was following a trap line. The frequent tracks in the snow, however, indicated an unusually good tracking country. He wondered if strangers—Indians, most likely—had come to poach on his domain.
He did not catch up with the traveler in the snow. The man had mushed swiftly. But shortly after the noon hour his keen eyes saw a wisp of smoke drifting through the trees, and his heart leaped in his breast. He pushed on, emerging all at once upon a human habitation.
It was a lean-to, rather than a cabin. Some logs had been used in its construction, but mostly its walls were merely frames, thatched heavily with spruce boughs. A fire smoldered in front. And his heart leaped with indescribable relief when he saw that neither of the two men that were squatted in the lean-to mouth was the stranger that had passed his camp six years before.
Bill had old acquaintance with the type of man that confronted him now. One of them was Joe Robinson,—an Indian who had wintered in Bradleyburg a few years before. Bill recognized him at once; he came of a breed that outwardly, at least, changes little before the march of time. There was nothing about him to indicate his age. He might be thirty—perhaps ten years older. Bill felt fairly certain, however, that he was not greatly older. In spite of legend to the contrary, a forty-year old Indian is among the patriarchs, and pneumonia or some other evil child of the northern winter, claims him quickly.
Joe's blood, he remembered, was about three-fourths pure. His mother had been a full-blooded squaw, his father a breed from the lake region to the east. He was slovenly as were most of his kind; unclean; and the most distinguished traits about him were not to his credit,—a certain quality of craft and treachery in his lupine face. His yellow eyes were too close together; his mouth was brutal. His companion, a half-breed with a dangerous mixture of French, was a man unknown to Bill,—but the latter did not desire a closer acquaintance. He was a boon companion and a mate for Joe.
Yet both of them possessed something of that strange aloofness and dignity that is a quality of all their people. They showed no surprise at Bill's appearance. In these mighty forests human beings were as rare a sight as would be an aeroplane to African savages, yet they glanced at him seemingly with little interest. It was true, however, that these men knew of his residence in this immediate section of Clearwater. The loss of his father's mine was a legend known all over that particular part of the province; they knew that he sought it yearly, clear up to the trapping season. When the snows were deep, they were well aware that he ran trap lines down the Grizzly River. Human inhabitants of the North are not so many but that they keep good track of one another's business.
But they had a better reason still for knowing that he was near. The prevailing winds blew down toward them from Bill's camp, and sometimes, through the unfathomable silence of the snowy forest, they had heard the faint report of his loud-mouthed gun.
It is doubtful that a white man—even a resident of the forest such as Bill—could ever have heard as much. He was a woodsman, but he did not inherit, straight from a thousand woodsman ancestors, perceptions almost as keen as those of the animals themselves. As it was, he hadn't had a chance to guess their presence. The wind always carried the sound of their rifles away from him rather than toward him; besides, their guns were of smaller caliber and had a less violent report.
Last of all, they had been careful about shooting. For a certain very good reason they had no desire for Bill to discover their presence. There are certain laws, among the northern men, as to trapping rights. Nothing can be learned in the provincial statute books concerning these laws. Mostly they are unwritten; but their influence is felt clear beyond the Arctic Circle. They state quite clearly that when a man lays down a line of traps, for a certain distance on each side of him the district is his, and no one shall poach on his preserves. And these Indians had lately been partners in an undertaking to clear the whole region of its furs.
They had no idea but that Bill had discovered their trap lines and had come to make trouble. For all that they sat so still and aloof, Joe's mind had flashed to his rifle in the corner of the lean-to, six feet away. He rather wished it was nearer. His friend Pete the Breed was considerably reassured by the feel of his long, keen-bladed knife against his thigh. Knives, after all, were very effective at close work. The two of them could really afford to be insolent.
And they were considerably amazed at Bill's first question. He had left the snowshoe trail that evidently passed in front of the shelter and had crossed the snow crust to the mouth of the lean-to. "Did one of you make those tracks out there?" he asked. He felt certain that one of them had. He only asked to make sure.
There was a quality in Bill's voice that usually, even from such gentry as this, won him a quick response. Joe's mind gave over the insolence it had planned. But for all that Bill's inner triumph was doomed to be short-lived.
"No," Joe grunted. "Our partner made it. Follow it down—pretty soon find another cabin."