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THE GIRL BEYOND THE TRAIL
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THE GIRL BEYOND THE TRAIL
BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
First Published 1527
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CUNTENTS
CHAPTER
Oe Sichians
z: ' . “Witt You CoME with ME?” . . Davip’s DECISION . AT THOREAU’S : . THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPH . DAvip’s VIcToRY
. DAvip MFETs BAREE .
. THE START FOR THE NortH . ON THE TRAIL.
. In SicHT oF TAvisn’s
. THE FINDING OF TAVISH
. NC | *AYER FOR TAVISH eae. | RM ee ; ,
. FATHER ROLAND’s SECRET . THE Mounrtarns !
. ‘THis is My Bear”
. Davip ExpLains
. WHY MarGE RAN Away
. “I Hate THE | ‘IcTuRE!”
. AT “ THE Nest”
. BROKAW 1S COMMUNICATIVE
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A WomMAn’s LAUGHTER
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104 117
136 150 163 175 186 193 204 217 229
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Contents CHAPTER PaGs 22. Davip 1s CONDEMNED , , < . 240 23. BROKAW’s CHALLENGE ‘ ; , - 249 24. THE KNockout . . ‘ : ‘ » 259 25. ‘‘ THEY HAVE Founp Our Trait!” . . 266 26. TARA TAKES VENGEANCE . j ; . ws
27. THE FINDING OF MICHAEL O’Doone . - 294
rpaas 240 249 259 266 283 294
THE GIRL BEYOND THE TRAIL
CHAPTER I
A WOMAN’S LAUGHTER
IF you had stood thes in the edge of the black spruce forest, with the wind moaning dismally through the twisting trees—midnight of deep December—the Trans- continental would have iooked like a thing of fire; dull fire, glowing with a smouldering warmth, but of strange ghostliness and out of place. It was a weird shadow, helpless and without motion, and black as the half Arctic night save for that band of illumination that cut it in twain from the first coach to the last, with a space like an inky hyphen where the bay gage cai ‘.y. Out of the north came armies of snow-leden c vads that scudded just above the earth, ana with these clouds came now and then a shrieking mec'crv of wind to taunt this stricken creation oy ~:an and the creatures it sheltered—men and women who had begun to shiver, and whose tense, white faces stared with increasing anxiety out into the mysterious darkness of the night that hung like a sable curtain ten feet fror: the car windows.
For three hours those faces had peered out into the night. Many of the prisoners in the snow-bound
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SFR CONES tne pester ameNC RE?
Pitta aga te
The Girl Beyond the Trail
coaches had enjoyed the experience somewhat at first, for there is a pleasing and indefinable thrill to unex- pected adventure, and this, for a brief spell, had been adventure de luxe. There had been warmth and light, men’s laughter, women’s voices, and children’s play. But the loudest jester among the men was now silent, huddled deep in his great coat; and the young woman who had clapped her hands in silly ecstasy when it was announced that the train was snow-bound, was weeping and shivering by turn. It was cold—so cold that the snow which came Sweeping and swirling with the wind was like granite-dust ; it clicked, clicked, clicked against the glass—a bombardment of untold billions of in- finitesimal projectiles fighting to break in. In the edge of the forest it was Probably forty degrees below zero. Within the coaches there still remained some little warmth. The burning lamps radiated it, and the pres- ence of many people added to it. But it was cold, and growing colder. A grey coating of congealed breath covered the car windows. A few men had given their outer coats to women and children. These men looked most frequently at their watches. The adventure de luxe was becoming serious.
For the twentieth time a Passing trainman was asked the same question.
“The good Lord only knows,” he growled down into the face of a young woman whose prettiness would have enticed the most chivalrous attention from him earlier in the evening. “Engine and tender been gone three hours, and the divisional point only twenty miles up the line. Should have been back with help long ago. Hell, ain’t it?”
The young woman did not reply, but her round
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A Woman’s Laughter
mouth formed a quick and silent approbation of his final remark.
“‘ Three hours! ’’ the trainman continued his growl- ing, as he went on with his lantern. ‘“That’s the hell o’ railroading it along the edge of the Arctic. When you git snowed in you’re snowed in, an’ there ain’t no two ways about it!”
He paused at the smoking compartment, thrust in his head for a moment, passed on and slammed the door of the car after him as he went into the next coach.
In that smoking compartment there were two men, facing each other across the narrow space between the two seats. They had not looked up when the trainman
_ thrust in his head. They seemed, as one leaned over _ towards the other, wholly oblivious of the storm.
It was the older man who bent forward. He was about fifty. The hand that rested for a moment on David Raine’s knee was red and knotted. It was the hand of a man who had lived his life in struggling with
_ the wilderness. And the face, too, was of such a man;
a face coloured and toughened by the tanning of wind and blizzard and hot northern sun, with eyes cobwebbed about by a myriad of fine lines that spoke of years spent under the strain of those things. He was not a large man. He was shorter than David Raine. There was a slight droop to his shoulders. Yet about him there was a strength, a suppressed energy ready to act, a red- blooded eagerness for life and its daily mysteries which the other and younger man did not possess. Through- out many thousands of square miles of the great northern wilderness this older man was known as Father Roland, the missioner.
His companion was not more than thirty-eight. 3
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
Perhaps he was a year or two younger. It may be that the wailing of the wind outside, the strange voices that were in it, and the chilling gloom of their little com- partment made of him a more Striking contrast to Father Roland than he would have been under other conditions. His eyes were a clear and Steady grey as they met Father Roland’s. They were eyes that one could not easily forget. Except for his eyes he was like a man who had been sick, and was still sick. The mis- sioner had made his own guess, and now, with his hand on the other’s knee, he said:
“And you say that you are afraid for this friend of yours?”
David Raine nodded his head. Lines deepened a little about his mouth.
“Yes, I am afraid.” Fora moment he turned to the night. A fiercer volley of the little snow-demons beat against the window, as though his pale face just beyond their reach stirred them to greater fury. “I have a most disturbing inclination to worry about him,’’ he added, and shrugged his shoulders slightly.
He faced Father Roland again.
“Did you ever hear of a man losing himself?” he asked. “I don’t mean in the woods, or in a desert, or by going mad. I mean in that other way—heart, body, soul; losing one’s grip, you might call it, until there was no earth to stand on. Did you?”
“Yes—many years ago—I knew of a man who lost himself in that way,” replied the missioner, straighten- ing in his seat. “But he found himself again. And this friend of yours? I am interested. This is the first time in three years that I have been down to the edge of civilisation, and what you have to tell will be different
4
A Woman’s Laughter
—vastly different from what I know. If you are betray- ing nothing would you mind telling me his story ?”
“It is not a pleasant story,” warned the younger man. “And on such a night as this——”
“It may be that one can see more clearly into the depths of misfortune and tragedy,” interrupted the mis- sioner quietly.
A faint flush rose into David Raine’s pale face. There was something of nervous eagerness in the clasp of his fingers upon his knees.
‘* Of course, there is the woman,”’ he said.
