The Valley of Silent Men: A Story of the Three River Country

by James Oliver Curwood

His own physical existence seemed a thing trivial and almost lost, a thing submerged and swallowed up by the warm beat and throb of that other life, a thousand times more precious than his own, which he held in his arms. Yet with the mad thrill that possessed him, in the embrace of his arms, there was an infinite tenderness, a gentleness, that drew from Marette's lips a low, glad whispering of his name. She drew his head down and kissed him, and Kent fell upon his knees at her side and crushed his face close down to her—while outside the patter of rain on the roof had ceased, and the fog-like darkness was breaking with gray dawn.

In that dawn of the new day Kent came at last out of the cabin and looked upon a splendid world. In his breast was the glory of a thing new-born, and the world, like himself, was changed. Storm had passed. The gray river lay under his eyes. Shoreward he made out the dark outlines of the deep spruce and cedar and balsam forests. About him there was a great stillness, broken only by the murmur of the river and the ripple of water under the scow. Wind had gone with the black rainclouds, and Kent, as he looked about him, saw the swift dissolution of the last shadows of night, and the breaking in the East of a new paradise. In the East, as the minutes passed, there came a soft and luminous gray, and after that, swiftly, with the miracle of far Northern dawn, a vast, low-burning fire seemed to start far beyond the forests, tinting the sky with a delicate pink that crept higher and higher as Kent watched it. The river, all at once, came out of its last drifting haze of fog and night. The scow was about in the middle of the channel. Two hundred yards on either side were thick green walls of forest glistening fresh and cool with the wet of storm and breathing forth the perfume which Kent was drawing deep into his lungs.

In the cabin he heard sound. Marette was up, and he was eager to have her come out and stand with him in this glory of their first day. He watched the smoke of the fire he had built, hardwood smoke that drifted up white and clean into the rain-washed air.

The smell of it, like the smell of balsam and cedar, was to Kent the aroma of life. And then he began to clean out what was left of the water in the bottom of the scow, and as he worked he whistled. He wanted Marette to hear that whistle. He wanted her to know that day had brought with it no doubt for him. A great and glorious world was about them and ahead of them. And they were safe.

As he worked, his mind became more than ever set upon the resolution to take no chances. He paused in his whistling for a moment to laugh softly and exultantly as he thought of the years of experience which were his surest safeguard now. He had become almost uncannily expert in all the finesse and trickery of his craft of hunting human game, and he knew what the man-hunters would do and what they would not do. He had them checkmated at the start. And, besides—with Kedsty, O'Connor, and himself gone—the Landing was short-handed just at present. There was an enormous satisfaction in that. But even with a score of men behind him Kent knew that he would beat them. His hazard, if there was peril at all, lay in this first day. Only the Police gasoline launch could possibly overtake them. And with the start they had, he was sure they would pass the Death Chute, conceal the scow, and take to the untracked forests north and west before the launch could menace them. After that he would keep always west and north, deeper and deeper into that wild and untraveled country which would be the last place in which the Law would seek for them. He straightened himself and looked at the smoke again, drifting like gray-white lace between him and the blue of the sky, and in that moment the sun capped the tall green tops of the highest cedars, and day broke gloriously over the earth.

For a quarter of an hour longer Kent mopped at the floor of the scow, and then—with a suddenness that drew him up as if a whip-lash had snapped behind him—he caught another aroma in the clean, forest-scented air. It was bacon and coffee! He had believed that Marette was taking her time in putting on dry footwear and making some sort of morning toilet. Instead of that, she was getting breakfast. It was not an extraordinary thing to do. To fry bacon and make coffee was not, in any sense, a remarkable achievement. But at the present moment it was the crowning touch to Kent's paradise. She was getting HIS breakfast! And—coffee and bacon—To Kent those two things had always stood for home. They were intimate and companionable. Where there were coffee and bacon, he had known children who laughed, women who sang, and men with happy, welcoming faces. They were home-builders.

"Whenever you smell coffee and bacon at a cabin," O'Connor had always said, "they'll ask you in to breakfast if you knock at the door."

But Kent was not recalling his old trail mate's words. In the present moment all other thoughts were lost in the discovery that Marette was getting breakfast—for him.

He went to the door and listened. Then he opened it and looked in. Marette was on her knees before the open door of the stove, toasting bread on two forks. Her face was flushed pink. She had not taken time to brush her hair, but had woven it carelessly into a thick braid that fell down her back. She gave a little exclamation of mock disappointment when she saw Kent.

"Why didn't you wait?" she remonstrated. "I wanted to surprise you."