Chapter IV: Part ONE: The Wakening (4)

Ben was not so far distant that he failed to discern the instant change in Neilson's tone. It had a strained, almost an apprehensive quality such as few men had ever heard in his voice before. Plainly all visitors in this end of the mountains were regarded with suspicion.

"He's a prospector--Mr. Darby," the girl replied. "Come here, Ben--and be introduced." She turned toward her new-found friend; and the latter walked near, into the light that streamed over him from the doorway. "This is my father, Mr. Darby--Mr. Neilson. Some one told him this was a good gold country."

Ben had already decided upon his course of action and had his answer ready. He knew perfectly that it would only put Neilson on his guard if he stated his true position; and besides, he wanted word of Ezram. "I may have a wrong steer, Mr. Neilson," he said, "but a man I met down on the river-trail, out of Snowy Gulch, advised me to come here. He said that he had some sort of a claim up here that his brother left him, and though it was a pocket country, he thought there'd soon be a great rush up this way."

"I hardly know who it could have been that you met," Neilson began doubtfully. "He didn't tell you his name--"

"Melville. I believe that was it. And if you'll tell me how to find him, I'll try to go on to-night. I brought him some of his belongings from Snowy Gulch--"

"Melville, eh? I guess I know who you mean now. But no--I don't know of any claim unless it's over east, beyond here. Maybe further down the river."

Ben made no reply at once; but his mind sped like lightning. Of course Neilson was lying about the claim: he knew perfectly that at that moment he was occupying one of Hiram Melville's cabins. He was a first-class actor, too--his voice indicating scarcely no acquaintance with or interest in the name.

"He hasn't come up this way?" Ben asked casually.

"He hasn't come through here that I know of. Of course I'm working at my claim--with my partners--and he might have gone through without our seeing him. It seems rather unlikely."

Ben was really puzzled now. If Ezram had already made his presence known and was camping somewhere in the hills about, there was no reason immediately evident why Neilson should deny his presence. Ben found himself wondering whether by any chance Ezram had been delayed along the trail, perhaps had even lost his way, and had not yet put in an appearance.

"He told me, in the few minutes that I talked to him, that his cabin was somewhere close to this one--I thought he said up this creek."

"There is a cabin up the creek a way," Neilson admitted, "but it isn't the one he meant. It's on my claim, and my two partners are living in it. But when he said near to this one, he might have meant ten miles. That's the way we Northern men speak of distance."

There was nothing more to say, nothing to do at present. He said his farewells to the girl, refused an invitation to pass the night in the cabin, and made his way to the green bank of the stream. Four hundred yards from the cabin, and perhaps a like number from the cabin of Ray and Charley--obscured from both by the thickets--he pitched his camp.

In the cabin he had left Jeffery Neilson catechized his daughter, trying to learn all he could concerning Ben. It was true that he carried the dead Hiram's rifle, and that the latter's pet wolf followed at his heels, but it was wholly probable that the old man, Hiram's brother, with whom he had conversed at the river, had designated him to get them. He had been courteous and respectful throughout the journey to the Yuga, Beatrice said, and he had also saved her from possible death in the fangs of the wolf the evening previous. Neilson decided that he would take no steps at present but merely wait and watch developments.

Meanwhile Ben had made his fire and unpacked his horses. He confined his riding horse with a picket rope; the others he turned loose. Then he cooked a simple meal for himself and the gaunt servant at his heels.

When the night had come down in full, and as he sat about the glowing coals of his supper fire, he had time to devote serious thought to the fate of Ezram. It occurred to him that perhaps the old man had discovered, at a distance, the presence of the claim-jumpers; and was merely waiting in the thickets for a chance to take action. If such were the case, sooner or later they could join their fortunes again. It was also easy to imagine that Ezram had lost his way on the journey out.

He stood at the edge of the firelight, gazing out into the darkened forest. The wolf crouched beside him: alert, watching his face for any command. It was wholly plain that the gaunt woods creature had accepted him at once as his master; and that the bond between them, because of some secret similarity of spirit, was already far closer than between most masters and their pets.

