Chapter IX

Dorothy slept late, and Pete cooked her a special breakfast when he heard her stirring in the tent. She saw with relief that the worst of the storm had passed during the night. There was not so great an agitation of the clouds that streaked across the face of the heavens, the rain had ceased, and the wind, though still brisk, was no longer a gale. The waves, however, were still quite high, the aftermath of the gale.

When Pete took the crude, tin eating utensils from her hand, he paused, for a moment, uncertainly. “Mrs. Newhall, this camp is in need of fresh meat,” he began rather shyly. “We may be here a few days yet, and a nice venison would go pretty good. I’m wondering if you and Mr. Ishmin would like to go into the interior with me, to-day, and see if we couldn’t get a caribou. It would help to pass the time, and it might be interesting to you.”

Dorothy glowed at the prospect. “I’d like it very much, Pete. Let’s ask Ivan about it.”

But the musician, sprawled on his moss-bed and reading a pocket-size novel in the original French, did not take so kindly to the suggestion.

“Not me to-day, Dorothy,” he protested. “There’ll be no pleasure for me in tramping over that howling tundra. The wind’s still sharp enough so that I want a fire and appreciate even such a lowly shelter as this. Wait till a nice day and I’ll go gladly.”

The girl turned in some disappointment to Pete. “I guess that ends it,” she told him.

The guide straightened, encouraged by her tone. “Yes—unless—unless you’d care to go with me alone.” She thought she saw a very curious, urgent appeal in his blue eyes. “I wouldn’t take you very far.”

He waited, hardly breathing, for her answer. She turned questioningly to Ivan. The latter smiled dimly and nodded his head. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t, if you want to,” he told her.

He spoke perfectly sincerely. It did not occur to him to be jealous in the least of this lowly guide; his own pride, his confidence in Dorothy, would not let him entertain such a thought. Jealousy of such a man as this would have implied equality, and this his consciousness of his own noble blood would not let him admit, even to himself. At the same time he knew that this Anglo-Saxon was absolutely to be trusted. This was not merely a belief with him; it was a conviction, the result of instinctive understanding of the man and his race. Pete would have only respect for his employer, in the fastnesses of the hills. It would likely have been the same with Fortune Joe, the native; but he would never have thus put temptation in the way of Nick Pavlof.

Yet an uneasy thought darkened his face, and he turned sharply to Pete.

“How far do you intend to go?”

“Not any farther than Mrs. Newhall desires,” was the answer, given with some spirit. “I’m inclined to think we can pick up a caribou within a mile.”

“You’ll be pretty lucky if you can. It’s not that there isn’t plenty of game—Bradford told me that—but the country is enormous. Don’t go more than two miles at the most—we might want to leave here in a hurry, and don’t want to wait for you. Go ahead, Dorothy, if you like. If you want to be a huntsman bold, I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”

“Then would you mind lending Mrs. Newhall your pistol?” Pete asked. “She might want to take a shot at a ptarmigan, and this bear gun of mine wouldn’t leave much bird.”

He spoke quietly, casually, but Dorothy did not misunderstand. At the same instant she realized that this tall, rugged man of the opens possessed those certain good manners, that unobtrusive consideration for others, that is the ideal of good breeding. He made this request not to furnish Dorothy an arm with which to shoot ptarmigan. Both she and Ivan understood this in an instant. He wanted to save her any uneasiness when she was alone with him in the wilds, simply to give her a deadly weapon with which she could protect, in direst need, her own integrity. She was caused to recall her own homeland of which chivalry is the tradition.

In the character of Pete the guide, this man had not been wholly able to discard the South’s most treasured teaching. This was simply an instance of the natural chivalry that was, in the last analysis, the chief trait and the guiding light of the Georgian’s life. He could not be otherwise. It was his birthright.

The two started away very happily together. Pete’s blue eyes danced; the girl was flushed and eager, bent on adventure. He took her up the low hill they had climbed the previous day, then down into the alder-grown valley beyond.

Almost at once they began to see the wild life that redeems even such barren, desolate lands as this. Ptarmigan flushed up, and instantly Dorothy recognized them as the most graceful creatures she had ever seen on wings. They had a way of mounting high, then dropping straight down, light as thistledown, and their raucous cries filled the air.

“Would you like to try a crack at ’em?” Pete asked. “They’d go mighty well for lunch.”

But Dorothy had no killing instinct, and she shook her head. “They’re too pretty. Of course we’ll get some if we can’t find any big game.”

He led her through a break in the alders; and here they both halted to watch a huge, snowshoe hare. It was a droll thing to see this creature stand erect in the grass in an effort to see plainly out of his weak eyes and to distinguish the nature of these tall, strange forms such as he had never laid eyes upon before. He walked back and forth on his hind legs, stretched to his full height. Then, remembering safety first—even at the expense of his inordinate curiosity—he sped away.

