THE PAYMENT
I
The Lennox home, in the far wilderness of the Umpqua Divide, looked rather like an emergency hospital for the first few days after Dan's fight with Whisperfoot. Its old sounds of laughter and talk were almost entirely lacking. Two injured men and a girl recovering from a nervous collapse do not tend toward cheer.
But the natural sturdiness of all three quickly came to their aid. Of course Lennox had been severely injured by the falling log, and many weeks would pass before he would be able to walk again. He could sit up for short periods, however; had the partial use of one arm; and could propel himself—after the first few weeks—at a snail's pace through the rooms in a rude wheel chair that Bill's ingenuity had contrived. The great livid scratches that Dan bore on his body quickly began to heal; and before a week was done, he began to venture forth on the hills again. Snowbird had remained in bed for three days: then she had hopped out, one bright afternoon, swearing never to go back into it again. Evidently the crisp, fall air of the mountains had been a nerve tonic for them all.
Of course there had been medical attention. A doctor and a nurse had motored up the day after the accident; the physician had set the bones and departed, and the nurse remained for a week, to see the grizzled mountaineer well on the way of convalescence. But it was an anxious wait, and Lennox's car was kept constantly in readiness to speed her away in case the snows should start. At last she had left him in Snowbird's hands, and Bill had driven her back to the settlements in his father's car. The die was now cast as to whether or not Dan and the remainder of the family should winter in the mountains. The snow clouds deepened every day, the frost was ever heavier in the dawns, and the road would surely remain open only a few days more.
Once more the three seemingly had the Divide all to themselves. Bert Cranston had evidently deserted his cabin and was working a trap-line on the Umpqua side. The rangers left the little station, all danger of fire past, and went down to their offices in the Federal building of one of the little cities below. Because he was worse than useless in the deep snows that were sure to come, one of the ranch hands that had driven up with Bill rode away to the valleys the last of the live stock,—the horse that Dan had ridden to Snowbird's defense.
Nothing had been heard of Landy Hildreth, who used to live on the trail to the marsh, and both Lennox and his daughter wondered why. There were also certain officials who had begun to be curious. As yet, Dan had told no one of the grim find he had made on his return from hunting. And he would have found it an extremely difficult fact to explain.
It all went back to those inner springs of motive that few men can see clearly enough within themselves to recognize. Even the first day, when he lay burning from his wounds, he worked out his own explanation in regard to the murder mystery. He hadn't the slightest doubt but that Cranston had killed Hildreth to prevent his testimony from reaching the courts below. Of course any other member of the arson ring of hillmen might have been the murderer; yet Dan was inclined to believe that Cranston, the leader of the gang, usually preferred to do such dangerous work as this himself. If it were true, somewhere on that tree-clad ridge clues would be left. By a law that went down to the roots of life, he knew, no action is so small but that it leaves its mark. Moreover, it was wholly possible that the written testimony Hildreth must have gathered had never been found or destroyed. Dan didn't want the aid of the courts to find these clues. He wanted to work out the case himself. It resolved itself into a simple matter of vengeance: Dan had his debt to pay, and he wanted to bring Cranston to ruin by his own hand alone.
While it was true that he took rather more than the casual interest that most citizens feel in the destruction of the forest by wanton fire, and had an actual sense of duty to do all that he could to stop the activities of the arson ring, his motives, stripped and bare, were really not utilitarian. He had no particular interest in Hildreth's case. He remembered him simply as one of Cranston's disreputable gang, a poacher and a fire bug himself. When all is said and done, it remained really a personal issue between Dan and Cranston. And personal issues are frowned upon by law and society. Civilization has toiled up from the darkness in a great measure to get away from them. But human nature remains distressingly the same, and Dan's desire to pay his debt was a distinctly human emotion. Sometime a breed will live upon the earth that can get clear away from personal vengeance—from that age-old code of the hills that demands a blow for a blow and a life for a life—but the time is not yet. And after all, by all the standards of men as men, not as read in idealistic philosophies, Dan's debt was entirely real. By the light held high by his ancestors, he could not turn his other cheek.
Just as soon as he was able, he went back to the scene of the murder. He didn't know when the snow would come to cover what evidence there was. It threatened every hour. Every wind promised it. The air was sharp and cold, and no drop of rain could fall through it without crystallizing into snow. The deer had all gone, and the burrowing people had sought their holes. The bees worked no more in the winter flowers. Of all the greater forest creatures, only the wolves and the bear remained,—the former because their fear of men would not permit them to go down to the lower hills, and the latter because of his knowledge that when food became scarce, he could always burrow in the snow. No bear goes into hibernation from choice. Wise old bachelor, he much prefers to keep just as late hours as he can—as long as the eating places in the berry thickets remain open. The cougars had all gone down with the deer, the migratory birds had departed, and even the squirrels were in hiding.
The scene didn't offer much in the way of clues. Of the body itself, only a white heap of bones remained; for many and terrible had been the agents at work upon them. The clothes, however, particularly the coat, were practically intact. Gripping himself, Dan thrust his fingers into its pockets, then into the pockets of the shirt and trousers. All papers that would in any way serve to identify the murdered man, or tell what his purpose had been in journeying down the trail the night of the murder had been removed. Only one explanation presented itself. Cranston had come before him, and searched the body himself.
Dan looked about for tracks, and he was considerably surprised to find the blurred, indistinct imprint of a shoe other than his own. He hadn't the least hope that the tracks themselves would offer a clue to a detective. They were too dim for that. The surprising fact was that since the murder had been committed immediately before the fall rains, the water had not completely washed them out. The only possibility remaining was that Cranston had returned to the body after the week's rain-fall. The track had been dimmed by the lighter rains that had fallen since.
But yet it was entirely to be expected that the examination of the body would be an after-thought on Cranston's part. Possibly at first his only thought was to kill and, following the prompting that has sent so many murderers to the gallows, he had afterwards returned to the scene of the crime to destroy any clues he might have left and to search the body for any evidence against the arson ring.
Dan's next thought was to follow along the trail and find Cranston's ambush. Of course it would be in the direction of the settlement from the body, as the bullet had entered from the front. He found it hard to believe that Hildreth had fallen in the exact spot where the body lay. Men journeying at night keep to the trail, and the white heap itself was fully forty feet back from the trail in the thickets. Perhaps Cranston had dragged it there to hide it from the sight of any one who might pass along the lonely trail again; and it was a remote possibility that Whisperfoot, coming in the night, had tugged it into the thickets for dreadful purposes of his own. Likely the shot was fired when Hildreth was in an open place on the trail; and Dan searched for the ambush with this conclusion in mind. He walked back, looking for a thicket from which such a spot would be visible. Something over fifty yards down he found it; and he knew it by the empty brass rifle cartridge that lay half buried in the wet leaves.
The shell was of the same caliber as Cranston's hunting rifle. Dan's hand shook as he put it in his pocket.
Encouraged by this amazing find, he turned up the trail toward Hildreth's cabin. It might be possible, he thought, that Hildreth had left some of his testimony—perhaps such rudely scrawled letters as Cranston had written him—in some forgotten drawer in his hut. It was but a short walk for Dan's hardened legs, and he made it before mid-afternoon.
The search itself was wholly without result. But because he had time to think as he climbed the ridge, because as he strode along beneath that wintry sky he had a chance to consider every detail of the case, he was able to start out on a new tack when, just before sunset, he returned to the body. This new train of thought had as its basis that Cranston's shot had not been deadly at once; that wounded, Hildreth had himself crawled into the thickets where Whisperfoot had found him. And that meant that he had to enlarge his search for such documents as Hildreth had carried to include all the territory between the trail and the location of the body.
It was possibly a distance of forty feet, and getting down on his hands and knees, Dan looked for any break in the shrubbery that would indicate the path that the wounded Hildreth had taken. And it was ten minutes well rewarded, as far as clearing up certain details of the crime. His senses had been trained and sharpened by his months in the wilderness, and he was able to back-track the wounded man from the skeleton clear to the clearing on the trail where he had first fallen. But as no clues presented themselves, he started to turn home.
He walked twelve feet, then turned back. Out of the corner of his eye it seemed to him that he had caught a flash of white, near the end of a great, dead log beside the path that the wounded Hildreth had taken. It was to the credit of his mountain training alone that his eye had been keen enough to detect it; that it had been so faithfully recorded on his consciousness; and that, knowing at last the importance of details, he had turned back. For a moment he searched in vain. Evidently a yellow leaf had deceived him. Once more he retraced his steps, trying to find the position from which his eye had caught the glimpse of white. Then he dived straight for the rotten end of the log.
Into a little hollow in the bark, on the underside of the log, some hand had thrust a small roll of papers. They were rain soaked now, and the ink had dimmed and blotted; but Dan realized their significance. They were the complete evidence that Hildreth had accumulated against the arson ring,—letters that had passed back and forth between himself and Cranston, a threat of murder from the former if Hildreth turned State's evidence, and a signed statement of the arson activities of the ring by Hildreth himself. They were not only enough to break up the ring and send its members to prison; with the aid of the empty shell and other circumstantial evidence, they could in all probability convict Bert Cranston of murder.
For a long time he stood with the shadows of the pines lengthening about him, his gray eyes in curious shadow. For the moment a glimpse was given him into the deep wells of the human soul; and understanding came to him. Was there no balm for hatred even in the moment of death? Were men unable to forget the themes and motives of their lives, even when the shadows closed down upon them? Hildreth had known what hand had struck him down. And even on the frontier of death, his first thought was to hide his evidence where Cranston could not find it when he searched the body, but where later it might be found by the detectives that were sure to come. It was the old creed of a life for a life. He wanted his evidence to be preserved,—not that right should be wronged, but so that Cranston would be prosecuted and convicted and made to suffer. His hatred of Cranston that had made him turn State's evidence in the first place had been carried with him down into death.
As Dan stood wondering, he thought he heard a twig crack on the trail behind him, and he wondered what forest creature was still lingering on the ridges at the eve of the snows.
II
The snow began to fall in earnest at midnight,—great, white flakes that almost in an instant covered the leaves. It was the real beginning of winter, and all living creatures knew it. The wolf pack sang to it from the ridge,—a wild and plaintive song that made Bert Cranston, sleeping in a lean-to on the Umpqua side of the Divide, swear and mutter in his sleep. But he didn't really waken until Jim Gibbs, one of his gang, returned from his secret mission.
They wasted no words. Bert flung aside the blankets, lighted a candle, and placed it out of the reach of the night wind. It cast queer shadows in the lean-to and found a curious reflection in the steel points of his eyes. His face looked swarthy and deep-lined in its light.
"Well?" he demanded. "What did you find?"
"Nothin'," Jim Gibbs answered gutturally. "If you ask me what I found out, I might have somethin' to answer."
"Then—" and Bert, after the manner of his kind, breathed an oath—"what did you find out?"
His tone, except for an added note of savagery, remained the same. Yet his heart was thumping a great deal louder than he liked to have it. He wasn't amused by his associate's play on words. Nor did he like the man's knowing tone and his air of importance. Realizing that the snows were at hand, he had sent Gibbs for a last search of the body, to find and recover the evidence that Hildreth had against him and which had not been revealed either on Hildreth's person or in his cabin. He had become increasingly apprehensive about those letters he had written Hildreth, and certain other documents that had been in his possession. He didn't understand why they hadn't turned up. And now the snows had started, and Jim Gibbs had returned empty-handed, but evidently not empty-minded.
