THE WAY OUT
Far away in the broken hut in the snow-blinded forest, Robert Vane gazed in perplexity at the useless webs which Joe held up for his inspection.
“How did I do that?” he asked. “I don’t remember anything of that sort.”
“You didn’t do it,” she answered. “It was done by the Danglers—my relatives.”
“But I don’t understand. And why did they leave me here—with the cord at my wrists so loose that I slipped my hands free? Why didn’t they do me in for keeps, if they feel that way about me?”
The girl let her snowshoes fall with a clatter.
“They did for you,” she said. “They knew nothing about me. When they tore the webbing they killed you as surely as if they had cut your throat—as far as they knew. You have no compass, no food, no matches, no blankets, no snowshoes—nothing. You are weak—for they have hurt you. You are lost—and the snow is deep and still falling. You are lost. They lost you.”
“I see. You have saved my life.”
“I know the way out; and I have matches, but nothing to eat—and nothing to mend your rackets with.”
“How far is it?”
“About seven miles to the nearest clearing—by the right way. By any other way—hundreds of miles! But I know the right one.”
“Seven miles. That’s not far. Two hours—or so. When shall we start? But you must be tired out. Of course you are!”
“I don’t believe I’d know the marks in this storm. It will thin up in a few hours, I think. Are you feeling better?”
“Right as rain,” he said, scrambling to his feet. He staggered a step, stood swaying and propped an arm to the nearest wall for support. He misjudged the distance, or the length of his arm, and would have fallen but for her. She sprang to him, embraced him and eased him to the floor. “But still a trifle dizzy,” he added.
She crouched beside him, with a shoulder to steady him, but with her face averted.
“Any chance of their returning to see how I am doing?” he asked.
She shook her head. “They are too clever for that,” she replied. “They will go to the village, and then home. People will see them and talk to them. They have traveled away from here as fast as they could, and left everything to—to nature.”
“But a man doesn’t starve to death in a few hours, nor in a few days. Suppose I simply sat here until a search-party found me?”
“Alone? As they intended. Without fire? You would freeze to death before a search-party was thought of.”
He felt in all his pockets. “That’s right,” he said. “All my matches are gone, and my pistol and ammunition—but they’ve left my cigarettes. Without a single match, confound them! But what if I had struck right out and happened on the right way? That would have upset their calculations, I imagine.”
“The snow is deep; to your hips, in places—and deeper. Even if you happened on the right way, and happened to keep it in this storm—which could not be—you would have no chance. Weak, and without help, and without a fire to rest by! You could not travel half of seven miles. But I have matches; and I know the way. I can help you.”
“I need help, heaven knows!” he said. “And I’m glad it is you.”
After a silence of several seconds she replied, “I’m glad, too.”
She left him, gathered some old boughs from a bunk, tore strips of bark from the logs of the wall and made a fire on the rough hearth. She tore poles from the fallen patch of roof, broke the smaller of them, and fed them to the fire. She helped him over to a corner near the hearth and gave him a match for his cigarette. She had plenty of matches, a large jack-knife and hairpins in her pockets.
“I can stand a lot of this,” said Vane. “The men who thought they could kill me this way are fools.”
Joe searched about the hut, found a rusty tin kettle at last and went out into the spinning snow. Vane felt a chill, whether physical or spiritual he did not know, the moment the warped door closed between them. He got to his feet, moved unsteadily and painfully to the door and pulled it open. He saw her through the veils of the snow descending the cleared slope before the hut and watched the slender figure until it melted into a dark screen of alders. His legs and arms ached; his ribs and head were sore; and his throat ached and his lips were parched; but his heart was elated.
She returned with the kettle full of chips of ice which she had hacked from the surface of the brook with her knife. She melted this at the fire and cooled it in the heap of snow under the break in the roof. They drank it together, turn and turn about. Vane felt much better for it.
“It’s queer to think that you wasted all that game with your ankle,” he said. “All that effort to make me promise to run away—all that successful effort—thrown away!”
“And worse than thrown away,” she answered. “If I hadn’t done that perhaps you would not have been ambushed.”
“I am glad you tricked me into carrying you on my back,” he returned gravely. “I don’t regret the ambush, the bump on the head, the thumps and kicks—anything. The fact is——”
“I wonder if you promised a horse to that young lady?” she interrupted.
“I did. How did you guess? And her brother bet a thousand dollars I wouldn’t find anything of the blood of Eclipse in these woods. But all that doesn’t matter. It all seems rather idiotic to me now. The real meaning of all this—of my coming to this country—is—well, I struck town just in time to pull you out of a fire, didn’t? And I didn’t even stop to take a look at what I had saved! Good Lord! And now you are saving my life; and even horses of the blood of Eclipse don’t seem so important to me now. It can’t be just chance that——”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“No fear! I haven’t forgotten a word you have said, nor a single——”
“But your mother—and the woman you promised the horse to!”
“I shall give her the horse, if I get it. But it doesn’t matter much, either way.”
“You asked her to be your wife.”
“Twice, I believe—but she said she wouldn’t.”
“She wouldn’t! Why?”
“Why should she? I’m poor.”
“Poor? And yet you wagered one thousand dollars that you’d find a horse of a certain strain of blood up here in these woods!”
“A sporting bet; and I have a thousand.”
“But you love her.”
“You are wrong. I thought I did, once or twice—or thought I thought I did. It was all a matter of thinking, as I see it now. But it doesn’t matter. Do you—are you—do you love someone?”
“What?”
“Do you love somebody?”
“I think—yes.”
“Think? Don’t you know?”