Ben sensed another side of the forest to-night because of his inborn love of the waste places not often seen. The thickets were menacing, sinister to-night. The spruce crept up to the skyline with darkness and mystery: he realized the eternal malevolence that haunts their silent fastnesses. They would have tricks in plenty to play on such as would lose their way on their dusky trails! Oh, they would have no mercy or remorse for any one who was lost, _out there_, to-night! Ben felt a heavy burden of dread!

Even now, old Ezram might be wandering, vainly, through the gloomy, whispering woods, ever penetrating farther into their merciless solitudes. And no homes smoked in the clearings, no camps glowed in the immensity of the dark--out there. This was just the beginning of the forest; clear into the shadow of the Arctic Circle, where the woodlands gave way to the Weary wastes of barrens, there was no break, no tilled fields or fisher's villages, only an occasional Indian encampment which not even a wolf, running through the night, might find. His supply of food would quickly be exhausted, fatigue would break his valiant spirit. Ben planned an extensive search for his tracks as soon as the morning light permitted him to see.

He missed the old man's comradeship with a deep and fervid longing. They had come to count on each other, these past weeks. It wasn't alone infinite gratitude that he felt for him now. The thing went too deep to tell. Yet there was no use seeking for him to-night.

He turned to the wolf and dropped his hand upon the animal's shoulder. Fenris started, then quivered in ecstasy. "I wish I had your nose, to-night, old boy," Ben told him. "I'd find that old buddy of mine. I wish I had your eyes to see in the dark, and your legs to run. Fenris, do you know where he is?"

The wolf turned his wild eyes toward his master's face, as if he were trying to understand.

XIV

Impelled by an urge within himself Ben suddenly knelt beside his lupine friend. He could not understand the flood of emotion, the vague sense of impending and dramatic events that stirred him to the quick. He only knew, with a knowledge akin to inspiration, that in Fenris lay the answer to his problem.

The moment was misted over with a quality of unreality. In the east rose the moon, shining incredibly on the tree tops, showering down through the little rifts in the withholding branches, enchanting the place as by the weaving of a dream. The moon madness caught up Ben like a flame, enthralling him as never before. He knew that white sphere of old. And all at once he realized that here, at his knees, was one who knew it too,--with a knowledge as ancient and as infinite as his own. Not for nothing had the wolf breed lived their lives beneath it through the long roll of the ages. Its rising and its setting had regulated the hunting hours of the pack time without end; its beams had lighted the game trails where the gray band had bayed after the deer; its light had beheld, since the world was young, the rapturous mating of the old pack leader and his female. Fenris too knew the moon-madness; but unlike Ben he had a means of expression of the wonder and mystery and vague longing that thrilled his wild heart. No man who has heard the pack song to the moon could doubt this fact. It is a long, melancholy wail, poignant with the pain of living, but it tells what man can not.

Ben knew, now, why he was a forester, a woodsman famed even among woodsmen. Most of his fellows had been tamed by civilization; they had lived beneath roofs instead of the canopy of heaven, and they had almost forgotten about the moon. Ben, on the other hand, was a recurrence of an earlier type, inheriting little from his immediate ancestors but reverting back a thousand centuries to the Cave and the Squatting Place. His nature was that of prehistoric man rather than that of the son of civilization; and in this lay the explanation for all that had set him apart from the great run of men and had made him the master woodsman that he was. And because his spirit was of the wildwood, because he also knew the magic of the moon, he was able to make this wildwood thing at his feet understand and obey his will.

The world of to-day seemed to fade out for him and left only the wolf, its fierce eyes on his own. Time swung back, and this might have been a scene of forgotten ages,--the wolf, the human hunter, the smoldering camp fire, the dark, jagged line of spruce against the sky. It was thus at the edge of the ice. Wolf and man--both children of the wild--had understood each other then; and they could understand each other now.

"Fenris, old boy," the man whispered. "Can you find him for me, Fenris? He's out there somewhere--" the man motioned toward the dark--"and I want him. Can you take me to him?"