"I've found out that the body's been uncovered—and men are already searchin' for clues. And moreover—I think they've found them." He paused, weighing the effect of his words. His eyes glittered with cunning. Rat that he was, he was wondering whether the time had arrived to leave the ship. He had no intention of continuing to give his services to a man with a rope-noose closing about him. And Cranston, knowing this fact, hated him as he hated the buzzard that would claim him in the end and tried to hide his apprehension.
"Go on. Blat it out," Cranston ordered. "Or else go away and let me sleep."
It was a bluff; but it worked. If Gibbs had gone without speaking, Cranston would have known no sleep that night. But the man became more fawning.
"I'm tellin' you, fast as I can," he went on, almost whining. "I went to the cabin, just as you said. But I didn't get a chance to search it—"
"Why not?" Cranston thundered. His voice reëchoed among the snow-wet pines.
"I'll tell you why! Because some one else—evidently a cop—was already searchin' it. Both of us know there's nothin' there anyway. We've gone over it too many times. After a while he went away—but I didn't turn back yet. That wouldn't be Jim Gibbs. I shadowed him, just as you'd want me to. And he went straight back to the body."
"Yes?" Cranston had hard work curbing his impatience. Again Gibbs' eyes were full of ominous speculations.
"He stopped at the body, and it was plain he'd been there before. He went crawling through the thickets, lookin' for clues. He done what you and me never thought to do—lookin' all the way between the trail and the body. He'd already found the brass shell you told me to get. At least, it wasn't there when I looked, after he'd gone. You should've thought of it before. But he found somethin' else a whole lot more important—a roll of papers that Hildreth had chucked into an old pine stump when he was dyin'. It was your fault, Cranston, for not gettin' them that night. You needn't 've been afraid of any one hearin' the shot and catching you red-handed. This detective stood and read 'em on the trail. And you know—just as well as I do—what they were."
"Damn you, I went back the next morning, as soon as I could see. And the mountain lion had already been there. I went back lots of times since. And that shell ain't nothing—but all the time I supposed I put it in my pocket. You know how it is—a fellow throws his empty shell out by habit."
Gibbs' eyes grew more intent. What was this thing? Cranston's tone, instead of commanding, was almost pleading. But the leader caught himself at once.
"I don't see why I need to explain any of that to you. What I want to know is this: why you didn't shoot and get those papers away from him?"
For an instant their eyes battled. But Gibbs had never the strength of his leader. If he had, it would have been asserted long since. He sucked in his breath, and his gaze fell away. It rested on Cranston's rifle, that in some manner had been pulled up across his knees. And at once he was cowed. He was never so fast with a gun as Cranston.
"Blood on my hands, eh—same as on yours?" he mumbled, looking down. "What do you think I want, a rope around my neck? These hills are big, but the arm of the law has reached up before, and it might again. You might as well know first as last I'm not goin' to do any killin's to cover up your murders."
"That comes of not going myself. You fool—if he gets that evidence down to the courts, you're broken the same as me."
"But I wouldn't get more'n a year or so, at most—and that's a heap different from the gallows. I did aim at him—"
"But you just lacked the guts to pull the trigger!"
"I did, and I ain't ashamed of it. But besides—the snows are here now, and he won't be able to even get word down to the valleys in six months. If you want him killed so bad, do it yourself."
This was a thought indeed. On the other hand, another murder might not be necessary. Months would pass before the road would be opened, and in the meantime Cranston could have a thousand chances to steal back the accusing letters. Perhaps they would be guarded closely at first, but by the late winter months they would be an old story, and a single raid on the house might turn the trick. He didn't believe for an instant that the man Gibbs had seen a detective. He had kept too close watch over the roads for that.
"A tall chap, in outing clothes—dark-haired and clean-shaven?"
"Yes?"
"Wears a tan hat?"
"That's the man."
"I know him—and I wish you'd punctured him. Why, you could've taken those papers away from him and slapped his face, and he wouldn't have put up his arms. And now he'll hide 'em somewhere—afraid to carry 'em for fear he meets me. That's Failing—the tenderfoot that's been staying at Lennox's. He's a lunger."
"He didn't look like no lunger to me."
"But no matter about that—it's just as I thought. And I'll get 'em back—mark my little words."
In the meantime the best thing to do was to move at once to his winter trapping grounds,—a certain neglected region on the lower levels of the North Fork. If at any time within the next few weeks, Dan should attempt to carry word down to the settlements, he would be certain to pass within view of this camp. But he knew that the chance of Dan starting upon any such journey before the snow had melted was not one in a thousand. To be caught in the Divide in the winter means to be snowed in as completely as the Innuits of upper Greenland. No word could pass except by a man on snowshoes. Really there was no urgency about this matter of the evidence.
Yet if the chance did come, if the house should be left unguarded, it might play Cranston to make an immediate search. Dan would have no reason for supposing that Cranston suspected his possession of the letters; he would not be particularly watchful, and would probably pigeonhole them until spring in Lennox's desk.
And the truth was that Cranston had reasoned out the situation almost perfectly. When Dan wakened in the morning, and the snow lay already a foot deep over the wilderness world, he knew that he would have no chance to act upon the Cranston case until the snows melted in the spring. So he pushed all thought of it out of his mind and turned his attention to more pleasant subjects. It was true that he read the documents over twice as he lay in bed. Then he tied them into a neat packet and put them away where they would be quickly available. Then he thrust his head out of the window and let the great snowflakes sift down upon his face. It was winter at last, the season that he loved.
He didn't stir from the house, that first day of the storm. Snowbird and he found plenty of pleasant things to do and talk about before the roaring fire that he built in the grate. He was glad of the great pile of wood that lay outside the door. It meant life itself, in this season. Then Snowbird led him to the windows, and they watched the white drifts pile up over the low underbrush.
When finally the snowstorm ceased, five days later, the whole face of the wilderness was changed. The buckbrush was mostly covered, the fences were out of sight; the forest seemed a clear, clean sweep of white, broken only by an occasional tall thicket and by the great, snow-covered trees.
When the clouds blew away, and the air grew clear, the temperature began to fall. Dan had no way of knowing how low it went. Thermometers were not considered essential at the Lennox home. But when his eyelids congealed with the frost, and his mittens froze to the logs of firewood that he carried through the door, and the pine trees exploded and cracked in the darkness, he was correct in his belief that it was very, very cold.
But he loved the cold, and the silence and austerity that went with it. The wilderness claimed him as never before. The rugged breed that were his ancestors had struggled through such seasons as this and passed a love of them down through the years to him.
When the ice made a crust over the snow, he learned to walk on snowshoes. At first there were pained ankles and endless floundering in the drifts. But between the fall of fresh snow and the thaws that softened the crust, he slowly mastered the art. Snowbird—and Dan never realized the full significance of her name until he saw her flying with incredible grace over the snow—laughed at him at first and ran him races that would usually end in his falling head-first into a ten-foot snowbank. She taught him how to ski and more than once she would stop in the middle of an earnest bit of pedagogy to find that he wasn't listening at all. He would seem to be fairly devouring her with his eyes, delighting in the play of soft pinks and reds in her cheeks, and drinking, as a man drinks wine, the amazing change of light and shadow in her eyes.
She seemed to blossom under his gaze. Not one of those short winter days went by without the discovery of some new trait or little vanity to astonish or delight him,—sometimes an unlooked-for tenderness toward the weak, often a sweet, untainted philosophy of life, or perhaps just a lowering of her eyelids in which her eyes would show lustrous through the lashes, or some sweeping, exuberant gesture startlingly graceful.
Lennox wakened one morning with the realization that this was one of the hardest winters of his experience. More snow had fallen in the night and had banked halfway up his windows. The last of the shrubbery—except for the ends of a few tall bushes that would not hold the snow—was covered, and the roofs of some of the lower outbuildings had somewhat the impression of drowning things, striving desperately to keep their heads above water. He began to be very glad of the abundant stores of provisions that overcrowded his pantry—savory hams and bacons, dried venison, sacks of potatoes and evaporated vegetables, and, of course, canned goods past counting. With the high fire roaring in the grate, the season held no ills for them. But sometimes, when the bitter cold came down at twilight, and the moon looked like a thing of ice itself over the snow, he began to wonder how the wild creatures who wintered on the Divide were faring. Of course most of them were gone. Woof, long since, had grunted and mumbled his way into a winter lair. But the wolves remained, strange gray shadows on the snow, and possibly a few of the hardier smaller creatures.
More than once in those long winter nights their talk was chopped off short by the song of the pack on some distant ridge. Sometime, when the world is old, possibly a man will be born that can continue to talk and keep his mind on his words while the wolf pack sings. But he is certainly an unknown quantity to-day. The cry sets in vibration curious memory chords, and for a moment the listener sees in his mind's eye his ancient home in an ancient world,—Darkness and Fear and Eyes shining about the cave. It carries him back, and he knows the wilderness as it really is; and to have such knowledge dries up all inclination to talk, as a sponge dries water. Of course the picture isn't entirely plain. It is more a thing guessed at, a photograph in some dark part of an under-consciousness that has constantly grown more dim as the centuries have passed. Possibly sometime it will fade out altogether; and then a man may continue to discuss the weather while the Song from the ridge shudders in at the windows. But the world will be quite cold by then, and no longer particularly interesting. And possibly even the wolves themselves will then be tamed to play dead and speak pieces,—which means the wilderness itself will be tamed. For as long as the wild lasts, the pack will run through it in the winter. They were here in the beginning, and in spite of constant war and constant hatred on the part of men, they will be here in the end. The reason is just that they are the symbol of the wilderness itself, and the idea of it continuing to exist without them is stranger than that of a nation without a flag.
It wasn't quite the same song that Dan had listened to in the first days of fall. It had been triumphant then, and proud with the wilderness pride. Of course it had been sad then, too, but it was more sad now. And it was stranger, too, and crept farther into the souls of its listeners. It was the song of strength that couldn't avail against the snow, possibly of cold and the despair and courage of starvation. These three that heard it were inured to the wilderness; but a moment was always needed after its last note had died to regain their gayety.
"They're getting lean and they're getting savage," Lennox said one night, stretched on his divan before the fireplace. He was still unable to walk; but the fractures were knitting slowly and the doctor had promised that the summer would find him well. "If we had a dog, I wouldn't offer much for his life. One of these days we'll find 'em in a big circle around the house—and then we'll have to open up with the rifles."
But this picture appalled neither of his two young listeners. No wolf pack can stand against three marksmen, armed with rifles and behind oaken walls.
Christmas came and passed, and January brought clear days and an ineffective sun shining on the snow. These were the best days of all. Every afternoon Dan and Snowbird would go out on their skis or on snowshoes, unarmed except for the pistol that Snowbird carried in the deep pocket of her mackinaw. "But why not?" Dan replied to Lennox's objection. "She could kill five wolves with five shots, or pretty near it, and you know well enough that that would hold 'em off till we got home. They'd stop to eat the five. I have hard enough time keeping up with her as it is, without carrying a rifle." And Lennox was content. In the first place, the wolf pack has to be desperate indeed before it will even threaten human beings; and knowing the coward that the wolf is in the other three seasons, he couldn't bring himself to believe that this point was reached. In the second, Dan had told the truth when he said that five deaths, or even fewer, would repel the attack of any wolf pack he had ever seen. There was just one troubling thought. He had heard, long ago, and he had forgotten who had told him, that in the most severe winters the wolves gather in particularly large packs; and a quality in the song that they had heard at night seemed to bear it out. The chorus had been exceptionally loud and strong, and he had been unable to pick out individual voices.
