Chapter VI: Part TWO: The Wolf-Man (2)

But they were around the bend by now, and Ben's breath caught as if in a triumphant gasp. Already all opportunity for the girl to swim to shore was irremediably past. While he could still control the canoe with comparative ease, the river was a swift-moving sheet of water that would carry any one but the strongest swimmer remorselessly into the rapids below. Ben smiled, like a man who has come into a great happiness, and rested on his paddle.

"Push into shore," the girl urged. "The home shore--if you can. Then I'll go and find him and try to quiet him. He'll kill you if you don't."

A short pause followed the girl's words. The man smiled coldly into her eyes.

"He'll kill me, will he?" he repeated.

The response to the simple question was simply unmitigated terror, swift and deadly, surging through the girl's frame. It caught and twisted her throat muscles like a cruel hand; and her childish eyes widened and darkened under his contemptuous gaze.

"What do you mean?" she asked breathlessly. "What--are you going to do?"

"He won't kill me," Ben went on. "I may kill him--and I will if I can--but he won't kill me. See--we're going faster all the time."

It was true. Strokes of the paddle were no longer necessary to propel the craft at the breakneck pace. It sped like an arrow--straight toward the perilous cataracts below.

The girl watched him with transcending horror, and slowly the truth went home. The supplies in the boat, her father's desperate attempt to rescue her, even at the risk of her own life and the cost of Ben's, this white, exultant face before her, more terrible than that of the wolf between, the cold reptile eyes so full of some unhallowed emotion,--at last she saw their meaning and relation. Was it _death_--was _that_ what this mad man in the stern had for her? She remembered what she had told him the day before, her description of the cataracts that lay below. She struggled to shake off the trance that her terror had cast about her.

"Turn into the shore," she told him, half-whispering. There was no pleading in her tone: the hard eyes before her told her only too plainly how futile her pleas would be. "You still have time to steer into shore. I'll jump overboard if you don't."

He shook his head. "Don't jump overboard, Beatrice," he answered, some of the harshness gone from his tones. "It isn't my purpose to kill you--and to jump over into this stream only means to die--'for any one except the most powerful swimmer. You'd be carried down in an instant."

The girl knew he spoke the truth. Only death dwelt in those cold and rushing waters. "What do you mean to do?" she asked.

Her tone was more quiet now, and he waited an instant before he answered. The canoe glided faster--ever faster down the stream. Somewhat afraid, but still trusting in the imperial mind of his master, the wolf raised his head to watch the racing shore line.

"It's just a little debt I owe your father--and his gang," Ben explained. "I'll tell you some time, in the days to come. It was a debt of blood--"

The girl's dark eyes charged with red fire. "And you, a coward, take your payment on a woman. Turn the canoe into the bank."

"The payment won't be taken from you," he explained soberly. "You'll be safe enough--even the fate that Neilson fears for you won't happen. I hate him too much to take _that_ payment from you. I'd die before I'd touch the flesh of his flesh to mine! Do you understand that?"

His fury had blazed up, for the instant, and she saw the deadly zeal of a fanatic in his gray eyes. A hatred beyond all naming, a bitterness and a rage such as she had never dreamed could blast a human heart was written in his brown, rugged face. Her woman's intuition gave her added vision, and she glimpsed something of the fire that smoldered and seared behind his eyes. They were of one blood, this man in the stern and the wolf on the duffle.

"Then why--"

"You're safe with me--the daughter of Jeff Neilson can't ever be anything but safe with me--as far as the thing you fear is concerned. Don't be afraid for that. I'm simply paying an honest debt, and you're the unfortunate agent. Don't you know the things he's fearing now are more torment to him than anything I could do to his flesh? If we should be killed in these rapids that are coming, it will be fair enough too; he'll know what it is to lose the dearest thing on earth he has. For you and me it will only be a minute that won't greatly matter. For him it will be weeks--months! But that's only a part of it. I hope to bring you through. The main thing is--that sooner or later they'll come for you--into a country where I'll have every advantage. Where there won't be any escape or chance for them. Where I can watch the trails, and shatter them--every one--as slow or as fast as I like. Where they'll have to hunt for me, week on week and month on month, their fears eating into them. That's my game, Beatrice. There will be discomfort for you--and some danger--but I'll make it as light as I can. And in another moment--"

"You've still got time to turn back," the girl answered him, seemingly without feeling. "Glide into shore, and we'll try to catch an overhanging limb. It's my last warning."

It was true that a few seconds remained in which they might, with heroic effort, save themselves. But these were passing: already they could see the gleaming whitecaps of the cataract below.

The roar of the wild waters was in their ears. Ahead they could see great rocks, emerging like fangs above the water, sharp-edged and wet with spray. The boat was shuddering; the water seemed to covet them, and a great force, like the hand of a river god, reached at them from beneath as if to crush them in a merciless grasp. A hundred yards farther the smooth, swift water fell into a seething, roaring cataract--such a manifestation of the mighty powers of nature as checks the breath and awes the heart--a death stream in which seemingly the canoe would be shattered to pieces in an instant.

