Their days were not without pleasure. Often they ventured far into the heavy forest, and always fresh delight and thrilling adventure awaited them. Ever they learned more of the wild things that were their only neighbors,—creatures all the way down the scale from the lordly moose, proud of his growing antlers and monarch of the marshes, to the small pika, squeaking on the slide-rock of the high peaks. They knew and loved them all; they found ever-increasing enjoyment in the study of their shy ways and furtive occupations; they observed with delight the droll awkwardness of the moose calves, the impertinence and saucy speech of the jays, the humor of the black bear and the surly arrogance of the grizzly. They knew that superlative cunning of his wickedness, the wolverine; the stealth of the red fox; the ferociousness of the ermine whose brown skin, soon to be white, suggested only something silken and soft and tender instead of a fiendish cutthroat, terror of the Little People; the skulking cowardice of the coyote; and the incredible savagery and agility of the fisher,—that middle-sized hunter that catches and kills everything he can master except fish. They climbed high hills and descended into still, mysterious valleys; they paddled long, dreamy twilight hours on the lake; they traversed marshes where the moose wallowed; and they walked through ancient forests where the decayed vegetation was a mossy pulp under their feet. Sometimes they forgot the poignancy of their strange lives, romping sometimes, gossiping like jays in the tree-limbs, and sometimes, forgetting enmity, they told each other their secret beliefs and philosophies. They had picnics in the woods; and long, comfortable evenings before their dancing fire. But there was one enduring joy that always surpassed all the rest, a happiness that seemed to have its origin in the silent places of their hearts. It was just the return, after a fatiguing day in forest and marsh, to the sheltering walls of the cave.
With his axe and hunting knife Ben prepared a complete set of furniture for their little abode. His first Work was a surpassing-marvelous dining-room suite of a table and two chairs. Then he put up shelves for their rapidly dwindling supplies of provisions and cut chunks of spruce log, with a bit of bark remaining, for fireside seats. And for more than a week, Beatrice was forbidden to enter a certain covert just beyond the glade lest she should prematurely discover an even greater wonder that Ben, in off hours, was preparing for a surprise.
From time to time she heard him busily at work, the ring of his axe and his gay whistling as he whittled bolts of wood; but other than that it concerned the grizzly skin she had not the least idea of his task. But the work was completed at last, and then came two days of rather significant silence,—quite incomprehensible to the girl. She was at a loss why Ben did not reveal his treasure.
But one morning she missed the familiar sounds of his fire-building, usually his first work on wakening. The very fact of their absence startled her wide-awake, while otherwise she would have perhaps slept late into the morning. Ben had seemingly vanished into the heavy timber across the glade.
Presently she heard him muttering and grunting as he moved some heavy object to the door of the cave. Boyishly, he could not wait for the usual late hour when she wakened. He made a wholly unnecessary amount of noise as he built the fire. Then he thrust his lean head into the cavern opening.
"I hope I haven't waked you up?" he said.
The girl smiled secretly. "I wanted to wake up, anyway—to-day."
"I wish you'd get up and come and look at something ugly I've got just outside the door."
She hurried into her outer garments, and in a moment appeared. It was ugly, certainly, the object that he had fashioned with such tireless toil: not fitted at all for a stylish city home; yet the girl, for one short instant, stopped breathing. It was a hammock, suspended on a stout frame, to take the place of her tree-bough bed on the cave floor. He had used the grizzly skin, hanging it with unbreakable sinew, and fashioning it in such a manner that folds of the hide could be turned over her on cold nights. For a moment she gazed, very earnestly, into the rugged, homely, raw-boned face of her companion.
Beatrice was deeply and inexplicably sobered, yet a curious happiness took swift possession of her heart. Reading the gratitude in her eyes, Ben's lips broke into a radiant smile.