There was no more ferocious creature in all the mammalian world than this. “Little Death,” was a name for him in an aboriginal tongue; and it was perfectly in accord with his disposition. His eyes were scarlet; he opened his rapacious jaws so wide that they resembled those of a deadly serpent; he screamed again and again in the most appalling fury. This was the demon of the Little People: the snaky Stealth that murdered the nestlings in the dead of night; the cruel and remorseless hunter whose red eyes froze the snowshoe hare with terror.
Tired out, barely able to stand erect, yet wholly content with his day’s catch, Ned made the cabin in the twilight, built his fire, and cooked his meager supper. After supper he skinned out such little animals as he had not taken time to skin on the trail, fleshed and stretched his pelts, then hung them up to dry. He was almost too tired to remove his wet garments when the work was done. He hardly remembered drawing the blankets over him.
Thus ended the first of a long series of arduous days. The hardship was incomparably greater than that endured by the great run of those hardy men, the northern trappers, not only because of his inadequate clothes, but because the line had been laid out by a giant’s rule. Doomsdorf had spaced his cabins according to his own idea of a full day’s work, and that meant they were nearly twice as far apart as those of the average trap line. Bess had been given the line he had laid out for his squaw, hardly half so rigorous, yet all the average man would care to attempt.
But in spite of the hardship, the wrack of cold, the fatigue that crept upon him like a dreadful sickness, Ned had many moments of comparative pleasure. One of these moments, seemingly yielding him much more delight than the occasion warranted, occurred at the end of the second day of actual trapping.
This day’s march had taken him to the Forks cabin; and there, as twilight drew about him, he was amazed to hear the nearing sound of footsteps in the snow. Some one was coming laboriously toward him, with the slow, dragging tread of deep fatigue.
The thing made no sense at all. Human companionship, in these gray and melancholy wastes, was beyond the scope of the imagination. For a moment he stared in dumb bewilderment like a man at the first seizure of madness. Then he sprang through the door and out on the snowy slope.
It was not just a whim of the fancy. A dim form moved toward him out of the grayness, hastening, now that his lantern light gleamed on the snow. Presently Ned saw the truth.
It was Bess, of course. At this point their lines coincided. It was her third stop, and since she had left the home cabin a day ahead of him, she was perfectly on schedule. He could hardly explain the delight that flashed through him at the sight of her. In this loneliness and silence mere human companionship was blessing enough.
His appearance in the doorway was not a surprise to Bess. She had counted the days carefully, and she knew his schedule would bring him here. But now she was too near dead with fatigue to give him more than a smile.
The night that ensued was one of revelation to Ned. His first cause of wonder was the well of reserve strength that suddenly manifested itself in the hour of need. He had not dreamed but that he was at the edge of collapse from the long day’s toil; his brain had been dull with fatigue, and he was almost too tired to build his fire, yet he found himself a tower of strength in caring for the exhausted girl. It was as if his own fatigue had mysteriously vanished when he became aware of hers.