The Sky Line of Spruce

by Edison Marshall

How could she obtain these things? For all his seeming carelessness Ben kept a fairly close watch on her actions, and he would discover her flight within a few hours. Stronger than she, and knowing every trail and pass for miles around he could overtake her with ease. He gave her no opportunity to seize his rifle, load it and turn it against him, thus making her escape by force.

The fact that she would leave him without food mattered not one way or another. He would still have his rifle, and his small stock of rifle cartridges would procure sufficient big game to sustain him for weeks and months to come. After all, the whole issue depended on the rifle,—the symbol of force. It would be his instrument of vengeance when his chance came. If she could only take this weapon from him she need not fear the coming of her rescuers. In that case Ben would be helpless against them.

Unfortunately, the gun rarely left his hands. If indeed she should attempt to seize it he would wrest it away from her before she could destroy or injure it. But it was a hopeful fact that the rifle was useless without its shells!

To procure these, however, presented an unsolvable problem. Any way she turned she found a barrier Ben kept them in his shell belt, and he wore the belt about his waist, waking or sleeping. Only to procure it, run like a deer and hurl it into the rapids of the Yuga,—and her problem would be absolutely solved. Ben would be obliged to leave the cave home at once and return with her to the Yuga cabins, utilizing the few stores they had left for the journey—simply because to stay, unarmed, would mean to die of starvation. Indeed the few remaining supplies would not more than last them through now, traveling early and late, so if the venture were to be attempted at all it must be at once. On the other hand his rifle and shells would enable the two of them to remain in the cavern indefinitely on a diet of meat alone.

As she worked about the cavern she brooded over the plan; but at first she could conceive of no possible way to procure the shells. If the chance came, however, she wanted to be ready. She planned all other details of the venture; the shortest route to the nearest rapids of the river where she might dispose of the deadly cylinders of brass. It became necessary, also, to consider the lesser weapon for the plain reason that it might defeat her in the moment of her success.

Ben kept the weapon in his cartridge belt, but the extra pistol shells were among the supplies. They could easily be procured. It would also be necessary to induce him to fire away the few shells that he carried in the pistol magazine; but this would likely be easy enough to do. He put little reliance on the weapon, trusting rather to his rifle both for the impending war and the procurance of big game; and he would not harbor the pistol shells as long as he had his rifle.

But the days were passing! Any attempt at deliverance must be made before the food stores were further depleted. They could not make the march without food. Days and nights overtook her with her triumph as far distant as ever. The moment of opportunity she had watched for, in which she might seize the cartridge belt and destroy it, had never come to pass. The plans she had made while the night lay soft and mysterious in the solitudes had all come to nothing. He had never, as she had hoped, removed his belt and forgotten to replace it, nor had his slumber ever been so deep that she could steal it from him.

His own triumph surely was almost at hand. Surely his pursuers had almost overtaken him. The stores had already fallen far below the margin of safety for the long journey home. The thought was with her, and she was desperate one long, warm afternoon as she searched for roots and berries in the forest. Edible plants were ever more hard to find, these past days; but what there were she gathered almost automatically, herself lost in a deep preoccupation. And all at once her hand reached toward a little vine of black berries, each with a green tuft at the end, not unlike gooseberries in southern gardens.

As if by instinct, hardly aware of the motion, she withdrew her hand. She knew this vine. She was enough of a forester never to mistake it. It was the deadly nightshade, and a handful of the berries spelt death. She started to look elsewhere.

But presently she paused, arrested by an idea so engrossing and yet so terrible that her heart seemed to pause in her breast. Had any rules been laid down for her to follow in her war with Ben? Was she to consider methods at such a time as this? Was she not a woods girl,—a woman, not a child, trained and tutored in the savage code of the wild that knows no ethics other than might, whether might of arm or craft, of brain or fell singleness of purpose? Should she consider ethics now?