“Yes, of course, the woman.”
“Sometimes I haven’t been quite sure whether this man worshipped the woman or the woman’s beauty,” David went on, with a strange glow in his eyes. “He loved beauty. And this woman was beautiful, almost too beautiful for the good of one’s soul, I guess. And he must have loved her, for when she went out of his life it was as if he had sunk into a black pit from out of which he could not rise. I have asked myself often if he would have loved her had she been less beautiful, even quite plain, and I have answered myself as he answered that question, in the affirmative. It was born in him to worship wherever he loved at all. Her beauty made a certain sort of completeness for him. He treasured that. He was proud of it. He counted him- self the richest man in the world because he possessed it. But deep under his worship of her beauty he loved her. Tam more and more sure of that, and I am equally sure that time will prove it—that he will never rise again with his old hope and faith out of that black pit into which he sank when he came face to face with the realisation that there were forces in life—in Nature,
no]
The Girl Beyond the Trail
perhaps—more potent than his love and his own Strong will.”
Father Roland nodded.
“TI understand,” he said, and he sank back farther in his corner by the window, so that his face was shrouded a little in shadow. “This other man loved a woman, too. And she was beautiful. He thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world. It is great love that makes beauty.”
“But this woman—my friend’s wife—was so beauti- ful that even the eyes of other women were fascinated by her. I have seen her when it seemed as though she must have come fresh from the hands of angels; and at first, when my friend was the happiest man in the world, he was fond of telling her that it must have been angels who put the colour in her face and the wonderful golden fires in her shining hair. It wasn’t his love for her that made her beautiful. She was beautiful.”
“And her soul?” softly questioned the shadowed lips of the missioner.
The other’s hands tightened slowly.
“In making her the angels forgot a soul, I guess,” he said.
“Then your friend did not love her.” The little forest missioner’s voice was quick and decisive. “There can be no love where there is not a soul.”
“That is impossible. He did love her. I know it.”
“T still disagree with you. Without knowing your friend, I say that he worshipped her beauty. There were others who worshipped that same loveliness— others who did not possess her, and who would have bartered their souls for her had they possessed souls to barter. Is that not true?”
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7 A Woman’s Laughter 4
: “Yes, there were others. But to understand you 1 must have known my friend before he sank down into the pit—when he was still a man. He was a tremendous | student. His fortune was sufficient to give him both ’ time and means for the pursuits he loved. He had his | great library, and adjoining it a laboratory. He wrote books which few people read because they were filled * with facts and old theories. He believed that the world + was very old, and that there was less profit for man in ‘ discovering new luxuries for an artificial civilisation _ than in re-discovering a few of the great laws and ~ miracles buried in the dust of the pas: He believed A that the nearer we get to the beginning of things, and * not the farther we drift, the clearer comprehension can we have of earth and sky and God, and the meaning of ~ it all. He did not consider it an argument for Progress » that Christ and His disciples knew nothing of the tele- * phone, of giant engines run by steam, of electricity, or of instruments by which man could send messages for ~ thousands of miles through space. His theory was that
se
_ the patriarchs of old held a closer touch on the pulse of ~ Life than progress in its present forms will ever bring - to us. He was not a fanatic. He was not a crank. ’ He was young, and filled with enthusiasm. He loved children. He wanted to fill his home with them. But his wife knew that she was too beautiful for that—and they had none.”
He had leaned a little forward, and had pulled his - hat a trifle over his eyes. There was a moment’s lull _ in the storm, and it was so quiet that each could hear _ the ticking of Father Roland’s big silver watch. Then he said : “TI don’t know why I tell you all this, father, unless 7
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
it is to relieve my own mind. There can be no hope that it will benefit my friend. And yet it cannot harm him. It seems very near to sacrilege to put into words what I am going to say about—his wife. Perhaps there were extenuating conditions for her. I have tried to convince myself of that, just as he tried to believe it, It may be that a man who is borr into this age must consider himself a misfit unless he Can tune himself in sympathy with its manner of life. He cannot be too critical, I guess. If he is to exist in a certain social order of our civilisation unburdened by great doubts and deep glooms, he must not shiver when his wife tinkles her champagne glass against another. He must learn to appreciate the Sinuous beauties of the cabaret dancer, and must train himself to take no offence when he sees shimmering wines gushing down white throats. He musi train himself to many things, just as he trains himself to classical music and grand opera. To do these things he must forget, as much as he can, the Sweet melodies and the sweeter women who are sinking into oblivion together. He Must accept life as a grand Piano tuned by a new Sort of tuning master, and unless he can dance to its music he is a misfit. That is what my friend said—to extenuate her. She fitted into life splendidty. He was in the other groove. She loved light, laughter, wine, Song, excitement. He, the Misfit, loved his books, his work, and his home. His greatest joy would have been to go with her, hand in hand, through some wonderful cathedral Pointing out its ancient glories and mysteries to her. He wanted aloneness—just they two. Such was his idea of love. And she—wanted the other things. You understand, father? The thing grew, and at last he saw that she 8
A Woman’s Laughter
| was getting away from him. Her passion for admira-
, tion and excitement became madness. I know, because _ I saw it. My friend said that it was madness, even as _ he was going mad. And yet he did not suspect her.
| If another had told him that she was unclean 1 am sure
he wouid have killed him. Slowly he came to experi- - ence the agony of knowing that tae woman whom he
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_ worshipped did not love him. But this did not lead
_ him to believe that she could love another—or others. _ Then, one day, he ieft the city. She went with him to " the train—his wife. She saw him go. She waved her _ handkerchief at him. And as she stood there she was— ~ glorious.”
* Through partly closed eyes the little missioner saw “his shoulders tighten, and a hardness settle about his *mouth. The voice, too, was changed when it went on. + It was almost emotionless.
“It’s sometimes curious how the Chief Arbiter of
* things plays His tricks on men—and women, isn’t it, 4 father? There was trouble on the line ahead, and my ‘friend came back. It was unexpected. It was late _ when he reached his home, and with his night key he “went in quietly, because he did not want to awaken her. _,it was very still in the house—until he came to the door of her room. There was a light. He heard voices— “very low. He listened. He went in.”
__ There was a terrible silence. The ticking of Father ~Roland’s big silver watch seemed like the tiny beating 7 of a drum.
“What happened then, David?”
_ “My friend went in,” repeated David. His eyes -Sought Father ..oland’s Squarely, and he saw the ques- jtionthere. “No, he did not kill them,” he said. “He
: 9
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
doesn’t know what kept him from killing—the man. He was a coward, that man. He crawled away like a worm. Perhaps that was why my friend spared him. The wonderful part of it was that the woman—his wife— was not afraid. She stood up in her glorious dishevel- ment, with that mantle of gold he had worshipped Streaming about her to her knees, and she laughed! Yes, she laughed—a mad sort of laugh; a laughter of fear, perhaps—but—laughter. So he did not kill them. Her laughter—the man’s cowardice—saved them. He turned. He closed the door. He left them. He went out into the night.”
