The Sky Line of Spruce

by Edison Marshall

Ever he listened for the first sound of the pack train in the forest; and even in his hours of pleasure his eyes ever roamed over the sweep of valley and marsh below. He was prepared for his enemies now. One or five, they couldn't escape him. He had provided for every contingency and had seemingly perfected his plan to the last detail.

He had not the slightest fear that his eagerness would cost him his aim when finally his eye looked along the sights at the forms of his enemies, helpless in the marsh. He was wholly cold about the matter now. The lust and turmoil in his veins, remembered like a ghastly dream from that first night, returned but feebly now, if at all. This change, this restraint had been increasingly manifest since his occupation of the cave, and it had marked, at the same time, a growing barrier between himself and Fenris. But he could not deny but that such a development was wholly to have been expected. Fenris was a child of the open forest aisles, never of the fireside and the hearth. It was not that the wolf had ceased to give him his dint of faithful service, or that he loved him any the less. But each of them had other interests,—one his home and hearth; the other the ever-haunting, enticing call of the wildwood. Lately Fenris had taken to wandering into the forest at night, going and coming like a ghost; and once his throat and jowls had been stained with dark blood.

"It's getting too tame for you here, old boy, isn't it?" Ben said to him one hushed, breathless night. "But wait just a little while more. It won't be tame then."

It was true: the hunting party, if they had started at once, must be nearing their death valley by now. Except for the absolute worst of traveling conditions they would have already come. Ben felt a growing impatience: a desire to do his work and get it over. His pulse no longer quickened and leaped at the thought of vengeance; and the wolflike pleasure in simple killing could no longer be his. It would merely be the soldier's work—a dreadful obligation to perform speedily and to forget. Even the memory of the huddled form of his savior and friend, so silent and impotent in the dead leaves, did not stir him into madness now.

Yet he never thought of disavowing his vengeance. It was still the main purpose of his life. He had no theme but that: when that work was done he could conceive of nothing further of interest on earth, nothing else worth living for. Not for an instant had he relented: except for that one kiss, on the occasion of her birthday, he had never broken his promise in regard to his relations with Beatrice. His first trait was steadfastness, a trait that, curiously enough, is inherent in all living creatures who are by blood close to the wild wolf, from the German police dog to the savage husky of the North. But he was certainly and deeply changed in these weeks in the cave. He no longer hated these three murderous enemies of his. The power to hate had simply died in his body. He regarded their destruction rather as a duty he owed old Ezram, an obligation that he would die sooner than forego.

The hushed, dark, primal forest had a different appeal for him now. He loved it still, with the reverence and adoration of the forester he was, but no longer with that love a servant bears his master. He had distinctly escaped from its dominance. The passion and mounting fire that it wakened at the fall of darkness could no longer take possession of him, as strong drink possesses the brain, bending his will, making of him simply a tool and a pawn to gratify its cruel desires and to achieve its mysterious ends. He had been, in spirit, a brother of the wolf, before: a runner in the packs. Such had been the outgrowth of innate traits; part of his strange destiny. Now, after these weeks in the cave, he was a man. It was hard for him to explain even to himself. It was as if in the escape from his own black passions, he had also escaped the curious tyranny of the wild; not further subject to its cruel moods and whims, but rather one of a Dominant Breed, a being who could lift his head in defiance to the storm, obey his own will, go his own way. This was no little change. Perhaps, when all is said and done, it marks the difference between man and the lesser mammals, the thing that has evolved a certain species of the primates—simply woods creatures that trembled at the storm and cowered in the night—into the rulers and monarchs of the earth.

Ben had come out from the darkened forest trails where he made his lairs and had gone into a cave to live! He had found a permanent abode—a lasting, shelter from the cold and the storm. It suggested a curious allegory to him. Some time in the long-forgotten past, probably when the later glaciers brought their promise of cold, all his race left their leafy bowers and found cave homes in the cliffs. Before that time they were merely woods children, blind puppets of nature, sleeping where exhaustion found them; wandering without aim in the tree aisles; mating when they met the female of their species on the trails and venturing on again; knowing the ghastly, haunting fear of the night and the blind terror of the storm and elements: merely higher beasts in a world of beasts. But they came to the caves. They established permanent abodes. They began to be men.

All that now stands as civilization, all the conquest of the earth and sea and air began from that moment. It was the Great Epoch,—and Ben had illustrated it in his own life. The change had been infinitely slow, but certain as the movement of the planets in their spheres. Behind the sheltering walls they got away from fear,—that cruel bondage in which Nature holds all her wild creatures, the burden that makes them her slaves. Never to shudder with horror when the darkness fell in silence and mystery; never to have the heart freeze with terror when the thunder roared in the sky and the wind raged in the trees. The cave dwellers began to come into their own. Sheltered behind stone walls they could defy the elements that had enslaved them so long. This freedom gained they learned to strike the fire; they took one woman to keep the cave, instead of mating indiscriminately in the forest, thus marking the beginning of family life. Love instead of deathless hatred, gentleness rather than cruelty, peace in the place of passion, mercy and tolerance and self-control: all these mighty bulwarks of man's dominance grew into strength behind the sheltering walls of home.

Thus in these few little weeks Ben Darby—a beast of the forest in his unbridled passions—had in some measure imaged the life history of the race. He had lived again the momentous regeneration. The protecting walls, the hearth, particularly Beatrice's wholesome and healing influence, had tamed him. He was still a forester, bred in the bone—loving these forest depths with an ardor too deep for words—but the mark of the beast was gone from his flesh.

He could still deal justice to Ezram's murderers and thus keep faith with his dead partner; but the primal passions could no longer dominate him. His pet, however, remained the wolf. The sheltering cavern walls were never for him. He loved Ben with an undying devotion, yet a barrier was rising between them. They could not go the same paths forever.