“Yes—I know.”
“Are you happy about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it wise?”
“I—I don’t think so. I’m sure it is not.”
“Good God! That fellow who came to see me! That—that——”
“What do you mean?”
“Steve Dangler.”
“Do you mean that? Do you think I love Steve Dangler?”
“But haven’t you just said so?”
She shook her head and turned her face away.
“Forgive me, please,” he whispered. “It’s your duty to forgive me, don’t you know—for I saved your life and you are saving mine. Joe, please look at me. It is your own fault that I—well, why did you pretend to hurt your ankle? Is it fair to walk miles and miles after a man in the woods at night, to save his life, and then to be angry with him for—for telling you the truth?”
“What truth have you told me?” she asked unsteadily, still with averted face.
“You are the dearest person in the world! You are the——”
She got swiftly and lightly to her feet, crossed to the door and opened it, then stood looking out. Vane sighed. Presently the girl turned, but she did not look at him.
“It is thinning,” she said. “I think we had better make a start now. It is clear enough for me to see the landmarks.”
She fastened on her rackets, and picked up the rusty kettle. Vane buttoned his outer coat, drew on his mittens, pulled his cap down about his ears and hoisted himself to his feet. “I’m ready,” he said.
The girl stepped out into the thinning snowfall, glanced back, glanced around, then moved off slowly. Vane followed. He stepped from the threshold and sank to his knees. His next step sank deeper. He plunged ahead, conscious of a protest from every bone in his body. But that did not dismay him. He had lifted his feet before against protests. His head felt clear now, and that was a great thing; and his heart felt like a strong engine in perfect running order. As for his bones, he was sure that none of them was broken. So he plowed forward in the tracks of the girl’s narrow webs.
They descended the little clearing, and entered the screen of alders along the brook. The snow took him to the hips there, and deeper. He plunged, stuck, plunged again and plowed through. The girl turned and watched his efforts for a few seconds with veiled eyes, then turned to her front again, and passed across the brook. Vane staggered in the shallower snow of the brook, fell to his hands and knees and came up again in a flash. He set his teeth and struggled forward. Halfway up the opposite bank he stuck fast. He struggled without a word. It was no use; so he rested, without a word. Joe came back to him and, without looking at him, took his hands and pulled him forward. He seconded her efforts ably, and was soon through that drift. She withdrew one hand from his grasp, but he kept hold of the other.
“I was afraid you had changed your mind,” he said.
“So I have,” she answered coolly.
“Surely not! You came back and pulled me out. You still mean to save my life, evidently.”
“Oh, that! Yes, I’ll save your life”—and she snatched her hand away.
Vane followed again. His heart didn’t feel so high now. In fact, it felt far worse than his knees and shoulders and ribs. He thought back and wondered at his dear companion of the hut as if at some beautiful experience of his childhood. He made one hundred yards, two hundred, two-fifty, before striking another drift. He struggled with the drift in a desperate silence. He got halfway through. She turned and came back to him.
“I’m all right,” he said. “With you in two ticks.”
She searched for his hands, but his were not extended in response. She came closer and pulled at his shoulders.
“I can manage it, thanks all the same,” he said.
“But you know you can’t!” she cried.
He squirmed free of her hands and clear of the drift, leaving her behind him. But her tracks were still in front for a distance of twenty yards or more; so he plowed his way onward without a backward glance. She ran past him and again led the way. He followed—but he fell at last, all in. He felt her arms, her hands. She was trying to raise him from the smothering snow. He pulled himself to his knees.
“I can do it—thanks,” he said. “I must rest—a minute.”
He didn’t look at her.
“Now take my hands,” she said, after a few minutes of silence and inaction.
“I can manage it, thanks all the same,” he said.
“But you can’t! You must let me help you!”
“No, thanks.”
“But—what else can you do?”
“The other thing—whatever it is.”
“Don’t be a fool!”
“Why not?”
“Then I shall light a fire.”
“I’m warm enough, thank you, but if you’ll give me a few of your matches I’ll be tremendously obliged.”
She gave him matches without a glance, and then went away. He lit a cigarette. Presently she reappeared, carrying bark and dry brush. She dug a hole in the snow and lit a fire at the bottom of it. Using a racket for a shovel, she enlarged the hole around the fire into a considerable hollow.
“It is turning colder,” she said. “You must come in here until you are rested.”
He obeyed slowly, painfully. She placed a few green fir boughs for him to sit on, and a few beside him for herself.
“It has almost stopped snowing,” she said. “If a wind comes up it will drift frightfully, and that will be worse than the snowfall.”
“How far have we come?” he asked.
“Nearly a mile,” she answered.
“I wish you would go on alone,” he said. “Without me you’d do it before the wind rises; and then, if you should happen to see Jard Hassock or someone who wouldn’t mind coming back for me, he’d find me waiting right here—if it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Trouble!” she cried, turning a stricken, outraged look at him; and then she hid her face in her hands and shook with sobs.
He slipped an arm around her.
“Why did you turn on me?” he asked. “In the hut you were—very kind. Why did you change—and treat me like a dog?”
She continued to hide her face and sob. His arm tightened.
“I said you were the dearest person in the world,” he continued. “You are—to me. You are the dearest person in the world.”
“You—have no right—to say that.”
“Then whoever has a right to stop me had better make haste. I love you, Joe! Make the worst of that. I love you! Now run away and leave me sticking here in the snow.”
“But—the woman who sent you—after a horse?”
“Bless her for that! She was kinder to me than she intended to be. Look at me, Joe.”
She looked at him.