He paused, as though his story was finished.
“And that is—the end?” asked Father Rolard softly.
“Of his dreams, his hopes, his joy in life—yes, that was the end.”
“But of your friend’s story? What happened after that?”
“A miracle, I guess,” replied David hesitatingly, as though he could not quite understand what had hap- pened after that. “You see, this friend of mine was not of the vacillating and irresolute sort. I had always given him credit for that—credit for being a man who would measure up to a situation. He was quite an athlete, and enjoyed boxing and fencing and swimming. If at any time in his life he could have conceived of a Situation such as he encountered in his wife’s room he would have lived in the moral certainty of killing the man. And when the situation did come, was it not a miracle that he should walk out into the night leaving them not only unharmed, but together? I ask you, father—was it not a miracle ?”
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A Woman’s Laughter
Father Roland’s eyes were gleaming strangely under the shadow of his broad-brimmed black hat. He merely nodded.
“Of course,” resumed David. “It may be that he _ was too stunned to act. | believe that the laughter— \ her laughter—acted upon him like a powerful drug. Instead of plunging him into the passion of a | murderous desire for vengeance it curiously enough " anesthetised his emotions. For hours he heard that laughter. I believe he will never forget it. _ He wandered the Streets all that night. It was in _ New York, and he was meeting many people. But he _ did not notice them. When morning came he was on + Fifth Avenue, many miles from his home. He wan- - dered down town in a constantly growing human _ Stream, whose noise and bustle and many-keyed voice _ acted on him like a tonic. For the first time he aske.’ _ himself what he would do. Stronger and stronger g-ew ~ the desire in him to return, to face again that Situation _in his home. I believe that he would have done this—I believe that the red blood in him would have meted out _ Its own punishment had he not turned just in time, and
at just the right plice. He found himself in front of _ The Little Church Around the Corner, nestling in its © hiding-place just off the Avenue. He remembered its ‘restful quiet, the coolness of its Shadowy aisles and alcoves. He was exhausted, and he went in. He sat = down facing the chancel, and as his eyes became accus- 3 tomed to the gloom, he saw that the broad, low dais in front of the Organ was banked with great masses of “hydrangeas. There had been a wedding, probably the evening before. My friend told me of the thickening 2 that came in his throat, of the Strange, terrible throb z B Ir
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
in his heart 1s he sat there alone—the only soul in the church—and stared at those hydrangeas. Hydrangeas had been their own wedding flower, father. And then——”
For the first time there was something like a break in the younger man’s voice.
“My friend thought he was alone,” he went on. “But someone had come out like a shadow beyond the chancel railing, and of a sudden, beginning wonderfully low and sweet, the great organ began to fill the church with its melody. The organist, too, thought he was alone. He was a little, old man, his shoulders thin and drooped, his hair white. But in his soul there must have been a great love and a great peace. He played ‘The Rosary.’ When he was done he rose and went away as quietly as he had come, and for a long time after that my friend sat there—alone. Something new was born in him, something which I hope will grow, and comfort him in the years to come. When he went out into the city again the sun was shining. He did not go home. He did not see the woman—his wife— again. He-has never seen her since that night when she stood up in her dishevelled beauty and laughed at him. Even the divorce proceedings did not bring them together. I believe that he treated her fairly. Through his attorneys he turned over to her a half of what he possessed. Then he went away. That was a year ago. In that year I know that he has fought desperately to bring himself back into his old health of mind and body, and I am quite sure that he has failed.”
He paused, his story finished. He drew the brim of his hat lower over his eyes, and then he rose to his feet. His build was slim and clean-cut. He was
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A Woman’s Laughter
perhaps five feet ten inches in height, which was four inches taller than the little missioner. His shoulders were of a good breadth, his waist and hips of an athletic slimness. But his clothes hung with a certain loose- ness. His hands were unnaturally thin, i:nd in his face still hovered the shadows of sickness, and of mental suffering.
Father Roland stood beside him now with eyes that shone with a deep understanding. In the sputter of the lamp above their heads the two men clasped hands, and the little missioner’s grip was like the grip of iron.
“David, I’ve preached a Strange code through the wilderness for many a long year,” he said, and his voice was vibrant with a strong emotion. “I’m not Catholic and I’m not Church of England. I’ve got no religion that wears a name. I’m simply Father Roland, and all these years I’ve helped to bury the dead in the forests, an’ nurse the sick, an’ marry the living, an’ it may be that I’ve learned one thing better than most of you who live down in civilisation. And that’s how to find your- self when you’re down and out. Boy, will you come with me?”
Their eyes met. A fiercer gust of the storm beat against the window. They could hear the wind wailing in the tic2s outside.
“It was your story that you told me,” said Father Roland, his voice barely above a whisper. “It was your story, David?”
“Yes, it was my story, father.”
“And she—was your wife?”
“Yes, she was my wife.”
Suddenly David freed his hand from the little missioner’s clasp. He had Stopped something that was
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
almost a cry on his lips. He pulled t.i: hat still lower over his eyes, and went through the avor out into the main part of the coach.
Father Roland did not follow. Some of the ruddi- ness had gone from his cheeks, and as he stood facing the door through which David had disappeared a smouldering fire began to burn far back in his eyes; and atter a few moments this fire died out, and his face was grey and haggard as he sat down again in his corner. His hands unclenched. With a great sigh his nead drooped forward on his chest, and for a long time he sat thus, his eyes and face lost in shadow, and one would not have known that he was breathing.
CHAPTER II “WILL YOU CoMF WITH ME?”
HALF a dozen times that night David had walked from end to end of the five Snow-bound coaches that made up the Transcontinental. He believed that for him it was
Otherwise a sleeping-car would have been picked up at the next divisional point, and he would not have un- burdened himself to Father Roland. They would not have sat up until that late hour in the smoking compart-
tragedy that had, in some mysterious way, unsealed his
compelled to tell it, coldly and without visible emotion, to gain his own freedom. He had meant to keep it to himself always. And of a Sudden it had all come out. He was not Sorry. He was glad. Ee was amazed at the change in himself. That day had been a terrible day for him. He could not get her out of his mind. Now a depressing hand seemed to have lifted itself from
had met a man, and from the soul of that man there had
reached out to him the Spirit of a deep and comforting
Strength. He would have revolted at compassion and 15
The Girl Beyond the Trail
words of pity would have shamed him. Father Roland had given voice to neither of these. But the grip of his hand had been like the grip of an iron man.
In the third coach David sat down in an empty seat. For the first time in many months there was the thrill of something in his blood which he could not analyse. What had the little missioner meant when, with that wonderful grip of his knotted hand, he had said: “I’ve learned one thing better than most of you who live down in civilisation. And that’s how to find yourself when you’re down and out?” And what had he meant when he added: “ Will you come with me?” Go with him? Where?
There came a sudden crash of the storm against the window, a shrieking blast of wind and snow, and David stared out into the night. He could see nothing. It was a black chaos outside. But he could hear. He could hear the wailing and moaning of that wind in the trees, and he almost fancied that it was not darkness alone that shut out his vision, but the thick walls of the . forest.