The snow was perfect for skiing. Previously their sport had been many times interrupted either by the fall of fresh snow or a thaw that had softened the snow crust; but now every afternoon was too perfect to remain indoors. They shouted and romped in the silences, and they did not dream but that they had the wilderness all to themselves. The fact that one night Lennox's keen eyes had seen what looked like the glow of a camp fire in the distance didn't affect this belief of theirs at all. It was evidently just the phosphorus glowing in a rotten log from which the winds had blown the snow.
Once or twice they caught glimpses of wild life: once a grouse that had buried in the snow flushed from their path and blew the snow-dust from its wings; and once or twice they saw snowshoe rabbits bounding away on flat feet over the drifts. But just one day they caught sight of a wolf. They were on snowshoes on a particularly brilliant afternoon late in January.
He was a lone male, evidently a straggler from the pack, and he leaped from the top of a tall thicket that had remained above the snow. The man and the girl had entirely different reactions. Dan's first impression was amazement at the animal's condition. It seemed to be in the last stages of starvation: unbelievably gaunt, with rib bones showing plainly even through the furry hide. Ordinarily the heavily furred animals do not show signs of famine; but even an inexperienced eye could not make a mistake in this case. The eyes were red, and they carried Dan back to his first adventure in the Oregon forest—the day he had shot the mad coyote. Snowbird thought of the beast only as an enemy. The wolves killed her father's stock; they were brigands of the worst order; and she shared the hatred of them that is a common trait of all primitive peoples. Her hand whipped back, seized her pistol, and she fired twice at the fleeing figure.
The second shot was a hit: both of them saw the wolf go to its side, then spring up and race on. Shouting, both of them sped after him.
In a few moments he was out of sight among the distant trees, but they found the blood-trail and mushed over the ridge. They expected at any moment to find him lying dead; but the track led them on clear down the next canyon. And now they cared not at all whether they found him: it was simply a tramp in the out-of-doors; and both of them were young with red blood in their veins.
But all at once Dan stopped in his tracks. The girl sped on for six paces before she missed the sound of his snowshoes; then she turned to find him standing, wholly motionless, with eyes fixed upon her.
It startled her, and she didn't know why. A companion abruptly freezing in his path, his muscles inert, and his eyes filling with speculations is always startling. When this occurs, it means simply that a thought so compelling and engrossing that even the half-unconscious physical functions, such as walking, cannot continue, has come into his mind. And it is part of the old creed of self-preservation to dislike greatly to be left out on any such thought as this. If danger is present, the sooner it is identified the better.
"What is it?" she demanded.
He turned to her, curiously intent. "How many shells have you in that pistol?"
She took one breath and answered him. "It holds five, and I shot twice. I haven't any others."
"And I don't suppose it ever occurred to you to carry extra ones in your pocket?"
"Father is always telling me to—and several times I have. But I'd shoot them away at target practice and forget to take any more. There was never any danger—except that night with a cougar. I did intend to—but what does it matter now?"
"We're a couple of wise ones, going after that wolf with only three shots to our name. Of course by himself he's harmless—but he's likely enough to lead us straight toward the pack. And Snowbird—I didn't like his looks. He's too gaunt, and he's too hungry—and I haven't a bit of doubt he waited in that brush for us to come, intending to attack us—and lost his nerve the last thing. That shows he's desperate. I don't like him, and I wouldn't like his pack. And a whole pack might not lose its nerve."
"Then you think we'd better turn back?"
"Yes, I do, and not come out any more without a whole pocket of shells. I'm going to carry my rifle, too, just as Lennox has always advised. He's only got a flesh-wound. You saw what you did with two cartridges—got in one flesh-wound. Three of 'em against a pack wouldn't be a great deal of aid. I don't mean to say you can't shoot, but a jumping, lively wolf is worse than a bird in the air. We've gone over three miles; and he'd lead us ten miles farther—even if he didn't go to the pack. Let's go back."
"If you say so. But I don't think there's the least bit of danger. We can always climb a tree."
"And have 'em make a beautiful circle under it! They've got more patience than we have—and we'd have to come down sometime. Your father can't come to our help, you know. It's the sign of the tenderfoot not to think there's any danger—and I'm not going to think that way any more."
They turned back and mushed in silence a long time.
"I suppose you'll think I'm a coward," Dan asked her humbly.
"Only prudent, Dan," she answered, smiling. Whether she meant it, he did not know. "I'm just beginning to understand that you—living here only a few months—really know and understand all this better than I do." She stretched her arms wide to the wilderness. "I guess it's your instincts."
"And I do understand," he told her earnestly. "I sensed danger back there just as sure as I can see your face. That pack—and it's a big one—is close; and it's terribly hungry. And you know—you can't help but know—that the wolves are not to be trusted in famine times."
"I know it only too well," she said.
Then she paused and asked him about a strange grayness, like snow blown by the wind, on the sky over the ridge.
III
Bert Cranston waited in a clump of exposed thicket on the hillside until he saw two black dots, that he knew were Dan and Snowbird, leave the Lennox home. He lay very still as they circled up the ridge, noticing that except for the pistol that he knew Snowbird always carried, they were unarmed. There was no particular reason why he should be interested in that point. It was just the mountain way always to look for weapons, and it is rather difficult to trace the mental processes behind this impulse. Perhaps it can be laid to the fact that many mountain families are often at feud with one another, and anything in the way of violence may happen before the morning.
The two passed out of his sight, and after a long time he heard the crack of Snowbird's pistol. He guessed that she had either shot at some wild creature, or else was merely at target practice,—rather a common proceeding for the two when they were on the hills together. Thus it is to be seen that Cranston knew their habits fairly well. And since he had kept a close watch upon them for several days, this was to be expected.
He had no intention of being interrupted in this work he was about to do. He had planned it all very well. At first the intermittent snow-storms and the thaws between had delayed him. He needed a perfect snow crust for the long tramp over the ridge; and at last the bright days and the icy dawns had made it. The elder Lennox was still helpless. He had noticed that when Dan and Snowbird went out, they were usually gone from two to four hours; and that gave him plenty of time for his undertaking. The moment had come at last to make a thorough search of Lennox's house for those incriminating documents that Dan had found near the body of Landy Hildreth.
The only really dangerous part of his undertaking was his approach. If by any chance Lennox were looking out of the window, he might be found waiting with a rifle across his arms. It would be quite like the old mountaineer to have his gun beside him, and to shoot it quick and exceptionally straight, without asking questions, at any stealing figure in the snow. Yet Cranston felt fairly sure that Lennox was still too helpless to raise a gun to a shooting position.
He had observed that the mountaineer spent his time either on the fireplace divan or on his own bed. Neither of these places was available to the rear windows of the house. So, very wisely, he made his attack from the rear.
He came stealing across the snow,—a musher of the first degree. Very silently and swiftly he slipped off his snowshoes at the door. The door itself was unlocked, just as he had supposed. In an instant more he was tiptoeing, a dark, silent figure, through the corridors of the house. He held his rifle ready in his hands.
He peered into Lennox's bedroom first. The room was unoccupied. Then the floor of the corridor creaked beneath his step; and he knew nothing further was to be gained by waiting. If Lennox suspected his presence, he might be waiting with aimed rifle as he opened the door of the living room.
He glided faster. He halted once more,—a moment at the living-room door to see if Lennox had been disturbed. He was lying still, however, so Cranston pushed through.
Lennox glanced up from his magazine to find that unmistakable thing, the barrel of a rifle, pointed at his breast. Cranston was one of those rare marksmen who shoots with both eyes open,—and that meant that he kept his full visual powers to the last instant before the hammer fell.
"I can't raise my arms," Lennox said simply. "One of 'em won't work at all—besides, against the doctor's orders."
Cranston stole over toward him, looking closely for weapons. He pulled aside the woolen blanket that Lennox had drawn up over his body, and he pushed his hand into the cushions of the couch. A few deft pats, holding his rifle through the fork of his arm, finger coiled into the trigger guard, assured him that Lennox was not "heeled" at all. Then he laughed and went to work.
"I thought I told you once," Lennox began with perfect coldness, "that the doors of my house were no longer open to you."
"You did say that," was Cranston's guttural reply. "But you see I'm here just the same, don't you? And what are you going to do about it?"
"I probably felt that sooner or later you would come to steal—just as you and your crowd stole the supplies from the forest station last winter—and that probably influenced me to give the orders. I didn't want thieves around my house, and I don't want them now. I don't want coyotes, either."
"And I don't want any such remarks out of you, either," Cranston answered him. "You lie still and shut up, and I suspect that sissy boarder of yours will come back, after he's through embracing your daughter in the snow, and find you in one piece. Otherwise not."
"If I were in one piece," Lennox answered him very quietly, "instead of a bundle of broken bones that can't lift its arms, I'd get up off this couch, unarmed as I am, and stamp on your lying lips."
But Cranston only laughed and tied Lennox's feet with a cord from the window shade.
He went to work very systematically. First he rifled Lennox's desk in the living room. Then he looked on all the mantels and ransacked the cupboards and the drawers. He was taunting and calm at first. But as the moments passed, his passion grew upon him. He no longer smiled. The rodent features became intent; the eyes narrowed to curious, bright slits under the dark lashes. He went to Dan's room, searched his bureau drawer and all the pockets of the clothes hanging in his closet. He upset his trunk and pawed among old letters in the suitcase. Then, stealing like some creature of the wilderness, he came back to the living room.
Lennox was not on the divan where he had left him. He lay instead on the floor near the fireplace; and he met the passion-drawn face with entire calmness. His motives were perfectly plain. He had just made a desperate effort to procure Dan's rifle that hung on two sets of deer horns over the fireplace, and was entirely exhausted from it. He had succeeded in getting down from the couch, though wracked by agony, but had been unable to lift himself up in reach of the gun.
Cranston read his intention in one glance. Lennox knew it, but he simply didn't care. He had passed the point where anything seemed to matter.
"Tell me where it is," Cranston ordered him. Again he pointed his rifle at Lennox's wasted breast.
"Tell you where what is? My money?"
"You know what I want—and it isn't money. I mean those letters that Failing found on the ridge. I'm through fooling, Lennox. Dan learned that long ago, and it's time you learned it now."
"Dan learned it because he was sick. He isn't sick now. Don't presume too much on that."
Cranston laughed with harsh scorn. "But that isn't the question. I said I've wasted all the time I'm going to. You are an old man and helpless; but I'm not going to let that stand in the way of getting what I came to get. They're hidden somewhere around this house. They wouldn't be out in the snow, because he'd want 'em where he could get them. By no means would he carry them on his person—fearing that some day he'd meet me on the ridge. He's a fool, but he ain't that much of a fool. I've watched, and he's had no chance to take them into town. I'll give you—just five seconds to tell me where they're hidden."
"And I give you," Lennox replied, "one second less than that—to go to Hell!"
Both of them breathed hard in the quiet room. Cranston was trembling now, shivering just a little in his arms and shoulders. "Don't get me wrong, Lennox," he warned.
