The Branding Iron

by Katharine Newlin Burt

He bowed. Her breast labored and all the distress of her soul, troubled by an instinctive, inarticulate consciousness of evil, wavered in her eyes. Her reason already accused her of ingratitude and treachery, but every fiber of her had suddenly revolted. She was all for liberty, she must have it.

He was wise, made no attempt to hold her, let her go; but, as she fled under the firs, her webs sinking deep into the heavy, uncrusted snow, he stood and watched her keenly. He had not failed to notice the trembling of her body, the quick lift and fall of her breast, the rapid flushing and paling of her face. He let her go.

And Joan ran, drawing recklessly on the depleted store of what had always been her inexhaustible strength. The snow was deep and soft, heavy with moisture, the March air was moist, too, not keen with frost, and the green firs were softly dark against an even, stone-colored sky of cloud. To Joan’s eyes, so long imprisoned, it was all astonishingly beautiful, clean and grave, part of the old life back to which she was running. Down the cañon trail she floundered, her short skirt gathering a weight of snow, her webs lifting a mass of it at every tugging step. Her speed perforce slackened, but she plodded on, out of breath and in a sweat. She was surprised at the weakness; put it down to excitement. “I was afeered he’d make me stay,” she said, and, “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go.” This went with her like a beating rhythm. She came to the opening in the firs, the foot of the steep trail, and out there stretched the valley, blank snow, blank sky, here and there a wooded ridge, then a range of lower hills, blue, snow-mottled; not a roof, not a thread of smoke, not a sound.

“I’m awful far away,” Joan whispered to herself, and, for the first time in her life, she doubted her strength. “I don’t rightly know where I am.” She looked back. There stood a high, familiar peak, but so were the outlines of these mountains jumbled and changed that she could not tell if Prosper’s cañon lay north or south of Pierre’s homestead. The former was high up on the foothills, and Pierre’s was well down, above the river. From where she stood, there was no river-bed in sight. She tried to remember the journey, but nothing came to her except a confused impression of following, following, following. Had they gone toward the river first and then turned north or had they traveled close to the base of the giant range? The ranger’s cabin where they had spent the night, surely that ought to be visible. If she went farther out, say beyond the wooded spur which shut the mountain country from her sight, perhaps she would find it.... She braced her quivering muscles and went on. The end of the jutting foothills seemed to crawl forward with her. She plunged into drifts, struggled up; sometimes the snow-plane seemed to stand up like a wall in front of her, the far hills lolling like a dragon along its top. She could not keep the breath in her lungs. Often she sank down and rested; when things grew steady she got up and worked on. Each time she rested, she crouched longer; each time made slower progress; and always the goal she had set herself, the end of that jutting hill, thrust itself out, nosed forward, sliding down to the plain. It began to darken, but Joan thought that her sight was failing. The enormous efforts she was making took every atom of her will. At last her muscles refused obedience, her laboring heart stopped. She stood a moment, swayed, fell, and this time she made no effort to rise. She had become a dark spot on the snow, a lifeless part of the loneliness and silence.

Above her, where the sharp peaks touched the clouds, there came a widening rift showing a cold, turquoise clarity. The sun was just setting and, as the cloud-banks lifted, strong shadows, intensely blue, pointed across the plain of snow. A small, black, energetic figure came out from among the firs and ran forward where the longest shadow pointed. It looked absurdly tiny and anxious; futile, in its pigmy haste, across the exquisite stillness. Joan, lying so still, was acquiescent; this little striving thing rebelled. It came forward steadily, following Joan’s uneven tracks, stamping them down firmly to make a solid path, and, as the sun dropped, leaving an immense gleaming depth of sky, he came down and bent over the black speck that was Joan....

Prosper took her by the shoulder and turned her over a little in the snow. Joan opened her eyes and looked at him. It was the dumb look of a beaten dog.

“Get up, child,” he said, “and come home with me.”

She struggled to her feet, he helping her; and silently, just as a savage woman, no matter what her pain, will follow her man, so Joan followed the track he had made by pressing the snow down triply over her former steps. “Can you do it?” he asked once, and she nodded. She was pale, her eyes heavy, but she was glad to be found, glad to be saved. He saw that, and he saw a dawning confusion in her eyes. At the end he drew her arm into his, and, when they came into the house, he knelt and took the snowshoes from her feet, she drooping against the wall. He put a hand on each of her shoulders and looked reproach.

“You wanted to leave me, Joan? You wanted to leave me, as much as that?”

She shook her head from side to side, then, drawing away, she stumbled past him into the room, dropped to the bearskin rug, and held out her hands to the flames. “It’s awful good to be back,” she said, and fell to sobbing. “I didn’t think you’d be carin’—I was thinkin’ only of old things. I was homesick—me that has no home.”