Was that what Father Roland had meant? Had he asked him to go with him into that?
His face touched the cold glass. He stared harder. That morning Father Roland had boarded the train at a wilderness station and had taken a seat beside him. They had become acquainted. And later the little missioner had told him how those vast forests reached without a break for hundreds of miles into the mys- terious North. He loved them, even as they lay cold and white outside the windows. There was gladness in his voice when he had said that he was going back into them. They were a part of his world—a world of
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“Will You Come with Me?”
“mystery and savage glory” he had called it, stretch- ing for a thousand miles to the edge of the Arctic, and fifteen hundred from Hudson’s Bay to the western mountains. And to-night he had said: “Will you come with me?”
David’s pulse quickened. A thousand little snow- demons beat in his face to challenge his courage. The wind swept down, as if enraged at the thought in his mind, and scooped up volley after volley of drifting snow and hurled them at him. There was only the thin glass between. It was like the defiance of a living thing. It threatened him. It dared him. It invited him out like a great bully, with a brawling show of fists. He had always been more or less pusillanimous in the face of winter. He disliked cold. He hated snow. But this that beat and shrieked at him outside the window had set something stirring strangely within him. It was a desire, whimsical and undecided at first, to thrust his naked face out into that darkness and feel the sting of the wind and snow. It was Father Roland’s world. And Father Roland had invited him to enter it. That was the curious part of the Situation, as it was impressed upon him with his face flattened against the window. The little forest missioner had invited him, and the night was dating him. For a single moment the incongruity of it all made him forget himself, and he laughed—a chuckling, half-broken and out-of-tune sort of laugh. It was the first time in a year that he had forgotten himself anywhere near to a point resembling laughter, and in the sudden and inexplicable spontaneity of it he was startled. He turned quickly, as though someone at his side had laughed and he was about to demand an explanation. He looked
17
The Girl Beyond the Trail
across the aisle, and his eyes met squarely the eyes of a woman.
He saw nothing but the eyes at first. They were big, dark, questing eyes—eyes that had in them a hunting look, as though in his face they hoped to find the answer to a great question. Never in his life had he seen eyes that were so haunted by a great unrest, or that held in their lustrous depths the smouldering glow of a deeper grief. Then the face added itself to the eyes. It was not a young face. The woman was past forty. But this age did not impress itself over a strange and appealing beauty in her countenance which was like the beauty of a flower whose petals were falling. Before David had seen more than this she turned her eyes from him slowly and doubtfully, as if not quite convinced that she had found what she sought, and faced the dark- ness beyond her own side of the car.
David was puzzled, and he looked at her with still deeper interest. Her seat was turned so that it was facing him across the aisle, three seats ahead, and he could look at her without conspicuous effort or rude- ness. Her hood had slipped down and hung by its long scarf about her shoulders. She leaned toward the window, and as she stared out her chin rested in the cup of her hand. He noticed that her hand was thin, and that there was a shadowy hollow in the white pallor of her cheek. Her hair was heavy, and done in thick coils that glowed dully in the lamplight. It was a deep brown, almost black, shot through with little silvery threads of grey.
For a few moments David withdrew his gaze, sub- oonsciously ashamed at the directness of his scrutiny. But after a little his eyes drifted back to her. Her
18
“Will You Come with Me?”
head had sunk forward a little, and he caught now a pathetic droop to her shoulders, and he fancied that he Saw a little shiver run through her. Just as a short time before he had felt the desire to thrust his face out into the night he felt now an equally unaccountable impulse to speak to her, and ask her if he could in any way add to her comfort. But he could see no excuse for this presumptuousness in himself. If she was in dis- tress it was not of a physical sort for which he might have suggested his services as a remedy. She was neither hungry nor cold, for there was a basket at her side in which he had a glimpse of broken bits of food, and at her back, draped over the seat, was a heavy beaver-skin coat.
He rose to his feet with the intention of returning to the smoking compartment in which he had left Father Roland. His movement seemed to rouse the woman.
Again her dark eyes met his own. They looked Straight up at him as he stood in the aisle, and he stopped. Her lips trembled.
“Are you—acquainted—between here and Lac Seul ?” she asked.
Her voice had in it the same haunting mystery that he had seen in her eyes, the same apprehension, the same hope, as though some curious and indefinable instinct was telling her that in this Stranger she was very near to the thing which she was seeking.
“Tam a stranger,” he said. “This is the first time I have ever been in this country.”
She sank back, the look of hope in her face dying out like a passing flash.
“IT thank you,” she murmured. “I thought—
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
perhaps—-you might know of a man whom I am seek- ing—a man by the name of Michael O’Doone.”
She did not expect him to speak again. She drew her heavy coat about her and turned her face again toward the window. There was nothing that he could say, nothing that he could do, and he went bac* to Father Roland.
He was in the last coach when a sound came to him faintly. It was too sharp for the wailing of the storm. Others heard it and grew suddenly erect, with tense and listening faces. The young woman with the round mouth gave a little gasp. A man pacing back and forth in the aisle stopped as if at the point of a bayonet.
It came again.
The heavy-jowled man who had taken the adventure as a jest at first, and who had rolled himself in his great- coat like a hibernating woodchuck, unloosed his voice in a rumble of joy.
“It’s the whistle!” he announced. “The damned thing’s coming at last!”
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CHAPTER III
DAVID’S DECISION
DavID came up quietly to the door of the smokir.g com- partment where he had left Father Roland. He looked in. The little missioner was huddled in his corner near the window. His head hung heavily forward and the shadow of his black Stetson concealed his face. He was apparently asleep. His hands, with their strangely developed joints and fingers, lay loosely upon his knees. For a full half minute David looked at him without moving or making a sound, and as he looked something warm and living seemed to reach out from the lonely figure of the wilderness preacher that filled him with a strangely new feeling of companionship. Again he made no effort to analyse the change in himself; he accepted it as one of the two or three inexplicable phenomena this night and the storm had » soduced for him, and was chiefly concerned in the fact that he was no longer oppressed by that torm: f aloneness which had been a part of his nights an. days for so many months. He was about to speak when he made up his mind not to disturb the other. So certain was he that Father Roland was asleep that he drew away from tie door on the tips of his toes and re-entered the coach. He did not stop in the first or the second cars, though there were plenty of empty seats, and people were rousing themselves into more cheerful activity. He passe~ through one and then the other to the third 21
The Girl Beyond the Trai:
coach, and sat down when he came to the seat he had ferme’ occupied. He did not look at the woman aruss . e aisle immediately. He did not want her to St>;ec: chat he had come back for that p:rpose. When his eyes did seek her in a casual sort of way he was disappointed.