"And don't have any delusions in regard to me, either," Lennox replied. "I've stood worse pain, from this accident, than any man can give me while I yet live, no matter what he does. If you want to get on me and hammer me in the approved Cranston way, I can't defend myself—but you won't get a civil answer out of me. I'm used to pain, and I can stand it. I'm not used to fawning to a coyote like you, and I can't stand it."
But Cranston hardly heard. An idea had flamed in his mind and cast a red glamour over all the scene about him. It was instilling a poison in his nerves and a madness in his blood, and it was searing him, like fire, in his dark brain. Nothing seemed real. He suddenly bent forward, tense.
"That's all right about you," he said. "But you'd be a little more polite if it was Snowbird—and Dan—that would have to pay."
Perhaps the color faded slightly in Lennox's face; but his voice did not change.
"They'll see your footprints before they come in and be ready," Lennox replied evenly. "They always come by the back way. And even with a pistol, Snowbird's a match for you."
"Did you think that was what I meant?" Cranston scorned. "I know a way to destroy those letters, and I'll do it—in the four seconds that I said, unless you tell. I'm not even sure I'm goin' to give you a chance to tell now; it's too good a scheme. There won't be any witnesses then to yell around in the courts. What if I choose to set fire to this house?"
"It wouldn't surprise me a great deal. It's your own trade." Lennox shuddered once on his place on the floor.
"I wouldn't have to worry about those letters then, would I? They are somewhere in the house, and they'd be burned to ashes. But that isn't all that would be burned. You could maybe crawl out, but you couldn't carry the guns, and you couldn't carry the pantry full of food. You're nearly eighty miles up here from the nearest occupied house, with two pair of snowshoes for the three of you and one dinky pistol. And you can't walk at all. It would be a nice pickle, wouldn't it? Wouldn't you have a fat chance of getting down to civilization?"
The voice no longer held steady. It trembled with passion. This was no idle threat. The brain had already seized upon the scheme with every intention of carrying it out. Outside the snow glittered in the sunlight, and pine limbs bowed with their load; overhung with that curious winter silence that, once felt, returns often in dreams. The wilderness lay stark and bare, stripped of all delusion—not only in the snow world outside but in the hearts of these two men, its sons.
"I have only one hope," Lennox replied. "I hope, unknown to me, that Dan has already dispatched those letters. The arm of the law is long, Cranston. It's easy to forget that fact up here. It will reach you in the end."
Cranston turned through the door, into the kitchen. He was gone a long time. Lennox heard him at work: the crinkle of paper and then a pouring sound around the walls. Then he heard the sharp crack of a match. An instant later the first wisp of smoke came curling, pungent with burning oil, through the corridor.
"You crawled from your couch to reach that gun," Cranston told him when he came in. "Let's see you crawl out now."
Lennox's answer was a curse,—the last, dread outpouring of an unbroken will. He didn't look again at the glittering eyes. He scarcely watched Cranston's further preparations: the oil poured on the rugs and furnishings, the kindling placed at the base of the curtains. Cranston was trained in this work. He was taking no chances on the fire being extinguished. And Lennox began to crawl toward the door.
He managed to grasp the corner of the blanket on the divan as he went, and he dragged it behind him. Pain wracked him, and smoke half-blinded him. But he made it at last. And by the time he had crawled one hundred feet over the snow crust, the whole structure was in flames. The red tongues spoke with a roar.
Cranston, the fire-madness on his face, hurried to the outbuildings. There he repeated the work. He touched a match to the hay in the barn, and the wind flung the flame through it in an instant. The sheds and other outbuildings were treated with oil. And seeing that his work was done, he called once to the prone body of Lennox on the snow and mushed away into the silences.
Lennox's answer was not a curse this time. Rather it was a prayer, unuttered, and in his long years Lennox had not prayed often. When he prayed at all, the words were burning fire. His prayer was that of Samson,—that for a moment his strength might come back to him.
IV
Two miles across the ridges, Dan and Snowbird saw a faint mist blowing between the trees. They didn't recognize it at first. It might be fine snow, blown by the wind, or even one of those mysterious fogs that sometimes sweep over the snow.
"But it looks like smoke," Snowbird said.
"But it couldn't be. The trees are too wet to burn."
But then a sound that at first was just the faintest whisper in which neither of them would let themselves believe, became distinct past all denying. It was that menacing crackle of a great fire, that in the whole world of sounds is perhaps the most terrible. They were trained by the hills, and neither of them tried to mince words. They had learned to face the truth, and they faced it now.
"It's our house," Snowbird told him. "And father can't get out."
She spoke very quietly. Perhaps the most terrible truths of life are always spoken in that same quiet voice. Then both of them started across the snow, fast as their unwieldy snowshoes would permit.
"He can crawl a little," Dan called to her. "Don't give up, Snowbird mine. I think he'll be safe."
They mounted to the top of the ridge; and the long sweep of the forest was revealed to them. The house was a singular tall pillar of flame, already glowing that dreadful red from which firemen, despairing, turn away. Then the girl seized his hands and danced about him in a mad circle.
"He's alive," she cried. "You can see him—just a dot on the snow. He crawled out to safety."
She turned and sped at a breakneck pace down the ridge. Dan had to race to keep up with her. But it wasn't entirely wise to try to mush so fast. A dead log lay beneath the snow with a broken limb stretched almost to its surface, and it caught her snowshoe. The wood cracked sharply, and she fell forward in the snow. But she wasn't hurt, and the snowshoe itself, in spite of a small crack in the wood, was still serviceable.
"Haste makes waste," he told her. "Keep your feet on the ground, Snowbird; the house is gone already and your father is safe. Remember what lies before us."
The thought sobered and halted her. She glanced once at the dark face of her companion. Dan couldn't understand the strange light that suddenly leaped to her eyes. Perhaps she herself couldn't have explained the wave of tenderness that swept over her,—with no cause except the look in Dan's earnest gray eyes and the lines that cut so deep. Since the world was new, it has been the boast of the boldest of men that they looked their Fate in the face. And this is no mean looking. For fate is a sword from the darkness, a power that reaches out of the mystery, and cannot be classed with sights of human origin. It burns out the eyes of all but the strongest men. Yet Dan was looking at his fate now, and his eyes held straight.
They walked together down to the ruined house, and the three of them sat silent while the fire burned red. Then Lennox turned to them with a half-smile.
"You're wasting time, you two," he said. "Remember all our food is gone. If you start now, and walk hard, maybe you can make it out."
"There are several things to do first," Dan answered simply.
"I don't know what they are. It isn't going to be any picnic, Dan. A man can travel only so far without food to keep up his strength, particularly over such ridges as you have to cross. It will be easy to give up and die. It's the test, man; it's the test."
"And what about you?" his daughter asked.
"Oh, I'll be all right. Besides—it's the only thing that can be done. I can't walk, and you can't carry me on your backs. What else remains? I'll stay here—and I'll scrape together enough wood to keep a fire. Then you can bring help."
He kept his eyes averted when he talked. He was afraid for Dan to see them, knowing that he could read the lie in them.
"How do you expect to find wood—in this snow?" Dan asked him. "It will take four days to get out; do you think you could lie here and battle with a fire for four days, and then four days more that it will take to come back? You'd have two choices: to burn green wood that I'd cut for you before I left, or the rain-soaked dead wood under the snow. You couldn't keep either one of them burning, and you'd die in a night. Besides—this is no time for an unarmed man to be alone in the hills."
Lennox's voice grew pleading. "Be sensible, Dan!" he cried. "That Cranston's got us, and got us right. I've only one thing more I care about—and that is that you pay the debt! I can't hope to get out myself. I say that I can't even hope to. But if you bring my daughter through—and when the spring comes, pay what we owe to Cranston—I'll be content. Heavens, son—I've lived my life. The old pack leader dies when his time comes, and so does a man."
His daughter crept to him and sheltered his gray head against her breast. "I'll stay with you then," she cried.
"Don't be a little fool, Snowbird," he urged. "My clothes are wet already from the melted snow. It's too long a way—it will be too hard a fight, and children—I'm old and tired out. I don't want to make the try—hunger and cold; and even if you'd stay here and grub wood, Snowbird, they'd find us both dead when they came back in a week. We can't live without food, and work and keep warm—and there isn't a living creature in the hills."
"Except the wolves," Dan reminded him.
"Except the wolves," Lennox echoed. "Remember, we're unarmed—and they'd find it out. You're young, Snowbird, and so is Dan—and you two will be happy. I know how things are, you two—more than you know yourselves—and in the end you'll be happy. But me—I'm too tired to make the try. I don't care about it enough. I'm going to wave you good-by, and smile, and lie here and let the cold come down. You feel warm in a little while—"
But she stopped his lips with her hand. And he bent and kissed it.
"If anybody's going to stay with you," Dan told them in a clear, firm voice, "it's going to be me. But aren't any of the cabins occupied?"
"You know they aren't," Lennox answered. "Not even the houses beyond the North Fork, even if we could get across. The nearest help is over seventy miles."
"And Snowbird, think! Haven't any supplies been left in the ranger station?"
"Not one thing," the girl told him. "You know Cranston and his crowd robbed the place last winter. And the telephone lines were disconnected when the rangers left."
"Then the only way is for me to stay here. You can take the pistol, and you'll have a fair chance of getting through. I'll grub wood for our camp meanwhile, and you can bring help."
"And if the wolves come, or if help didn't come in time," Lennox whispered, passion-drawn for the first time, "who would pay what we owe to Cranston?"
"But her life counts—first of all."
"I know it does—but mine doesn't count at all. Believe me, you two. I'm speaking from my own desires when I say I don't want to make the fight. Snowbird would never make it through alone. There are the wolves, and maybe Cranston too—the worst wolf of all. A woman can't mush across those ridges four days without food, without some one who loves her and forces her on! Neither can she stay here with me and try to make green branches burn in a fire. She's got three little pistol balls—and we'd all die for a whim. Oh, please, please—"
But Dan leaped for his hand with glowing eyes. "Listen, man!" he cried. "I know another way yet. I know more than one way; but one, if we've got the strength, is almost sure. There is an ax in the kitchen, and the blade will still be good."
"Likely dulled with the fire—"
"I'll cut a limb with my jackknife for the handle. There will be nails in the ashes, plenty of them. We'll make a rude sledge, and we'll get you out too."
Lennox seemed to be studying his wasted hands. "It's a chance, but it isn't worth it," he said at last. "You'll have fight enough, without tugging at a heavy sled. It will take all night to build it, and it would cut down your chances of getting out by pretty near half. Remember the ridges, Dan—"
"But we'll climb every ridge—besides, its a slow, down grade most of the way. Snowbird—tell him he must do it."
Snowbird told him, overpowering him with her enthusiasm. And Dan shook his shoulders with rough hands. "You're hurting, boy!" Lennox warned. "I'm a bag of broken bones."
"I'll tote you down there if I have to tie you in," Dan Failing replied. "Before, I've bowed to your will; but this time you have to bow to mine. I'm not going to let you stay here and die, no matter if you beg on your knees! It's the test—and I'm going to bring you through."
He meant what he said. If mortal strength and sinew could survive such a test, he would succeed. There was nothing in these words to suggest the physical weakling that both of them had known a few months before. The eyes were earnest, the dark face intent, the determined voice did not waver at all.
"Dan Failing speaks!" Lennox replied with glowing eyes. He was recalling another Dan Failing of the dead years, a boyhood hero, and his remembered voice had never been more determined, more masterful than this he had just heard.
