Certain muscles most used in tugging through the snow, seemingly worn to shreds the first day’s march, strengthened under the stress, and he found he did his daily stint with ever greater ease. Ever he handled the little, daily crises with greater skill, and this with less loss of vital energy: the crossing of a swollen stream or a perilous morass; or the climbing of a slippery glacier. Every day the wilderness unrolled its pages to his eyes.
The little daily encounters with the wild life were ever a greater delight. He found pleasure in trying to guess the identity of the lesser, scurrying people he met on the trail: he found a moving beauty in the far-off glimpse of the running pack, in a vivid silhouette on the ridge at twilight; the sight of a bull caribou tossing his far-spreading antlers sent his blood moving fast in his veins. By the grace of the Red Gods he was afforded the excitement of being obliged to backtrack two hundred yards in order gracefully to yield the trail to a great, surly Alaskan bear already seeking a lair for his winter sleep.
He crossed the divide to Forks cabin, followed the springs to Thirty-Mile cabin, descended to the sea, and along the shore to the home cabin, just as he had been told to do. He put out his traps as he went in what seemed to him the most likely places, using every wile Doomsdorf had taught him to increase his chances for a catch. In spite of the fact that he went alone, the second day was ever so much easier than the first; and he came into the home cabin only painfully tired, but not absolutely exhausted, on the fifth. Of course he didn’t forget that, other things being equal, these first five days were his easiest days. Actual trapping had not yet started: he had not been obliged to stop, thaw out and skin such larger animals as would be found dead in his traps; nor yet work late into the night fleshing and stretching the pelts. A greater factor was the moderate weather: light snowfall and temperature above freezing, a considerable variance from the deadly blizzards that would ensue.
All through the five days he had strengthened himself with the thought that Lenore awaited him at the journey’s end; and she had never seemed so lovely to him as when, returning in the gray twilight, he saw her standing framed in the lighted doorway of the home cabin. She had suffered no ill-treatment in his absence. The great fear that had been upon his heart was groundless, after all: her face was fresh, her eyes bright, she was not lost in despair. In spite of his aching muscles, his face lighted with hopefulness and relief that was almost happiness.
Doubtless it was his own eagerness that made her seem so slow in coming into his arms; and his own great fire that caused her to seem to lack warmth. He had been boyishly anticipatory, foolishly exultant. Yet it was all sweet enough. The girl fluttered a single instant in his arms, and he felt repaid for everything.
“Let me go,” she whispered tensely, when his arms tried to hold her. “Don’t let Doomsdorf see. He might kill you——”
But it came about that she didn’t finish the warning. Presently she felt his arms turn to steel. She felt herself thrust back until her eyes looked straight into his.
She had never seen Ned in this mood before. Indeed she couldn’t ever remember experiencing the sensation that swept her now: secretly appalled at him, burnt with his fire, wavering beneath his will. She didn’t know he had arms like that. His face, when she tried to meet it, hardly seemed his own. The flesh was like gray iron, the eyes cold as stones.
“What has Doomsdorf to do with it?” he demanded. “Has he any claim on you?”
“Of course not,” she hastened to reply. “He’s treated me as well as could be expected. But you know—he makes claims on us all.”