She was almost covered in her coat. He caught only the gleam of her thick dark hair, and the shape of one slim hand, white as paper in the lamp-glow. He knew that she was not asleep for he saw her shoulders move, and the hand shifted its position to hold the coat closer about her. The whistling of the approaching engines, which he could hear distinctly now, had no apparent effect on her. For ten minutes he sat Staring at all he could see of her—the dark glow of her hair and that one ghostly white hand. He moved, he shuffled his feet, he coughed—he made sure that she knew he was there, but she did not look up. He was sorry that he had not brought Father Roland with him in the first place, for he was certain that if the little missioner had seen the grief and the despair in her eyes —-the hope almost burned out—he would have gone to her and said things which he had found it impossible to say when the opportunity had come to him. He rose again from his seat as the powerful snow-engine and its consort coupled on to the train. The shock almost flung him off his feet. Even then she did not raise her head.
A second time he returned to the smoking compart- ment.
Father Roland was no longer huddled down in his corner. He was on his feet, his hands thrust deep down into his trousers pockets, and he was whistling softly as
22
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David’s Decision
David came in. His hat lay on the seat. It was the first time David had seen his round, rugged, weather- reddened face without the big Stetson. He looked younger, and yet older; his face, as David saw it there in the lamp-glow, had something in the ruddy glow and deeply lined strength of it that was almost youthful. But his thick, shaggy hair was very grey. The train had begun to move. He turned to the window for a moment, and then looked at David.
“We are under way,” he said. “Very soon I will be getting off.”
David sat down.
“It is some distance beyond the divisional point ahead—this cabin where you get off ?” he asked.
“Yes, twenty or twenty-five miles. There is nothing but a cabin and two or three log out-buildings there— where Thoreau, the Frenchman, has his fox-pens, as I told you. It is not a regular stop, but the train will slow down to throw off my dunnage and give me an easy jump. My dogs and Indian are with Thoreau.”
“And from there—from Thoreau’s—it is a long distance to the place you call home?”
The little missioner rubbed his hands in a queer rasping way. The movement of those rugged hands and the curious chuckling laugh that accompanied it radiated a sort of cheer. T hey were expressive of more than satisfaction.
“It’s a great many miles to my own cabin, but it’s home—all home—after I get into the forests. My cabin is at the lower end of God’s Lake, three hundred miles by dogs and sledge from Thoreau’s—three hundred miles as straight North as a niskuk flies.”
“A niskuk?” said David.
23
The Girl Beyond the Trail
“Yes—a grey goose.”
“Don’t you have crows?”
“A few, but they’re as crooked in flight as they are in morals. They're scavengers, and they hang down pretty close to the line of rail—close to civilisation, where there’s a lot of scavenging to be done, you know.”
For the second time that night David found a laugh on his lips.
“Then—you don’t like civilisation ?”
“My heart is in the Northland,” replied Father Roland, and David saw a sudden change in the other’s face, a dying out of the light in his eyes, a tenseness that came and went like a flash at the corners of his mouth. In that same moment he saw the missioner’s hands tighten, and the fingers knot themselves curiously and then slowly relax.
One of these hands dropped on David’s shoulder, and Father Roland became the questioner.
“You have been thinking, since you left me a little while ago ?” he asked.
“Yes. I came back. But you were asleep.”
“I haven’t been asleep. I have been awake every minute. I thought once that I heard a movement at the door, but when I looked up there was no one there. You told me to-day that you were going west—to the British Columbia mountains ?”
David nodded. Father Roland sat down beside him.
“Of course, you didn’t tell me why you weré going,” he went on. “I have made my own guess since you told me about the woman, David. Probably you will never know just why your story has struck so deeply
24
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Dial aael
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MEE REA Ce eae sess
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David’s Decision
home with me, and why it has seemed to make you more a son to me than a stranger. I have guessed thet in ,soiag west you are simply wandering. You are fighting in a vain and foolish sort of way to run away from something. Isn’t that it? You are running away—trying to escape the one thing in the whole wide world that you cannot lose by flight—and that’s memory. You can think just as hard in Japan or the South Sea Islands as you can on Fifth Avenue in New York, and sometimes the farther away you get the more maddening your thoughts become. It isn’t travel you want, David. It’s blood—red blood. And for putting blood into you, and courage, and the joy of just living and breathing, there’s nothing on the face of the earth like—that!”
He reached an arm past David and pointed to the night beyond the car window.
“You mean the Storm, and the snow——”
“Yes, storm, aad snow, and sunshine, and forests— the tens of thousands of miles of our Northland that you've only seen the edge of. That’s what I mean. But, first of «11 "—and again the little missioner rubbed his hands in his curious, rasping way—‘first of all, I’m thinking of the Supper that’s waiting for us at Thoreau’s. Will you get off and have supper with me at the Frenchman’s, David? After that, if you decide not to go up to God’s Lake with me, Thoreau can bring you and your luggage back to the station with his dog- team. Such a supper—or breakfast—it will be! I can smell it now, for I know Thoreau—his fish, his birds, the tenderest steaks in the forests! I can hear Thoreau cursing because the train hasn’t come, and I’ll wager
- he’s got fish and caribou tenderloin and Partridges just
25
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
ready for a final turn in the roaster. What do you say? Will you get off with me?”
“It is a tempting offer to a hungry man, father.”
The little missioner chuckled elatedly.
“Hunger !—that’s the real medicine of the gods, David, when the belt isn’t drawn too tight. If I want to know the nature and the quality of a man I ask about his stomach. Did you ever know of a man who loved to eat who wasn’t a pretty decent sort? Did you ever know of a man who loved pie—who’d go out of his way to get pie—that didn’t have a heart in him bigger’n a pumpkin? I guess you didn’t. If a man’s got a good stomach he isn’t a grouch, and he won’t stick a knife into your back; but if he eats from habit—orx necessity— he isn’t a beautiful character in the eyes of nature, and there’s pretty sure to be a cog loose somewhere in his make-up. I’m a grub-scientist, David. I warn you of that before we get off at Thoreau’s. I love to eat, and the Frenchman knows it. That’s why I can smeil things in that cabin forty miles away.”
He was rubbing his hands so briskly and his face radiated such joyous anticipation as he talked that David unconsciously felt the spirit of his enthusiasm. He had gripped one of Father Roland’s hands and was pumping it up and down almost before he realised what he was doing.
“I'll get off with you at Thoreau’s!” he exclaimed. “And later—if I feel as I do now, and you still want my conpany, I’ll go on with you into the north country!”
A slight flush rose into his thin cheeks, and his eyes shone with a freshly kindled enthusiasm. As Father Roland saw the change in him his two knotted hands closed over David's.
26
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David’s Decision
“I knew you had a splendid stomach in you from the momer’ u finished telling me about the woman,” he cried eaultantly. “I knew it, David. And I do want your company—I want it as I never wanted the com- pany of another man!”
“That is the strange part of it,” replied David, a slight quiver in his voice. He drew away his hands suddenly, and with a jerk brought himself to his feet. “Good God—look at me!” he cried. “I am a wreck physically. It would be a lie if you told me I am not. See those hands—these arms! I’m down and out. I’m weak as a dog, and the stomach you speak of is a myth. I haven’t eaten a square meal in a year. Why do you want me as a companion? Why do you think it would be a pleasure for you to drag a decrepit misfit like myself up into a country like yours? Is it because of your— your code of faith? Is it because you think you may save a soul?”