Ben shook his head. The girl's white hand flashed to her side, then rose sure and steady, holding her pistol. "Turn quick, or I'll fire," she said.

He felt that, if such action were in her power, she told the truth. No mercy dwelt in her clear gaze. His eye fell to the box of cartridges, now fallen safely among the duffle. Presently he smiled into her eyes.

"Your gun is empty, Beatrice," he told her quietly. He heard her sob, and he smiled a little, reassuringly. "Never mind--and pray for a good voyage," he advised. "We're going through."

XXI

The craft and its occupants were out of sight by the time Jeffery Neilson reached the river bank with his rifle. The flush had swept from his bronze skin, leaving it a ghastly yellow, and for once in his life no oaths came to his lips. He could only mutter, strangely, from a convulsed throat.

Like an insane man he hastened down the river bank, fighting his way through the brush. The thickets were dense, ordinarily impenetrable to any mortal strength except to that mighty, incalculable power of the moose and grizzly; yet they could not restrain him now. The tough clothes he wore were nearly torn from his body; his face and hands were scratched as if by the claws of a lynx; but he did not pause till he reached the bank of the gray river.

Only one more glimpse of the canoe was vouchsafed him, and that glimpse came too late. He saw the light barge just as it hovered at the crest of the rapids. Even if he could have shot straight at so great a range and had killed the man in the stern, no miracle could have saved his daughter. She would have been instantly swept to her death against the crags.

Some measure of self-control returned to him then, and he made his way fast as he could toward the claim. Sensing the older man's distress, Ray straightened from his work at the sight of him.

The face before him was drawn and white; but there was no time for questions. Hard hands seized his arm.

"Ray, do you know of a canoe anywhere--up or down this river?"

"There's one at the landing. None other I know of."

"Think, man! You don't know where we can get one?"

"No. Old Hiram's canoe was the only one. What's the matter?"

"Do you think there's one chance in a million of getting down through those rapids on a raft?"

Ray's eyes opened wide. "A raft!" he echoed. "Man, are you crazy? Even at this high water a canoe wouldn't have a chance in ten of making it. The river's falling every hour--"

"I know it. Do you suppose there's a canoe in town?"

"No! Of course there isn't--one that you could even dream about shooting those rapids in. Besides, by the time we got there and packed it up--it would take two days to pack it the best we could do--the river would be too far down to tackle the trip at all. And it won't come up again till fall--you know that. Tell me what's the matter. Has Beatrice--"

"Beatrice has gone down, that's all."

"Then she's dead--no hope of anything else. Only an expert could hope to take her through, and there's nothing to live on Back There. What's the use of trying to follow--?"

Neilson straightened, his eyes searching Ray's. "She's got food, I suppose. And she's got an expert paddler to take her there."

Ray's face seemed to darken before his eyes. His hands half closed, shook in his face, then caught at Neilson's shoulders. "You don't mean--she's run away?"

"Don't be a fool. Not run away--abducted. The prospector I told you about--Darby--was the old man's partner. He's paying us back. Heaven only knows what the girl's fate will be--I don't dare to think of it. Ray, I wish to God I had died before I ever saw this day!"

Ray stared blankly. "Then he found out--about the murder?" he gasped.

"Yes. Here's his letter. Take time--and read it. There's no use to try to act before we think--how to act. If I could only see a way--"

Ray read the letter carefully, crumpling it at last in savage wrath. "It's your fault!" he cried. "Why didn't you save her for me as I've always asked you to do; why did you let her go out with him at all? I'll bet she wanted to go--"

"I'd rather she had, instead of being taken by force!" The older man--aged incredibly in a few little minutes--slowly straightened. "But don't storm at me, Ray!" he warned, carefully and quietly. "I've stood a lot from you, but to-day I'd kill you for one word!"

They faced each other in black disdain, but Ray knew he spoke the truth. There was no toying with this man's wrath to-day.

"And if you'd let me croak this devil like I wanted to, it wouldn't have happened either. But there's no use crying about either one. The girl's a goner, sure; she's deep in the rapids by now."

"Yes, and it's part of this man's hellish plan to take her clear through to Back There. You see, he dares us to come for her--and he'll be waiting and ready for us, mark my words. My God, she's probably dead--smashed to pieces--already!"

"He says he's got the old man's letter, leaving the claim to him. That messes up things even worse."

"I wish I'd never heard of the claim. There's only one thing to do, and that's to rush into Snowy Gulch and get a big outfit--all the horses and supplies we can find--and go after her by land."

"Yes, and walk right into his trap. Think again, Neilson. It would take weeks and months to get in that way. Besides, what would happen to the claim while we're gone?"

"You needn't fear for the claim! Of course, I'd expect you to think of that first--you who loved Beatrice so dearly!" Neilson's face was white with disdain. "It'll be recorded in our names, by then--likely Chan is already in Bradleyburg--and Darby himself is the only man on earth we have to fear." He paused, putting his faith in desperate craft. "If you want to cinch the claim, the first thing to do is go and stamp the life out of Darby; otherwise he'll turn up and make us trouble, just as he says."

