Hidden Creek Part 31

Miss Blake snapped at her. "Harness that team now? As much as your life is worth, Sheila! And we can't make it on foot. We'd drop in our tracks and freeze. If it comes to the worst we may have to try it, but--oh, I'll get something to-morrow."

But to-morrow brought no better luck. During the hunting the dogs were left on their chains, and Sheila, through the lonely hours, would watch them through the window and could almost see the wolfishness grow in their deep, wild eyes. She would try to talk to them, pat them, coax them into doggy-ness. But day by day they responded more unwillingly. All but Berg: Berg stayed with her in the house, lay on her feet, leaned against her knee. He shared her meals. He was beginning to swing his heart from Miss Blake to her, and this was the second cause for strife.

Since that one outbreak, Sheila had gone carefully. She was dignified, aloof, very still. She obeyed and slaved as she had never done in the summer days. The dread of physical violence hung on her brain like a cloud. She encouraged Berg's affection, and wondered, if it came to a struggle, whether he would side with her. She was given the opportunity to put this matter to the test.

Miss Blake was very late that night. It was midnight, a stark midnight of stars and biting cold, when Berg stood up from his sleep and barked his low, short bark of welcome. Outside the other dogs broke into their clamor, drowning all other sound, and in the midst of it the door flew rudely open. Miss Blake stood and clung to the side of the door. Her face was bluish-white. She put out her hand toward Sheila, clutching the air.

Sheila ran over to her.

"You're hurt?"

"Twisted my blamed ankle. G.o.d!" She hobbled over, a heavy arm round Sheila, to her chair and sat there while the girl gave her some brandy, removed the snowshoes, and cut away the boot from a swollen and discolored leg.

"That's the end of my hunting," grunted the patient, who bore the agony of rubbing and bathing stoically. "And, I reckon, I couldn't have stood much more." She clenched her hand in Berg's mane. "G.o.d! Those dogs! I'll have to shoot them--next." Sheila looked up to her with a sort of horrified hope. There was then a way out from that fear.

"I'd rather die, I think," said the woman hoa.r.s.ely. "I love those dogs."

Sheila looked up into a tender and quivering face--the face of a mother.

"They mean something to me--those brutes. I guess I kind of centered my heart on 'em--out here alone. I raised 'em up, from puppies, all but Berg and the mother. They were the cutest little fellows. I remember when Wreck got porcupine quills in his nose and came to me and lay on his back and whined to me. It was as if he said, 'Help me, momma.' Sure it was.

And he pretty near died. Oh, d.a.m.n! If I have to shoot 'em I might just as well shoot myself and be done with it...Thanks, Sheila. I'll eat my supper here and then you can help me to bed. When my ankle's all well, we can have a try for the post-office, perhaps." She leaned back and drew Berg roughly up against her. She caressed him. He made little soft, throaty sounds of tenderness.

Sheila came back with a tray and, as she came, Berg pulled himself away from his mistress and went wagging over to greet her.

"Come here!" snapped Miss Blake. Berg hesitated, cuddled close to Sheila, and kept step beside her.

Miss Blake's eyes went red. "Come here!" she said again. Berg did not cringe or hasten. He reached Miss Blake's chair at the same instant as Sheila, not a moment earlier.

Miss Blake pulled herself up. The tray went shattering to the floor. She hobbled over to the fire, white with the anguish, took down the whip from its nail. At that Berg cringed and whined. The woman fell upon him with her terrible lash. She held herself with one hand on the mantel-shelf, while with the other she scored the howling victim. His fur came off his back under the dreadful, knife-edge blows.

"Oh, stop!" cried Sheila. "Stop! You're killing him!" She ran over and caught Miss Blake's arm.

"d.a.m.n you!" said the woman fiercely. She stood breathing fast. Sweat of pain and rage and exertion stood out on her face. "Do _you_ want that whip?"

She half-turned, lifting her lash, and at that, with a snarl, Berg crouched himself and bared his teeth.

Miss Blake started and stared at him. Suddenly she gave in. Pain and anger twisted her spirit.

"You'd turn my Berg against me!" she choked, and fell heavily down on the rug in a dead faint.

When she came to she was grim and silent. She got herself with scant help to bed, her big bed in the corner of the living-room, and for a week she was kept there with fever and much pain. Berg lay beside her or followed Sheila about her work, and the woman watched them both with ruddy eyes.