The wolf trembled all over, struggling to get his meaning. This was no creature of subordinate intelligence: the great wolf of the North. He had, besides the cunning of the wild hunters, the intelligence that is the trait of the whole canine breed. Nor did he depend on his sense of hearing alone. He watched his master's face, and more than that, he was tuned and keyed to those mysterious vibrations that carry a message from brain to brain no less clearly and swift than words themselves,--the secret wireless of the wild.

"He's my buddy, old boy, and I want you to find him for me," Ben went on, more patiently. He searched his pockets, drawing out at last the copy of the letter Ezram had given him that morning, and, because the old man had carried it for many days, it could still convey a message to the keen nose of the wolf. He put it to the animal's nostrils, then pointed away into the darkness.

Fenris followed the motion with his eyes; and presently his long body stiffened. Ben watched him, fascinated. Then the wolf sniffed at the paper again and trotted away into the night.

In one leap Ben was on his feet, following him. The wolf turned once, saw that his master was at his heels, and sped on. They turned up a slight draw, toward the hillside.

It became clear at once that Fenris was depending upon his marvelous sense of smell. His nose would lower to the ground, and sometimes he tacked back and forth, uncertainly. At such times Ben watched him with bated breath. But always he caught the scent again.

Once more he paused, sniffing eagerly; then turned, whining. Just as clearly as if they had possessed a mutual language Ben understood: the animal had caught the clear scent at last. The wolf loped off, and his fierce bay rang through the hushed forest.

It was a long-drawn, triumphant note; and the wild creatures paused in their mysterious, hushed occupations to listen. It was also significant that it made certain deadly inroads in the spirit of Ray Brent, sitting in his distant cabin. He marked the direction of the sound, and he cursed, half in awe, under his breath. He had always hated the gray rangers. They were the uncanny demons of the forest.

Ben followed the running wolf as fast as he could; and in his eagerness he had no opportunity for conjecture as to what he would find at the end of the pursuit. Yet he did not believe for an instant this was a false trail. The wolf's deep, full-ringing bays were ever more urgent and excited, filling the forest with their uproar. But quite suddenly the silence closed down again, seemingly more deep and mysterious than ever.

Ben's first sensation was one of icy terror that crept to the very marrow of his bones. He knew instantly that there was a meaning of dreadful portent in the abrupt cessation of the cries. He halted an instant, listening, but at first could hear no more than the throb of his heart in his breast and the whisper of his own troubled breathing. But presently, at a distance of one hundred yards, he distinguished the soft whining of the wolf.

Fenris was no longer running! He had halted at the edge of a distant thicket. The cold sweat sprang out on Ben's forehead, and he broke into a headlong run.

There was no later remembrance of traversing that last hundred yards. The hillside seemed to whip under his feet. He paused at last, just at the dark margin of an impenetrable thicket. The wolf whined disconsolately just beyond the range of his vision.

"Ezram!" he called, a curious throbbing quality in his voice. "Are you there, Ez? It's me--Ben."

But the thickets neither rustled nor spoke. The cracked old voice he had learned to love did not speak in relief, in that moment of unutterable suspense. Indeed, the silence seemed to deepen about him. The spruce trees were hushed and impassive as ever; the moon shone and the wind breathed softly in his face. Fenris came whimpering toward him.

Together, the man and the wolf, they crept on into the thicket. They halted at last before a curious shadow in the silvered covert. Ben knew at once he had found his ancient comrade.

He and Ezram had had their last laugh together. He lay very still, the moonlight ensilvering his droll, kindly face,--sleeping so deeply that no human voice could ever waken him. An ugly rifle wound yawned darkly at his temple.

XV

The first effect of a great shock is usually a semi-paralysis of the entire mental mechanism and is, as a rule, beneficent. The brain seems to be enclosed in a great preoccupation, like a wall, and the messages of pain and horror brought by the nerves batter against it in vain. The senses are dulled, the perceptions blunted, and full realization does not come.

