XIV
Bill only had to turn to see the snowy roof of the cabin, two hundred yards away down the glade. Ordinarily his sharp eyes would have discerned it long before: perhaps the same inner spirit, encountered before this eventful day, was trying to protect him still. He turned without a word, and no man could have read the expression on his wind-tanned face. He mushed slowly on to his journey's end.
It was a new cabin, just erected, and smoke drifted faintly from its chimney. Bill rapped on the door.
"Come along in," some one answered gruffly. Bill removed his snowshoes, and the door opened before his hand.
He did not have to glance twice at the bearded face to know in whose presence he stood. His inner senses told him all too plainly. Changed as he was, there was no chance in heaven or earth for a mistake. This was Harold Lounsbury, the same man who had passed his camp years before, the same lost lover that Virginia had come to find.
Even now, Bill thought, it was not too late to withdraw. He could pretend that he had came to quarrel in regard to his trapping rights. After one glance he knew that, from the standard of good sense, there was a full reason for withdrawal. In the years he might even reconcile his own conscience to the act. Harold leaned forward, but he didn't get up to meet him.
Bill scarcely noticed the man's furtive preparations for self-defense. His rifle lay across his knees, and ostensibly he was in the act of cleaning it, but in reality he was holding it ready for Bill's first offensive move. He had known of Bill of old; in the circle in which he moved—lost utterly to the sight of the men of Bradleyburg—there were stories in plenty about this stalwart woodsman. For days—ever since he had come here with his Indians and laid down his trap line—he had dreaded just such a visit. The real reason for Bill's coming did not even occur to him.
Bill saw that the man was frightened. His lips were loose, his eyes nervous and bright, his hands did not hold quite steady. But all these observations were at once obliterated and forgotten in the face of a greater, more profound discovery. In one scrutinizing glance the truth swept him like a flood. Here was one that the wilderness had crushed in its brutal grasp. As far as Bill's standards were concerned, it had broken and destroyed him.
This did not mean that his health was wasted. His body was strong and trim: except for a suspicious network of red lines in his cheeks and a yellow tinge to the whites of his eyes, he would have seemed in superb physical condition. The evidence lay rather in the expression of his face, and most of all in the surroundings in which he lived.
He had been, to some extent at least, a man of refinement and culture when he had passed through Bill's camp so long ago. He had been clean-shaven except for a small mustache; courteous, rather patronizing but still friendly. Now he was like a surly beast. His eyes were narrow and greedy,—weasel eyes that at once Bill mistrusted and disliked. A scowl was at his lips, no more were they in a firm, straight line. The light and glory of upright manhood, if indeed he had ever possessed it, had gone from him now. He was a friend and a companion of Joe and Pete: in a measure at least he was of their own kind.
When the white man chooses to descend, even the savages of the forest cannot keep pace with him. Bill knew now why Harold had never written home. The wilderness had seized him body and soul, but not in the embrace of love with which it held Bill. Obviously he had taken the line of least resistance to perdition. He had forgotten the world of men; in reality he was no longer of it. Bill read the truth—a familiar truth in the North—in his crafty, stealthy, yet savage face.
He was utterly unkempt and slovenly. His coarse beard covered his lips, his matted hair was dull with dirt, his skin was scarcely less dark than that of the Indians themselves. The nails on his hands were foul; the floor of the house was cluttered with rubbish and filth. It was a worthy place, this new-built cabin! Even the desolate wastes outside were not comparable with this.
Yet leering through his degeneracy, his identity could not be mistaken. Here was the man Virginia had pierced the North to seek.
Harold removed his pipe. "What do you want?" he asked.
For a moment Bill did not answer. His thoughts were wandering afar. He remembered, when Harold had passed his camp, there had been something vaguely familiar, a haunting resemblance to a face seen long before. The same familiarity recurred to him now. But he pushed it away and bent his mind to the subject in hand. "You're Lounsbury, of course," he said.
"Sure." This man had not forgotten his name, in the years that he was lost to men. "I ask you again—what do you want?"
"You've been living on the Yuga. You came up here to trap in my territory."
The man's hands stirred, ever so little, and the rifle moved on his knees. "You don't own this whole country." Then he seemed to take courage from Bill's impassive face. He remembered his stanch allies—Pete and Joe. "And what if I did?"
"You knew I trapped here. You brought up Joe Robinson and a breed with you. You meant to clean up this winter—all the furs in the country."
Harold's face drew in a scowl. "And what are you goin' to do about it?"
"The queer thing is——" and Bill spoke quietly, slowly, "I'm not going to do anything about it—now."
Harold's crafty eyes searched his face. He wondered if Bill was afraid—some way it didn't fit into the stories that he had heard of him that this woodsman should be afraid. But he might as well go on that supposition as any other. "Maybe it's a good thing," he said. And for an instant, something of his lost suavity of speech came back to him. "Then to what—do I owe the honor of this visit?"