"He can't do much if the claim's recorded in our names!"

"He can make us plenty of trouble. If you want the girl, Ray--don't lose a minute. Put your things together as fast as you can. We'll try to get some men in Snowy Gulch to come with us--to join in the hunt--and we'll hire every pack horse in the country. Get busy, and get busy quick."

Reluctant to leave his gold, yet seeing the truth in Neilson's words, Ray hastened to his cabin to get such few supplies as would be needed for the day's march into Snowy Gulch. In less than five minutes they were on their way--tramping in file down the narrow moose trail.

They crossed the divide, thus reaching the headwaters of Poor Man's Creek; then took the trail down toward the settlements. But the two claim-jumpers had not yet learned all the day's ill news. Half-way to the mouth of the stream they met Chan Heminway on his way back to the claim.

At the first sight of him, riding in the rear of a long train of laden pack horses, they could hardly believe their eyes. It was not to be credited that he had made the trip to Bradleyburg and back in the few days he had been absent. Only an aeroplane could have made so fast a trip. Could it be that in spite of his definite orders he was returning with the duty of recording the claim still unperformed? To Neilson, however, the sight of the long pack train brought some measure of satisfaction. Here were horses laden with the summer supplies that Chan had been told to procure, and they could be utilized in the pursuit of Beatrice. Two days at least could be saved.

"What in the devil you coming back for?" Ray shouted, when Chan's identity became certain.

Chan rode nearer as if he had not heard. He checked his horse deliberately, undoubtedly inwardly excited by the news he had to tell and perhaps somewhat triumphant because he was its bearer. "I'm coming back because there ain't no use in staying at Snowy Gulch any longer," he answered at last. "I've got the supplies, and I'm packin' up to the claim, just as I was told."

"But why didn't you go to Bradleyburg and record the claim?" Ray stormed. "Don't you know until that's done we're likely to be chased off any minute?"

Chan looked into his partner's angry eyes, and his own lips drew in a scowl. "Because there wasn't any use in goin' to Bradleyburg."

Ray was stricken with terror, and his words faltered. "You mean you could tend to it in Snowy Gulch--"

"I don't mean nothing of the kind. Shut up a minute, and I'll tell you about it. A few days ago Steve Morris got a letter addressed to old Hiram Melville--in care of Steve. He opened it and read it, and I heard about it soon as I got into town. There ain't no use of our trying to record that claim."

"For God's sake, why?"

"Because it's already recorded, that's why. We all felt so sure, and we wasn't sure at all. Before old Hiram died he wrote a letter--one of them two letters you heard about, Neilson--and which you wished you'd got hold of. Who that letter was to was an official in Bradleyburg--an old friend of Hiram's--and in it was a description of the claim. This letter Morris got was a notice that his claim was all properly filed in his--Hiram's--name. Whatever formalities was necessary was cut out because the old man had been too sick to make the trip--the recorder got special permission from Victoria. To be plain, I didn't file the claim because it's already filed, and I didn't want to show myself up as a claim-jumper quite as bad as that."

"It's all over town--about the claim?"

"Sure, but there won't be a rush. There's quite a movement over Bradleyburg way for one thing; for another, this is a pocket country, once and for always."

For some seconds thereafter his partners could make no intelligent response. This bitter blow had been anticipated by neither. But Ray was a strong man, and his self-control quickly returned to him.

"You see what that means, don't you?" he asked Neilson.

"It means we've lost!"

The eyes before him narrowed and gleamed. "So that's what it means to you! Well, I don't look at it just that way. It means to me that we've got to take these supplies and these pack horses and start out and find Ben Darby--and never stop hunting till we've found him."

"Of course we've got to rescue Beatrice--"

"Rescuing Beatrice isn't all of it now, by a long shot. For the Lord's sake, Neilson--use your head a minute. Didn't old Hiram leave a will, giving this claim to his brother Ezra? If the claim wasn't recorded that will wouldn't mean much--but it is. And hasn't this Ben got a letter from Ezra leaving the claim to him? Now do you want to know who owns that claim? Ben Darby owns it, and as long as he can kick, that quarter of a million in gold can never be ours."

"You mean we've got to find him--and destroy that letter--"

"We've got to; that's all. He wrote us he had it, just to taunt us, and we've got to burn that up whether we find the girl or not. But that ain't all we've got to destroy--that piece of paper. You see that, don't you?"

Neilson breathed heavily. "It's all plain enough."

"I want it to be plain, so next time I want to let daylight through a man you won't stand in the way. It ain't just enough to burn up that letter. We've got to get the man who owns it, too. If we don't he'd still have a good enough case against us--with a good lawyer. Likely enough lots of people knew of their partnership, maybe have seen the letter--and they'd all be good witnesses in a suit. Our reputation ain't so good, after that Jenkins deal, that we'd shine very bright in a suit. Even if he couldn't prove his own claim, he could lug out the will old Hiram left--he alone knows where it's hid--and then his next nearest relatives would come in and get the claim. On the other hand, if we smash him, the thing will all quiet down; there'll be no claimants to work the mine; and after a few months we can step in and put up our own notices. But we've got to do that first--smash him wide-open as soon as we can catch up with him. He'll be way out in Back There, and no man would ever know what became of him, and there'd be nobody left to oppose us any more. But we can't be safe any other way."

