Arriving back at the clearing just before sundown, they paused at the cabin door. Dave looked into Miranda’s eyes with something of reproach, something of appeal. Kirstie’s voice, talking cheerfully to Kroof, came from the raspberry brambles behind the house. Miranda stretched out her hand with a cool frankness, and returned his look blankly.
“I’ve had a real good time, thank you, Dave,” she said. “You’ll find mother yonder, picking raspberries.”
Chapter XVIII
The Forfeit of the Alien
All through the summer and early autumn Dave continued his fortnightly visits to the cabin in the clearing, and always Miranda treated him with the same cold, casual civility. She felt, or pretended to herself that she felt, grateful now to the blunt-fingered, wan woman over at Gabe White’s, who had rudely jostled her back to her senses when she was on the very edge of giving up her freedom and her personality to a man—a strong man, who would have absorbed her. She flung herself passionately once more into the fellowship of the furtive folk, the secrecy and wonder of the wood. As it was a human love which she was crushing out, and as she felt the need of humanity cravingly, though not understandingly, at her heart, she lavished upon Kirstie a demonstrativeness of affection such as she had never shown before. It pleased Kirstie, and she met it heartily in her calm, strong way; but she saw through it, and smiled at the back of her brain, scarcely daring to think her thought frankly, lest the girl’s intuition should discern it. She made much of Dave, but never before Miranda; and she kept encouraging the rather despondent man with the continual assertion: “It’ll be all right, Dave. Don’t fret, but bide your time.” To which Dave responded by biding his time with a quiet, unaggressive persistence; and if he fretted, he took pains not to show it.
If Dave had an ally in Kirstie, he had consistent antagonists in all the folk of the wood; for never before in all Miranda’s semi-occult experience had the folk of the wood come so near to her. Kroof was her almost ceaseless companion, more devoted, if possible, than ever, and certainly more quick in comprehension of Miranda’s English. And Kroof’s cub, a particularly fine and well-grown young animal, was well-nigh as devoted as his mother. When these two were absent on some rare expedition of their own, undertaken by Kroof for the hardening of the cub’s muscles, then the very foxes took to following Miranda, close to heel, like dogs; and one drowsy fall afternoon, when she had lain down to sleep on a sloping patch of pine needles, the self-same big panther from whom she had rescued Dave came lazily and lay down beside her. His large purring at her ear awoke her. He purred still more loudly when she gently scratched him under the throat. She was filled with a curious exaltation as she marked how her influence over the wild things grew and widened. Nothing, she vowed, should ever lure her away from these clear shades, these silent folks whom she ruled by hand and eye, and this mysterious life which she alone could know. When Old Dave, for whom she cared warmly, made his now infrequent visits to the clearing, she had an inclination to avoid him, lest he should attack her purpose; and the thought of little Jimmy’s white face and baby mouth she put away obstinately, as most dangerous of all. And so it came that when October arrived, and all the forest everywhere was noiselessly astir with falling leaves, and the light of the blue began to peer in upon the places which had been closed to it all summer, by that time Miranda felt quite secure in her resolve; and Dave’s fight now was to keep the despair of his heart from writing itself large upon his face.
Toward the end of that October Dave’s hunting took him to the rocky open ground where, in the previous June, he and Miranda had encountered the lynxes. He was looking for fresh meat for Kirstie, and game, that day, had kept aloof. Just as he recognized, with a kind of homesick ache of remembrance, the spot where he and Miranda had seemed, for a brief space, to be in perfect accord with each other,—how long ago and how unbelievable it appeared to him now!—his hunter’s eye caught a sight which brought the rifle to his shoulder. Just at the edge of the open a young bear stood greedily stripping blueberries from the laden bushes, and grunting with satisfaction at the sweet repast.
“A bit of bear steak,” thought Dave, “will be jest the thing for Kirstie. She’s gittin’ a mite tired o’ deer’s meat!”
An unhurried aim, a sharp, slapping report, and the handsome cub sank forward upon his snout, and rolled over, shot through the brain. Dave strode up to him. He had died instantly—so instantly and painlessly that his half-open mouth was still full of berries and small, dark green leaves. Dave felt his soft and glossy dark coat.
“Ye’re a fine young critter,” he muttered half regretfully. “It was kind o’ mean to cut ye off when ye was havin’ such a good time all to yerself.”
But Dave was not one to nurse an idle sentimentality. Without delay he skinned the carcase, and cached the pelt carefully under a pile of heavy stones, intending to return for it the first day possible. He was going to the clearing now, and could not take a raw pelt with him, to damn him finally in Miranda’s eyes; but the skin was too fine a one to be left to the foxes and wolverines. When it was safely bestowed, he cut off the choicest portions of the carcase, wrapped them in leaves and tied them up in birch bark, slung the package over his shoulder, and set out in haste for the clearing. He was anxious that Kirstie should have bear steaks for supper that night.