The Snowshoe Trail Part 23

As he reached to seize it, he had a distinct premonition of misfortune.

It was as if some subtle consciousness within him, knowing and remembering every detail of his past and its infinite and exact relations with his present, was warning him that to open the box was to receive knowledge that would be hateful to him. Yet he would not be cowed by such a visionary danger. He was tired out, his nerves were torn, and he was prey to his own dark imaginings. Likely enough the box was empty.

It was not, however. It contained a single photograph.

His eye leaped over it. He remembered now; he had looked at it during his former visit to the cabin, years before. It was a typical old-fashioned photograph--two men standing in stiff and awkward poses in an old-fashioned picture gallery--printed in the time-worn way. No modern photographer, however, could have caught a better likeness or made a more distinct picture. It had obviously been one of his father's possessions and had been left in the cabin.

One of the men was his own father. He had seen his photograph often enough to recognize it; besides, he remembered the man in the flesh.

And he stared at the other face--a rather handsome, thin-lipped, sardonic-eyed face--as if he were looking at a ghost.

"Great G.o.d," he cried. "It's Harold Lounsbury!"

But instantly he knew it could not be Harold Lounsbury. The picture was fully twenty-five years old and the face was that of a mature man, probably aged thirty. Harold Lounsbury himself was only thirty. And now, looking closer, he saw that the features were not quite the same.

There was more breeding, more sensitiveness in Harold's face. And there was also, dim and haunting, some slight resemblance to Kenly Lounsbury, whom he had brought up into Clearwater and who had gone back with Vosper.

Yet already his inner consciousness was screaming in his ear the ident.i.ty of this man. Already he knew. It was no other than Rutheford, the man who later, in the cavern darkness, had struck his father down.

His deductions followed with deadly and remorseless certainty. He knew now why Harold Lounsbury had come into Clearwater. Virginia had told Bill that her lover seemed to have some definite place in view for his prospecting: he had simply come to search for the same lost mine that Bill had discovered the previous day. He knew now why Kenly Lounsbury had been willing to finance Virginia's trip into the North,--not in hopes of finding his lost nephew, but to find the mine of which he also had some knowledge and thus repair the broken remnants of his fortune.

In the same sweep of realization he knew why Harold Lounsbury's face had always haunted him and filled him with hazy, uncertain memories. He had never seen Harold before; but he had seen this photograph in his own boyhood, and Harold's face had so resembled the one in the picture that it had haunted and disturbed him.

Only too well he knew the truth. Harold Lounsbury was Rutheford's son,--the son of his father's murderer. Kenly Lounsbury was Rutheford's brother. Both had come to Clearwater to repair their broken fortunes from the mine of which they both had knowledge. Whether it was guilty knowledge or not no man could tell.

Such directions as Rutheford had given his son had been unavailing because of the snowslide that had changed the contour of the little valley where the mine lay. He understood now Harold's disappointment and emotion when Bill had discovered the mine. Likely his own name was Harold Rutheford, or else Rutheford's true name had been Lounsbury.

Bill stood shivering all over with rage and hate.

Now he knew the road of vengeance! He had only to trace Harold Lounsbury back to his city--there to find his father's murderer. His eyes were glittering and terrible to see at the potentialities of that finding. Yet in an instant he knew that death had likely already claimed the elder Rutheford. Otherwise he himself would have come back, long since, to recover the mine. He would be financing the expedition, rather than his brother Kenly.

But by that stern old law, the law that goes down to the roots of the earth and whose justice lies in mystic balances beyond the sight of men, has it not been written that the sins of the father shall be visited upon the son? It wasn't too late yet to command some measure of payment. In Virginia's own city lived the Lounsburys,--a proud and wealthy family, moving in the most haughty circles, patronizing the humble, flattered and honored and exalted. But oh, he could break them down! He could stamp their name with shame. He could not pay eye for eye and tooth for tooth, because Rutheford was likely already dead. He could not pay for his father's murder by striking down his murderer.

But he could make Harold pay for his own wrongs. He could make him atone for the bitter moments of his youth and manhood, that irremediable loss of his boyhood. If Rutheford had left a widow he could make her pay for his own mother's sufferings.

