The Sky Line of Spruce Part 30

Chan Heminway, also, had developed marvelously in the journey. He also was more a.s.sertive, less the underling he had been. He had developed a brutality that, though it contained nothing of the exquisite fineness of cruelty of which Ray's diseased thought might conceive, was nevertheless the full expression of his depraved nature. He no longer cowered in fear of Neilson. Rather he looked to Ray as his leader, took him as his example, tried to imitate him, and at last really began to share in his mood. In cruelty to the horses he was particularly adept; but he was also given to strange, savage bursts of insane fury.

"We must be close on them now," Neilson said one morning when they had left the main gorge of the Yuga far behind them. "If they're not dead we're bound to find trace of 'em in a few days."

The hope seemed well-founded. It is impossible for even most of the wild creatures--furtive as twilight shadows--to journey through wood s.p.a.ces without leaving trace of their goings and comings: much less clumsy human beings. Ultimately the searchers would find their tracks in the soft earth, the ashes of a camp fire, or a charred cooking rack.

"And when we get 'em, we can wait and live on meat until the river goes up in fall--then float on down to the Indian villages in their canoe,"

Chan answered. "It will carry four of us, all right."

Ray, Chan, Neilson and Neilson's daughter--these made four. What remained of Ben when Ray was through could be left, silent upon some hushed hillside, to the mercy of the wild creatures and the elements.

Surely they were in the enemy-country now; and now a fresh fear began to oppress them. They might expect an attack from their implacable foe at any moment. It did not make for ease of mind to know that any brush clump might be their enemy's ambush; that any instant a concealed rifle might speak death to them in the silence. Ben would have every advantage of fortress and ambush. They had not thought greatly of this matter at first; but now the fear increased with the pa.s.sing days. Even Neilson was not wholly exempt from it. It seemed a hideous, deadly thing, incompatible with life and hope, that they should be plunging deeper, farther into helplessness and peril.

If mental distress and physical discomfort can const.i.tute vengeance Ben was already avenged. Now that they were in the hill-lands, out from the gorge and into a region of yellow beaver meadows lying between gently sloping hills, their apprehension turned to veritable terror. A blind man could see how small was their fighting chance against a hidden foe who had prepared for their coming. The skin twitched and crept when a twig cracked about their camp at night, and a cold like death crept over the frame when the thickets crashed under a leaping moose.

Ray found himself regretting, for the first time, that murderous crime of his of months before. Even riches might not pay for these days of dread and nights of terror: the recovery of the girl from Ben's arms could not begin to recompense. Indeed, the girl's memory was increasingly hard to call up. The mind was kept busy elsewhere.

"We're walking right into a death trap," he told Neilson one morning.

"If he is here, what chance have we got; he'd have weeks to explore the country and lay an ambush for us. Besides, I believe he's dead. I don't believe a human being could have got down this far, alive."

Chan too had found himself inclining toward this latter belief; without Ray's energy and ambition he had less to keep him fronted to the chase.

Neilson, however, was not yet ready to turn back. He too feared Ben's attack, but already in the twilight of advancing years, he did not regard physical danger in the same light as these two younger men.

Besides, he was made of different stuff. The safety of his daughter was the one remaining impulse in his life.

And more and more, in the chill August nights, the talk about the camp fire took this trend: the folly of pushing on. It was better to turn back and wait his chances to strike again, Ray argued, than to walk bald-faced into death. Sometime Ben must return to the claim: a chance might come to lay him low. Besides, ever it seemed more probable that the river had claimed him.

One rainy, disagreeable morning, as they camped beside the river near the mouth of a small creek, affairs reached their crisis. They had caught and saddled the horses; Ray was pulling tight the last hitch.

Chan stood beside him, speaking in an undertone. When he had finished Ray cursed explosively in the silence.

Neilson turned. He seemed to sense impending developments. "What now?"

he asked.

"I'm not going on, that's what it is," Ray replied. "Neilson, it's two against one--if you want to go on you can--but Ray and I are going back.

That devil's dead. Beatrice is, too--sure as h.e.l.l. If they ain't dead, he'll get us. I was a fool ever to start out. And that's final."

"You're going back, eh--scared out!" Neilson commented coldly.

"I'm going back--and don't say too much about being scared out, either."

"And you too, Chan? You're against me, too?"