He was breathing deeply. As he excoriated him- self and bared his weakness the hot blood crept slowly into his face.
“Why do you want me to go?” he demanded. “Why don’t you ask some man with red blood in his veins and a heart that hasn’t been burned out? Why have you asked me?”
Father Roland made as if to speak, and then caught himself. Again for a Passing flash there came that mystericus change in him, a sudden dying out of the enthusiasm in his eyes and a greyness in his face that came and went like a shadow of pain. In another moment he was saying :
“I’m not playing the part of the Good Samaritan, David. I’ve got a personal and a selfish reason for
Cc 27
| The Girl Beyond the Trail
wanting you with me. It may be possible—just pos- sible, I say—that I need you even more than you will ’ me.” He held out his hand. “Let me have your checks and I'll go ahead to the baggage car and arrange to have your dunnage thrown off with mine at the Frenchman’s.”
David gave him the checks, and sat down after he had gone. He began to realise that for the first time in many months he was taking a deep and growing interest in matters outside of his own life. The night and its happenings had kindled a strange fire within him, and the warmth of this fire ran through his veins and set his body and his brain tingling curiously. New forces were beginning to fight his own malady. As he sat alone after Father Roland had gone his mind had dragged itself away from the East; he thought of a woman, but it was the woman in the third coach back. Her wonderful eyes haunted him—their questing despair, the strange pain that seemed to burn ‘ike glow- ing coals in their depths. He had not only seen misery and hopelessness in them; he had seen tragedy, and they troubled him. He made up his mind to tell Father Roland about her when he returned from the baggage cs -nd take him to her.
tho was Father Roland? For the first time he ‘mself the question. There was something of mysic,,y about the little forest missioner that he found as strange and unanswerable as the thing he had seen in the eyes of the woman in the third car back. Father Roland had not been asleep when he looked in quietly and saw him hunched down in his corner near the win- dow, just as a little later he had seen the woman crumpled down in hers. It was as if the same oppress-
28
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David’s Decision ing hand had been upon them in those moments. And why had Father Roland asked him, of all men, to go with him as a comrade into the North ? Following this he asked himself the still more puzzling question : Why had he accepted the invitation ?
He stared out into the night, as if that might hold an answer ior him. He had not noticed until now that the storm had ceased its beating against the window. It was not so black outside. With his face close to the glass he could make out : : dark wall of the forest. From the rumble of the trucks under him he knew that the two engines were making good time. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter of twelve. They had been travelling for half an hour, and he figured the divisional point ahead would be reached by midnight. It seemed a very short time after that when he heard the tiny bell in his watch tinkling off the hour of twelve. The last strokes were drowned in a shrill blast of the engine whistle, and a moment later he caught the dull glow of lights in the hollow of a wide curve the train was making. Father Roland had told him the train would wait at this point fifteen minutes, and even now he heard the clanging of hand-bells announcing the fact ihat hot coffee, sandwiches, and ready-prepared suppers were awaiting the half-starved passengers. The trucks grated harshly, the whirring groan of the air-brakes ran under him like a great Sigh, and suddenly he was look- ing down into the face of a pop-eyed man who was clanging a bell with all the Strength of his right arm under his window, and who with this labour was emitting a husky din of “Supper—supper ‘ot an’ ready at The Royal,” in his vain effort to drown the competi- tion of a stili more raucous voice that was bellowing :
29
The Girl Beyond the Trail
“’Ot steak an’ liver’n onions at the Queen Alexan- dry!” As David made no movement the man under his window stretched up his neck and yelled a personal invitation. ‘“‘W’y don’t you come out and eat, old chap? You’ve got fifteen minutes, an’ mebby ’arf an ‘our. Supper—supper ’ot an’ ready at The Royal!” Up and down the length of the dimly lighted platform David heard that clangour of bells, and as if determined to capture his stomach or die, the pop-eyed man never moved an inch from his window, while behind him there jostled and hurried an eager and steadily growing throng of hungry people.
David thought again of the woman in the third coach back. Was she getting off here, he wondered? He went to the door of the smoking compartment and waited another half minute for Father Roland. It was quite evident his delay was occasioned by some diffi- culty in the baggage car, a difficulty which perhaps his own presence might help to straighten out. He hesi- tated between the thought of joining the missioner and the stronger impulse to go back into the third coach. He was conscious of a certain feeling of embarrassment as he returned for the third time to look at her. He was not anxious for her to see him again unless Father Roland were with him. His hesitancy, if it was not altogether embarrassment, was caused by the fear that she might quite naturally regard his interest in a wrong light. He was especially sensitive upon that point, and had always been. The fact that she was not a young woman, and that he had seen her dark hair finely threaded with grey, made no difference with him in his peculiarly chivalric conception of man’s attitude toward woman. He did not mean to impress himself upon
30
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David’s Decision
her; this time he merely wanted to see if she had roused herself, or had left the car. At least this was the trend of isis raental argument as he entered the third coach.
The car was empty. The woman was gone. Even the old man whe hel hobbied in on crutches at the last Station had hobbled out again in response to the clang- ing bells. When he came to the seat where the woman had been David paused, and would have turned back had he not chanced to look out through the window. He was just in time to catch the swift upturn of a pass- ing face. It was her face. She saw him and recognised him; she seemed for a moment to hesitate, her eyes were filled again with that haunting fire, her lips trembled as if about to speak—and then, like a mysterious Shadow, she drifted out of his vision into darkness. For a space he remained in his bent and Staring attitude, trying to pierce the gloom into which she had dis- appeared. As he drew back from the window, wonder- ing what she must think of him, his eyes fell to the seat where she had been sitting, and he saw that she had left something behind.
It was a very thin package, done up in a bit of news- Paper and tied with red String. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. It was five or six inches in width and perhaps eight in length, and was not more than half an inch in thickness. The newspaper in which the object was wrapped was worn until the print was almost obliterated.
Again he looked out through the window. Was it a trick of his eyes, he wondered, or did he see once more that pale and haunting face in the gloom just beyond thelamp-glow? His fingers closed a little tighter upon
31
The Girl Beyond the Trail
the thin packet in his hand. At least he had found an excuse; if she was still there—if he could find her—he had an adequate apology for going to her. She had forgotten something; it was simply a matter of courtesy on his part to return it. As he alighted into the half foot of snow on the platform he could have given no other reason for his action. His mind could Not clarify itself; it had no cohesiveness of Purpose or of emotion at this particular juncture. It was as if a Strange and magnetic under-tow was drawing him after her. And he obeyed the impulse. He began seeking for her, with the thin packet in his hand.
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CHAPTER IV
AT THOREAU’S
Davip followed where he fancied he had last seen the woman’s face and caught himself just in time to keep from pitching over the edge of the platform. Beyond that there was a pit of blackness. Surely she had not gone there ?