Once Pete startled and halted her by an abrupt touch on the arm. “Stand perfectly still,” he cautioned. “You’ll see the proof of something Fortune Joe told me—that an animal can’t distinguish anything but a moving object. It’s a fox—and by George, he’s got something in his mouth.”

Down through the valley and straight toward them came Reynard, spreading his beautiful brush and bearing a ptarmigan that had been the late prey of his stealthy and ferocious cunning. It was amazing to the girl that the animal—a large, splendid specimen of the Northern red fox—should approach steadily within fifty yards before he so much as noticed them. They were in plain sight in the open, but because they stood motionless he simply did not see them.

He halted uneasily, turning his head to the right and left; then to get a better look, and partly from simple preoccupation, he dropped the grouse. It delighted the girl beyond words when he walked a few feet to one side in an attempt to size up their breed. Not quite satisfied, he started to trot away.

But he was not so frightened but that he returned to get his grouse. He ran a few feet, then turned to look again. He was a beautiful thing, burnished red; his step was indescribably delicate in the moss; and he made, his game in his mouth and vivid on the hillside, an entrancing picture. Having business elsewhere, he soon trotted away.

“It’s perfectly amazing,” the girl said, when she got her breath.

“Isn’t it! He simply couldn’t dope us out—and because we didn’t move we didn’t register fear in his foxy mind. You see, Mrs. Newhall, animals were developed without taking man into consideration, and that’s why man is such a fatal enemy to them. They’re not prepared to contest man’s power of reason. To them, things that do not move are not alive—except, of course, when they can get a living scent. If the wind hadn’t been blowing toward us instead of toward him, he wouldn’t have come within hundreds of feet. As it was I think our dim smell—blown away though it was—more than our appearance made him uneasy and kept him from getting nearer. You see now why all the smaller animals, the weaker ones, have developed the power to stand perfectly motionless—simply to avoid being seen by the beasts of prey. And of course it never occurs to them that man’s superior eyes, aided by his reason, can distinguish outline without movement.”

Dorothy looked thoughtful. “I don’t believe I’ll ever care to take part in a fox hunt again,” she said. “Of course, the fun of riding is wonderful, but the idea of turning loose a pack of hounds on that beautiful thing!” They sped on up the next hill and down into the farther valley and to the bank of a small, swiftly flowing stream. There were signs in plenty here of the wild life that thronged the region. She saw tracks not only of fox and caribou, but a wolverine had trotted along that way in the dawn; an otter had romped on the muddy bank; and, at a crossing, she encountered a huge, almost triangular imprint that might have been the track of some legendary man-eater of bygone ages.

The track was fully twelve inches long, and sharp claws had cut deeply into the sand. “Nothing more or less than the great Kodiak bear,” Pete explained. “Maybe you don’t know it, but this is just about the last place in the world where the big Kodiak—whose hide is sometimes eleven feet long—can still be found in any numbers. Can’t you fancy the old warrior—booming along here looking for salmon?” But he was quick to explain that even these huge beasts would run from human beings a thousand times where once they would stand and fight; that, unlike the Alaskan brown bears of farther east and the grizzlies of the mountains, they were practically never known to make an unprovoked attack.

Thence they followed the stream clear up into the higher hills. The stream itself constantly narrowed until it was merely a rivulet flowing in a deeply-cut gully, far below them. Dorothy was thankful for her sturdy training on court and golf green before she got halfway up that long, steep-sloping ridge. She was active and athletic, yet she had to stop every few minutes for breath.

“How far do you want to go?” she asked him in one of these rests.

“I hoped to go quite a little farther. We’re not more than a mile from camp, and two miles is our limit. I’d rather hoped we could reach the top of the ridge. Do you want to turn back?”

She looked up at the rocky backbone of the ridge that still towered grandly above them—its imposing elevation manifest by scattered patches of last winter’s snows—and then into Pete’s brown face. She hated to give up when this tall guide of hers expected her to go on. She was a sportswoman at heart, and she flashed him a smile.

“We’ll plug on up,” she told him.

They went on, and now the stream was but a silver thread far below them in the dark gully, and the gully itself was crusted over at intervals by last year’s snow. Sometimes they skirted alder thickets, sometimes crossed wide grassless spaces where old bear tracks made irregular depressions in the loose gravel and black, volcanic ash; but at last they stood at the very windy crest of the ridge.

Almost at once Pete pointed out some curious white spots, not to be noticed at all by a casual glance, in one of the adjacent valleys. These were the caribou,—the veritable children of these mossy barrens.

They did not turn to the hunt at once. Dorothy needed rest before attempting the difficult stalk at Pete’s side; so she seated herself on a grand throne of rock in the gray cliff and overlooked the country. This was ever a grim, merciless land, yet it had a quality of unearthly beauty.

