The Sky Line of Spruce

by Edison Marshall

Just in time Ben sprang aside, out of the reach of those terrible forearms; and his axe swung mightly in the air. Its blade gleamed and descended—a blow that might have easily broken the bear's back if it had gone true but which now seemed only to infuriate him the more. The bear reared up, reeled, and lashed down; and dying though he was, he struck with incredible power. One slashing stroke of that vast forepaw, one slow closing of those cruel fangs upon skull or breast, and life would have gone out like a light. But Ben leaped aside again, and again swung down his axe.

These were but the first blows of a terrific battle that carried like a storm through the still reaches of the forest. Far in the distant tree aisles the woods people paused in their night's occupation to listen, stirred and terrified by the throb and thrill in the air; the grazing caribou lifted his growing horns and snorted in terror; the beasts of prey paused in the chase, growling uneasily, gazing with fierce, luminous eyes in the direction of the battle.

It is beyond the ken of man whether or not, in their wild hearts, these forest folk sensed what was taking place,—that their gray monarch, the sovereign grizzly, was at the death-fight with some dreadful invader from the South. They heard the bear's fierce bawls, unimitatable by any other voice as he lashed down blow after blow; and they heard the thud and crunch of the axe against his body. Had this monarch of the trails found his master at last?

Gazing out through the aperture of the cave Beatrice beheld the whole picture: the ring of spruce trees, the glade so strange and ensilvered in the moonlight, and these two fighting beasts, magnificent in fury over the embers of the dying fire. And Ben's powers increased, rather than lessened. Ever he swung his terrible axe with greater power.

He fought like the wolf that was his blood brother,—lunging, striking down, recoiling out of harm's way, and springing forward to strike again. This man was Wolf Darby, a forester known in many provinces for his woods prowess, but even those who had seen his most spectacular feats, in past days, had not appreciated the real extent of his powers. There was a fury and a might in his blows that was hard to associate with the world of human beings,—such ferociousness and wolf-like savagery, welling strength and prowess of battle that mostly men have forgotten in their centuries of civilization, but which still mark the death-fight between beasts.

Ben had always recalled the earlier types of man—his great-thewed ancestors, wild hunters in the forests of ancient Germany—but never so much as to-night. He was in his natural surroundings—at the mouth of his cave in which the Woman watched and exulted in his blows, enclosed by the primeval forest and beside the ashes of his fire. There could be nothing strange or unreal about this scene to Beatrice. It was more true than any soft vista of a far-away city could possibly be. It was life itself,—man battling for his home and his woman against the raw forces of the wild.

All superficialities and superfluities were gone, and only the basic stuff of life remained,—the cave, the fire, the man who fought the beast in the light of the ancient moon. At that moment Ben was no more of the twentieth century than he was of the first, or of the first more than of some dark, unnumbered century of the world's young days. He was simply the male of his species, the man-child of all time, forgetting for the moment all the little lessons civilization had taught, and fighting his fight in the basic way for the basic things.

This was no new war which Ben and the grizzly fought in the pale light of the moon. It had begun when the race began, and it would continue, in varied fields, until men perished from the earth. Ben fought for life—not only his own but the girl's—that old, beloved privilege to breathe the air and see and know and be. He represented, by a strange symbolism, the whole race that has always fought in merciless and never-ending battle with the cruel and oppressive powers of nature. In the grizzly were typified all those ancient enemies that have always opposed, with claw and fang, this stalwart, self-knowing breed that has risen among the primates: he symbolized not only the Beast of the forest, but the merciless elements, storm and flood and cold and all the legions of death. And had they but known their ultimate fate if this intruder survived the battle and brought his fellows into this, their last stronghold, the watching forest creatures would have prayed to see the grizzly strike him to the earth.

Ben knew, too, that he was fighting for his home; and this also lent him strength. Home! His shelter from the storm and the cold, the thing that marked him a man instead of a beast. The grizzly had come to drive him forth; and they had met beside the ashes of his fire.

The old exhilaration and rapture of battle flashed through him as he swung his axe, sending home blow after blow. Sometimes he cried out, involuntarily, in his fury and hatred; and as the bear weakened he waged the fight at closer quarters. His muscles made marvelous response, flinging him out of danger in the instant of necessity and giving terrific power to his blows.