Chapter XV

To Dorothy were left the hills and the sky, the steep crags and the alder thickets, many-colored by the whims of the frost. That strange mood of utter loneliness that she remembered from many a tragic dream settled upon her, weighing her down, seemingly about to kill her with its burden upon her heart, and with it a sense of absolute futility and helplessness. There was no special sense of terror, because the loneliness was itself terror in its last degree, and it pervaded all her being. She was all alone, lost as in a dream.

The images that her five senses portrayed in her mind tended to accentuate the mood of loneliness, rather than to divert her from it. She stood a solitary figure in an uninhabited waste: the empty barrens stretching down to the barren sea; the hills, gray with dying herbage, rolling on and losing themselves at last behind the curtains of the clouds; the gray, forbidding crags piled up in endless grim heaps about her. It was a lonely, utterly cheerless vista of dead sky and dead world, and the blast of the wind was too unvarying and monotonous to destroy the effect of silence.

Queer, vagrant thoughts chased each other through her mind. She watched the wind ravish the yellow leaves from the alders; they fluttered sadly in the air and fell rustling in the moss. She was all alone, under those cold, winter clouds. No companion stood beside her now. There was no pillar to sustain her failing strength; she was helpless under the lash of the gale, the cruel might of the elements. The guide whose strength and companionship she had come to rely on more than she herself guessed, who had stood between her and the persecutions of this accursed land, had fallen and vanished from the plane of her life. Her shield was broken, the rainbow of her hope had faded.

She was scarcely conscious of her own life as she stared down at the yawning hole in the snow crust through which Pete had fallen. Her thoughts were those of half-delirium—abstract terror, queer erratic fancies that were darkened and shadowed with a sudden, secret knowledge of the dread meaning of life. She had known _security_—the last dream, the dearest blessing in all the uncertain trails of life—but it had departed, and now she was exposed to the punishment of Destiny. Of course Pete was dead. Such chasms were of fearful depth. The dull-red coloring paled slowly in her face, and she swayed as if about to drop down.

Yet she must not lose consciousness. It was part of the grim code of this grim land to fight to the last breath: such was part of the obligation of all living things. Pete himself had made that plain. Only by constant, unyielding struggle could life prevail against the cruel powers of death and darkness. She began to climb down the hill, stumbling, sliding in the loose earth, fighting through the alder thickets. Her delicate skin was scratched and torn; her hands bled from grasping the sharp rocks. Soon she reached the brink of the chasm.

One glance showed it to be more than sixty feet in depth—at the point she encountered it first—and a small stream flowed between great bowlders at the bottom. Here the banks were covered with a heavy, impassable growth of alders. She followed down the brink a short distance, then began to work her way down into the gully itself.

Half-sliding, half-running, in imminent danger of breaking her bones on the rocks at the bottom she made her way to the stream bed, then fought on up toward the place where Pete had fallen. The banks were too sheer to find foothold, so she walked in the stream, the icy water splashing over her as she slipped and stumbled on the slippery stones. Soon she vanished into a cavern formed by the snowbank completely bridging the gully. The shadows slowly gathered, the farther she went under the roof of snow until finally she groped her way in a curious, wan twilight that was like the grayness of a dream.

The gapping rent in the snowy roof above showed her where Pete had fallen. She made out a long shadow among the bowlders of the creek bed, and at once she knelt in the shallow water at his side.

She was too terrified, now, for coherent thought; yet a dim glimmer of a startling truth came to her as she groped for the man’s bleeding hand. To her he was not merely a guide, a faithful servant. Her prayer for his life was heartfelt: indeed it seemed the first theme of her own life. All other hopes and fears paled beside the strong light of this. He was not just a fellow mortal who had given her service: he was her companion, her stronghold and shelter; but this was only the beginning. In that instant of stress the voice of her heart spoke clearly above the confusing babble of lesser tongues, and some deep tenderness—almost forgotten—was thrilled into life. This rough man of the opens made an appeal to her that could no longer be denied, that reached to the secret places of her being. At that instant he was more than life itself.

The time might come when false pride would manifest itself again, and she would be ashamed of this heart secret that the fateful moment had revealed; but she yielded to it freely now. She was sobbing quietly, like a child in inconsolable grief, as she began to nurse him. She took his rough hands and kissed their wounds, then she kissed his lips to see if they were still warm with life. Then she pressed his battered head against her breast and rocked him as a child rocks its doll.

