The Snowshoe Trail

by Edison Marshall

He walked toward the battered instrument. Her heart was cold within her, and she nodded eagerly. "Yes—a little ragtime. It will be frightfully loud in the cabin, but it's better than the sound of the storm."

She didn't dream that this wilderness man would choose any other kind of music than ragtime. She was but new to the North, otherwise she would have made no such mistake. Superficiality was no part of these northern men. They knew life in the raw, the travail of existence, the pinch of cold and the fury of the storm; and the music that they felt in their hearts was never the light-hearted dance music of the South. Music is the articulation of the soul, and the souls of these men were darkened and sad. It could not be otherwise, sons of the wilderness as they were.

The pack song, on the hilltop in the winter moon, was never a melody of laughter. Rather it was the song of life itself, life in the raw, and the sadness and pain and the hopeless war of existence find their echo in the wailing notes. None of the wilderness voices were joyous. When Bill had chosen his records he took those that answered his own mood and expressed his own being.

Not all of them were sad music, in the strictest sense. But they were all intense, poignant and tremulous with the deepest longings of the human soul.

"I haven't any ragtime," the man explained humbly. "I could only bring up a few records, and so I took just the ones I liked best. They're simple things—I'm sorry I haven't any more."

She looked at this man with growing wonder. Of course he would like the simple things. No man of her acquaintance had ever possessed truer standards: no sophistication or cultural growth such as she herself had know could have given him a truer gentility. What was this thing that men could learn in the woods and in the North that gave them such poise, such standards, and brought out such qualities of manhood? Yet she knew that the forests did not treat all men alike. Those of intrinsic virtue were made better, their strength was supplemented by the strength of the wilderness itself, but the weaklings perished quickly. This was not a land for soft men, for the weak and the cowardly and the vicious. The wild soon found them out, harried them by storms and broke their hearts and their spirits, and kept from them its gracious secrets. Perhaps in this latter thing lay the explanation. It seemed to her that Bill was always straining, listening for the faintest, whispered voices of the forest about him. He was always watching, always studying—his soul and his heart open—and Nature poured forth upon him her incalculable rewards.

He put on a record, closed the doors of the instrument tight to muffle the sound, and set the needle. She recognized the melody at once. It was Drdla's "Souvenir"—and the first notes seemed to sweep her into infinity.

It was a beautiful, haunting thing, sweet as love, warm as a maiden's heart, tender as motherhood; and all at once Virginia was aware of a heart-stirring and incredible contrast. The melody did not drown out the sound of the storm. It rose above it, infinitely sweet and entreating, and all the time the wild strains of the storm outside made a strange and dreadful background. Yet the two songs mingled with such harmony as only old masters, devotees to music, can sometimes hear in their inmost souls but never express in notes.

She felt the tears start in her eyes. Her cheeks flamed. Her heart raced and thrilled. For all the exquisite beauty of the song, a vague dread and an incomprehensible fear seemed to come upon her. For all the stir and impulse of the melody, a strange but exquisite sadness engulfed her spirit. In that single instant the North drew aside its curtains of mystery and showed her its secret altar. For a breath at least she knew its soul,—its travail, its dreadful beauty, its infinite sadness, its merciless strength.

In her time Virginia had now and then known the fear of Death. Two nights previous, as the waters had engulfed her, she had known it very well. But never before had she known fear of life. That's what it was—fear of life—life that could only cost and could not pay, that could take and could not give, that could pain but could not heal. She knew now the dreadful persecution of the elements, cold and storm and the snow fields stretching ever from range to range. She knew the fear of hunger, of struggle to break the spirit and rend the body, of disaster that could not be turned aside, of cruel and immutable destiny. She knew now why the waterfowl had circled all day so restlessly: they too had known the age-old fear of the northern winter. They had sensed, in secret ways, the swift approach of the storm.