Bill sighed and straightened. The struggle within himself had, an instant before, waged more furiously than ever. Why should he not leave this man to his filthy cabin and his degeneracy and never let Virginia know of their meeting? He wondered if such had been his secret plan, concealed in the further recesses of his mind, when he had told her to-day's expedition concerned his mine,—so that he could withdraw if he wished. In this course most likely lay the girl's ultimate happiness, certainly his own. He could steal back; no one would ever know the truth. The man had sunk beneath her; even he, Bill, was more worthy of her than this degenerate son of cities and culture.
Yet who was he to dare to take into his own hands the question of Virginia's destiny? He had promised to bring her lost lover back to her; the fact that he was no longer the man she had known could be only a subterfuge to quiet his own conscience. Besides, the last sentence that the man had spoken had been singularly portentous. For the instant he had fallen into his own native speech, and the fact offered tremendous possibilities. Could it be that the old days were not entirely forgotten, that some of the virtues that Virginia had loved in him still dwelt in his degenerate hulk, ready to be wakened again? He had heard of men being redeemed. And all at once he knew his course.
So intent was he upon his thoughts that he scarcely heard the sound of steps in the snow outside the cabin door, then the noise of some one on the threshold in the act of removing snowshoes.
The task that confronted him now was that, no more and no less, to which he had consecrated his life,—to bring happiness to the girl he loved. There was work to do with this man. But even yet he might be redeemed; with Bill's aid his manhood might return to him. His own love for the girl tore at his heart, the image of his life stretched lonely and drear before him, yet he could not turn aside.
"I didn't come to see you about trapping. I came—about Virginia Tremont."
His eyes were on Harold's face, and he saw the man start. He had not forgotten the name. Just for an instant his face was stark pale and devoid of expression. "Virginia!" he cried. "My God, what do you know about her?"
But he didn't wait the answer. All at once he looked, with an annoyance and anxiety that at first Bill could not understand, toward the door of the cabin. The door knob slightly turned.
Bill wheeled, with a sense of vast and impending drama. Harold swore, a single brutal oath, then laughed nervously. An Indian squaw—for all her filth an untidiness a fair representative of her breed—pushed through the door and came stolidly inside. She walked to the back of the cabin and began upon some household task.
Bill's face was stern as the gray cliffs of the Selkirks when he turned again to Harold. "Is that your woman?" he asked simply.
Harold did not reply. He had not wished this man, emissary from his old acquaintances of his native city, to know about Sindy. He retained that much pride, at least. But the answer to Bill's question was too self-evident for him to attempt denial. He nodded, shrugging his shoulders.
Bill waited an instant; and his voice when he spoke again was singularly low and flat. "Did you marry her?"
Harold shrugged again. "One doesn't marry squaws," he replied.
Once more the silence was poignant in the wretched cabin. "I came to find Harold Lounsbury, a gentleman," Bill went on in the same strange, flat voice, "and I find—a squaw man."
Bill realized at once that this new development did not in the least affect his own duty. His job had been to find Harold and return him to Virginia's arms. It was not for him to settle the girl's destiny. For all he had spent his days in the great solitudes of nature he knew enough of life to know that women do not give their love to angels. Rather they love their men as much for their weaknesses as for their virtues. This smirch in Harold's life was a question for the two of them to settle between them.
It did, however, complicate the work of regeneration. Bill had known squaw men before, and few of them had ever regenerated. Usually they were men that could not stand the test of existence by their own toil: either from failure or weakness they took this sordid line of least resistance. From thence on they did not struggle down the trap line in the bitter winter days. They laid comfortably in their cabins and their squaws tended to such small matters. It was true that the squaws wore out quickly; sometimes they needed beating, and at about forty they withered and died, or else the blizzard caught them unprotected in the forest,—and then it became necessary to select another. This was an annoyance, but not a tragedy. One was usually as faithful and as industrious as another.
It was perfectly evident that Sindy had been at work setting out traps. Bill stared at the woman and for the moment he did not see the little sparks growing to flame in Harold's eyes.
"What did you say?" he asked, menacing. He had caught a word that has come to be an epithet in the North.
But by taking it up Harold made a severe strategical error. Bill had never hesitated, by the light of an ancient idiom, to call a spade a spade. Also he always had good reasons before he took back his words. "I said," he repeated clearly, "that I'd found—a squaw man."
Harold's muscles set but immediately relaxed again. He shrugged once. "And is it anybody's business but my own?" he asked.
"It hadn't ought to be, but it is," was the answer. "It's my business, and somebody else's too." he turned to the woman. "Listen, Sindy, and give me a polite answer. You're Joe Robinson's sister, aren't you?"
The Indian looked up, nodded, then went back to her work.
"Then you left Buckshot Dan—to come here and live with this white man?"
Harold turned to her with a snarl. "Don't answer him, Sindy. It's none of his business." Then his smoldering eyes met Bill's. "Now we've talked enough. You can go."