It was all strange and unreal, in the shadowed cave, in the wan light that poured through the hole in the wall. Outside the wind swept on in its tireless journey, hustling the dead leaves, shrilling over the crags; but it could not reach them here, in the stillness and the darkness. She was not aware of the cold water at her feet, of a red stain that spread over her breast from a long gash on Pete’s brown forehead. She only knew that this battered body was, by some tragic witchery of the moment, her own; that—for this hour—her love for Ivan and for the memory of her dead was some way centered in him.

She kissed the homely, bleeding face, then tried to coax him back to consciousness. . . . They must not linger here, in the creek bed and under the cold roof of snow. He was not dead: she was sure of that now. As she mounted nearer the head springs of the little stream that flowed at her feet the gully itself had decreased in depth, and Pete had fallen scarcely more than thirty feet. The fall too might have been somewhat broken by striking first the almost sheer wall of the gully just above the water. Yet he might easily be mortally injured. His present deep sleep might usher him, without waking, straight into death.

She began quietly to bathe his wounds. The cold water was an effective stimulant, and soon he stirred and opened his eyes.

It moved her to the depths to see a little, faint echo of his friendly smile come to his lips. It was almost imperceptible, yet its meaning was plain; that he would stand between her and disaster, that she need not fear. It had always been his impulse to cheer her, to save her from the poignancy of life. “Don’t trouble about me,” he told her faintly.

The drops of water on his bleeding face were not wholly from the cold stream. Her tears lay there too. “Don’t try to talk,” she cautioned him.

He closed his eyes, rested, and full consciousness came back to him. “I don’t believe I’m badly hurt, Mrs. Newhall—just shaken up and scratched. I hit the bank and slid part of the way. Maybe I can get up.”

“You mustn’t try it. I’ll run back for help——”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t be best to wait. . . . It’s pretty cold down here—almost freezing. The best plan is to try to reach the camp.”

He spoke softly, with evident difficulty; yet she was convinced at last he was not mortally injured. She realized that life itself, however, might depend on getting him at once into camp. At least he must not be left under the snowbank to the mercy of the cold.

She took his hand and he tried to get to his feet. Evidently the entire mechanism of his central nervous system had suffered from the shock of the fall, and at first his muscles refused to respond to the commands of his brain. It was only with the girl’s help that he was able to get to his knees. Very slowly, unsteadily, pulling with his own free hand on the over-hanging roots of the gulch from which the soil had been carried by his sliding body, and leaning on Dorothy, he managed to stand erect.

He paused for breath and they met each other’s eyes. The fact that Pete had not been mortally injured did not mean that he was safe. He was at the bottom of a steep ravine, already suffering from the intense cold of the cavern, and weary miles of waste land lay between him and shelter. He could not walk unaided over the hills and across the barrens with such strength as he now had. He could not wait for help to come from the camp; hours would pass before the natives returned from their hunting, and hours more would be required to bring them here, even if Dorothy could find the way alone. Safety depended upon the fighting spirit, the courage and fortitude, of one person.

That one person was Dorothy. If she did not get him to camp and shelter, it might easily mean that cold and exposure would put out the spark of his life before the morning. For her the whole issue was suddenly immensely simplified.

There was no further time for terror and vain tears. For one of the few times in her life she had work to do. In that moment the engine of her thoughts halted to give freer play to the engine of her body. She began to fight for Pete’s life as she had never fought for anything on earth before.

Encircling him with her arm and sustaining him against her shoulder she started away with him down the creek and out of the shadow of the snowbank. He was unsteady, faltering, and at first they could go only at a snail’s pace. All the time she encouraged him with her words and her voice, and most of all by the pressure of her hand. And soon they were from under the snow roof and were seeking a path up the steep wall of the gully.

Without a word from Pete she continued on down the ravine until she found an old game trail that permitted fairly easy egress. This had been part of the guide’s own teaching in their many excursions into the wild. The narrow, brown trailing path up the hillside was quite steep, but at least it was a way through the brush and offered them the greatest margin of safety. Slowly, laboriously, resting every few paces, they reached the crest.