Neilson nodded slowly. His subordinate had put the matter clearly; and there was truth in his words. In Ben's murder alone lay their safety.

He had always been adverse to bloodshed; but further reluctance meant ruin. Ben was one whom he could strike down without mercy or regret. And the blow would not be for expediency alone. There would be a personal debt to pay after the long months of searching. He could not forget that Beatrice was helpless in his hands.

"The thing to do is to turn back with Chan, at once," he said.

"Of course," Ray agreed. "That plan of yours to get help in chasing 'em down don't go any more. We don't want any spectators for what's ahead of us. Here's grub and horses a-plenty, and we needn't lose any time."

So they turned back toward the Yuga, on their quest of hate.

XXII

Beatrice Neilson was a mountain girl, with the strong thews of Jael, yet she hid her face as the canoe shot into the crest of the rapids. It seemed incredible to her that the light craft should buffet that wild cataract and yet live. She was young and she loved life; and death seemed very near.

The scene that her eyes beheld in that last little instant in which the boat seemed to hang, shuddering, at the crest of the descent was branded indelibly on her memory. She saw Ben's face, set like iron, the muscles bunching beneath his flannel sleeves as he set his paddle. He was leaning forward, aware of nothing in the world but the forthcoming crisis. And in that swift flash of vision she saw not only the steel determination and the brutal savagery of the avenger. A little glimpse of the truth went home to her, and she beheld something of the misdirected idealism of the man, the intensity and steadfastness that were the dominant traits of his nature. She could not doubt his belief in the reality of his cause. Whether fancied or real the injury, deep wells of emotion in his heart had broken their seals and flowed forth.

The wolf crouched on the heap of supplies, fearful to the depths of his wild heart of this mighty stream, yet still putting his faith in his master in the stern. Beatrice saw his wild, frightened eyes as he gazed down into the frightful whirlpools. The banks seemed to whip past.

Then the rushing waters caught the craft and seemed to fling it into the air. There was the swift sense of lightning and incredible movement, of such incalculable speed as that with which a meteor blazes through the sky, and then a mighty surging, struggle; an interminable instant of ineffable and stupendous conflict. The bow dipped, split the foam; then the raging waters seized the craft again, and with one great impulse hurled it through the clouds of spray, down between the narrow portals of rocks.

Beatrice came to herself with the realization that she had uttered a shrill cry. Part of the impulse behind it was simply terror; but it was also the expression of an intensity of sensation never before experienced. She could have understood, now, the lure of the rapids to experienced canoeists. She forced herself to look into the wild cataract.

The boat sped at an unbelievable pace. Ben held his paddle like iron, yet with a touch as delicate as that of a great musician upon piano keys, and he steered his craft to the last inch. His face was still like metal, but the eyes, steely, vivid, and magnetic, had a look of triumph. The first of the great tests had been passed.

Sudden confidence in Ben's ability to guide her through to safety began to warm the girl's frozen heart. There were no places more dangerous than that just past; and he had handled his craft like a master. He was a voyageur: as long as his iron control was sustained, as long as his nerve was strong and his eye true she had every chance of coming out alive. But they had irremediably cast their fortunes upon the river, now. They could not turn back. She was in his whole charge, an agent of vengeance against her own father and his confederates.

Hot, blinding tears suddenly filled her eyes. Her frantic fear of the river had held them back for a time; but they flowed freely enough now the first crisis was past. In utter misery and despair her head bowed in her hands; and her brown hair, disheveled, dropped down.

Ben gazed at her with a curious mingling of emotions. It had not been part of his plan to bring sorrow to this girl. After all, she was not in the least responsible for her father's crimes. He had sworn to have no regrets, no matter what innocent flesh was despoiled in order that he might strike the guilty; yet the sight of that bowed, lovely head went home to him very deeply indeed. She was the instrument of his vengeance, necessary to his cause, but there was nothing to be gained by afflicting her needlessly. At least, he could give her his pity. It would not weaken him, dampen his fiery resolution, to give her that.

As he guided his craft he felt growing compassion for her; yet it was a personal pity only and brought no regrets that he had acted as he did.

"I wish you wouldn't cry," he said, rather quietly.

Amazed beyond expression at the words, Beatrice looked up. For the instant her woe was forgotten in the astounding fact that she had won compassion from this cast-iron man in the stern.

"I'll try not to," she told him, her dark eyes ineffably beautiful with their luster of tears. "I don't see why I should try--why I should try to do anything you ask me to--but yet I will--"

Further words came to him, and he could not restrain them. "You're sort of--the goat, Beatrice," he told her soberly. "It was said, long ago, that the sins of the father must be visited upon the children; and maybe that's the way it is with you. I can't help but feel sorry--that you had to undergo this--so that I could reach your father and his men. If you had seen old Ezram lying there--the life gone from, his kind, gray old face--the man who brought me home and gave me my one chance--maybe you'd understand."