Two or three of the bells were still clanging, but with abated enthusiasm; from the dimly lighted plat- form, greyish-white in the ghostly flicker of the oil- lamps, the crowd of hungry passengers was ebbing swiftly in its quest of food and drink; a last half-hearted bawling of the virtue to be found in the “ hot steak an’ liver’n bacor “he Queen Alexandry” gave way to a comforting s; a silence broken only by a growing clatter of dishus, the subdued wheezing of the engines, and the raucous voice of a trainman telling the baggage- man that the hump between his shoulders was not a head but a knot kindly tied there by his Creator to keep him from unravelling. Even the Promise of a fight—at least, of a blow or two delivered in the grey gloom of the baggage-man’s door, did not turn David from his quest. When he returned a few minutes later two or three sympathetic friends were nursing the baggage- man back into consciousness. He was about to pass the group when someone gripped his arm, and a familiar and joyous chuckle sounded in his ear. Father Roland stood beside him.
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
‘Dear Father in Heaven, but it was a turrible blow, David!’’ cried the little missiorer, his face dancing in the flare of the baggage-room lamps. “It was a tremenjous blow—straight out from his shoulder like a battering-ram, and hard as rock! It put him to sleep like a baby. Did you see it?”
“I didn’t,” said David, staring at the other in amazement.
“He deserved it,” explained Father Roland. “I love to see a good clean blow when it’s delivered in the right, David. I’ve seen the times when a hard fist was worth more than a preacher and his prayer.” He was chuckling delightedly as they turned back to the train. “The baggage is arranged for,” he added. “They'll put us off together at the Frenchman’s.”
David had slipped the thin packet into his pocket. He no longer felt so keenly the desire to tell Father Rolar * about the woman—at least, not at the present time. His quest had been futile. The woman had dis- appeared as completely as though she had actually floated away into that pit of darkness beyond the far end of the platrorm. He had drawn but one conclusion. This place—Graham—-was her home; undoubtedly friends had been at the station to meet her; even now she might be telling them, or a husband, or a grown-up son, of the strange fellow who had stared at her in such a curious fashion. Disappointment in not finding her had brought a reaction. He had an inward and un- comfortable feeling .f having been very silly, and of having allowed his imagination to get the better of his common-sense. He had persuaded himself to believe that she had been in very great distress. He had acted honestly and with chivalrous intention. And yet, after
34
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At Thoreau’s
what had passed between him and Father Roland in the smoking compartment, and in view of his failure to establish a proof of his own convictions, he was de- termined to keep this particular event of the night to himself.
A loud voice began to announce that the moment of departure had arrived, and as the passengers began scrambling back into their coaches Father Roland ted the way to the baggage car.
“They’re going to let us ride with the dunnage so there won’t be any mistake or time lost when we get to Thoreau’s,” he said.
They climbed up into the warm and lighted car, and after the baggage man in charge had given them a sour nod of recognition the first thing that David noticed was his own and Father Roland’s Property stacked up near the door. His own belongings were a steamer trunk and two black morocco bags, while Father Roland’s Share of the pile consisted most’, of boxes and bulging gunny-sacks that must have weighed close to half a ton. Near the pile was a Pair of scales, shoved back against the wall of the car. David laughed queerly as he nodded toward them. They gave him a rather Satisfy- ing inspiration. With them he could prove the incon- gruity of the Partnership that had already begun to exist between him and the missioner. He weighed him- self, with Father Roland looking on. The scales balanced at a hundred and thirty-two.
“And I’m five feet nine in height,” he said dis- gustedly. “It should be a hundred and sixty. You See where I’m at!”
“T knew a two-hunded-pound Pig once that worried himself down to ninety because the man who kept the
35
The Girl Beyond the Trail
pig also kept skunks,” replied Father Roland with his odd chuckle. ‘Next to smallpox and a bullet througt your heart worry is about the blackest, man-killingest thing on earth, David. See that bag?”
He pointed to one of the bulging gunny-sacks.
“That’s the antidote,” he said. “It’s the best medicine I know of in the grub line for a man who’s lost his grip. There’s the makings of three men in that sack.”
“What is it?” asked David curiously.
The missioner bent over to examine a card attached to the neck of the bag.
“To be perfectly accurate it contains a hundred and ten pounds of beans,” he answered.
“Beans! Great heaven! I loathe them!”
“So do most down-and-outs,” affirmed Father Ro- land cheerfully. “That’s one reason for the peculiar psychological value of beans. They begin to tell you when you’re getting weaned away from a lobster palate and a stuffed-crab stomach, and when you get to the point where you want ’em on your regular bill of fare you'll find more fun in chopping down a tree than in going to a grand opera. But the beans must be cooked right, David—browned like a nut, juicy to the heart of ‘em, and seasoned alongside a broiling duck or partridge, or a tender rabbit. Ah!”
The little missioner rubbed his hands ecstatically.
David’s rejoinder, if one was on his lips, was in- terrupted by a violent cursing. The train was well under way, and the baggage-master had sat down at a small table with his back toward them. He had leaped to his feet now, his face furious, and with another de- moniac curse he gave the coal-scuttle a kick that sent it
36
At Thoreau’s
with a bang to the far end of the car. The table was littered with playing cards.
“Damn ’em—they beat me this time in ten plays!” he yelled. “They’ve got the devil in ’em! If they was alive I’d jump on ‘xm! I’ve played this game of solitaire for nineteen years—I’ve played a million games —an’ damned if I ever got beat in my life as it’s beat me since we left Halifax!”
“Dear Heaven!” gasped Father Roland. “Have you been playing all the way from Halifax ?”
The solitaire-fiend seemed not to hear, and resuming his seat with a low and ominous muttering, he dealt himself another hand. In less than a minute he was on his feet again, shaking the cards angrily under the little missioner’s nose as though that individual was entirely accountable for his bad luck.
“Look at that accursed trey o’ hearts!” he de- manded. “First card, ain’t it? First card! an’ if it had been the third ’r the sixth ’r the ninth ’r anything except that confounded Number One I’d have slipped the game up my sleeve. Ain’t it enough to wrack any honest man’s soul? I ask you—ain’t it?”
“Why don’t you charge the trey of hearts to the place that suits you?” asked David innocently. “It seems to me it would be very easy to move it to third place in the deck if you want it there.”
The baggage-man’s bulging eyes seemed ready to pop as he stared at David, and when he saw that David really meant what he had said a look of unutterable dis- gust spread over his countenance. Then he grinned— a sickly and malicious sort of grin.
“Say, mister, you’ve never piayed solitaire, have you?” he asked.
37
The Girl Beyond the Trail
“Never,” confessed David.
Without another word the baggage-man hunched himself over his table, dealt himself another hand, and not until the train began slowing up for Thoreau’s place did he rise from his seat or cease his low mutterings and g umblings. In response to the engineer’s whistle he jumped to his feet and rolled back the car door.
“Now step tively!” he commanded. “ We've got no orders to stop her, and we’ll have to dump this stuff out on the move!”