For a long time, in which time itself stood still, Ben sat beside the dead body of his old counselor and friend as a child might sit among flowers. He half leaned forward, his arms limp, his hands resting in his lap, a deep wonder and bewilderment in his eyes. Dully he watched the moon lifting in the sky and felt the caress of the wind against his face, glancing only from time to time at the huddled body before him. The wolf whined softly, and sometimes Ben reached his hand to caress the furry shoulder.

But slowly his wandering faculties returned to him. He began to understand. Ezram was dead--that was it--gone from his life as smoke goes in the air. Never to hear him again, or see him, or make plans with him, or have high adventures beside him along the lonely trails. Fenris had found him in the darkness: here he lay--the old family friend, the man who had saved him, redeemed him and given him his chance, his old "buddy" who had brought him home. The thing was not credible at first: that here, dead as a stone, lay the shell of that life that had been his own salvation. He studied intently the gray face, missed its habitual smile and for really the first time his gaze rested upon the yawning wound in the temple.

He gazed at it in speechless, growing horror, and something like an incredible cold descended upon him. The entire hydraulic system of his blood seemed to be freezing. His hands were cold, his vitals icy and lifeless. There was, however, the beginning of heat somewhere back of his eyes. He could feel it but dimly, but it was increasing, slowly, like a smoldering coal that eats its way into wood and soon will burst into a flame. Slowly he began to grow rigid, his muscles flexing. His face underwent a tangible change. The lines deepened, the lips set in a hard line, the eyes were like those of a reptile,--cold, passionless, unutterably terrible. His face was pale like the paleness of death, but it appeared more like hard, white metal than flesh. His mind began to work clear again; he began to understand.

Ezram had been shot, murdered by the men who had jumped his claim. Beatrice's father, who had talked to him, had probably committed the crime: if not he, one of his understrappers at his order. He found himself recalling what Jeffery Neilson had said. Oh, the man had been sharp! Believing that in the depth of the forest the body would never be discovered, he had tried to send Ben farther into the interior in search of him.

He arose, wholly self-mastered, and with hard, strong hands made a detailed examination of Ezram's wound. He had evidently been shot by a rifle of large caliber, probably at close range. Ezram's own gun lay at his feet, loaded but not cocked.

"They shot you down in cold blood, old boy, didn't they?" he found himself asking. "You didn't have a chance!"

But the gray lips were setting with death, and could not answer. Ben had forgotten for the instant; he must keep better hold of himself. The time was not ripe to turn himself loose. But he did wish for one more word with Ezram, just a few little minutes of planning. They could doubtless work out something good together. They could decide what to do.

From this point his mind naturally fell to Ezram's parting advice to him. "I've only got one decent place to keep things safe, and that ain't so all-fired decent," the old man had told him. "I always put 'em down my bootleg, between the sock and the leather. If I ever get shuffled off, all of a sudden, I want you to look there careful."

Still with the same deathly pallor he crept over the dead leaves to Ezram's feet. His hands were perfectly steady as he unlooped the laces, one after another, and quietly pulled off the right boot. In the boot leg, just as Ezram had promised, Ben found a scrap of white paper.

He spread it on his knee, and unfolded it with care. The moonlight was not sufficiently vivid, however, for him to read the penciled scrawl. He felt in his pocket for a match.

Because his mind was operating clear and sure, his thoughts flashed at once to his enemies in their cabins along the creek. He did not want them to know he had found the body. His first instinct was to work in the dark, to achieve his ends by stealth and cunning! It was strange what capacity for cunning had come upon him. Oh, he would be crafty--sharp--sure in every motion.

It was unlikely, however, that the faint glare of a match could carry so far. To make sure he walked behind the covert, then turned his back to the canyon through which the creek flowed. The match cracked, inordinately loud in the silence, and his eyes followed the script. Ezram had been faithful to the last:

To WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

In case of my death I leave all I die possessed of including my
brother Hiram's claim near Yuga River to my pard and buddy, Ben
Darby.

(Signed) EZRA MELVILLE.