They were speechless a long time, Beatrice watching the swift leap of the shore line, Ben guiding, with steady hand, the canoe. Neither of them could guess at what speed they traveled this first wild half-hour; but he knew that the long miles--so heart-breaking with their ridges and brush thickets to men and horses--were whipping past them each in a few, little breaths. Ever they plunged deeper into the secret, hushed heart of the wild--a land unknown to the tread of white men, a region so still and changeless that it seemed excluded from the reign and law of, time. The spruce grew here, straight and dark and tall, a stalwart army whose measureless march no human eyes beheld. Already they had come farther than a pack train could travel, through the same region, in weary days.

Already they were at the border of Back There. They had cut the last ties with the world of men. There were no trails here, leading slowly but immutably to the busy centers of civilization; not a blaze on a tree for the eyes of a woodsman riding on some forest venture, not the ashes of a dead camp fire or a charred cooking rack, where an Indian had broiled his caribou flesh. Except by the slow process of exploration with pack horses, traveling a few miles each day, fording unknown rivers and encircling impassable ranges, or by waiting patiently until the fall rains swelled the river, they might never leave this land they had so boldly entered. They could not go out the way they had come--over those seething waters--and the river, falling swiftly, would soon be too low to permit them to push down to its lower waters where they might find Indian encampments.

Nothing was left but the wilderness, ancient and unchanged. The spruce forest had a depth and a darkness that even Ben had never seen; the wild creatures that they sometimes glimpsed on the bank stared at them wholly without knowledge as to what they were, and likely amazed at the strength whereby they had braved this seething torrent that swept through their sylvan home. Here was a land where the grizzly had not yet learned of a might greater than his, where he had not yet surrendered his sovereignty to man. Here the moose--mightiest of the antlered herd--reached full maturity and old age without ever mistaking the call of a birch-bark horn for that of his rutting cow. Young bulls with only a fifty-inch spread of horns and ten points on each did not lead the herds, as in the more accessible provinces of the North. All things were in their proper balance, since the forest had gone unchanged for time immemorial; and as the head-hunters had not yet come the bull moose did not rank as a full-grown warrior until he wore thirty points and had five feet of spread, and he wasn't a patriarch until he could no longer walk free between two tree trunks seventy inches apart. Certain of the lesser forest people were not in unwonted numbers because that fierce little hunter, the marten, had been exterminated by trappers; the otter, yet to know the feel of cold iron, fished to his heart's content in rivers where an artificial fly had never fallen and the trout swarmed in uncounted numbers in the pools.

Darting down the rapids Ben felt the beginnings of an exquisite exhilaration. Part of it arose from the very thrill and excitement of their headlong pace; but partly it had a deeper, more portentous origin. Here was his own country--this Back There. While all the spruce forest in which he had lived had been his natural range and district--his own kind of land with which he felt close and intimate relations--this was even more his home than his own birthplace. By light of a secret quality, hard to recognize, he was of it, and it was of him. He felt the joy of one who sees the gleam of his own hearth through a distant window.

He _knew_ this land; it was as if he had simply been away, through the centuries, and had come home. The shadows and the stillness had the exact depth and tone that was true and right; the forest fragance was undefiled; the dark sky line was like something he had dreamed come true. He felt a strange and growing excitement, as if magnificent adventure were opening out before him. His gaze fell, with a queer sense of understanding, to Fenris.

The wolf had recovered from his fear of the river, by now, and he was crouched, alert and still, in his place. His gaze was fast upon the shore line; and the green and yellow fires that mark the beast were ablaze again in his eyes. Fenris too made instinctive response to those breathless forests; and Ben knew that the bond between them was never so close as now.

Fenris also knew that here was his own realm, the land in which the great Fear had not yet laid its curse. The forest still thronged with game, the wood trails would be his own. Here was the motherland, not only to him but to his master, too. They were its fierce children: one by breed, the other because he answered, to the full, the call of the wild from which no man is wholly immune.

Ben could have understood the wolf's growing exultation. The war he was about to wage with Neilson. would be on his own ground, in a land that enhanced and developed his innate, natural powers, and where he had every advantage. The wolf does not run into the heart of busy cities in pursuit of his prey. He tries to decoy it into his own fastnesses.

A sudden movement on the part of Beatrice, in the bow of the canoe, caught his eye. She had leaned forward and was reaching among the supplies. His mind at once leaped to the box of shells for her pistol that he had thrown among the duffle, but evidently this was not the object of her search. She lifted into her hands a paper parcel, the same she had brought from her cabin early that morning.

He tried to analyze the curious mingling of emotions in her face. It was neither white with disdain nor dark with wrath; and the tears were gone from her eyes. Rather her expression was speculative, pensive. Presently her eyes met his.

His heart leaped; why he did not know. "What is, it?" he asked.

"Ben--I called you that yesterday and there's no use going back to last names now--I've made an important decision."