The fight was not only to surmount the grade. She also had to guard against a lapse into unconsciousness on the part of the injured man, the results of which would have been to throw all of his dead weight against her and hurl them both down the steep grade in a perilous fall. Pete gave his own strength of will to this battle; and he was breathless and fainting when he relaxed on the crest of the gully.

“It’s not so cold up here,” the man told her, when he had rested. “There’s no use of you breaking your heart open trying to half-carry me. I think you can leave me here and send the natives to bring me in.”

Dorothy glanced at the white sky and heeded the threat of winter in the wind. Then she smiled into his eyes. “We’ll go on,” she said.

They went on, and that first, long, nigh-insuperable mile proved definitely the quality of Dorothy’s basic metal. She found that she not only had spirit to endure; but that her physical strength itself was greater than she had ever dared dream. Almost at once she was desperately tired, face stark white with fatigue, muscles aching. What was a dull pain at first became burning agony in her arms and breast. It did not occur to her to give up, nor did she question why she should make such a heroic effort for this lowly guide. There was room for but one thought in her mind: that she must get him to the shelter of the camp at any cost.

Beyond her knowledge or analysis it had become a principle with her,—a theme beyond her sight but which was as much part of her as her heart or her soul. It was a cruel test to body and spirit, but even if Pete’s strength had completely failed, leaving him helpless to fight in his own behalf, she would have won through. An unconquerable spirit moved in her to-day—its mystic origin she did not yet know or attempt to trace—and she would have got the injured man to shelter if she had had to carry him on her back. This was spared her, however, because after the first mile Pete slowly but steadily began to rally.

Ever his heart beat with greater power; the vital energy flowed through the floodgates of his nerves in an ever greater stream. He carried more of his own weight, depending less on the strength of his companion. When vivid consciousness swept back to him and he saw the girl’s white, drawn face, he took her arm from his and tried to go unaided; but she would not hear of this. She drew his arm through hers again with a strange, tender urgency; and she would not let it go.

“But I’m all right now,” he objected.

She studied his pale face and somber eyes. “Let me help you a while longer, Pete,” she told him. “The less of your strength you spend the more rapid your complete recovery, and the sooner we can leave the coast and go home.”

It was not exactly what she meant to say, yet she saw no way gracefully to retract it. It was better that he thought all her effort selfish, with no end in view other than a more speedy departure home, than to involve her in difficulties that might cost the most treasured secrets of her heart. She was afraid of what she might say, and perhaps she was terrorized at what she might herself learn of her own heart’s desires. Watching him intently, she thought she saw an odd quiver at his lips, a look of anguish that flickered swiftly across his kind, haggard face. Yet likely she only imagined it. He was only a guide, wedded to his open places.

“Of course you’re eager to go,” he told her. “I’ll help you to get away at the earliest possible moment.”

He meant what he said. Her brain whirled and her thought moved in unfamiliar fields the remainder of the way to camp. Down the steep grades, through the brush thickets, across streams and over hills she led him, sustaining him with the touch of her hand, leading him, cheering him with her voice and her smile. At last she laid him on his cot.

She built up the fire, with fast, eager motions, and heated a pot of water. Then, sitting beside him, she bathed his wounds. She did not know why he quivered at the touch of her warm, caressing fingers, or whence came the sea of tenderness that flowed through her finger tips upon him. The moment, to Pete, seemed actually to redeem and brighten some of the dark hollows in the trail of his life. No earthly event could wipe it from his memory; he had been starved for this, and he would know it again, in dreams, in hushed moments about his solitary camp fire; and the soft touch would warm him when the winter winds lashed him on the dreary barrens.

Dorothy helped him off with his wet boots, and still postponing the dread moment of self-analysis, tucked his blankets about him. Then she built up the fire and prepared a warm nourishing soup which she fed him, spoonful at a time. She did not remember that she was dead tired herself, that she was accustomed to receiving, rather than giving service; and she let herself forget, for the moment, that this man was of a plane and sphere far below hers. Unaware of her own aching muscles she worked cheerfully about the camp, tending to Pete’s every comfort, warming his great, cold hands between hers, even cutting fuel to keep the fire warm at the mouth of the dugout. It was increasingly evident that he had received no mortal injuries, only a severe shock and some painful bruises and cuts, yet she found herself nursing him as if his life were at stake. The hours winged by, and night seemed to fall before its time.