The document was as formal as Ezram could make it, with a carefully drawn seal, and for all its quaint wording, it was a will to stand in any court. But Ezram had not been able to hold his dignity for long. He had added a postscript:

Son, old Hiram made a will, and I guess I can make one too. I just
found out about them devils that jumped our claim. I left you back
there at the river because I didn't want you taking any dam fool
risks till I found out how things lay.

I just got one thing to ask. If them devils get me--get them. My
life ain't worth much but I want you to make them pay for the little
it is worth. Never stop till you've done it.

Ben lighted match after match until he had absorbed every word. Then he folded the paper and placed it in his pocket; but the action did not in the least take his eyes from the words. He could still see them, written in fire. They were branded on his spirit.

He stood wholly motionless for a space of almost a minute, as if listening. The heat back of his eyes was more intense now. The red coals were about to burst into flame. All the blood of his huge body seemed to be collecting there, searing his brain.

The moon was no longer white in the sky. It had turned a fiery red. The stars were red too,--all of them more red than the Star of War. "I want you to make them pay," a voice said clearly in his ears. "Never stop till you've done it."

And now Ben was no longer pale. His face was no longer hard and set. Rather it was dark--dark as dark earth. His eyes glowed like coals beneath his black brows. He was not standing still and lifeless now. He was shivering all over with the blackest hate, the most deadly fury.

"Make them pay," he said aloud again, "and never stop till you've done it."

A sudden snarl from the lips of the wolf drew his eyes downward. Heaven help him; for the moment he had forgotten Fenris! But he must not forget him again. They had work to do, the two of them.

Fenris was no longer whining disconsolately. His master's fury had passed to him, and Ben looked and saw before him not the docile pet, but the savage beast of the wild. The hair was erect on his shoulders, his lips were drawn, too; he was crouched as if for battle. The eyes, sunken in their sockets, were red and terrible to see. Yet he was still Ben's servant. That quality could never pass from him. The eyes of two met,--the wolf and the man.

At that instant the little tongue of flame that had been mounting in Ben's brain burst into a dreadful conflagration. It was the explosion at last, no less terrible because of its silence--because the sound of the least, little wind was still discernible in the distant thickets. He dropped to his knees before the wolf, seizing its head in a terrific grasp. He half jerked it off its feet, till he held it so that its eyes burned straight into his.

"Fenris, Fenris!" he breathed. "We've got to make them pay. And we must not stop till we're done."

It was more than a command. It had the quality of a vow. And now, as they knelt, eyes looking into eyes, it was like a pagan rite in the ancient world.

Their separate identities were no longer greatly pronounced. They were not man and beast, they were simply the wolves of the forest. The old qualities most often associated with manhood--gentleness, forbearance, mercy--seemed to pass away from Ben as a light passes into darkness. Only the Wolf was left, the dominant Beast--that darker, hidden side of himself from which no man can wholly escape and which civilization has only smothered, as fresh fuel smothers a flame. Not for nothing had his fellows known him as "Wolf" Darby; and now the name was true.

The Beast that dwells under every man's skin, in a greater or less degree, was in the full ascendancy at last. The unnamable ferocity that marks the death-leap of the wild hunters was in his face. In his eyes was cunning,--such craft as marks the pack in its hunting. All over him was written that unearthly rage that is alone the property and trait of the woods creatures: the fury with which a she-wolf fights for her cubs or a rattlesnake avenges the death of its mate. Mercy, remorse, compassion there was none.

And the demon gods of the wilderness rejoiced. For uncounted thousands of years the tide of battle had flowed against them; and it was long and long since they had won such a victory as this. Mostly their men children had forsaken their leafy bowers to live in houses. They tilled the ground rather than hunt in the forest. The cattle that had once run wild in the marshes now fed dully in enclosed pastures; the horses--that mighty breed that once mated and fought and died in freedom on the high lands--pulled lowly burdens in the cultivated fields. Even some of the canine people too--first cousins to the wolves themselves--had sold themselves into slavery for a gnawed bone and a chimney corner. But to-night the wild had claimed its own again.

Here was one, at least, who had come back into his own. The forest seemed to whisper and thrill with rapture.