"And Cranston didn't get his purpose, after all." To prove his words, Dan thrust his hand into his inner coat pocket. He drew forth a little, flat package, half as thick as a pack of cards. He held it up for them to see. "The thing Bert Cranston burned the house down to destroy," he explained. "I'm learning to know this mountain breed, Lennox. I kept it in my pocket where I could fight for it, at any minute."
Cranston had been mistaken, after all, in thinking that in fear of himself Dan would be afraid to keep the packet on his person, and would cravenly conceal it in the house. He would have been even more surprised to know that Dan had lived in constant hope of meeting Cranston on the ridges, showing him what it contained, and fighting him for it, hands to hands. And even yet, perhaps the day would come when Cranston would know at last that Snowbird's words, after the fight of long ago, were true.
The twilight was falling over the snow, so Snowbird and Dan turned to the toil of building a sled.
V
The snow was steel-gray in the moonlight when the little party made their start down the long trail. Their preparations, simple and crude as they were, had taken hours of ceaseless labor on the part of the three. The ax, its edge dulled by the flame and its handle burned away, had been cooled in the snow, and with his one sound arm, Lennox had driven the hot nails that Snowbird gathered from the ashes of one of the outbuildings. The embers of the house itself still glowed red in the darkness.
Dan had cut the green limbs of the trees and planed them with his ax. The sled had been completed, handles attached for pushing it, and a piece of fence wire fastened with nails as a rope to pull it. The warm mackinaws of both of them as well as the one blanket that Lennox had saved from the fire were wrapped about the old frontiersman's wasted body,—Dan and Snowbird hoping to keep warm by the exercise of propelling the sled. Except for the dull ax and the half-empty pistol, their only equipment was a single charred pot for melting snow that Dan had recovered from the ashes of the kitchen.
The three had worked almost in silence. Words didn't help now. They wasted no sorely-needed breath. But they did have one minute of talk when they got to the top of the little ridge that had overlooked the house.
"We'll travel mostly at night," Dan told them. "We can see in the snow, and by taking our rest in the daytime, when the sun is bright and warm, we can save our strength. We won't have to keep such big fires then—and at night our exertion will keep us as warm as we can hope for. Getting up all night to cut green wood with this dull ax in the snow would break us to pieces very soon, for remember that we haven't any food. I know how to build a fire even in the snow—especially if I can find the dead, dry heart of a rotten log—but it isn't any fun to keep it going with green wood. We don't want to have to spend any more of our strength stripping off wet bark and hacking at saplings than we can help; and that means we'd better do our resting in the heat of the day. After all, it's a fight against starvation more than anything else."
"Just think," the girl told them, reproaching herself, "if I'd just shot straight at that wolf to-day, we could have gone back and got his body. It might have carried us through."
Neither of the others as much as looked surprised at these amazing regrets over the lost, unsavory flesh of a wolf. They were up against realities, and they didn't mince words. Dan smiled at her gently, and his great shoulder leaned against the traces.
They moved through a dead world. The ever-present manifestations of wild life that had been such a delight to Dan in the summer and fall were quite lacking now. The snow was trackless. Once they thought they saw a snowshoe rabbit, a strange shadow on the snow, but he was too far away for Snowbird to risk a pistol shot. The pound or two of flesh would be sorely needed before the journey was over, but the pistol cartridges might be needed still more. She didn't let her mind rest on certain possibilities wherein they might be needed. Such thoughts stole the courage from the spirit, and courage was essential beyond all things else to bring them through.
Once a flock of wild geese, stragglers from the main army of waterfowl, passed overhead on their southern migration. They were many months too late. They called down their eerie cries,—that song that they had learned from the noise the wind makes, blowing over the bleak marshes. It wailed down to them a long time after the flock was hidden by the distant tree tops, and seemed to shiver, with curious echoes, among the pines. Trudging on, they listened to its last note. And possibly they understood the cry as never before. It was one of the untamed, primitive voices of the wilderness, and they could realize something of its sadness, its infinite yearning and complaint. They knew the wilderness now, just as the geese themselves did. They knew its cold, its hunger, its remorselessness, and beyond all, the fear that was bright eyes in the darkness. No man could have crossed that first twenty miles with them and remained a tenderfoot. The wild was sending home its lessons, one after another, until the spirit broke beneath them. It was showing its teeth. It was reminding them, very clearly, that in spite of houses built on the ridges and cattle pens and rifles and all the tools and aids of civilization, it was still unconquered.
Mostly the forest was heavily laden with silence. And silence, in this case, didn't seem to be merely an absence of sound. It seemed like a substance in itself, something that lay over the snow, in which all sound was immediately smothered and extinguished. They heard their own footfalls in the snow and the crunch of the sled. But the sound only went a little way. Once in a long time distant trees cracked in the frost; and they all stood still a moment, trying to fight down the vain hope that this might be some hunter from the valleys who would come to their aid. A few times they heard the snow sliding, with the dull sound of rolling window shade, down from the overburdened limbs. The trees were inert with their load of snow.
As the dawn came out, they all stood still and listened to the wolf pack, singing on the ridge somewhere behind them. It was a large pack. They couldn't make out individual voices,—neither the more shrill cry of the females, the yapping of the cubs, or the low, clear G-below-middle-C note of the males.
"If they should cross our tracks—" Lennox suggested.
"No use worrying about that now—not until we come to it," Dan told him.
The morning broke, the sun rose bright in a clear sky. But still they trudged on. In spite of the fact that the sled was heavy and broke through the snow crust as they tugged at it, they had made good time since their departure. But now every step was a pronounced effort. It was the dreadful beginning of fatigue that only food and warmth and rest could rectify.
"We'll rest now," Dan told them at ten o'clock. "The sun is warm enough so that we won't need much of a fire. And we'll try to get five hours' sleep."
"Too long, if we're going to make it out," Lennox objected.
"That leaves a work-day of nineteen hours," Dan persisted. "Not any too little. Five hours it will be."
He found where the snow had drifted against a great, dead log, leaving the white covering only a foot in depth on the lee side. He began to scrape the snow away, then hacked at the log with his ax until he had procured a piece of comparatively dry wood from its center. They all stood breathless while he lighted the little pile of kindling and heaped it with green wood,—the only wood procurable. But it didn't burn freely. It smoked fitfully, threatening to die out, and emitting very little heat.
But they didn't particularly care. The sun was warm above, as always in the mountain winters of Southern Oregon. Snowbird and Dan cleared spaces beside the fire and slept. Lennox, who had rested on the journey, lay on his sled and with his uninjured arm tried to hack enough wood from the saplings that Dan had cut to keep the fire burning.
At three they got up, still tired and aching in their bones from exposure. Twenty-four hours had passed since they had tasted food, and their unreplenished systems complained. There is no better engine in the wide world than the human body. It will stand more neglect and abuse than the finest steel motors ever made by the hands of European craftsmen. A man may fast many days if he lies quietly in one place and keeps warm. But fasting is a deadly proposition while pulling sledges over the snow.
Dan was less hopeful now. His face told what his words did not. The lines cleft deeper about his lips and eyes; and Snowbird's heart ached when he tried to encourage her with a smile. It was a wan, strange smile that couldn't quite hide the first sickness of despair.
The shadows quickly lengthened—simply leaping over the snow from the fast-falling sun. Soon it dropped down behind the ridge; and the gray of twilight began to deepen among the more distant trees. It blurred the outline and dulled the sight. With the twilight came the cold, first crisp, then bitter and penetrating to the vitals. The twilight deepened, the snow turned gray, and then, in a vague way, the journey began to partake of a quality of unreality. It was not that the cold and the snow and their hunger were not entirely real, or that the wilderness was no longer naked to their eyes. It was just that their whole effort seemed like some dreadful, emburdened journey in a dream,—a stumbling advance under difficulties too many and real to be true.
The first sign was the far-off cry of the wolf pack. It was very faint, simply a stir in the ear drums, yet it was entirely clear. That clear, cold mountain air was a perfect telephone system, conveying a message distinctly, no matter how faintly. There were no tall buildings or cities to disturb the ether waves. And all three of them knew at the same instant it was not exactly the cry they had heard before.
They couldn't have told just why, even if they had wished to talk about it. In some dim way, it had lost the strange quality of despair that it had held before. It was as if the pack were running with renewed life, that each wolf was calling to another with a dreadful sort of exultation. It was an excited cry too,—not the long, sad song they had learned to listen for. It sounded immediately behind them.
They couldn't help but listen. No human ears could have shut out the sound. But none of them pretended that they had heard. And this was the worst sign of all. Each one of the three was hoping against hope in his very heart; and at the same time, hoping that the others did not understand.
For a long time, as the darkness deepened about them, the forests were still. Perhaps, Dan thought, he had been mistaken after all. His shoulders straightened. Then the chorus blared again.
The man looked back at the girl, smiling into her eyes. Lennox lay as if asleep, the lines of his dark face curiously pronounced. And the girl, because she was of the mountains, body and soul, answered Dan's smile. Then they knew that all of them knew the truth. Not even an inexperienced ear could have any delusions about the pack song now. It was that oldest of wilderness songs, the hunting-cry,—that frenzied song of blood-lust that the wolf pack utters when it is running on the trail of game. It had found the track of living flesh at last.
"There's no use stopping, or trying to climb a tree," Dan told them simply. "In the first place, Lennox can't do it. In the second, we've got to take a chance—for cold and hunger can get up a tree where the wolf pack can't."
He spoke wholly without emotion. Once more he tightened the traces of the sled.
"I've heard that sometimes the pack will chase a man for days without attacking," Lennox told them. "It all depends on how long they've gone without food. Keep on and try to forget 'em. Maybe we can keep 'em bluffed."
But as the hours passed, it became increasingly difficult to forget the wolf pack. It was only a matter of turning the head and peering for an instant into the shadows to catch a glimpse of one of the creatures. Their forms, when they emerged from the shadows of the tree trunks, were entirely visible against the snow. They no longer yapped and howled. They acted very intent and stealthy. They had spread out in a great wing, slipping from shadow and shadow, and what were their mental processes no human being may even guess. It was a new game; and they seemed to be seeking the best means of attack. Their usual fear of men, always their first emotion, had given way wholly to a hunting cunning: an effort to procure their game without too great risk of their own lives. In the desperation of their hunger they could not remember such things as the fear of men. They spread out farther, and at last Dan looked up to find one of the gray beasts waiting, like a shadow himself, in the shadow of a tree not one hundred feet from the sled. Snowbird whipped out her pistol.
"Don't dare!" Dan's voice cracked out to her. He didn't speak loudly; yet the words came so sharp and commanding, so like pistol fire itself, that they penetrated into her consciousness and choked back the nervous reflexes that in an instant might have lost them one of their three precious shells. She caught herself with a sob. Dan shouted at the wolf, and it melted into the shadows.
"You won't do it again, Snowbird?" he asked her very humbly. But his meaning was clear. He was not as skilled with a pistol as she; but if her nerves were breaking, the gun must be taken from her hands. The three shells must be saved to the moment of utmost need.
"No," she told him, looking straight into his eyes. "I won't do it again."
He believed her. He knew that she spoke the truth. He met her eyes with a half smile. Then, wholly without warning, Fate played its last trump.
