XVII
The addition of Harold to their number did not influence, for long, Virginia's old relations with Bill. They were comrades as ever; they talked and chatted around the little stove in the hushed nights; they played their favorite melodies on the battered phonograph, and they took the same joyous, exciting expeditions into the wild. These latter diversions were looked upon with no favor by Harold, but he couldn't see how he could reasonably interfere. Nor did he care, at first, to accompany them. He had no love for the snow-swept wastes.
The crust on the snow was steadily strengthening; most the days were clear and excessively cold. The journey could be undertaken soon. Only a few more days of the adventure remained.
Their excursions at first were a matter of pleasure only, but by one unexpected stroke from the sinister powers of the wild they were suddenly made necessary. Her first knowledge of the blow came when Bill entered her cabin to build the morning fire.
She had not yet risen. It had always been her practice to wait till the room was snug and warm before she dressed. She was asleep when Bill came in, and aroused by his footsteps, she was aware of the fleeting memory of unhappy dreams. She couldn't have told just what they were. It seemed to her that some unseen danger had been menacing her security,—that evil and dangerous forces were conspiring and making war against her. Hidden foes were in ambush, ready to pounce forth.
The danger seemed different and beyond that which she had faced every day: snow and cold and the other inanimate forces of the wild. And she was vastly relieved to hear Bill's voice calling her from sleep.
But the next instant her fears returned—not the ghastly fear of evil dreams but of actual and real disaster. It wasn't Bill's usual custom to waken her. He wanted her to spend as many as possible of the monotonous hours in sleep. There was a subdued quality in his voice, too, that once or twice she had heard before. She drew aside the curtain, far enough to see his face. There was no paleness, however, nor no fear, for all that his eyes were sober.
"You'd better get up as soon as you can, Virginia," he said. "We've got to take a real hunt to-day."
"Hunt? After meat?"
"Yes. We're face to face with a new problem. The pack came by last night—the wolf pack. As usual, when men are near, they didn't make a sound. I didn't hear them at all. And they got away with the big moose ham, hanging on the spruce. Stripped the bone clean."
"Then we're out of meat?"
"All except the little piece outside the door. We've been going through it pretty fast."
Bill spoke true. Their meat consumption had practically doubled since Harold had come. For all his lack of physical exercise, the latter was an unusually heavy eater.
"But we won't be able to find any now. The moose are gone——"
"We're not very likely to, that's certain; but it won't be a tragedy if we don't. It would only be an annoyance. It's true that we've got to have more supplies to start down—I don't believe we could make it through with what we have, considering the loss of this ham—but if it's necessary I can mush over to me Twenty-three Mile cabin and get the supplies I left over there. Harold tells me he hasn't a thing in his old place. However, I can do it, if we don't happen to pick up some meat to-day."
"We might track down the wolves, and get one of those——"
"Wolf meat hasn't a flavor you'd care for, I'm afraid. The Indians have been known to eat it, but they can but away beaver and tough old grizzly bear. Those things are starvation meats only. But if you care to, we can dash out and see if we can pick up a young caribou or a left-over moose. It's pleasant out to-day, anyway. It's rather warm—I believe there's going to be a change of weather."
"Good or bad?" the girl asked.
"Haven't had any government bulletins on that point, this morning. Probably bad. The weather in the North, Virginia, goes along the way it is a while, and then it gets worse."
She dressed, and at breakfast their exultation over their trip grew painful to Harold's ears. He announced his intention of going along.
Curiously, even Virginia did not receive this announcement with particular enthusiasm. It was not that her regard for Bill was any kin to that she held for Harold. Rather, it was a fear that Harold's presence might blunt the edge of the fine companionship she enjoyed with the woodsman. It would throw a personal element into an otherwise care-free and adventurous day. But she smiled at him, rather fondly.
"Just as you like, Harold."
They put on their snowshoes, their warmest wraps, and started gayly forth. Bill took rather a new course to-day. He bent his steps toward a stream that he called Creek Despair,—named for the fact that he had once held high hopes of finding his lost mine along its waters, only to meet an utter and hopeless failure. From the map he had judged that the lost claim lay somewhere along its course, but he had washed it from its mother springs clear to its mouth, finding scarcely the faintest traces in the pan. Because he had made such a tireless search in this particular section in previous years he had completely avoided it in the present adventure. Even on his pleasure trips with Virginia he had never forgotten his search: thus he had led her into more favorable regions where he might reasonably keep his eyes over for clews. Now that he had given up finding the claim—for this season, at least, and perhaps forever—one way was as good as another. And he remembered that an old caribou trail lay just beyond the stream on the steep hillside.
Bill led the way, mushing quietly an swiftly, and Virginia sped after him. The cold had brought a high color to her cheeks and a luster to her eyes; her nerves and muscles tingled with life. She was in wonderful spirits. Never she took a hundred paces without experiencing some sort of a little, heart-gladdening adventure.