CHAPTER XI

THE PACK

In January a wind blew steadily from the east and snow came as if to bury them alive. The cabin turned to a cave, a small square of warmth under a mountain of impenetrable white; one door and one window only, opening to a s.p.a.ce of sun. Against the others the blank white lids of winter pressed. Sheila shoveled this s.p.a.ce out sometimes twice a day.

The dog kennels were moved into it, and stood against the side of a snow-bank eight feet high, up which, when they were unchained, the gaunt, wolfish animals leapt in a loosely formed pack, the great mother, Brenda, at their head, and padded off into the silent woods in their hungry search for food.

But, one day, they refused to go. Miss Blake, her whip in her hand, limped out. The snow had stopped. The day was still and bright again above the snowy firs, the mountain sc.r.a.ped against the blue sky like a cliff of broken ice. The dogs had crept out of their houses and were squatted or huddled in the sun. As she came out they rose and strained at their tethers. One of them whined. Brenda, the mother, bared her teeth.

One by one, as they were freed, they slunk close to Miss Blake, looking up into her face. They crowded close at her heels as she went back to the house. She had to push the door to in their very jaws and they pressed against it, their heads hung low, sniffing the odor of food. Presently a long-drawn, hideous howling rose from them. Time and again Miss Blake drove them away with lash and voice. Time and again they came back. They scratched at the threshold, whimpered, and whined.

Sheila and Miss Blake gave them what food they would have eaten themselves that day. It served only to excite their restlessness, to hold them there at the crack of the door, snuffling and s...o...b..ring. The outer circle slept, the inner watched. Then they would shift, like sentries.

They had a horrible sort of system. Most of that dreadful afternoon Miss Blake paced the floor, trying to strengthen her ankle for the trip to the post-office. At sunset, when the small snow-banked room was nearly dark, she stopped, threw up her head, and looked at Sheila. The girl was sitting on the lowest step of the ladder washing some dried apples. Her face had thinned to a silvery wedge between the thick square ma.s.ses of her hair. There was a haunted look in her clear eyes. The soft mouth had tightened.

"How in G.o.d's name," said Miss Blake, "shall I get 'em on their chains again?"

Sheila stopped her work, and her lips fell helplessly apart. She looked up at the older woman and shook her head.

Miss Blake's fear snapped into a sort of frenzy. She gritted her teeth and stamped. "You simpleton!" she said. "You never have a notion in your head."

Sheila stood up quickly. Something told her that she had better be on her feet. She kept very still. "You will know better than I could what to do about the dogs," she said quietly. "They'll go back on their chains for you, I should think. They're afraid of you."

"Aren't you?" Miss Blake asked roughly.

"No. Of course not."

"You little liar! You're scared half out of your wits. You're scared of the whole thing--scared of the snow, scared of the cold, scared of the dogs, and scared sick of me. Come, now. Tell me the truth."

It was almost her old bluff, bullying tone, but back of it was a disorder of stretched nerves. Sheila weighed her words and tried to weigh her thoughts.

"I don't think I am afraid, Miss Blake. Why should I be afraid of the dogs, if you aren't? And why should I be afraid of you? You have been good to me. You are a good woman."

At this Miss Blake threw back her head and laughed. She was terribly like one of the dogs howling. There was something wild and wolfish in her broad neck and in the sound she made. And she snapped back into silence with wolfish suddenness.

"If you're not scared, then," she scoffed, "go and chain up the dogs yourself."

For an instant Sheila quite calmly balanced the danger out of doors against the danger within.

"I think," she said--and managed one of her drifting smiles--"I think I am a great deal more afraid of the dogs than I am of you, Miss Blake."

The woman studied her for a minute in silence, then she walked over to her elk-horn throne and sat down on it.

She leaned back in a royal way and spread her dark broad hands across the arms.

"Well," she said coolly, "did you hear what I said? Go out and chain up the dogs!"

Sheila held herself like a slim little cavalier. "If I go out," she said coolly, "I will not take a whip. I'll take a gun."

"And shoot my dogs?"

"Miss Blake, what else is left for us to do? We can't let them claw down the door and tear us into bits, can we?"

"You'd shoot my dogs?"

"You said yourself that we might have to shoot them."