Hidden Country

by Henry Oyen

XXX

The cave became still. Snuggled down in her bed in the canoe Betty had fallen asleep as readily as if in her bed in the owner’s suite aboard the Wanderer. Sleep pressed on my eyelids, too; my body, tired from the unwonted exertions of the day, demanded insistently the boon of recreating slumber.

I fought off my drowsiness, however, and lay curled up on my bed of boughs, facing the cave’s mouth, and tried to think. Yet though I realized that I was awake it all seemed like a dream, such a dream as youth dreams when the call of Romance and Adventure still is real.

I was Gardner Pitt, writing man; my accustomed environment, the carefully barbered, denaturalized life of my set in New York. No, that must be a mistake. That New York existence seemed too far away to be a part of my present life. That was the dream; this the reality. I was Gardner Pitt, but I was not a writer; I was simply a hundred and sixty pounds of man, and I was sleeping on a pile of brush at the mouth of a cavern, in which slept a woman guarded by my presence. And it all seemed so natural, so vital and true a field for a man’s activities, that for the time nothing else had significance. True, this was not my woman that I was guarding, but another’s. But no thought of this entered my mind at the time. I did not think at all beyond the problem of escaping from Brack.

I placed my pistol in my right hand, determined to lie awake through the night.

I must have fallen asleep immediately after this, because when I was awakened by the rays of the morning sun slanting into the cave, the pistol lay with my relaxed hand upon it. I started up with a sensation of guilt.

With my pistol in my hand I peered out of the cave, more than half expecting to find Brack calmly awaiting me with his tantalizing smile in its place. But no human presence disturbed the primitive peace of that hillside that morning. A covey of feeding grouse lifted their heads and looked at me without fear. Birds were singing, the sun was bright and warm, and down on the blue water of the bay a pair of tiny ducks played.

I turned to look at Betty and was greeted by the sight of a very tousled, half-awake little head, peering over the side of the canoe.

“‘Mornin’,” murmured the little head sleepily.

“‘Mornin’,” I replied.

“Oo-oo-ah!” The little head yawned tremendously. “Wha’ time is ’t?”

It was 7:02 by my watch as I consulted it.

“Oo-o-wah!” Little head looked at me appealingly. “Do we got to get up so early when we play Injun?”

“Only the hunting Injun’s got to get up so early. Other Injuns sleep as long as they please.”

“Hunting? What for?”

“Oh, for a nice, big white yacht, for one thing. I’ll be gone only a short while. In the meantime you sleep.”

“O-um-mum,” murmured the little head and sank comfortably out of sight in the canoe.

Parting the brush that hid the cave, I stepped out and went down the hillside a short distance. Looking back I was pleased to find that the cave was so well hidden that unless one knew its location it might be passed close by without its existence being suspected. Save for the possibility that man who had taken the rifle was one of Brack’s gang the cave offered a fairly safe hiding place.

My first move was to assure myself that the yacht was not anchored near by. I went cautiously up the bay for half a mile, scrutinizing each inlet in vain for a sight of the Wanderer’s white sides. I then swung up into the hills, marching a circle around the cave, impelled by the instinctive desire to ascertain the possible presence of any enemy.

At a distance of a city block from the cave I found a tiny spring sending its rivulet down the hillside to the bay, and as I lay down to drink I saw huddled beneath a tiny fir a flock of grouse watching me from a distance of ten or twelve feet.

Instinct promptly whispered: “Food” and I recalled the scant supply I had taken from the cabin, and reached for my pistol. The pistol, however, would roar like a cannon in that morning stillness and my supply of ammunition was limited to the ten cartridges in the magazine.

Lying motionless I looked around until my eyes fell upon a club. It was out of reach, but the foolish birds, confident that they were hidden, sat still while I secured the club and hurled it with all my might into their midst. I leaped forward instantly, and in the roar and flurry of the covey’s rising pounced upon two fluttering birds which my club had stunned.

Betty was up and wide awake when I returned to the cave. She had made her hair into one thick braid which hung down her back, and her face was rosy from sound sleep. She shuddered first at the sight of the birds.