Again the wilderness reminded them of its might, and their brave spirits were almost broken by the utter remorselessness of the blow. The girl went on her face with a crack of wood. Her snowshoe had been cracked by her fall of the day before, when running to the fire, and whether she struck some other obstruction in the snow, or whether the cracked wood had simply given way under her weight, mattered not even enough for them to investigate. As in all great disasters, only the result remained. The result in this case was that her snowshoe, without which she could not walk at all in the snow, was irreparably broken.
VI
"Fate has stacked the cards against us," Lennox told them, after the first moment's horror from the broken snowshoe.
But no one answered him. The girl, white-faced, kept her wide eyes on Dan. He seemed to be peering into the shadows beside the trail, as if he were watching for the gray forms that now and then glided from tree to tree. In reality, he was not looking for wolves. He was gazing down into his own soul, measuring his own spirit for the trial that lay before him.
The girl, unable to step with the broken snowshoe, rested her weight on one foot and hobbled like a bird with broken wings across to him. No sight of all this terrible journey had been more dreadful in her father's eyes than this. It seemed to split open the strong heart of the man. She touched her hand to his arm.
"I'm sorry, Dan," she told him. "You tried so hard—"
Just one little sound broke from his throat—a strange, deep gasp that could not be suppressed. Then he caught her hand in his and kissed it,—again and again. "Do you think I care about that?" he asked her. "I only wish I could have done more—and what I have done doesn't count. Just as in my fight with Cranston, nothing counts because I didn't win. It's just fate, Snowbird. It's no one's fault, but maybe, in this world, nothing is ever any one's fault." For in the twilight of those winter woods, in the shadow of death itself, perhaps he was catching glimmerings of eternal truths that are hidden from all but the most far-seeing eyes.
"And this is the end?" she asked him. She spoke very bravely.
"No!" His hand tightened on hers. "No, so long as an ounce of strength remains. To fight—never to give up—may God give me spirit for it till I die."
And this was no idle prayer. His eyes raised to the starry sky as he spoke.
"But, son," Lennox asked him rather quietly, "what can you do? The wolves aren't going to wait a great deal longer, and we can't go on."
"There's one thing more—one more trial to make," Dan answered. "I thought about it at first, but it was too long a chance to try if there was any other way. And I suppose you thought of it too."
"Overtaking Cranston?"
"Of course. And it sounds like a crazy dream. But listen, both of you. If we have got to die, up here in the snow—and it looks like we had—what is the thing you want done worst before we go?"
Lennox's hands clasped, and he leaned forward on the sled. "Pay Cranston!" he said.
"Yes!" Dan's voice rang. "Cranston's never going to be paid unless we do it. There will be no signs of incendiarism at the house, and no proofs. They'll find our bodies in the snow, and we'll just be a mystery, with no one made to pay. The evidence in my pocket will be taken by Cranston, sometime this winter. If I don't make him pay, he never will pay. And that's one reason why I'm going to try to carry out this plan I've got.
"The second reason is that it's the one hope we have left. I take it that none of us are deceived on that point. And no man can die tamely—if he is a man—while there's a chance. I mean a young man, like me,—not one who is old and tired. It sounds perfectly silly to talk about finding Cranston's winter quarters, and then, with my bare hands, conquering him, taking his food and his blankets and his snowshoes and his rifle to fight away these wolves, and bringing 'em back here."
"You wouldn't be barehanded," the girl reminded him. "You could have the pistol."
He didn't even seem to hear her. "I've been thinking about it. It's a long, long chance—much worse than the chance we had of getting out by straight walking. I think we could have made it, if the wolves had kept off and the snowshoe hadn't broken. It would have nearly killed us, but I believe we could have got out. That's why I didn't try this other way first. A man with his bare hands hasn't much of a chance against another with a rifle, and I don't want you to be too hopeful. And of course, the hardest problem is finding his camp.
"But I do feel sure of one thing: that he is back to his old trapping line on the North Fork—somewhere south of here—and his camp is somewhere on the river. I think he would have gone there so that he could cut off any attempt I might make to get through with those letters. My plan is to start back at an angle that will carry me between the North Fork and our old house. Somewhere in there I'll find his tracks, the tracks he made when he first came over to burn up the house. I suppose he was careful to mix 'em up after once he arrived there, but the first part of the way he likely walked straight toward the house from his camp. Somewhere, if I go that way, I'll cross his trail—within ten miles at least. Then I'll back-track him to his camp."
"And never come back!" the girl cried.
"Maybe not. But at least everything that can be done will be done. Nothing will be left. No regrets. We will have made the last trial. I'm not going to waste any time, Snowbird. The sooner we get your fire built the better."
"Father and I are to stay here—?"
"What else can you do?" He went back to his traces and drew the sled one hundred yards farther. He didn't seem to see the gaunt wolf that backed off into the shadows as he approached. He refused to notice that the pack seemed to be steadily growing bolder. Human hunters usually had guns that could blast and destroy from a distance; but even an animal intelligence could perceive that these three seemed to be without this means of inflicting death. A wolf is ever so much more intelligent than a crow,—yet a crow shows little fear of an unarmed man and is wholly unapproachable by a boy with a gun. The ugly truth was simply that in their increasing madness and excitement and hunger, they were becoming less and less fearful of these three strange humans with the sled.
It was not a good place for a camp. They worked a long time before they cleared a little patch of ground of its snow mantle. Dan cut a number of saplings—laboriously with his ax—and built a fire with the comparatively dry core of a dead tree. True, it was feeble and flickering, but as good as could be hoped for, considering the difficulties under which he worked. The dead logs under the snow were soaked with water from the rains and the thaws. The green wood that he cut smoked without blazing.
"No more time to be lost," Dan told Snowbird. "It lies in your hands to keep the fire burning. And don't leave the circle of the firelight without that pistol in your hand."
"You don't mean," she asked, unbelieving, "that you are going to go out there to fight Cranston—unarmed?"
"Of course, Snowbird. You must keep the pistol."
"But it means death; that's all it means. What chance would you have against a man with a rifle? And as soon as you get away from this fire, the wolves will tear you to pieces."
"And what would you and your father do, if I took it? You can't get him into a tree. You can't build a big enough fire to frighten them. Please don't even talk about this matter, Snowbird. My mind's made up. I think the pack will stay here. They usually—God knows how—know who is helpless and who isn't. Maybe with the gun, you will be able to save your lives."
"What's the chance of that?"
"You might—with one cartridge—kill one of the devils; and the others—but you know how they devour their own dead. That might break their famine enough so that they'd hold off until I can get back. That's the prize I'm playing for."
"And what if you don't get back?"
He took her hand in one of his, and with the other he caressed, for a single moment, the lovely flesh of her throat. The love he had for her spoke from his eyes,—such speech as no human vision could possibly mistake. Both of them were tingling and breathless with a great, sweet wonder.
"Never let those fangs tear that softness, while you live," he told her gently. "Never let that brave old man on the sled go to his death with the pack tearing at him. Cheat 'em, Snowbird! Beat 'em the last minute, if no other way remains! Show 'em who's boss, after all—of all this forest."
"You mean—?" Her eyes widened.
"I mean that you must only spend one of those three shells in fighting off the wolves. Save that till the moment you need it most. The other two must be saved—for something else."
She nodded, shuddering an instant at a menacing shadow that moved within sixty feet of the fire. The firelight half-blinded them, dim as it was, and they couldn't see into the darkness as well as they had before. Except for strange, blue-yellow lights, close together and two and two about the fire, they might have thought that the pack was gone.
"Then good-by, Dan!" she told him. And she stretched up her arms. "The thing I said—that day on the hillside—doesn't hold any more."
His own arms encircled her, but he made no effort to claim her lips. Lennox watched them quietly; in this moment of crisis not even pretending to look away. Dan shook his head to her entreating eyes. "It isn't just a kiss, darling," he told her soberly. "It goes deeper than that. It's a symbol. It was your word, too, and mine; and words can't be broken, things being as they are. Can't I make you understand?"
She nodded. His eyes burned. Perhaps she didn't understand, as far as actual functioning of the brain was concerned. But she reached up to him, as women—knowing life in the concrete rather than the abstract—have always reached up to men; and she dimly caught the gleam of some eternal principle and right behind his words. This strong man of the mountains had given his word, had been witness to her own promise to him and to herself, and a law that goes down to the roots of life prevented him from claiming the kiss.
Many times, since the world was new, comfort—happiness—life itself have been contingent on the breaking of a law. Yet in spite of what seemed common sense, even though no punishment would forthcome if it were broken, the law has been kept. It was this way now. It wouldn't have been just a kiss such as boys and girls have always had in the moonlight. It meant the symbolic renunciation of the debt that Dan owed Cranston,—a debt that in his mind might possibly go unpaid, but which no weight of circumstance could make him renounce.
His longing for her lips pulled at the roots of him. But by the laws of his being he couldn't claim them until the debt incurred on the hillside, months ago, had been paid; to take them now meant to dull the fine edge of his resolve to carry the issue through to the end, to dim the star that led him, to weaken him, by bending now, for the test to come. He didn't know why. It had its font in the deep wells of the spirit. Common sense can't reveal how the holy man keeps strong the spirit by denying the flesh. It goes too deep for that. Dan kept to his consecration.
He did, however, kiss her hands, and he kissed the tears out of her eyes. Then he turned into the darkness and broke through the ring of the wolves.
VII
Dan Failing was never more thankful for his unerring sense of direction. He struck off at a forty-five-degree angle between their late course and a direct road to the river, and he kept it as if by a surveyor's line. All the old devices of the wilderness—the ridge on ridge that looked just alike, inclines that to the casual eye looked like downward slopes, streams that vanished beneath the snow, and the snow-mist blowing across the face of the landmarks—could not avail against him.
A half dozen of the wolves followed him at first. But perhaps their fierce eyes marked his long stride and his powerful body, and decided that their better chance was with the helpless man and the girl beside the flickering fire. They turned back, one by one. Dan kept straight on and in two hours crossed Cranston's trail.
It was perfectly plain in the moonlit snow. He began to back-track. He headed down a long slope and in an hour more struck the North Fork. He didn't doubt but that he would find Cranston in his camp, if he found the camp at all. The man had certainly returned to it immediately after setting fire to the buildings, if for no other reason than for food. It isn't well to be abroad on the wintry mountains without a supply of food; and Cranston would certainly know this fact.
Dan didn't know when a rifle bullet from some camp in the thickets would put an abrupt end to his advance. The brush grew high by the river, the elevation was considerably lower, and there might be one hundred camps out of the sight of the casual wayfarer. If Cranston should see him, mushing across the moonlit snow, it would give him the most savage joy to open fire upon him with his rifle.
Dan's advance became more cautious. He was in a notable trapping region, and he might encounter Cranston's camp at any moment. His keen eyes searched the thickets, and particularly they watched the sky line for a faint glare that might mean a camp fire. He tried to walk silently. It wasn't an easy thing to do with awkward snowshoes; but the river drowned the little noise that he made. He tried to take advantage of the shelter of the thickets and the trees. Then, at the base of a little ridge, he came to a sudden halt.
He had estimated just right. Not two hundred yards distant, a camp fire flickered and glowed in the shelter of a great log. He saw it, by the most astounding good fortune, through a little rift in the trees. Ten feet on either side, and it was obscured.