Every manifestation of the forest life about her filled her with delight. The beauty of the winter woods, the absorbing record that the wild creatures had left in the snow, the long sweep of range and valley that she could glimpse from a still hilltop, all had their joy for her. With Bill she found something to delight her, something to make her laugh and quicken her blood, in every hundred yards of their course. Sometimes when the snow record was obscure, Bill stopped and explained, usually with a graphic story and unconscious humor that made the woods tingle and ring with her joyous, rippling laughter. More than often, however, she was able to piece our the mystery by herself.
Bill had a long and highly fanciful conversation with a little, black-tailed ermine that tried to run under his feet; he imitated—to Virginia's delight, the spectacle of a large and stiff cow moose pulling herself through the mud; he repeated for her the demented cries of the loons that they had sometimes heard from the still waters of Gray Lake. But he didn't forget that the main purpose of their expedition was to hunt. When at last they reached the caribou range he commanded silence.
Harold, silent in the others' gayety, immediately evinced a decided inclination to talk. He had not particularly enjoyed the excursion so far. In the first place he had no love either for the winter forest or the creatures that inhabited it; he would have been much more comfortable and at ease beside the cabin stove. He couldn't much with comfort at Bill's regular pace: he was rather out of breath and irritated after the first two hundred rods. Most of all, he was savagely conscious of the fact that Virginia was not giving him a rightful share of her attention. For the time being she seemed to have forgotten his presence. He was resentful, wishing disaster upon the hunt, eager to turn back.
"The rule is silence, from now on," Virginia answered his first remark. "Bill says we're in a game country."
The answer didn't satisfy him. But his heart suddenly leaped when Bill glanced back in warning and pointed to an entrancing wilderness picture, a hundred yards in front.
In a little glade and framed by the forest stood a large bull caribou, flashing and incredibly vivid against the snow. There is no animal in all North American fauna, even the bull elk, that presents a more splendid figure than that huge member of the deer family, Osburn's caribou. His mane is snow white, his back and sides a glossy brown, his eye flashes, and his antlers—in the season that he carries them—stream back like young trees. The bull did not stir out of his tracks, yet he gave the impression of infinite movement and pulsing, quivering vitality. He shook and threw his head, he lifted his fore foot nervously, and framed by the winter forest he was a sight never to forget. Incidentally he made a first-class target,—one that seemed impossible to miss.
"I'll take him," Harold shouted. "Let me take him."
In a flash Harold realized that here was his opportunity: in one stroke, one easy shot, he could turn the day's ignominy into triumph. He could focus Virginia's admiration upon himself. But the impulse had even deeper significances. It was not the way of sportsmen, wandering in file on mountain trails, to clamor for the first shot at game. Whatever is said is usually in solicitation to a companion to shoot; and Virginia felt oddly embarrassed. Harold's gun leaped to his shoulder.
But in the fields of sport there is always a penalty for extreme eagerness. There is a retributive justice for those that attempt to grasp opportunities. Harold was afraid that Bill might raise and shoot, thus rubbing him of his triumph, and he pressed back against the trigger just a fifth of a second too soon. The target looked too big to miss, but his bullet flung up the snow behind the animal.
The caribou's powerful limbs pushed out a mighty leap. Frenzied, Harold shot again; but his nerve was broken and his self-control blown to the four winds. The animal had gained the shelter of the thickets by now, and Harold's third and fourth shots went wild. Then he lowered his weapon with a curse.
It is part of the creed of a certain type of hunter to never admit a clean miss. "My sights are off," Harold shouted. "They didn't shoot within three feet of where I aimed. Damn such a gun—but I think I wounded him the third shot. You'll find him dead if you follow him long enough."
Bill answered nothing, but went to see. In the firing he hadn't even raised his own gun to his shoulder. There is a certain code among hunters in regard to shooting another's game: an unwritten law that, except in a case of life and death, one hunter does not interfere with another's shooting. It was through no desire to embarrass Harold that he didn't assist him in putting down his trophy. He was simply giving the man full play. Bill stared at the caribou tracks in the snow, followed them a hundred feet, and then came mushing back.
"You didn't seem to have put one in," he reported simply.
"I didn't, eh?" Harold answered angrily. "How could you tell, so soon? I suppose you're woodsman enough to know that a wounded animal doesn't always show blood. I'd be ready to bet that if we followed him far enough we'd find him dead."
"We'd have to follow him till he died naturally of old age," was the good-humored reply. "We can't always hit, Lounsbury. He began to trot when he got into the trees—a perfectly normal gait. I think we'd better look for something else."
"Then I want you to carry my gun awhile, and let me take yours. The sights are off a mile. It's all ready, and here's a handful of extra shells. You ought to be willing to do that, at least."
Harold had forgotten that this man was not his personal guide, subject to his every wish. He held out gun and shells; and, smiling, Bill received them, giving his own weapon in exchange. They mushed on down the trail.
But Harold's miss had not been his greater sin. To miss is human; no true sportsman holds it against his fellow. The omission that followed, however, was by all the codes of the hunting trails unpardonable. He supposed that he had refilled his rifle magazine with shells before he put it in Bill's hands. In his confusion and anger, he had forgotten to do so; and the only load that the gun contained was that in the barrel, thrown in automatically when the last empty shell was ejected.