XIV
Bill only had to turn to see the snowy roof of the cabin, two hundred yards away down the glade. Ordinarily his sharp eyes would have discerned it long before: perhaps the same inner spirit, encountered before this eventful day, was trying to protect him still. He turned without a word, and no man could have read the expression on his wind-tanned face. He mushed slowly on to his journey's end.
It was a new cabin, just erected, and smoke drifted faintly from its chimney. Bill rapped on the door.
"Come along in," some one answered gruffly. Bill removed his snowshoes, and the door opened before his hand.
He did not have to glance twice at the bearded face to know in whose presence he stood. His inner senses told him all too plainly. Changed as he was, there was no chance in heaven or earth for a mistake. This was Harold Lounsbury, the same man who had passed his camp years before, the same lost lover that Virginia had come to find.
Even now, Bill thought, it was not too late to withdraw. He could pretend that he had came to quarrel in regard to his trapping rights. After one glance he knew that, from the standard of good sense, there was a full reason for withdrawal. In the years he might even reconcile his own conscience to the act. Harold leaned forward, but he didn't get up to meet him.
Bill scarcely noticed the man's furtive preparations for self-defense. His rifle lay across his knees, and ostensibly he was in the act of cleaning it, but in reality he was holding it ready for Bill's first offensive move. He had known of Bill of old; in the circle in which he moved—lost utterly to the sight of the men of Bradleyburg—there were stories in plenty about this stalwart woodsman. For days—ever since he had come here with his Indians and laid down his trap line—he had dreaded just such a visit. The real reason for Bill's coming did not even occur to him.
Bill saw that the man was frightened. His lips were loose, his eyes nervous and bright, his hands did not hold quite steady. But all these observations were at once obliterated and forgotten in the face of a greater, more profound discovery. In one scrutinizing glance the truth swept him like a flood. Here was one that the wilderness had crushed in its brutal grasp. As far as Bill's standards were concerned, it had broken and destroyed him.
This did not mean that his health was wasted. His body was strong and trim: except for a suspicious network of red lines in his cheeks and a yellow tinge to the whites of his eyes, he would have seemed in superb physical condition. The evidence lay rather in the expression of his face, and most of all in the surroundings in which he lived.