"No one can live in this boundless wilderness and not believe," she told him earnestly, her dark eyes brimming with her fervor. "Perhaps I can't tell you why—maybe it's just a feeling of need, of insufficiency of self. Besides, God is close, like He was to the Israelites when they were in the wilderness; but you will remember that He never came close again.—This forest is so big and so awful, He knows he must stay close to keep you from dying of fear.—God may not be a reality to the people of the cities, where they see only buildings and streets, but Ben, He is to me. You can't forget Him up here. He stands on every mountain, just as the sons of Aaron saw Him."
He found, to his surprise, that she was not ill-read, particularly in the old-time classics. But her environment had also influenced her choice of reading. She loved the old legends in the minor,—far-off and plaintive things that reflected the mood of the dusky forest in which she lived.
One night, when the moon was in the sky, he told her of his war record, of the shell-shock and the strange, criminal mania that followed it; and then of his swift recovery. With an over-powering need of self-justification he told her of his further adventures with Ezram, of the old man's murder and the theft of the claim. She heard him out, listening attentively; but in loyalty to her father she did not let herself believe him entirely. The answer she gave him was the same as she had always given at his every reference to his side of the case.
"If you were in the right, you'd take me back and let the law take its course," she told him. "You'd not be out here laying an ambush for them, to kill them when they try to rescue me."
He could never make her understand how, by the intricacies of law, it would be a rare chance that he would be able to fasten the crime on the murderers: that he had taken the only sure way open to make them pay for Ezram's death. He told her of the old man's, final request; how that his war with her father and his men was a debt that, by secret, inscrutable laws of his being, could never be written off or disavowed. But he could never fully find words to uphold his position. The thing went back to his instincts, traced at last to the remorseless spirit of the wolf that was his heritage.
Yet these hours of talk were immensely good for him. While they never met on common grounds, the girl's true outlook and nobility of character were ever more manifest to him; and were not without a gentling, healing influence upon him. He could not blind himself to them. And sometimes when he sat alone by his dying fire, as the dark menaced him, and the girl that was his charge slept within the portals of stone, he had the unescapable feeling that the very structure of his life was falling and shattering down; but even now he could see, an enchanted vista in the distance, a mightier, more glorious tower, builded and shaped by this woman's hand.
XXXI
While Beatrice was at her household tasks—cooking the meals, cleaning the cave, washing and repairing their clothes—Ben never forgot his more serious work. Certain hours every day he spent in exploration, seeking out the passes over the hills, examining every possible means of entrance and egress into his valley, getting the lay of the land and picking out the points from which he would make his attack. Already he knew every winding game trail and every detail of the landscape for five miles or more around. His ultimate vengeance seemed just as sure as the night following the day.