The Rim of the Desert

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

"It happened, of course, in Alaska," Miss Armitage ventured, breaking the pause. "You knew her there?"

"Yes, it was in Alaska and about five years ago. The season I gave up getting rich in a hurry and went back to geological work. I had spent the winter on the Tanana with David Weatherbee. We had staked a promising placer, and we were ready to begin sluicing with the first spring thaw, when he sold his interest unexpectedly to meet an obligation down in the States. That nettled me, and I sold out my own share to the same men and accepted a position with the department, who had written to ask me to take charge of a party working above Seward. Weatherbee started with me, but I left him to prospect along the headwaters of the Susitna. My surveys kept me in the neighborhood of Turnagain Arm until midsummer, when I moved camp up the river to the mouth of an unexplored tributary. It was the kind of stream to lure a prospector or a sportsman, clear, rapid, broken by riffles and sand-bars, while the grassy shores looked favorable for elk or caribou. To bridge the delay while the last pack-horses straggled in and the men were busy pitching tents and putting things into shape, I decided to go on a short hunting trip. I traveled light, with only a single blanket rolled compactly for my shoulder strap, in case the short night should overtake me, with a generous lunch that Sandy, the cook, had supplied, but at the end of two hours' steady tramping I had sighted nothing. I had reached a wooded ravine and a snow-peak, apparently the source of the stream, closed the top of the gorge. It was the heart of the wilderness, over a hundred miles from a settlement and off the track of road-houses, but a few rods on I came upon the flume and dump of a placer mine. The miner's cabin stood a little farther up the bank under a clump of spruce, but the place seemed abandoned. Then I noticed some berry bushes near the sluice had been lately snapped off, where some heavy animal had pushed through, and a moment later, in the moist soil at a small spillway, I picked up the trail of a large bear.

"The tracks led me up the rough path towards the cabin, but midway I came to a fallen tree. It must have been down a week or more, but no attempt had been made to clear the trail or to cut through, so, pushing up over the matted boughs, I leaped from the bole to avoid the litter beyond. At the same instant I saw under me, wedged in the broken branches, the body of my bear. He was a huge grizzly, and must have made an easy and ugly target as he lumbered across the barricade. I found one bullet had taken him nearly between the eyes, while another had lodged in the shoulder. And it was plain the shots were aimed from the window, with the rifle probably resting on the sill.

"As I went on up the path, the loud baying of a dog came from the cabin, then a woman's face, young and small and very white, appeared at the window. Seeing me, she turned quickly and threw open the door. The next instant her hand fell to the neck of a fine Gordon setter and, tugging at his collar, she drew back and stood surveying me from head to foot. 'It's all right, madam,' I said, stopping before her. 'Don't try to hold him. The bear won't trouble you any more. You made a mighty fine shot.'

"'Oh,' she said, and let the dog go, 'I am so glad you have come.' And she sank into a chair, shaking and sobbing."

"You mean," exclaimed Miss Armitage breathlessly, "it was she who killed the bear?"

Tisdale nodded gently. "I wish I could make you understand the situation. She was not a sportswoman. She was city bred and had been carefully reared—accustomed to have things done for her. I saw this at a glance. Only her extremity and the fear that the dog would be hurt nerved her to shoot."

"Oh, I see, I see," said Miss Armitage. "Fate had brought her, left her in that solitary place—alone."

"Fate?" Tisdale questioned. "Well, perhaps, but not maliciously; not in jest. On second thought I would not lay it to Fate at all. You see, she had come voluntarily, willingly, though blindly enough. She was one of the few women who are capable of a great love."

Tisdale waited, but the woman beside him had no more to say. "I saw I must give her time to gather her self-control," he went on, "so I turned my attention to the setter, who was alternately springing on me and excitedly wagging his tail. I like a good dog, and I soon had him familiarly snuffing my pockets; then he stretched himself playfully, with an inquiring, almost human yawn; but suddenly remembering the bear, he stood pointing, head up, forepaw lifted, and made a rush, baying furiously.