"I hope it's a happy one," he ventured.

"It's as happy as it can be, under the circumstances. Ben, I came of a line of frontiersmen--the forest people--and if the woods teach one thing it is to make the best of any bad situation."

Ben nodded. For all his long training he had not entirely mastered this lesson himself, but he knew she spoke true.

"We've found out how hard Fate can hit--if I can make it plain," she went on. "We've found out there are certain powers--or devils--or something else, and what I don't know--that are always lying in wait for people, ready to strike them down. Maybe you would call it Destiny. But the Destiny city men know isn't the Destiny we know out here--I don't have to tell you that. We see Nature just as she is, without any gay clothes, and we know the cruelty behind her smile, and the evil plans behind her gentle words."

The man was amazed. Evidently the stress and excitement of the morning had brought out the fanciful and poetic side of the girl's nature.

"We don't look for good luck," she told him. "We don't expect to live forever. We know what death is, and that it is sure to come, and that misfortune comes always--in the snow and the cold and the falling tree--and when we have good luck we're glad--we don't take it for granted. Living up here, where life is real, we've learned that we have to make the best of things in order to be happy at all."

"And you mean--you're going to try to make the best of _this_?" His voice throbbed ever so slightly, because he could not hold it even.

"There's nothing else I can do," she replied. "You've taken me here and as yet I don't see how I can get away. This doesn't mean I've gone over to your side."

He nodded. He understood _that_ very well.

"I'm just admitting that at present I'm in your hands--helpless--and many long weeks in before us," she went on. "I'm on my father's side, last and always, and I'll strike back at you if the chance comes. Expect no mercy from me, in case I ever see my way to strike."

The man's eyes suddenly gleamed. "Don't you know--that you'd have a better chance of fighting me--if you didn't put me on guard?"

"I don't think so. I don't believe you'd be fooled that easy. Besides--I can't pretend to be a friend--when I'm really an enemy."

For one significant instant the man looked down. This was what he had done--pretended friendship when he was a foe. But his was a high cause!

"I'm warning you that I'm against you to the last--and will beat you if I see my way," the girl went on. "But at the same time I'm going to make the best of a bad situation, and try to get all the comfort I can. I'm in your hands at present, and we're foes, but just the same we can talk, and try to make each other comfortable so that we can be comfortable ourselves, and try not to be any more miserable than we can help. I'm not going to cry any more."

As she talked she was slowly unwrapping the little parcel she had brought. Presently she held it out to him.

It was just a box of homemade candy--fudge made with sugar and canned milk--that she had brought for their day's picnic. But it was a peace offering not to be despised. A heavy load lifted from Ben's heart.

He waited his chance, guiding the boat with care, and then reached a brown hand. He crushed a piece of the soft, delicious confection between his lips. "Thanks, Beatrice," he said. "I'll remember all you've told me."

XXIII

It is a peculiar fact that no one is more deeply moved by the great works and phenomena of nature than those who live among them. It is the visitor from distant cities, or the callow youth with tawdry clothes and tawdry thoughts who disturbs the great silences and austerity of majestic scenes with half-felt effusive words or cheap impertinences. Oddly enough, the awe that the wilderness dweller knows at the sight of some great, mysterious canyon or towering peak seems to increase, rather than decrease, with familiarity. His native scenes never grow old to him. Their beauty and majesty is eternal.

Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that the native woodsman knows nature as she really is: living ever close to her he knows her power over his life. Perhaps there is a religious side to the matter, too. In the solitudes the religious instincts receive an impulse that is impossible to those who know only the works of man. The religion that this gives is true and deep, and the eye instinctively lifts in reverence to the manifestations of divine might.

When the swirling waters carried the canoe down into the gorge of the Yuga both Ben and Beatrice were instinctively awed and stilled. Ever the walls of the gorge grew more steep, until the sunlight was cut off and they rode as if in twilight. The stone of the precipices presented a marvellous array of color; and the spruce, almost black in the subdued light, stood in startling contrast. Ben saw at once that even were they able to land they could not--until they had emerged from the gorge--climb to the highlands. A mountain goat, most hardy of all mountaineers, could scarcely scale the abrupt wall.

During this time of half-light they saw none of the larger forest creatures that at first had gazed at them with such wonder from the banks. The reason was simply that they could not descend and ascend the steep walls.

Mostly Ben had time only for an occasional glimpse at the colossus above him. His work was to guide the craft between the perilous boulders. Occasionally the river slackened its wild pace, and at such times he stretched his arms and rested his straining eyes.

Both had largely forgotten the danger of the ride. Because she was trying bravely to make the best of a tragic situation Beatrice had resolved to keep danger from her thoughts. Ben had known from the first that danger was an inevitable element in his venture, and he accepted it just as he had considered it,--with entire coldness. Yet both of them knew, in their secret thoughts, that the balance of life and death was so fine that the least minor incident might cast them into darkness. It would not have to be a great disaster, a wide departure from the commonplace. They were traveling at a terrific rate of speed, and a sharp rock too close to the surface would rip the bottom from their craft. Any instant might bring the shock and shudder of the end.