As he stood in that bleak and lonely cabin, lost in the desolate wastes of snow, he was simply the clansman--the feudist--the primitive avenger. Virginia too should know the crime, and the haunting sight of those pitiful bones in the dark cavern would rise before her eyes whenever she sought Harold's arms. He would show her the picture; she could see the murderer's face in her own lover's. She could never yield to him then----

Virginia! Soft above the wail and complaint of the wind, he spoke her name. His star, his universe, the gracious, beautiful girl whose happiness had been his one aim! And could he change that aim now?

The wind wept, the snow was swept before it in great, unearthly clouds of white, the fire crackled and leaped at the opening in the cabin door.

The northern winter night closed down, ever deeper, ever darker, ever more fraught with those mighty pa.s.sions of the human soul. But he responded no more to the wild music of the wind. The wilderness pa.s.sions no longer found an echo in his own heart. He had suddenly remembered Virginia.

His face was like clay in the dancing light. His eyes were sunken and were dark as night. He knew now where his course would lie. All at once he knew by a knowledge true as life that this dark cabin, in the dark forest, must keep its secrets.

He could not wreak vengeance upon the man Virginia loved. He could not take payment from her. The same law that had governed him before was still the immutable voice of his being, the basic and irrevocable law of his life. He could not blast her happiness with such a revelation as this. His boyhood dream of vengeance would go the way of all his other dreams,--like the smoke of a camp fire lost in the unmeasured s.p.a.ces of the forest. The shadow that the dark woods had cast upon his spirit seemed to grow and deepen.

But he must act now, while his strength was upon him. To look again into Harold's face might cost him his own resolve. To think of Virginia in his arms, her lips against his, the wicked blood of the man pulsing so close that she could thrill at it and hear it, might set him on fire again. He must destroy the evidence. The night might bring his own death--he had a vague presentiment of disaster--and this photograph must never be found beside his body. She knew his father's story; her quick mind would leap to the truth at once. Besides, the destruction of the photograph--so that he could never look at it again--might lessen his own bitterness and give him a little peace. He crumpled it in his hand, and turning, gave it to the flames at the cabin mouth.

And from the savage powers of Nature there came a strange and incredible response. The wind shrieked, then seemed to ship about in the sky, completely changing direction. And all at once the smoke from the fire began to pour in upon him, choking his lungs and filling his eyes with tears.

XXII

For a full moment Bill gave little attention to the deepening clouds of pungent, biting wood smoke that the wind whipped in through the hole he had cut in the door. Likely it was just a momentary gust, a shifting in the air currents, and the wind would soon resume its normal direction.

Besides, the discovery that he had just made seemed to hold and occupy all the territory of his thought: he was scarcely aware of the burning pain that the acrid, resinous green-wood smoke brought to his eyes.

This was the most bitter moment of his life, and he was lost and remote in his dark broodings. The smoke didn't matter.

He began really to wonder about it when the room grew so smoky that it no longer received the firelight. The hole in the door was like a flue: the smoke--that deadly green-wood smoke known of old to the woodsman--streamed through in great clouds. He had shut his eyes at first; now he found it impossible to keep them open. The pungent smoke crept into his lungs and throat, burning like fire. He knew that it could no longer be disregarded.

It had been part of his wilderness training to respond like lightning in a crisis. Many times on the forest trails life itself had depended upon an instantaneous decision, then immediate effort to carry the decision out. The fawn that does not leap like a serpent's head at the first crack of a twig as the wolf steals toward him in the thicket never lives to grow antlers. The power to act, to summon and focus the full might of the muscles in the wink of an eye, then to hurl them into a breach had been Bill's salvation many times. But to-night the power seemed gone. For long seconds his muscles hung inert. He didn't know what to do.

The capacity for mighty and instantaneous effort seemed gone from his body. His mind was slow too,--blunted. He could make no decisions.

He only seemed bewildered and impotent.

The truth was that Bill had been near the point of utter exhaustion from his day's toil in the snow and his labor of building the fire. The vital nervous fluids no longer sprang forth to his muscles at the command of his brain: they came tardily, if at all. The fountain of his nervous energy had simply run down as the battery runs down in a motor, and it could only be recharged by a rest. But there was a deeper reason behind this strange apathy. The last blow--the sight of the photograph of his father's murderer and its new connection with his life--had for the time being at least crushed the fighting spirit within the man. The fight for life no longer seemed worth while. In his bitterness he had lost the power to care.