“Oh, the poor, pretty things!” she murmured, stroking their feathers. “I wish you hadn’t hurt them.”

“I didn’t hurt them,” I replied. “They never knew what struck them. I didn’t like to do it, but we must find our own food, or surrender to Brack.”

She looked at the birds wistfully and said nothing as I led her to the spring. I left her splashing the ice-cold water upon her face and proceeded to dress the birds. When I returned to the cave she was waiting with her sleeves rolled up and a set look in her eyes.

“I can cook them,” she said firmly. “That’s my share of the game. You cut them in two and put a stick through the pieces and hold them before a hot fire that doesn’t smoke.”

“Any fire that we have must not smoke,” I said. “The smoke would show above the trees and be seen.”

“Then we must have perfectly dry wood,” she said quickly. “A small fire and dry; that doesn’t smoke.”

We set about gathering the wood together. Between two stones at the cave’s opening we built our fire, watching it jealously, to see that only the minimum of smoke arose from it in the clear air. Betty put her conscience to rest as she regarded the dressed grouse, composed mainly of succulent breast.

“They must be intended for food,” she said, “or they wouldn’t be made as they are.”

I agreed with her emphatically, and with a skewered half bird in each hand we sat down before the fire and proceeded with our cookery.

Freshly killed spruce grouse, roasted before an uncertain fire, and without salt, do not make ideal breakfast food, a fact which we discovered soon after the birds were done.

“I believe,” said Betty, when she had nibbled at half a bird, “I have had enough.”

“I have other viands in my pocket.”

“To be saved for future reference,” she laughed.

“We’ll wrap the rest of this wild poultry up in nice clean leaves and save it for another meal.”

“We will. It will be tasty when cold.”

At the spring where we went to wash down the meal with drafts of water, Betty’s eyes began to twinkle and the corners of her lips twitched suspiciously.

“Well, we’ve perfectly beautiful drinking water, at least,” she said, and smothered her laughter behind both hands.

“Now then,” she said briskly, when we were back in the cave, “are we going to occupy this apartment for some time, or do we continue our travels of last night?”

I told her that it seemed best for us to stay in hiding.

“All right. Then let’s try to brighten the place up a little. We don’t have to sit here and look at these black stone walls just because we’re playing Injun. Come and help me; I love to select furnishings for a room.”

From the hillside near the cave we gathered more branches and brush. Pine, spruce, birch and willow, budding into the full growth of Summer, came by the armfuls into the cavern.

“You never would have thought that this place needed decorating, would you?” said Betty, as she set to work. “Certainly not. This rough roof offers a shelter; these harsh walls hide us from our enemies. So you, being a mere man, think it’s all right. Ha! I’d hate to be a mere man.”

She was flying about the cave, fastening branches in the clefts of the rock, stepping back to view the results, altering her arrangements, apparently so lost in her work as to have forgotten our true situation.

“Now hand me that birch branch—the white contrasts beautifully with the green pine; now another piece of pine, now some more birch. There. That’s what you call repetition of color, isn’t it? You don’t know? Gracious. How can men be so ignorant of the really important things of life!”

On the rock forming the roof of the cave we found a patch of moss, velvet soft to the touch, and a gentle brown and gold in color. With a stick I loosened great pieces from the rock and bore it carefully within where Betty directed the carpeting of the cave. When a large piece reached its destination intact Betty beamed; when the moss broke between my outstretched hands she pouted.

“I think so long as Nature goes to the trouble of creating a carpet for us it might as well do a good job and make it strong enough to stand transportation.”

But when the cave was carpeted with its soft, yielding cushion of moss she clapped her hands in delight.

“Look at it!” she cried, embracing the cave with a gesture. “Why, it’s cozy; people could almost live here.”

Our coming and going had trodden down much of the brush which had so thoroughly hidden the cave, and with some of the branches left over from Betty’s decorations I proceeded to weave a screen over the opening. When I had completed it I crawled out and inspected my work from a distance. The cave now was hidden more thoroughly than ever. Brack must look long and carefully to find us.

