Here was another who had stood the gaff! She too knew what it was to take the fighting chance. Presently he knew, by light of this adventure on the ice, that Bess was more than mere companion in toil and hardship, some one to shelter and protect. She was a comrade-at-arms,—such a fortress of strength as the best of women have always been to the men they loved.
He did not know whether or not she loved him. It didn’t affect the point that, in a crisis, she had shown the temper of her steel! He did not stand alone henceforth. In the struggle for freedom that was to come here was an ally on whom, to the very gates of death, he could implicitly rely.
XXVII
When food and warmth had brought complete recovery, Ned took up with Bess the problem of deliverance from the island. He found that for weeks she had been thinking along the same line, and like him, she had as yet failed to hit upon any plan that offered the least chance for success. The subject held them late into the night.
There was no need of a formal pact between them. Each of them realized that if ever the matter came to the crisis, the other could be relied upon to the last ditch. They stood together on that. Whatever the one attempted, the other would carry through. And because of their mutual trust, both felt more certain than ever of their ultimate triumph.
They took different trails in the dawn, following the long circle of their trap lines. All the way they pondered on this same problem, conceiving a plan only to reject it because of some unsurmountable obstacle to its success; dwelling upon the project every hour and dreaming about it at night. But Ned was far as ever from a conclusion when, three days later, he followed the beach on the way to the home cabin.
He had watched with deadened interest the drama of the wild things about him these last days; but when he was less than a mile from home he had cause to remember it again. To his great amazement he found at the edge of the ice the fresh track of one of the large island bears.
There was nothing to tell for sure what had awakened the great creature prematurely from its winter sleep. The expected date of awakening was still many weeks off. But the grizzly is notoriously irregular in his habits; and experienced naturalists have long since ceased to be surprised at whatever he may do. Ned reasoned at once that the present mild weather had merely beguiled the old veteran from his lair (the size of the track indicated a patriarch among the bears) and he was simply enjoying the late winter sunlight until a cold spell should drive him in again.
The sight of the great imprint was a welcome one to Ned, not alone because the wakening forecasted, perhaps, an early spring, but because he was in immediate need of bear fur. His own coat was worn; besides, he was planning a suit of cold-proof garments for Lenore, to be used perhaps in their final flight across the ice. And he saw at once that conditions were favorable for trapping the great creature.
Scarcely a quarter of a mile ahead, in a little pass that led through the shore crags down to the beach, Doomsdorf had left one of his most powerful bear traps. Ned had seen it many times as he had clambered through on a short cut to the cabin. Because it lay in a natural runway for game—one of the few spots where the shore crags could be easily surmounted—it was at least possible that the huge bear might fall into it, on his return to his lair in the hills.