He lost no time. He did not know when the wolves about Snowbird's camp would lose the last of their cowardice. Yet he knew he must keep a tight grip on his self-control and not let the necessity of haste cost him his victory. He crept forward, step by step, placing his snowshoes with consummate care. When he was one hundred yards distant he saw that Cranston's camp was situated beside a little stream that flowed into the river and that—like the mountaineer he was—he had built a large lean-to reinforced with snowbanks. The fire burned at its opening. Cranston was not in sight; either he was absent from camp or asleep in his lean-to. The latter seemed the more likely.
Dan made a wide detour, coming in about thirty yards behind the construction. Still he moved with incredible caution. Never in his life had he possessed a greater mastery over his own nerves. His heart leaped somewhat fast in his breast; but this was the only wasted motion. It isn't easy to advance through such thickets without ever a misstep, without the rustle of a branch or the crack of a twig. Certain of the wild creatures find it easy; but men have forgotten how in too many centuries of cities and farms. It is hardly a human quality; and a spectator would have found a rather ghastly fascination in watching the lithe motions, the passionless face, the hands that didn't shake at all. But there were no spectators—unless the little band of wolves, stragglers from the pack that had gathered on the hills behind—watched with lighted eyes.
Dan went down at full length upon the snow and softly removed his snowshoes. They would be only an impediment in the close work that was sure to follow. He slid along the snow crust, clear to the mouth of the lean-to.
The moonlight poured through and showed the interior with rather remarkable plainness. Cranston was sprawled, half-sitting, half-lying on a tree-bough pallet near the rear wall. There was not the slightest doubt of the man's wakefulness. Dan heard him stir, and once—as if at the memory of his deed of the day before—he cursed in a savage whisper. Although he was facing the opening of the lean-to, he was wholly unaware of Dan's presence. The latter had thrust his head at the side of the opening, and it was in shadow. Cranston seemed to be watching the great, white snow fields that lay in front, and for a moment Dan was at loss to explain this seeming vigil. Then he understood. The white field before him was part of the long ridge that the three of them would pass on their way to the valleys. Cranston had evidently anticipated that the girl and the man would attempt to march out—even if he hadn't guessed they would try to take the helpless Lennox with them—and he wished to be prepared for emergencies. There might be sport to have with Dan, unarmed as he was. And his eyes were full of strange conjectures in regard to Snowbird. Both would be exhausted now and helpless—
Dan's eyes encompassed the room: the piles of provisions heaped against the wall, the snowshoes beside the pallet, but most of all he wished to locate Cranston's rifle. Success or failure hung on that. He couldn't find it at first. Then he saw the glitter of its barrel in the moonlight,—leaning against a grub-box possibly six feet from Cranston and ten from himself.
His heart leaped. The best he had hoped for—for the sake of Snowbird, not himself—was that he would be nearer to the gun than Cranston and would be able to seize it first. But conditions could be greatly worse than they were. If Cranston had actually had the weapon in his hands, the odds of battle would have been frightfully against Dan. It takes a certain length of time to seize, swing, and aim a rifle; and Dan felt that while he would be unable to reach it himself, Cranston could not procure it either, without giving Dan an opportunity to leap upon him. In all his dreams, through the months of preparation, he had pictured it thus. It was the test at last.
The gun might be loaded, and still—in these days of safety devices—unready to fire; and the loss of a fraction of a second might enable Cranston to reach his knife. Thus Dan felt justified in ignoring the gun altogether and trusting—as he had most desired—to a battle of hands. And he wanted both hands free when he made his attack.
If Dan had been erect upon his feet, his course would have been an immediate leap on the shoulders of his adversary, running the risk of Cranston reaching his hunting knife in time. But the second that he would require to get to his feet would entirely offset this advantage. Cranston could spring up too. So he did the next most disarming thing.
He sprang up and strode into the lean-to.
"Good evening, Cranston," he said pleasantly.
Cranston was also upon his feet the same instant. His instincts were entirely true. He knew if he leaped for his rifle, Dan would be upon his back in an instant, and he would have no chance to use it. His training, also, had been that of the hills, and his reflexes flung him erect upon his feet at the same instant that he saw the leap of his enemy's shadow. They brought up face to face. The rifle was now out of the running, as they were at about equal distances from it, and neither would have time to swing or aim it.
Dan's sudden appearance had been so utterly unlooked-for, that for a moment Cranston could find no answer. His eyes moved to the rifle, then to his belt where hung his hunting knife, that still lay on the pallet. "Good evening, Failing," he replied, trying his hardest to fall into that strange spirit of nonchalance with which brave men have so often met their adversaries, and which Dan had now. "I'm surprised to see you here. What do you want?"
Dan's voice when he replied was no more warm than the snow banks that reinforced the lean-to. "I want your rifle—also your snowshoes and your supplies of food. And I think I'll take your blankets, too."
"And I suppose you mean to fight for them?" Cranston asked. His lips drew up in a smile, but there was no smile in the tone of his words.
"You're right," Dan told him, and he stepped nearer. "Not only for that, Cranston. We're face to face at last—hands to hands. I've got a knife in my pocket, but I'm not even going to bring it out. It's hands to hands—you and I—until everything's square between us."
"Perhaps you've forgotten that day on the ridge?" Cranston asked. "You haven't any woman to save you this time."
"I remember the day, and that's part of the debt. The thing you did yesterday is part of it too. It's all to be settled at last, Cranston, and I don't believe I could spare you if you went to your knees before me. You've got a clearing out by the fire—big as a prize ring. We'll go out there—side by side. And hands to hands we'll settle all these debts we have between us—with no rules of fighting and no mercy in the end!"
They measured each other with their eyes. Once more Cranston's gaze stole to his rifle, but lunging out, Dan kicked it three feet farther into the shadows of the lean-to. Dan saw the dark face drawn with passion, the hands clenching, the shoulder muscles growing into hard knots. And Cranston looked and knew that merciless vengeance—that age-old sin and Christless creed by which he lived—had followed him down and was clutching him at last.
He saw it in the position of the stalwart form before him, the clear level eyes that the moonlight made bright as steel, the hard lines, the slim, powerful hands. He could read it in the tones of the voice,—tones that he himself could not imitate or pretend. The hour had come for the settling of old debts.
He tried to curse his adversary as a weakling and a degenerate, but the obscene words he sought for would not come to his lips. Here was his fate, and because the darkness always fades before the light, and the courage of wickedness always breaks before the courage of righteousness, Cranston was afraid to look it in the face. The fear of defeat, of death, of Heaven knows what remorselessness with which this grave giant would administer justice was upon him, and his heart seemed to freeze in his breast. Cravenly he leaped for his knife on the blankets below him.
Dan was upon him before he ever reached it. He sprang as a cougar springs, incredibly fast and with shattering power. Both went down, and for a long time they writhed and struggled in each other's arms. The pine boughs rustled strangely.
The dark, gaunt hand reached in vain for the knife. Some resistless power seemed to be holding his wrist and was bending its bone as an Indian bends a bow. Pain lashed through him.—And then this dark-hearted man, who had never known the meaning of mercy, opened his lips to scream that this terrible enemy be merciful to him.
But the words wouldn't come. A ghastly weight had come at his throat, and his tortured lungs sobbed for breath. Then, for a long time, there was a curious pounding, lashing sound in the evergreen boughs. It seemed merciless and endless.
But Dan got up at last, in a strange, heavy silence, and swiftly went to work. He took the rifle and filled it with cartridges from Cranston's belt. Then he put the remaining two boxes of shells into his shirt pocket. The supplies of food—the sack of nutritious jerked venison like dried bark, the little package of cheese, the boxes of hardtack and one of the small sacks of prepared flour—he tied, with a single kettle, into his heavy blankets and flung them with the rifle upon his back. Finally he took the pair of snowshoes from the floor. He worked coldly, swiftly, all the time munching at a piece of jerked venison. When he had finished he walked to the door of the lean-to.
It seemed to Dan that Cranston whispered faintly, from his unconsciousness, as he passed; but the victor did not turn to look. The snowshoes crunched away into the darkness. On the hill behind a half-dozen wolves—stragglers from the pack—frisked and leaped about in a curious way. A strange smell had reached them on the wind, and when the loud, fearful steps were out of hearing, it might pay them to creep down, one by one, and investigate its cause.
VIII
The gray circle about the fire was growing impatient. Snowbird waited to the last instant before she admitted this fact. But it is possible only so long to deny the truth of a thing that all the senses verify, and that moment for her was past.
At first the wolves had lingered in the deepest shadow and were only visible in profile against the gray snow. But as the night wore on, they became increasingly careless. They crept up to the very edge of the little circle of firelight; and when a high-leaping flame threw a gleam over them, they didn't shrink. She had only to look up to see that age-old circle of fire—bright dots, two and two—at every side.
It is an instinct in the hunting creatures to remain silent before the attack. The triumph cries come afterward. But they seemed no longer anxious about this, either. Sometimes she would hear their footfall as they leaped in the snow, and what excitement stirred them she didn't dare to think. Quite often one of them would snarl softly,—a strange sound in the darkness.
She noticed that when she went to her hands and knees, laboriously to cut a piece of the drier wood from the rain-soaked, rotted snag that was her principal supply of fuel, every wolf would leap forward, only to draw back when she stood straight again. At such times she saw them perfectly plainly,—their gaunt bodies, their eyes lighted with the insanity of famine, their ivory fangs that glistened in the firelight. She worked desperately to keep the fire burning bright. She dared not neglect it for a moment. Except for the single pistol ball that she could afford to expend on the wolves—of the three she had—the fire was her last defense.
But it was a losing fight. The rain-soaked wood smoked without flame, the comparatively dry core with which Dan had started the fire had burned down, and the green wood, hacked with such heart-breaking difficulty from the saplings that Dan had cut, needed the most tireless attention to burn at all.
When Dan had gone, these little trees were well within the circle of the wolves. Unfortunately, the circle had drawn in past them. Nevertheless, now that the last of the drier dead wood was consumed, she shouldered her ax and walked straight toward the gray, crouching bodies in the snow. For a tragic second she thought that the nearest of them was going to stand its ground. But almost when she was in striking range, and its body was sinking to the snow in preparation for a leap, it skulked back into the shadow. Exhausted as she was, it seemed to her that she chopped endlessly to cut away one little length. The ax blade was dull, the handle awkward in her hand, she could scarcely stand on her broken snowshoes, and worse, the ice crust broke beneath her blows, burying the sapling in the snow. She noticed that every time she bent to strike a blow, the circle would plunge a step nearer her, withdrawing as she straightened again.
Books of woodcraft often describe with what ease a fire may be built and maintained in wet snow. It works fairly well in theory, but it is a heart-breaking task in practice. Under such difficulties as she worked, it became one of those dreadful undertakings that partake of a nightmare quality,—the walking of a treadmill or the sweeping of waves from the shore.
When she secured the first length, her fire was almost extinguished. It threw a fault cloud of smoke into the air, but the flame was almost gone. The darkness dropped about her, and the wolves came stealing over the snow. She worked furiously, with the strength of desperation, and little by little she won back a tiny flame.
Her nervous vitality was flowing from her in a frightful stream. Too long she had toiled without food in the constant presence of danger, and she was very near indeed to utter exhaustion. But at the same time she knew she must not faint. That was one thing she could not do,—to fall unconscious before the last of her three cartridges was expended in the right way.
