The Isle of Retribution

by Edison Marshall

He dismissed in an instant the idea of telling Bess. His loyalty to Lenore demanded that, at least. She must not go where his own betrothed was excluded. If the thought came that Bess, by light of courage and fortitude, had already gone where in weakness and self-pity Lenore could not possibly follow—the windy snow fields and the bitter crests of the rugged hills—he pushed it sternly from him. The whole thing was a matter of instinct with him, perhaps a wish to shield himself from invidious comparisons of the two girls. He would have liked to convince himself that Lenore could be his ally, but he was wholly unable to do so. Realizing that, he preferred to believe that Bess was likewise incompetent. But he knew he must not let his mind dwell to any great length upon the subject. He might be forced to change his mind.

He must make a lone fight. He must follow a lone trail—like the old gray pack leader whose sluts cannot keep pace.

Thereafter, day and night, Ned watched his chances. Never he climbed to the top of the ridge but that he searched, with straining eyes, for the glimpse of a dog-sledge on the horizon, or perhaps the faint line of a distant island. On the nights that he spent at the home cabin, he made an intense study of Doomsdorf’s most minor habits, trying to uncover some little failing, some trifling carelessness that might give him his opportunity. He made it a point to leave his axe in easy reaching distance; his clasp knife, in a holster of fur, was always open in his pocket, always ready to his hand. All day, down the weary length of his trap line, he considered ways and means.

Simply because the wild continued to train him, he was ever stronger for this great, ultimate trial. Not only his intent was stronger, his courage greater, but his body also continued its marvelous development. His muscles were like those of a grizzly: great bunches of tendons, hard as stone, moving under his white skin. Every motion was lithe and strong; his energy was a never-failing fountain; his eyes were vivid and clear against the old-leather hue of his face.

There was no longer an unpleasant discoloration in the whites of his eyes. They were a cold, hard, pale blue; and the little network of lines that had once shown faintly at his cheek bones had completely faded. His hands had killing strength; his neck was a brown pillar of muscle. Health was upon him, in its full glory, to the full meaning of the word.

He found, to his great amazement, that his mental powers had similarly developed. His thought was more clear, and it flowed in deeper channels. It was no effort for him now to follow one line of thought to its conclusion. The tendency to veer off in the direction of least resistance had been entirely overcome. He could be of some aid, now, in the fur house of Godfrey Cornet. He felt he would like to match wits with his father’s competitors.

He would need not only this great physical strength, but also his enhanced mental powers in the trial and stress that were to come. Doomsdorf’s tyranny could not be endured forever; they were being borne along toward a crisis as if on an ocean current. And for all his growth, Ned never made the fatal mistake of considering himself a physical match for Doomsdorf. Over and above the fact that the latter was armed with rifle and pistol, Ned was still a child in his hands. It was simply a case of intrinsic limitations. It was as if the wolf, chain-lightning savagery that he is, should try to lay low the venerable grizzly bear.

Sooner or later the crisis would fall upon them,—a fit of savage anger on Doomsdorf’s part, or a wrong that could not be endured, even if death were the penalty for rebellion. Moreover, Ned could not escape the haunting fear that such a crisis was actually imminent. Doomsdorf’s mood was an uncertain thing at best; and lately it had taken a turn for the worse. He was not getting the satisfaction that he had anticipated out of Ned’s slavery; the situation had lost its novelty, and he was open to any Satanic form of diversion that might occur to him. Ned had mastered his trap lines, had stood the gaff and was a better man on account of it; and it was time his master provided additional entertainment for him. In these dark, winter days he remembered the Siberian prison with particular vividness, and at such times the steely glitter was more pronounced in his eyes, and certain things that he had seen lingered ever in his mind. He kept remembering strange ghosts of men, toiling in the snow till they died, and souls that went out screaming under the lash; and such remembrances moved him with a dark, unspeakable lust. He thought he would like to bring these memory-pictures to life. Besides, his attitude toward Bess was ever more sinister. He followed her motions with a queer, searching, speculative gaze; and now and then he offered her little favors.

If he could only be held in restraint a few months more. Ned knew perfectly that the longer the crisis could be averted, the better his chance for life and liberty. He would have more opportunity to make preparations, to lay plans. Besides, every day that he followed his trap line he was better trained—in character and mind and body—for the test to come. The work of bringing out Ned Cornet’s manhood had never ceased.

Every day he had learned more of those savage natural forces that find clearest expression in the North. He knew the wind and the cold, snow-slide and blizzard, but also he knew hunger and fear and travail and pain. All these things taught him what they had to teach, and all of them served to shape him into the man he had grown to be. And one still, clear afternoon the North sent home a new realization of its power.