When I slipped back into our shelter I surprised Betty sitting on the canoe with her head bowed upon her hands in an attitude of dejection. She looked up, smiling bravely, but her cheerfulness was only surface-deep.

I looked away without a word, as did she, but in that moment we had confessed to one another that our display of high spirits had merely been acting, each wishing to help bolster up the courage of the other. We sat so for some time. Betty finally broke the silence.

“Well,” she said quietly, “there’s no use pretending any more, is there?”

As I had no reply she continued—

“We might as well admit out loud that neither of us feels—well, exactly jolly about it.”

“That’s true,” I replied inanely.

We were silent again.

“What—what are we going to do about it, Mr. Pitt?”

“There is nothing much to do; we are safe for the time being. So long as we keep out of Brack’s sight we are safe. For the present we could do just that—and hope.”

Betty heard me without a word. Once more she bowed her face upon her hands, and her girlish shoulders trembled. I was at her side in an instant.

“Don’t, Betty, please don’t!” I pleaded. “You mustn’t give way. It’s rough, and it’s hard, specially hard for a girl like you, but don’t give way for—for my sake. It’s been your fine courage and cheerfulness that’s kept me from showing that I’m really a coward. Yes, it is; you’ve kept me from being a coward. Don’t—please don’t be afraid. We’ll get out of this all right somehow, sure.”

She looked at me, her eyes moist, but with her old thoughtful look in them.

“Do you really believe we will, in your heart, Mr. Pitt?”

“Most emphatically I do.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you only hope——?”

“No; I believe.”

“Oh!” she cried suddenly. “I hope—I pray—that you’re right; because it’s all my fault, all my fault, and I’d never forgive myself if I’d brought harm to you—or George.”

Once more the sound of George’s name on her tongue shocked me. Could she never get the man out of her head?

I picked aimlessly at a birch bough over my head, and each little budding leaf that I plucked away seemed like the tiny dreams which unconsciously had been in my mind all morning, and which now were driven away. The dreams that come to a man willy-nilly, without reason, without basis of hope. It probably was the stress of yesterday, the natural romance of a cave in the wilderness that were responsible. Well, I had that, anyhow; hours with Betty, in the sunlit, primitive woods. The memory of that would remain. Why, I was rich, richer than I had ever been in my life.

“Will you allow me to say something serious, Betty?”

Her look was startled, apprehensive, but her eyes gave consent.

“These hours have been the biggest of my life.”

I stopped. Betty was looking at the ground. And suddenly all the winds of the world seemed to be drawing me toward her, urging me to throw myself beside her, and a stream of words was upon my tongue.

I reached up, plucked a twig of pine from its cleft, and when I had stripped its needles one by one my self-control had returned.

“So you see I’m a winner,” I laughed. “You mustn’t worry one little worry about me. Whatever happens I’m ahead of the game.”

It was a long time before she spoke, and then she did so without looking up.

“Is—that—true?”

“Can’t you see it is?”

She nodded without looking to see.

“And—is that—all?”

“Isn’t that plenty? The biggest hours of my life—to have and remember?”

She poked her white toe into the moss, but still her eyes were on the ground.

“I feel awf’ly guilty,” she said faintly. “It’s all my fault. The whole thing is my fault. Poor George! If it hadn’t been for me he never would have met Brack, and then all this would not have happened.”

“George probably is all right by this time. He is under Dr. Olson’s care, and the doctor is one of us.”

“I’ve made him suffer terribly, haven’t I?”

“No. If he hadn’t—” I checked myself. “You haven’t made him suffer. And he’ll be a wiser man when you see him again, and you’ll both forget and be happy together.”

Betty lifted her eyes and studied me closely. Her expression was puzzling; she seemed incredulous. A quizzical smile touched her lips; she suppressed it and looked away.

“And George,” she said, as if her thoughts had wandered away from him, “I must make up for it all to him—if I can.”

“If you can! Of course you can. You will!”

Again she lifted her head and looked me squarely in the eyes. And this time when she looked away I knew that I was a fool, though I did not know just why.