Again she went forth to the sapling, and this time it seemed to her that if she simply tossed the ax through the air, she could fell one of the gray crowd. But when she stooped to pick it up—She didn't finish the thought. She turned to coax the fire. And then she leaned sobbing over the sled.
"What's the use?" she cried. "He won't come back. What's the use of fighting any more?"
"There's always use of fighting," her father told her. He seemed to speak with difficulty, and his face looked strange and white. The cold and the exposure were having their effect on his weakened system, and unconsciousness was a near shadow indeed. "But, dearest,—if I could only make you do what I want you to—"
"What?"
"You're able to climb a tree, and if you'd take these coats, you wouldn't freeze by morning. If you'd only have the strength—"
"And see you torn to pieces!"
"I'm old, dear—and very tired—and I'd crawl away into the shadows, where you couldn't see. There's no use mincing words, Snowbird. You're a brave girl—always have been since a little thing, as God is my Judge—and you know we must face the truth. Better one of us die than both. And I promise—I'll never feel their fangs. And I won't take your pistol with me either."
Her thought flashed to the clasp hunting knife that he carried in his pocket. But her eyes lighted, and she bent and kissed him. And the wolves leaped forward even at this.
"We'll stay it out," she told him. "We'll fight it to the last—just as Dan would want us to do. Besides—it would only mean the same fate for me, in a little while. I couldn't cling up there forever—and Dan won't come back."
She was wholly unable to gain on the fire. Only by dint of the most heart-breaking toil was she able to secure any dry fuel for it at all. Every length of wood she cut had to be scraped of bark, and half the time the fire was only a sickly column of white smoke. It became increasingly difficult to swing the ax. The trail was almost at its end.
The after-midnight hours drew one by one across the face of the wilderness, and she thought that the deepening cold presaged dawn. Her fingers were numb. Her nerve control was breaking; she could no longer drive a straight blow with the ax. The number of the wolves seemed to be increasing: every way she looked she could see them leaping. Or was this just hysteria? Surely the battle could go on but a few moments more. The wolves themselves, sensing dawn, were losing the last of their cowardice.
Once more she went to one of the saplings, but she stumbled and almost went to her face at the first blow. It was the instant that her gray watchers had been waiting for. The wolf that stood nearest leaped—a gray streak out of the shadow—and every wolf in the pack shot forward with a yell. It was a short, expectant cry; but it chopped off short. For with a half-sob, and seemingly without mental process, she aimed her pistol and fired.
A fast-leaping wolf is one of the most difficult pistol targets that can be imagined. It bordered on the miraculous that she did not miss him altogether. Her nerves were torn, their control over her muscles largely gone. Yet the bullet coursed down through the lungs, inflicting a mortal wound.
The wolf had leaped for her throat; but he fell short. She staggered from a blow, and she heard a curious sound in the region of her hip. But she didn't know that the fangs had gone home in her soft flesh. The wolf rolled on the ground; and if her pistol had possessed the shocking power of a rifle, he would have never got up again. As it was, he shrieked once, then sped off in the darkness to die. Five or six of the nearest wolves, catching the smell of his blood, bayed and sped after him.
But the remainder of the great pack—fully fifteen of the gray, gaunt creatures—came stealing across the snow toward her. White fangs had gone home; and a new madness was in the air.
Straining into the silence, a perfectly straight line between Cranston's camp and Snowbird's, Dan Failing came mushing across the snow. His sense of direction had never been obliged to stand such a test as this before. Snowbird's fire was a single dot on a vast plateau; yet he had gone straight toward it.
He was risking everything for the sake of speed. He gave no heed to the fallen timber that might have torn the web of his snowshoes to shreds. Because he shut out all thought of it, he had no feeling of fatigue. The fight with Cranston had been a frightful strain on muscle and nerve; but he scarcely remembered it now. His whole purpose was to return to Snowbird before the wolves lost the last of their cowardice.
The jerked venison that he had munched had brought him back much of his strength. He was wholly unconscious of his heavy pack. Never did he glide so swiftly, so softly, with such unerring step; and it was nothing more or less than a perfect expression of the ironclad control that his steel nerves had over his muscles.
Then, through the silence, he heard the shout of the pack as the wolf had leaped at Snowbird. He knew what it meant. The wolves were attacking then, and a great flood of black, hating bitterness poured over him at the thought he had been too late. It had all been in vain, and before the thought could fully go home, he heard the dim, far-off crack of a pistol.
Was that the first of the three shots, the one she might expend on the wolves, or had the first two already been spent and was she taking the last gateway of escape? Perhaps even now Lennox was lying still on the sled, and she was standing before the ruin of her fire, praying that her soul might have wings. He shouted with all the power of his lungs across the snow.
But Snowbird only heard the soft glide of the wolves in the snow. The wind was blowing toward Dan; and while he had heard the loud chorus of the pack, one of the most far-carrying cries, and the penetrating crack of a pistol, she couldn't hear his answering shout. In fact, the wilderness seemed preternaturally still. All was breathless, heavy with suspense, and she stood, just as Dan had thought, between the ruin of her fire and the sled, and she looked with straight eyes to the oncoming wolves.
"Hurry, Snowbird," Lennox was whispering. "Give me the pistol—for that last work. We have only a moment more."
He looked very calm and brave, half-raised as he was on the sled, and perhaps a half-smile lingered at his bearded lips. And the bravest thing of all was that to spare her, he was willing to take the little weapon from her hand to use it in its last service. She tried to smile at him, then crept over to his side.
The strain was over. They knew what they had to face. She put the pistol in his steady hand.
His hand lowered to his side and he sat waiting. The moments passed. The wolves seemed to be waiting too, for the last flickering tongue of the little fire to die away. The last of her fuel was ignited and burning out; they were crouched and ready to spring if she should venture forth after more. The darkness closed down deeper, and at last only a column of smoke remained.
It was nothing to be afraid of. The great, gray leader of the pack, a wolf that weighed nearly one hundred pounds, began slowly and deliberately to set his muscles for the spring. It was the same as when the great bull elk comes to bay at the base of the cliffs: usually some one wolf, often the great pack leader, wishing to remind his followers of his might, or else some full-grown male proud in his strength, will attack alone. Because this was the noblest game that the pack had ever faced, the leader chose to make the first leap himself. It was true that these two had neither such horns nor razor-edged hoofs as the elk, yet they had eyes that chilled his heart when he tried to look at them. But one was lying almost prone, and the fire was out. Besides, the madness of starvation, intensified ten times by their terrible realization of the wound at her hip, was upon the pack as never before. The muscles bunched at his lean flanks.
But as Snowbird and her father gazed at him in fascinated horror, the great wolf suddenly smashed down in the snow. She was aware of its curious, utter collapse actually before the sound of the rifle shot that occasioned it had penetrated her consciousness. It was a perfect shot at long range; and for a long instant her tortured faculties refused to accept the truth.
Then the rifle spoke again, and a second wolf—a large male that crouched on the other side of the sled—fell kicking in the snow. The pack had leaped forward at the first death; but they halted at the second. And then terror came to them when the third wolf suddenly opened its savage lips and screamed in the death agony.
Up to this time, except for the report of the rifle, the attack had been made in utter silence. The reason was just that both breath and nervous force are needed to shout; and Dan Failing could afford to waste neither of these vital forces. He had dropped to his knee, and was firing again and again, his gray eyes looking clear and straight along the barrel, his fingers without jerk or tremor pressing again and again at the trigger, his hands holding the rifle as in a vice. Every nerve and muscle were completely in his command. The distance was far, yet he shot with deadly, amazing accuracy. The wolves were within a few feet of the girl, and a fraction's waver in the gun barrel might have sped his bullet toward her.
"It's Dan Failing," Lennox shouted as the fourth wolf died.
Then Snowbird snatched her pistol from her father's hand and opened fire. The two shells were no longer needed to free herself and her father from the agony of fangs. She took careful aim, and although a pistol is never as accurate or as powerful as a rifle, she killed one wolf and wounded another.
Frenzied in their savagery, three or four of the remaining wolves leaped at the body of one of the wounded; but the others scattered in all directions. Still Dan fired with the same unbelievable accuracy, and still the wolves died in the snow. The girl and the man were screaming now in the frenzied joy of deliverance. The wolves scurried frantically among the trees; and some of them unknowingly ran full in the face of their enemy, to be shot down without mercy. And few indeed were those that escaped,—to collect on a distant ridge, and, perhaps, to be haunted in dreams by a Death that came out of the shadows to blast the pack.
Again the pack-song would be despairing and strange in the winter nights,—that age-old chant of Famine and Fear and the long war of existence with only Death and Darkness in the end. And because it is the voice of the wilderness itself, the tenderfoot that camps in the evergreen forest will listen, and his talk will die at his lips, and he will have the beginnings of knowledge. And perhaps he will wonder if God has given him the thews and fiber to meet the wilderness breast to breast as Dan had met it: to remain and to fight and to conquer. And thereby his metal will be tested in the eyes of the Red Gods.
Snowbird stood waiting in the snow, arms stretched to her forester as Dan came running through the wood. But his arms were wider yet, and she went softly into them.
"We will take it easy from now on," Dan Failing told them, after the camp was cleared of its dead and the fire was built high. "We have plenty of food; and we will travel a little while each day and make warm camps at night. We'll have friendship fires, just as sometimes we used to build on the ridge."
"But after you get down into the valleys?" Lennox asked anxiously. "Are you and Snowbird coming up here to live?"
The silence fell over their camp; and a wounded wolf whined in the darkness. "Do you think I could leave it now?" Dan asked. By no gift of words could he have explained why; yet he knew that by token of his conquest, his spirit was wedded to the dark forests forever. "But heaven knows what I'll do for a living."
Snowbird crept near him, and her eyes shone in the bright firelight. "I've solved that," she said. "You know you studied forestry—and I told the supervisor at the station how much you knew about it. I wasn't going to tell you until—until certain things happened—and now they have happened, I can't wait another instant. He said that with a little more study you could get into the Forest Service—take an examination and become a ranger. You're a natural forester if one ever lived, and you'd love the work."
"Besides," Lennox added, "it would clip my Snowbird's wings to make her live on the plains. My big house will be rebuilt, children. There will be fires in the fireplace on the fall nights. There is no use of thinking of the plains."
"And there's going to be a smaller house—just a cottage at first—right beside it," Dan replied. He could go back to his forests, after all. He wouldn't have to throw away his birthright, fought for so hard; and it seemed to him no other occupation could offer so much as that of the forest rangers,—those silent, cool-nerved guardians of the forest and keepers of its keys.
For a long time Snowbird and he stood together at the edge of the firelight, their bodies warm from the glow, their hearts brimming with words they could not utter. Words always come hard to the mountain people. They are folk of action, and Dan, rather than to words, trusted to the yearning of his arms.
"We're made for each other, Snowbird darling," he told her breathlessly at last. "And at last I can claim what I've been waiting for all these months."
He claimed it; and in open defiance to all civil law, he collected fully one hundred times in the next few minutes. But it didn't particularly matter, and Snowbird didn't even turn her face. "Maybe you've forgotten you claimed it when you first came back too," she said.
So he had. It had completely slipped his mind, in the excitement of his fight with the wolf pack. And then while Lennox pretended to be asleep, they sat, breathless with happiness, on the edge of the sled and watched the dawn come out.
They had never seen the snow so lovely in the sunlight.