Far below her the wide barrens swept down to the blue sea. Behind, the ridges mounted ever higher, with a queer effect of actual procession, until at last the high, sharp, white peaks of the Aleutian Range stood flashing against the cold, gray clouds. There was something pagan and aboriginal about the place that she had not seen even in the uninhabited wooded islands that she had skirted on the way through the Inside Passage. Perhaps the very absence of the sheltering forests helped in the effect. This land lay naked to the storm, the unbroken sweep of the wind, and the snows that would soon overspread and deepen in a great, white shroud of silence; bared to the cruel ravishment of the elements and to the light of cold, winter stars; while in gentler lands the punishment was borne by the tall, uplifted trees.

Other wildernesses had undergone a process of change and erosion that this land had not shared. It was not merely a fancy with her: a scientist could have told her that the far-flung Peninsula had indeed lifted up from the sea but yesterday in comparison with the vast age of the remainder of the continent. There was no reason why the lower hills and valleys should not be clothed in hardy spruce other than that the march of the forests had not yet reached here. The jagged peaks were not yet worn down, the cliffs and rock ridges were sharp, unrounded by the processes of nature; the whole tone of the mountains grim and defiant in a way she could not name. This was a vista of the young world, soon after it had taken form.

A savage place, as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover—

It would have been depressing, alone; and even the companionship of this lowly guide cheered her and consoled her. It was in some way too much for her; she felt inadequate to face it, in need of a strong, sustaining arm. It was puzzling how companionable she felt with Pete; how she could sit and dream in silence without feeling the absence of speech; how she seemed to fall into his watchful, brooding mood. She was, for the moment, perfectly at peace.

Soon after she began the long stalk toward the caribou herd, at Pete’s side. They sped swiftly down into the valley, and then, taking shelter behind a thicket of alder, moved straight toward the animals. The last two hundred yards that would bring Pete into long-rifle range had to be made with laborious stealth, taking advantage of every rise in ground and walking in a tiring, stooped position. But they crawled at last to the top of a low rise that marked the end of the stalk.

Lying prone in the deep moss they peered over the brow of the hill. It was a very satisfying picture to Dorothy. The caribou are always beautiful animals; and the setting of the green hillside, with the heaven-reaching white peaks behind, showed them at their best. They were just uneasy enough to give an image of unquenchable vitality: the bucks tossing their huge, treelike antlers, the does timid for their fawns, every head lifted, keen noses trying to catch a faint, unfamiliar scent. The range, however, was about three hundred yards: a distance in which kills are made often in hunters’ tales but rarely in hunting.

“If I’m going to have a chance, I’ve got to take a rest,” Pete whispered. “I’m not an extra fancy shot—would you mind crawling around in front?”

She obeyed instantly, every nerve keyed up by the excitement of the chase, and it was quite like being a mighty nimrod herself to lie prone on the moss and let Pete rest his rifle across her body. She was spent by the long stalk, but she held her breath like a veteran while he took aim.

And the wilderness gods granted him success. At the rifle’s sharp sound a young buck—a shimmering, splendid creature with horns branched but once—fell stone dead in the moss.

The reindeer leaped, milled an instant, then swept off through the valley. The two hunters climbed down, and a few seconds later Pete drew the keen blade of his hunting knife across the shaggy throat of the fallen animal. The carcass was then drawn, the trim feet interlocked, and Pete lifted the entire one hundred pounds on his broad back.

There was one further, minor adventure to that first day in the wilds,—but not at all concerned with rifles and death. They reached the bank of a narrow, swift stream; and Pete, who walked in front, came to an abrupt halt.

He turned to her with no distinguishable expression on his bronzed face, and she stared back in return. “We’ve really got to get across this creek,” he told her. “And it’s too deep for your waterproof boots. How do you think we can manage it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.” The girl hid a faint smile. “It’s too bad you don’t feel yourself capable of carrying me over.”

He plunged immediately into the stream, laid his venison on the opposite bank, then came tramping back. He picked her up seemingly without effort.

He chose his footing with scrupulous care, but she could not accuse him of loitering. The rushing waters evidently taxed his strength greater than she had guessed, for his nut-brown face looked somewhat drawn and pale when he put her down.

It was only an incident of the trail, and it disturbed her that, as she walked on toward camp, she could not get it out of her mind. It haunted her that she had lain with such comfort, with such a sense of security, on his broad chest; that somehow the moment had recalled the most dear, the most treasured moments of her life. She could not deny to herself that the wheel of her blood had turned at a faster gait and that her nerves quickened; but it was a painful and embarrassing admission. It did not please her that she could be moved, even vaguely and faintly, by this crude, rough man of the barrens. Yet, somehow, she had been caused to think of the lover of her girlhood. Memories, tender and dear, had been quickened to life.

To Pete the moment had been of nothing less than glory. He too knew it was only an adventure of the trail, that it was but the image of a hopeless dream that must never—could never—come true; yet for an instant it had lifted him, as with wings, out of the valley of the shadow. Beauty and fragrance—a tenderness beyond thought—had been his as the beloved burden filled his arms, as the icy water eddied about his feet.