Chan cursed. "I'd gone a week ago if it'd been me. We knew the way home, at least."

The old man looked a long time into the river depths. Only too well he realized that their decision was final. But there was no answer, in the swirling depths, to the question that wracked his heart: whether or not in these spruce-clad hills his daughter still lived. It could only murmur and roar, without shaping words that human ears could grasp, never relieving the dreadful uncertainty that would be his life's curse from henceforth. He sighed, and the lines across his brow were dark and deep.

"Then turn the horses around, you cowards," he answered. "I can't go on alone."

For once neither Ray nor Chan had outward resentment for the epithet.

Secretly they realized that old Neilson was to the wall at last, and like a grizzly at bay, it was safer not to molest him. Chan went down to the edge of the creek to water his saddle horse.

But presently they heard him curse, in inordinate and startled amazement, as he gazed at some imprint in the mud of the sh.o.r.e. They saw the color sweep from his face. In an instant his two companions were beside him.

Clear and unmistakable in the mud they saw the stale imprint of Ben's canoe as they had landed, and the tracks of both the man and the girl as they had turned into the forest.

x.x.xVII

The dawn that crept so gray and mysterious over the frosty green of spruce brought no hope to Beatrice, sitting beside the unconscious form of Ben in the cave fronting the glade. Rather it only brought the tragic truth home more clearly. Her love for him had manifested itself too late to give happiness to either of them: even now his life seemed to be stealing from her, into the valley of the shadow.

She had watched beside him the whole night; and now she beheld a sinister change in his condition. He was still unconscious, but he no longer drew his breath at long intervals, softly and quietly. He was breathing in short, troubled gasps, and an ominous red glow was in his cheeks. She touched his brow, only to find it burning with fever.

The fact was not hard to understand. The downpour of cold rain in which he had lain, wounded, for so many hours had drawn the life heat out of him, and some organic malady had combined with his bodily injuries to strike out his life. Her predicament was one of absolute helplessness.

She was hundreds of miles--weary weeks of march--from medical attention, and she could neither leave him nor carry him. The wilderness forces, resenting the intrusion into their secret depths, had seemingly taken full vengeance at last. They had seemingly closed all gates to life and safety. They had set the trap with care; and the cruel jaws had sprung.

She sat dry-eyed, incoherent prayers at her trembling lips. Mostly she did not touch the man, only sat at his bedside in the crude chair Ben had fashioned for her while the minutes rolled into hours and the hours sped the night away,--in tireless vigil, watching with lightless eyes.

Once she bent and touched her lips to his.

They were not cold now. They were warm with fever. But in the strange twilight-world of unconsciousness he could neither know of nor respond to her kiss. She patted down his covering and sometimes held his hard hands warm between hers, as if she could thus keep death from seizing them and leading him away. But her courage did not break again.

The wan light showed her his drawn face; and just for an instant her arms pressed about it. "I won't give up, Ben," she promised. "I'll keep on fighting--to the last minute. And maybe I can pull you through."

Beatrice meant exactly what she said: to the last minute. That did not mean to the gray hour when, by all dictate of common sense, further fight is useless. She meant that she would battle tirelessly as long as one pale spark glowed in his spirit, as long as his breath could cloud a gla.s.s. The best thing for her now, however, was rest. She was exhausted by the strain of the night; and she must save herself for the crisis that was sure to come. Ben was sleeping easily now; the instant when his life hung in the balance still impended.

She built up the fire, put on water to heat, covered the man with added blankets, then lay down on Ben's cot. Soon she drifted into uneasy slumber, waking at intervals to serve her patient.

The hours dragged by, the night sloped down to the forest; and the dawn followed the night. Ben's life still flickered, like a flame in the wind, in the twilight land between life and death.

Yet little could she do for him these first few days, except, in her simple faith, to pray. Never an hour pa.s.sed but that prayers were at her lips, childlike, direct, entreating prayers from her woman's heart. Of all her offices these were first: she had no doubt but that they counted most. She sat by his bedside, kept him covered with the warmest robes, hewed wood for the fire; but as yet he had never fully emerged from his unconsciousness. Would he slip away in the night without ever wakening?

But in the morning of the fourth day he opened his eyes vividly, muttered, and fell immediately to sleep. He woke again at evening; and his moving lips conveyed a message. In response she brought him steaming grouse broth, administering it a spoonful at a time until he fell to sleep again.