The smoke deepened in the cabin. It seemed to be affecting his power to stand erect. He tried to think of some way to save himself; his mind was slow and dull.

He knew that he couldn't get out of the cabin. There was only a little hole in the door; to crawl through it, inch by inch as he had entered, would subject him to the full fury of the flames. Oh, they would sear and destroy him quickly if he tried to creep through them! All night they had been mocking him with their cheerful crackle; they had only been waiting for this chance to torture him. He had to spring high to enter the little hole at all; there was no way to dodge the flames outside. But he might knock the logs apart and put the fire out.

There was only a distance of two paces between him and the door, but he seemed to have difficulty in making these. He reeled against the wall.

But when he tried to thrust his arms through to reach the burning logs, the cruel tongues stabbed at his hands.

But in spite of the pain, he reached again. The skin blistered on his hands, and for a long, horrible instant he groped impotently. The flame was raging by now, two or three pitch-laden spruce chunks blazing fiercely at once, and it seemed wholly likely that the cabin itself would catch fire. But he couldn't reach the logs.

He remembered his gloves then and fumbled for them in his pocket. The smoke could only be endured a few seconds more. He caught hold the edge of the opening and tried to spring up. But the flames beat into his face and drove him down again.

For a moment he stood reeling, trying to think, trying to remember some resource, some avenue of escape. There was no furniture to stand on.

If he could cover his face he might be able to leap part way through the opening and knock the burning logs apart. He tried to open his smarting eyes, but the lids were wracked with pain and would not at once respond.

He made it at last, but the dense smoke was impervious to his vision.

The firelight gave it a ghastly pallor.

His ax! With his ax he could chop the door away. His hand fumbled at his belt. But he remembered now; he lad left his ax outside the cabin, its blade thrust into the spruce log that had supplied his fuel.

Suddenly he saw himself face to face with seemingly certain death. It was curious that he did not feel more fear, greater revulsion. It was almost as if it didn't matter. While the steady sinking of the burning logs lessened, in some degree, the danger of the cabin igniting--a few inches of snow against the door remaining unmelted--the smoke clouds were swiftly and surely strangling him. Already his consciousness was departing. He leaped for the opening again and fell sprawling on the dirt floor. He started to spring up----

But he suddenly grew inert, breathing deeply. There was still air close to the ground. Strange he hadn't thought of it before,--just to lie still, face close to the dirt. It pained him to breathe; his eyes throbbed and burned, but at least it was life. He pressed his face to the cool earth.

Yet unconsciousness was sweeping him again. He would feel himself drifting, then with all the faltering power of his will he would struggle back. But perhaps this sweet oblivion was only sleep. His nerves were crying for rest. Once more he floated, and the hours of night crept by.

When Bill wakened again, the last pale glimmer of the lighted smoke was gone. He was bewildered at first, confusing reality with his dreams, but soon the full memory of the night's events swept back to him. His faculties had rallied now, his thought was clearer. The few hours that he had rested had been his salvation.

Yet it was still night. He raised his hands before his eyes but could not see even their outline. And the cabin was still full of smoke. But it seemed somewhat less dense now, less pungent. But the smarting in his eyes was more intense.

The fire had evidently burned down and out. He struggled to open his eyes, then gazed around the walls in search of the opening in the door.

But he could not see the reflection of an ember. He fought his way to his feet.

His fumbling hands encountered the log walls; he then groped about till he found the plank door. His gloved hands smarted, but their sense of touch did no seem blunted. He had never known a darker night! Now that he found the hole in the door, it was curious that he could not see one star gleaming through. But perhaps clouds had overspread.

A measure of heat against his face told him that coals were still glowing under the ashes, yet he might be able to creep through. It was worth a trial: the smoke in the cabin was still almost unbearable. His muscles were more at his command now; with a great lurch he sprang up and thrust head and shoulders through the opening.

The hot ashes punished his face, and his hand encountered hot coals as he thrust them through. Yet with a mighty effort he pushed on until his wrists touched the icy snow. He knew that he was safe.

He stood erect, scarcely believing in his deliverance. And the snow had crusted during the night; it would almost hold him up without snowshoes.