There would scarcely be time to be afraid. Both would be hurled into the stream; and the wild waters, pounding against the rocks, would close the matter swiftly. It awed them and humbled them to realize with what dispatch and ease this wilderness power could snuff out their mortal lives. There would be no chance to fight back, no element of uncertainty in the outcome. Here was a destiny against which the strength of man was as thistledown in the wind! The thought was good spiritual medicine for Ben, just as it would have been for most other men, and his egoism died a swift and natural death.

One crash, one shock, and then the darkness and silence of the end! The river would rage on, unsatiated by their few pounds of flesh, storming by in noble fury; but no man would know whither they had gone and how they had died. The walls of the gorge would not tremble one whit, or notice; and the spruce against the sky would not bow their heads to show that they had seen.

But the canyon broke at last, and the craft emerged into the sunlight. It was good to see the easy slope of the hills again, the spruce forests, and the forms of the wild creatures on the river bank, startled by their passing. Noon came and passed, and for lunch they ate the last of the fudge. And now a significant change was manifest in both of them.

Psychologists are ever astounded at the ability of mortals, men and animals, to become adjusted to any set of circumstances. The wax of habit sets almost in a day. The truth was, that in a certain measure with very definite and restricted limits, both Ben and Beatrice were becoming adjusted even to this amazing situation in which they found themselves. This did not mean that Beatrice was in the least degree reconciled to it. She had simply accepted it with the intention of making the best of it. She had been abducted by an enemy of her father and was being carried down an unknown and dangerous river; but the element of surprise, the life of which is never but a moment, was already passing away. Sometimes she caught herself with a distinct start, remembering everything with a rage and a bitter load on her heart; but the mood would pass quickly.

It is impossible, through any ordinary change of fortune, for a normal person to lose his sense of self-identity. As long as that remains exterior conditions can make no vital change, or make him feel greatly different than he felt before. The change from a peasant to a millionaire brings only a moment's surprise, and then readjustment. Beatrice was still herself; the man in the stern remained Ben Darby and no one else. Very naturally she began to talk to him, and he to answer her.

The fact that they were bitter foes, one the victim of the other, did not decree they could not have friendly conversation, isolated as they were. From time to time Ben pointed out objects of interest on the shore; and she found herself remarking, in a casual voice, about them. And before the afternoon he had made her laugh, in spite of herself,--a gay sound in which fear and distress had little echo.

"We're bound to see a great deal of each other in the next few weeks," he had said; and this fact could not be denied. The sooner both became adjusted to it the better. Actual fear of him she had none; she remembered only too well the steel in his eyes and the white flame on his cheeks as he had assured her of her safety.

In mid-afternoon Ben began to think of making his night's camp. From time to time the bank became an upright precipice where not even a tree could find foothold; and it had occurred to him, with sudden vividness, that he did not wish the darkness to overtake him in such a place. The river rocks would make short work of him, in that case. It was better to pick out a camp site in plenty of time lest they could not find one at the day's end.

In one of the more quiet stretches of water he saw the place--a small cove and a green, tree-clad bank, with the gorge rising behind. Handling his canoe with greatest care he slanted toward it. A moment later he had caught the brush at the water's edge, stepped off into shallow water, and was drawing the canoe up onto the bank.

"We're through for the day," he said happily, as he helped Beatrice out of the boat. "I'll confess I'm ready to rest."

Beatrice made no answer because her eyes were busy. Coolly and quietly she took stock of the situation, trying to get an idea of the geographical features of the camp site. She saw in a glance, however, that there was no path to freedom up the gorge behind her. The rocks were precipitate: besides, she remembered that over a hundred miles of impassable wilderness lay between her and her father's cabin. Without food and supplies she could not hope to make the journey.

The racing river, however, wakened a curious, inviting train of thought. The torrent continued largely unabated for at least one hundred miles more, she knew, and the hours that it would be passable in a canoe were numbered. The river had fallen steadily all day; driftwood was left on the shore; rocks dried swiftly in the sun, cropping out like fangs above the foam of the stream. Was there still time to drift on down the Yuga a hundred or more miles to the distant Indian encampment? She shut the thought from her mind, at present, and turned her attention to the work of making camp.

With entire good humor she began to gather such pieces of dead wood as she could find for their fire.

"Your prisoner might as well make herself useful," she said.

Ben's face lighted as she had not seen it since their outward journey from Snowy Gulch. "Thank God you're taking it that way, Beatrice," he told her fervently. "It was a proposition I couldn't help--"

But the girl's eyes flashed, and her lips set in a hard line. "I'm doing it to make my own time go faster," she told him softly, rather slowly. "I want you to remember that."

But instantly both forgot their words to listen to a familiar clucking sound from a near-by shrub. Peering closely they made out the plump, genial form of Franklin's grouse,--a bird known far and wide in the north for her ample breast and her tender flesh.

"Good Lord, there's supper!" Ben whispered. "Beatrice, get your pistol--"

Her eyes smiled as she looked him in the face. "You remember--my pistol isn't loaded!"