In the days that followed he was conscious to the degree that he could drink broth, yet never recognizing Beatrice nor seeming to know where he was. His fever still lingered, raging; yet in these days she began to notice a slow improvement in his condition. The healing agents of his body were hard at work; and doubt was removed that he had received mortal internal injuries. She had set his broken arm the best she could, holding the bones in place with splints; but in all likelihood it would have to be broken and set again when he reached the settlements. She began to notice the first cessation of his fever; although weeks of sickness yet remained, she believed that the crisis was past. Yet in spite of these hopeful signs, she was face to face with the most tragic situation of all. Their food was almost gone.

It would be long weeks before Ben could hope for sufficient strength to start the journey down to the settlements, even if the way were open. As it was their only chance lay in the fall rains that would flood the Yuga and enable them to journey down to the native villages in their canoe. These rains would not fall till October. For all that she had h.o.a.rded their supplies to the last morsel, eating barely enough herself to sustain life in her body, the dread spectre of starvation waited just without the cave. She had realized perfectly that Ben could not hope to throw off the malady without nutritious food and she had not stinted with him; and now, just when she had begun to hope for his recovery, she shook the last precious cup of flour from the sack.

The rice and sugar were gone, long since. The honey she had h.o.a.rded to give Ben--knowing its warming, nutritive value--not tasting a drop herself. Of all their stores only a few pieces of jerked caribou remained; she had used the rest to make rich broth for Ben, and there was no way under heaven whereby they might procure more.

The rifle was broken. The last of the pistol shots was fired the day she had prepared the poisoned cup for Ben.

Yet she still waged the fight, struggling with high courage and tireless resolution against the frightful odds that opposed her. Her faith was as of that nameless daughter of the Gileadite; and she could not yield. Not ambition, not hatred--not even such fire of fury as had been wakened in Wolf Darby's heart that first frenzied night on the hillside--could have been the impulse for such fort.i.tude and sacrifice as hers. It was not one of these base pa.s.sions--known in the full category to her rescuers who were even now bearing down upon her valley--that kept the steel in her thews and the steadfastness in her heart. She loved this man; her love for him was as wholesome and as steadfast as her own self; and the law of that love was to give him all she had.

There were few witnesses to this infinite giving of hers. Ben himself still lingered in a strange stupor, remembering nothing, knowing neither the girl nor himself. Perhaps the wild things saw her desperate efforts to find food in the wilderness,--the long hours of weary searching for a handful of berries that gave such little nourishment to his weakened body, or for a few acorns stored for winter by bird or rodent. Sometimes a great-antlered moose--an easy trophy if the rifle had been unbroken--saw her searching for wocus like a lost thing in the tenacious mud of the marshes; and almost nightly a silent wolf, pausing in his hunting, gazed uneasily through the cavern maw. But mostly her long hours of service in the cave, the chill nights that she sat beside Ben's cot, the dreary mornings when she cooked her own scanty breakfast and took her uneasy rest, the endless labor of fire-mending so that the cave could be kept at an even heat went un.o.bserved by mortal eyes. The healing forces of his body called for warmth and nourishment; but for all the might of her efforts she waged a losing fight.

What little wocus she was able to find she made into bread for Ben; yet it was never enough to satisfy his body's craving. The only meat she had herself was the vapid flesh that had been previously boiled for Ben's broth; and now only a few pieces of the jerked meat remained. She herself tried to live on such plants as the wilderness yielded, and she soon began to notice the tragic loss of her own strength. Her eyes were hollow, preternaturally large; she experienced a strange, floating sensation, as if spirit and flesh were disa.s.sociated.

Still Ben lingered in his mysterious stupor, unaware of what went on about him; but his fever was almost gone by now, and the first beginnings of strength returned to his thews. His mind had begun to grope vaguely for the key that would open the doors of his memory and remind him again of some great, half-forgotten task that still confronted him, some duty unperformed. Yet he could not quite seize it.

The girl who worked about his cot was without his bourne of knowledge; her voice reached him as if from an infinite distance, and her words penetrated only to the outer edges of his consciousness. It was not strictly, however, a return of his amnesia. It was simply an outgrowth of delirium caused by his sickness and injuries, to be wholly dispelled as soon as he was wholly well.