It was only when she had gone to her own bed, tired out, and the two packers were on watch, that she dared scrutinize the events of the day. It was not merely that she had given heroic aid to Pete, lavish with her own strength and wracking her body with fatigue. She might have done as much, under certain conditions, to any one in need. The thing that amazed her, that distressed and terrified her, was not that she had helped him, but that in helping him she had found the greatest glory, the most exalted happiness that had blessed her since the first months of her marriage.

She could not lie to herself. She had loved to bear his weight down the rugged trail; and the touch of his hand had buoyed her up, out of herself and out of the despair that lately had engulfed her. She had cried for him and kissed him, and she had caressed him with her hands as she had washed his wounds. Even the hard labor of cutting fuel had not been odious; and just to sit beside him had blessed her with a calm, far-reaching pleasure such as she could remember from long ago.

Could there be but one answer? Was it her strange destiny that she should give her love—a love that the salt of the earth pleaded for in vain—to this humble renegade, a hopeless exile from the nations of men? Almost in the hour of her definite engagement to Ivan, the man who had sought her hand and who was worthy of the love she had so wanted to give him, was it her fate to learn that her heart had already been lost to another; that just as she was to find contentment in Ivan’s arms this ghost should rise to plague her? And it was a ghost: the ghost of the love she had given Peter, months and years before. The guide called to some deeply hidden part of her that had been submerged for years; and it was all familiar, like something dreamed long ago. In this unhappy hour when she had given up hope of ever knowing transcendent, youthful love again, when she was beginning to know the hard face of the world and to accept its drab realities, when youth and dreams and tenderness had become empty words, was she to know at last another great love,—only to have it shattered in the clutch of circumstance?

She knew now why, even from the first hour, the grim adventure on this shore had been thrilling to her. She knew why she had befriended Pete even against Ivan, why his companionship had been so dear and his protection so comforting; and she understood why her whole world had passed into darkness when she had seen him fall. The first caribou hunt, on her first day in the hills, had given her what had hitherto been an almost-forgotten joy; and every day since that joy had increased. Even from the first hour he had called to her, and she had answered. Evidently this love—and it could be nothing else but love—had been predestined, a thing of the instincts that all the barriers of caste and circumstance could not restrain.

But it must never, never be. Only tragedy lay that way, and she had had enough of tragedy. She looked at the matter calmly; and she knew her only possible course. She was no longer mortified and ashamed; it was not through any innate vulgarity that her love should go to this man of the open places. She was not blind to his natural nobility of character, and she knew that some way, somehow, her love for the departed Peter had come to life in him. Yet she knew she must instantly shut out all dream of him, deafen herself to his appeal, even repress the image of Peter that wakened every time she looked and thought of him. The two were connected, some way, in her heart; and she must forget him, and Peter too, in Ivan’s arms.

The barrier between her and the guide was wholly impassable; and it must be forgotten like a vain dream. He was an exile in the North; she was of cities. He was of the storm and the windy shore, the desolation and the solitude; and she was of warmth and laughter and beauty. He was of another plane and caste, and never the two could meet. Besides, she had gone too far with Ivan to turn away from him. She had given him her promise.

She knew her course. In a few more days she and the man who loved her would launch their boat and row away; and Pete would be left on the desolate shore. They would never cross trails again. Slowly these strange, rapturous memories that already seemed like dreams instead of the living events of the hours just gone would pale and die, just as many of the memories of Peter had paled and died; his rugged, homely, yet ever-familiar face would fade in her remembrance; and the drama in the wilderness would be dimmed by the mists of the past. She would take up her old gaieties, and she would live for Ivan. In time the poignant pain would pass away, and she would find the normal contentment of marriage. The affair had not gone so far but that distance and time could soon obscure it. It was only a dream at best, an erratic impulse beyond her analysis, and it was not too late to break sharply off and find full forgetfulness in Ivan’s arms. With Ivan she would sail straight away, and gray seas would stretch their lonesome breadths between.

As soon as the Russian returned she would remove all danger by putting herself forever out of Pete’s reach. Thus she would defeat her willful heart, cheat the enigmatic destiny that had jested with her so long, and perhaps find a humble share of human happiness.