The Sky Line of Spruce

by Edison Marshall

"I wish I'd brought more tea," Ben complained, as he sipped that most delightful of all drinks, the black tea beloved of the northern men.

"You a woodsman, and don't know how to remedy that!" the girl responded. "I know of a native substitute that's almost as good as the real article."

About the embers of the fire they sat and watched the tremulous wings of night close round them. The copse grew breathless. The distant trees blended into shadow, the nearer trunks dimmed and finally faded; the large, white northern stars emerged in infinite troops and companies, peering down through the rifts in the trees. Here about their fire they had established the domain of man. For a few short hours they had routed the forces of the wilderness; but the foe pressed close upon them. Just at the fluctuating ring of firelight he waited, clothed in darkness and mystery,—the infinite, brooding spirit of the ancient forest.

They had never known such silence, broken only by the prolonged chord of the river, as descended upon them now. It was new and strange to the conscious life of Ben, himself, the veritable offspring of the woods; although infinitely old and familiar to a still, watching, secret self within him. It was as if he had searched forever for this place and had just found it, and it answered, to the full, a queer mood of silence in his own heart. The wind had died down now. The last wail of a coyote—disconsolate on a far-away ridge—had trembled away into nothingness; the voices of the Little People who had chirped and rustled in the tree aisles during the daylight hours were stilled with a breathless, dramatic stillness. Such sound as remained over the interminable breadth of that dark forest was only the faint stirrings and rustlings of the beasts of prey going to their hunting; and this was only a moving tone in the great chord of silence.

To Ben the falling night brought a return of his most terrible moods. Beatrice sensed them in his pale, set face and his cold, wolfish eyes. The wolf sat beside him, swept by his master's mood, gazing with deadly speculations into the darkness. Beatrice saw them as one breed to-night. The wild had wholly claimed this repatriated son. The paw of the Beast was heavy upon him; the softening influences of civilization seemed wholly dispelled. There was little here to remind her that this was the twentieth century. The primitive that lies just under the skin in all men was in the ascendancy; and there was little indeed to distinguish him from the hunter of long ago, a grizzled savage at the edge of the ice who chased the mammoth and wild pony, knowing no home but the forest and no gentleness unknown to the wolf that ran at his heels.... The tenderness and sympathy he had had for her earlier that day seemed quite gone now. She searched for it in vain in the dark and savage lines of his pale face.

Because it has always been that the happiness of women must depend upon the mood of men, her own spirits fell. The despair that descended upon her brought also resentment and rage; and soon she slipped away quietly to her bed. She drew the blankets over her face; but no tears wet her cheeks to-night. She was dry-eyed, thoughtful—full of vague plans.

She lay awake a long time, until at last a little, faint ray of hope beamed bright and clear. More than a hundred miles farther down the Yuga, past the mouth of Grizzly River, not far from the great, north-flowing stream of which the Yuga was a tributary, lay an Indian village—and if only she could reach it she might enlist the aid of the natives and make a safe return, by a long, roundabout route, to her father's arms. The plan meant deliverance from Ben and the defeat of all his schemes of vengeance,—perhaps the salvation of her father and his subordinates.

She realized perfectly the reality of her father's danger. She had read the iron resolve in Ben's face. She knew that if she failed to make an immediate escape from him, all his dreadful plans were likely to succeed: his enemies would follow him into the unexplored mazes of Back There to effect her rescue and fall helpless in his trap. What quality of mercy he would extend to them then she could readily guess.

Just to get down to the Indian village: this was her whole problem. But it was Ben's plan to land and enter the interior somewhere in the vast wilderness between, from which escape could not be made until the flood waters of fall. The way would remain open but a few hours more, due to the simple fact that the waters were steadily falling and the river-bottom crags, forming impassable barriers at some points, would be exposed. If she made her escape at all it must be soon.

Yet she could not attempt it at night. She could not see to guide the canoe while the darkness lay over the river. Just one further chance remained—to depart in the first gray of dawn.