Christopher walked to the first turn of the logging-road, and the young man followed him; and when the trees had shut from sight the snow-heaped roofs and the yellow lights and all sign of human neighbors, Christopher stopped, leaned against a tree, and gazed up at the sparkling heavens.
“I reckoned your feelings was gettin’ away from you a bit, Mr. Wade,” said the old man, quietly, “and I thought we’d step out for a while where we can sort of get a grip on somethin’ stationary, as you might say. In time of deep trouble, when they happen to be round, a chap feels inclined to grab holt of poor human critters, but they ain’t much of a prop to hang to. Not when there’s the big woods!”
“The big woods have got her, Christopher,” choked the young man, despairingly. “And I’m afraid!”
“The big woods look savagest to you when you’re peekin’ into them from a camp window in the night,” declared the old man. “But when you’re right in ’em, like we are now, they ain’t anything but friendly. Look around you! Listen! There’s nothing to be afraid of. Let the big woods talk to you a moment, my boy. Forget there are men for just a little while. I’ve let the woods talk to me in some of the sore times in my life, and they’ve always comforted me when I really set myself to listen.”
“My God, I can only hear the words that are written on this scrap of paper!” cried Wade. He shook “Ladder” Lane’s crumpled letter before the woodsman’s face, and Christopher quietly reached for it, took it, and tore it up.
“When a paper talks louder than the good old woods talk, it’s time to get rid of it,” he remarked, and tossed the bits over the snow.
“I ain’t goin’ to tell you not to worry,” Christopher went on, after a time. “I’m no fool, and you’re no fool. It’s a hard proposition, Mr. Wade. A lunatic whirling in a snow-cloud like a leaf, round and round, and then driftin’ out, and no way in the world of tellin’ where he came from! And there’s some one—off that way he came from—that you want terrible bad! Yet even that lunatic’s tracks have been patted smooth by the wind. It’s no time to talk to human critters, Mr. Wade. It would be ‘Run this way and run that!’ Let the woods talk to you! They’ve been wrastlin’ the big winds all day. They’ll probably have to wrastle ’em again to-morrow. And they’ll be ready for the fight. Hear ’em sleep? The same for you and for me, Mr. Wade. Go in and sleep, and be ready for what comes to-morrow.”
He walked ahead, leading the way back to camp, and Wade followed, every aching muscle crying for rest, though his heart, aching more poignantly, called on him to plunge into the forest in search of the helpless hostage the woods were hiding.
It is not in the nature of woodsmen to pry into another’s reason for this or that. Barnum Withee gave Christopher Straight a chance to tell why he and his employer were so far off the Enchanted operation; but when Christopher Straight smoked on without explaining, Barnum Withee smoked on without asking questions. In one of the dim bunks of the wangan Wade breathed stertorously, drugged with nature’s opiate of utter weariness. And after listening a moment with an air of relief, Christopher broke upon Withee’s meditations.