"Wait!" Something in the grave face and set features silenced the squaw man. "But it's true—we have talked just about enough. I've got one question. Lounsbury—do you think, by any chance—you've got any manhood left? Do you think you're rotten clear through?"
Harold leaped then, savage as a wolf, and his rifle swung in his arms. Instantly Bill's form, impassive before, seemed simply to waken with life. There was no rage in his face, only determination; but his arm drove out fast as a serpent's head. Seemingly with one motion he wrenched the gun from the man's hand and sent him spinning against the wall.
Before even his body crashed against the logs, Bill had whirled to face the squaw. He knew these savage women. It would be wholly in character for her whip a gleaming knife from her dress and spring to her man's aid. But she looked up as if with indifference, and once more went back to her work.
Bill was considerably heartened. At least he didn't have to deal with the savage love that sometimes the Indian women bore the whites. Sindy was evidently wholly indifferent to Harold's fate. The match obviously had not been a great success.
For an instant Harold lay still, crumpled on the floor; then his bleeding hands fumbled at his belt. Once more Bill sprang and snatched him to his feet. The holster, however, was empty.
"No more of that," Bill cautioned. The man's eyes smoldered with resentment, but for the moment he was cowed. "Before you start anything more, hear what I've got to offer you." His voice lowered, and the words came rather painfully. "It's your one chance, Lounsbury—to come back. Virginia Tremont has come into the North, looking for you. She's at my camp. She wants to take you back with her."
Lounsbury's breath caught with a strange, sobbing sound. "Virginia—up here?" he cried. "Does she know about—this——" He indicated the cabin interior, and all it meant, with one sweep of his arm.
"Of course not. How could she? Whether you tell her or not is a matter for you and she to decide. She's come to find you—and bring you back."
"My God! To the States?"
"Of course."
For the instant the black wrath had left his face, and his thought swung backward to his own youth,—to the days he had known Virginia in a far-off city. He was more than a little awed at this manifestation of her love. He supposed that she had forgotten him long since and had never dreamed that she would search for him here.
Once more the expression of his face changed, and Bill couldn't have explained the wave of revulsion that surged through him. He only knew a blind desire to tear with his strong fingers those leering lips before him. Harold was lost in insidious speculations. He remembered the girl's beauty, the grace and litheness of her form, the holy miracle of her kisses. Opposite him sat his squaw,—swarthy, unclean, shapeless, comely as squaws go but as far from Virginia as night was from day. Perhaps it wasn't too late yet——
But at that instant he heard the East Wind on the roof, and he recalled that the old problem of existence faced him still. He had solved it up here. His cabin was warm, he was full-fed; the squaw grubbed his living for him out of the frozen forests. He did not want to be forced to face the competition of civilized existence again. He was dirty, care-free; his furs supplied food and clothes for him and certain rags for her, and filled his cupboard with strong drink. He remembered that the girl had had no money, and that he had come first to the North to find gold. If he had succeeded, if his poke were heavy with the yellow metal, he could go back to his city and take up his old life anew, but he couldn't begin at the bottom. With wealth at his command he might even find a more desirable woman than Virginia: perhaps the years had changed her even as himself. There was no need of dreaming further about the matter. Only one course, considering the circumstances, lay before him.
"You're very kind," he said at last. "But I won't go. Tell her you didn't find me."
Bill straightened and sighed. "Make no mistake about that, Lounsbury," he answered. "You're going with me—" and then he spoke softly, a pause between each word—"if I have to drag you there through the snow. I was told to bring you back, and I'm going to do it."
"You are, eh?" Harold scowled and tried to find courage to attack this man again. Yet his muscles hung limp, and he couldn't even raise his eyes to meet those that looked so steadfastly at him now.
"Sindy can go home to Buckshot Dan. He'll take her back—you stole her from him. And you, Lounsbury, rotten as you are, are coming with me. God knows I hope she'll drive you from her door; but I'm going to bring you, just the same."
Harold's eyes glowed, and for the moment his brain was too busy with other considerations openly to resent the words. Then his face grew cunning. It was all plain enough: Bill loved Virginia himself. Through some code of ethics that was almost incredible to Harold, he was willing to sacrifice his own happiness for hers. And the way to pay for the rough treatment he had just had, treatment that he couldn't, at present at least, avenge in kind, was to win the girl away from him. The thing was already done. She loved him enough to search even the frozen realms of the North for him: simply by a little tenderness, a little care, he could command her to love to the full again. The fact that Bill wanted her made her infinitely more desirable to him.
"You won't tell her—about Sindy?"
"Not as long as you're decent. That's for you to settle for yourself—whether she finds out about her."
Harold believed him. While he himself would have used the smirch as a weapon against his rival, he knew that Bill meant what he said. "I'll go," he announced. "If she's at the Gray Lake cabin, we've got plenty of time to make it before dark."