He came on again, slowly. Obeying an impulse which he did not consciously recognize, he stepped softly as a man does in a death chamber. His soul was oppressed, his spirit drooped suddenly as the atmosphere of the abandoned camp fell upon it.
By daylight, gloom haunted the tenantless buildings; by night, here would be melancholia’s own demesne. Nowhere else in the world does one find that terrible sadness which spreads its somber wings in the abode of man long given over to the wild to be a lair for its soft-footed children.
More questions demanding answers and all unanswerable. He sought to throw off the influence which had fallen upon him and went on more swiftly, seeking the girl who had fled here. Had she stopped in one of these ruined houses? Was one of them “home” to her? Who lived here with her? And why? Were they, like himself, chance comers, newly arrived? Or did they, like the log houses, belong to this land; were they like everything of man here, being drawn back into the mighty arms of the wild?
This part of the world, the fastnesses stretching from Belle Fortune to Ruminoff Shanty on the Gold River, was what he and his fellows glibly called “new country.” What country on the earth is new? What nook or corner has not once known the foot of man and his conquering hand? And, given time, what bit of the world has not in the end hurled its conqueror out, trodden down his monuments, made dust of his labors, and crowned his hearths in creeping vines and forgetfulness, wresting it all back from him?
The thoughts which came to him had their own way in a mind which was half given to the search resumed. Questions came involuntarily; he did not pause or seek to answer them. Hurriedly he went up and down, turning out for fallen timbers, circling tangled growths.
At every open door and window he looked in eagerly, noting less the sagging panels and broken shutters than the dark interiors. Many roofs had fallen, many walls were down, many buildings were but rectangular heaps of ruins grown over grass. But other houses, builded solidly of great logs, with sturdy steep roofs, stood defiantly.
“There was a time when hundreds of men lived here,” he thought as he hastened on. “Men and women, maybe, and perhaps children! Why did they go like this? Even a town may die like a man, even its name be forgotten in a generation or two.”
Pushing through a rear yard long ago so reclaimed by the wilderness that he must fight his way through brush shoulder high, he came out suddenly upon a path. It ran, broad and straight, toward the lake. There, upon a little knoll, until now hidden from him by the trees, was the largest building of the village, the one in a state of the best preservation. The path ran to the door. On either side of the doorstep, cleared of weeds, was a space in which grew tall red flowers. He stopped a moment, his heart beating fast.
The door was closed, the windows were covered with heavy shutters. He came on again, walking warily, his eyes everywhere at once. What should a man expect here in the dead city of the Sasnokee-keewan? A rifle ball as readily as anything else. And yet he came on steadily, his own rifle ready.
At last he stood not ten steps from the closed door, wondering. Some one lived here; so much was certain. The well-worn path told it eloquently. Then, too, there were signs of digging about the little flower garden. A woman’s work—hers. And she, herself, was she in there now?