"Excuse me. I forgot. Give it to me."

She handed him the little gun, and he slipped in the shells he had taken from it. Then--for the simple and sensible reason that he didn't want to take any chance on the loss of their dinner--he stole within twenty feet of the bird. Very carefully he drew down on the plump neck.

"Dinner all safe," he remarked rather gayly, as the grouse came tumbling through the branches.

XXIV

Quietly Beatrice retrieved the bird and began to remove its feathers. Ben built the fire, chopped sturdily at a half-grown spruce until it shattered to the earth, and then chopped it into lengths for fuel. When the fire was blazing bright, he cut away the green branches and laid them, stems overlapping, into a fragrant bed.

"Here's where you sleep to-night, Beatrice," he informed her.

She stopped in her work long enough to try the springy boughs with her arms; then she gave him an answering smile. Even a tenderfoot can make some sort of a comfortable pallet out of evergreen boughs--ends overlapping and plumes bent--but a master woodsman can fashion a veritable cradle, soft as silk with never a hard limb to irritate the flesh, and yielding as a hair mattress. Such softness, with the fragrance of the balsam like a sleeping potion, can not help but bring sweet dreams.

Ben had been wholly deliberate in the care with which he had built the pallet. He had simply come to the conclusion that she was paying a high price for her father's sins; and from now on he intended to make all things as easy as he could for her. Moreover, she had been a sportswoman of the rarest breed and merited every kindness he could do for her.

He was not half so careful with his own bed, built sixty feet on the opposite side of the fire. He threw it together rather hastily. And when he walked back to the fire he found an amazing change.

Already Beatrice had established sovereignty over the little patch of ground they had chosen for the camp,--and the wilderness had drawn back. This spot was no longer mere part of the far-spreading, trackless wilds. It had been set off and marked so that the wilderness creatures could no longer mistake it for part of their domain. Over the fire she had erected a cooking rack; and water was already boiling in a small bucket suspended from it. In another container a fragrant mixture was in the process of cooking. She had spread one of the blankets on the grass for a tablecloth.

As twilight lowered they sat down to their simple meal,--tea, sweetened with sugar, and vegetables and meat happily mingled in a stew. It was true that the vegetable end was held up by white grains of rice alone, but the meat was the white, tender flesh of grouse, permeating the entire dish with its tempting flavor. As a whole, the stew was greatly satisfying to the inner man.

"I wish I'd brought more tea," Ben complained, as he sipped that most delightful of all drinks, the black tea beloved of the northern men.

"You a woodsman, and don't know how to remedy that!" the girl responded. "I know of a native substitute that's almost as good as the real article."

About the embers of the fire they sat and watched the tremulous wings of night close round them. The copse grew breathless. The distant trees blended into shadow, the nearer trunks dimmed and finally faded; the large, white northern stars emerged in infinite troops and companies, peering down through the rifts in the trees. Here about their fire they had established the domain of man. For a few short hours they had routed the forces of the wilderness; but the foe pressed close upon them. Just at the fluctuating ring of firelight he waited, clothed in darkness and mystery,--the infinite, brooding spirit of the ancient forest.

They had never known such silence, broken only by the prolonged chord of the river, as descended upon them now. It was new and strange to the conscious life of Ben, himself, the veritable offspring of the woods; although infinitely old and familiar to a still, watching, secret self within him. It was as if he had searched forever for this place and had just found it, and it answered, to the full, a queer mood of silence in his own heart. The wind had died down now. The last wail of a coyote--disconsolate on a far-away ridge--had trembled away into nothingness; the voices of the Little People who had chirped and rustled in the tree aisles during the daylight hours were stilled with a breathless, dramatic stillness. Such sound as remained over the interminable breadth of that dark forest was only the faint stirrings and rustlings of the beasts of prey going to their hunting; and this was only a moving tone in the great chord of silence.

To Ben the falling night brought a return of his most terrible moods. Beatrice sensed them in his pale, set face and his cold, wolfish eyes. The wolf sat beside him, swept by his master's mood, gazing with deadly speculations into the darkness. Beatrice saw them as one breed to-night. The wild had wholly claimed this repatriated son. The paw of the Beast was heavy upon him; the softening influences of civilization seemed wholly dispelled. There was little here to remind her that this was the twentieth century. The primitive that lies just under the skin in all men was in the ascendancy; and there was little indeed to distinguish him from the hunter of long ago, a grizzled savage at the edge of the ice who chased the mammoth and wild pony, knowing no home but the forest and no gentleness unknown to the wolf that ran at his heels.... The tenderness and sympathy he had had for her earlier that day seemed quite gone now. She searched for it in vain in the dark and savage lines of his pale face.

Because it has always been that the happiness of women must depend upon the mood of men, her own spirits fell. The despair that descended upon her brought also resentment and rage; and soon she slipped away quietly to her bed. She drew the blankets over her face; but no tears wet her cheeks to-night. She was dry-eyed, thoughtful--full of vague plans.