As he spoke he gave the hundred and ten pounds of beans a heave out into the night. Father Roland jumped to his assistance, and David saw his steamer trunk and his handbags follow the beans.
“The snow is soft and deep an’ there won’t be any harm done,” Father Roland assured him as he tossed out a fifty-pound box of prunes.
David heard sounds now—a man’s shout, a fiendish tonguing of dogs, and above that a steady chorus of yapping, which he guessed came from the foxes. Sud- denly a lantern gleamed, then a second and a third, and a dark, bearded face—a fierce and piratical-looking face— began running along outside the door. The last box and the last bag went off, and with a sudden moverient the trainman hauled David to the door.
“Jump!” he cried.
The face and the lantern had fallen behind, and it was as black as an abyss outside. With a mute prayer David launched himself much as he had seen the bags and the boxes sent out. He fell with a thud in a soft blanket of snow. He looked up in time to see the little missioner flying out like a curious gargoyle through the door; the baggage-man’s lantern waved, the engineer’s
38
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At Thoreau’s
whistle gave a responding screech, and the train whirred past. Not until the tail-light of the last coach was receding like a great red firefly in the gloom did David get up. Father Roland was on his feet, and down the track came two of the three lanterns on the run.
It was all unusually weird and strangely interesting to David. He was breathing deeply. There was a warmth in his bedy which was new to him. It struck him all at once, as he heard Father Roland crunching through the snow, that he was experiencing an entirely new phase of life—a life he had read about at times and dreamed of at other times, but which he had never come physically in contact with. The yapping of the foxes, the crying of the dogs, those lanterns hurrying down the track, the blackness of the night, and the strong perfume of balsam in the cold air—an odour that he breathed deep into his lungs like the fumes of an ex- hilarating drink—quickened sharply a pulse that a few hours before he thought was almost lifeless. He had no time to ask himself whether he was enjoying these new sensations; he felt only the thrill of them as Thoreau and the Indian came up out of the night with their lanterns. In Thoreau himself, as he stood a moment later in the glow of the lanterns, was embodied the living, breathing spirit of this new world into which David's leap out of the baggage car had plunged him. He was picturesquely of the wild, his face darkly bearded, his ivory-white teeth shining as he smiled a welcome, his tri-coloured Hudson’s Bay coat of wool, with its frivolous red fringes thrown open at the throat, the bushy tail of his fisher-skin cap hanging over a shoulder—and with these things his voice rattling forth in French and half Indian his joy that Father Roland
39
The Girl Beyond the Trail
was not dead, but had arrived at last. Behind him Stood the Indian, without a mobile expression, dark, Shrouded, a bronze sphinx of mystery. But his eyes shone as the little missioner greeted him—shone so darkly and so full of ‘re that for a moment David was fascinated by them. Then he was introduced.
“IT am happy to meet you, m’sieu,” said the French- man. His race was softly polite, even in the forests, and Thoreau’s voice, now mildly subdued, came Strangely from the bearded wildness of his face. The grip of his hand was like Father Roland’s—something David had never felt among his friends back in the city. He winced in the darkness, and for a long time after- ward his fingers tingled.
It was then that David made his first break in the etiquette of ‘= forests—a fortunate one, as time proved. He did rot ow that shaking hands with an Indian was a matter of some formality, and so when Father Roland said, “This is Mukoki, who has been with me for many years,” David thrust out his fist. Mukoki looked him straight in the eyes for a moment, and then his blanket-coat parted and his slim, dark hand reached out. Having received his lesson from both the mis- sioner and the Frenchman, David put into his grip all the strength that was in him—the warmest hand-shake Mukoki had ever received in his life from a white man, with the exception of his master the missioner.
The next thing David heard was Father Rx land’s voice inquiring eagerly about supper. Thoreau’s reply was in French.
“He says the cabin is like the inside of a great roast duck,” chuckled the missioner. “Come, David! We'll leave Mukoki to gather up our freight.”
40
At Thoreau’s
A short walk up the track, and David saw the cabin. It was back in the shelter of the black Spruce and balsam, its two windows that faced ...e railroad warmly illumined by the light inside. The foxes had ceased their yapping, but the snarling and howling of dogs became more bloodthirsty as they drew nearer, and David could hear an ominous clinking of chains and snapping of teeth. A few steps more and they were at the door. Thoreau himself opened it, and stood back.
“Aprés vous, m’sieu,” he saic, his white teeth shin- ing at David. “It would give me bad luck, and pos- sibly all of my foxes would die, if I went into my house ahead of a stranger.”
David went in. An Indian woman Stood with her back to him, bending over a table. She was as slim as a reed, and had the longest and sleckest black hair he had ever seen, done in two heavy braids that hung down her back. In another moment she had turned her round brown face, and her teeth and eyes were shining, but she spoke no word. Thoreau did not introduce his wild-flower wife. He had opened his cabin door, and had let David enter before him, which was accepting him as a friend in his home, and therefore, in his under- standing of things, an introduction was unnecessary and out of place. Father Roland chuckled, rubbed his hands briskly, and said something to the woman in her own language that made her giggle shyly. It was contagious. David smiled. Father Roland’s face was crinkled with little ines cf joy. The Frenchman’s teeth gleamed. In the big cook-stove the fire snapped and crackled and Popped. ™farie opened the stove door to put in more wood, and her face shone rosy and her teeth were like milk in the fire-flash. Thoreau went to
41
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snaerateeercaget econ aettietpete ———
coat teiabe tenn
rib on vera prngat ee Ee ~ — s petiliedidids teitethneah ussite eee ieee ttpeuE eet greener ra
The Girl Beyond the Trail
her and laid a big, heavy hand fondly on her sleek head, and said something in soft Cree that brought another giggle into Marie’s throat, like the curious notes of a bird.
In David there was a slow and wonderful awaken- ing. Every fibre of him was stirred by the cheer of this cabin builded from logs rough-hewn out of the forest; his body, weakened by the months of mental and physical anguish which had been his burden, seemed filled with a new strength. Unconsciously he was smil- ing, and his soul was rising up out of its dark prison as he saw Thoreau’s big hand stroking Marie’s shining hair. He was watching Thoreau when, at a word from Marie, the Frenchman suddenly swung open the oven door and pulled forth a huge roasting-pan.
At sight of the pan Father Roland gave a joyous cry, and he rubbed his hands so briskly that a little shiver ran up David’s back. They had smelled the rich aroma of that pan; a delicious whiff of it had struck their nostrils even before the cabin door had opened—that and a perfume of coffee; but not until now did the fragrance of the oven and the pan smite them with all of its potency.
“Mallards fattened on wild rice, and a rabbit—my favourite—a rabbit roasted with an onion where his heart was, and well peppered!” gloated the little mis- sioner. ‘Dear Heaven, was there ever such a mess to put strength into a man’s gizzard, David? And coffee! —this coffee of Marie’s! It is more than ambrosia. It is an elixir which transforms a cup into a fountain of youth. Take off your coat, David—take off your coat and make yourself at home!”
And as David stripped off his coat, and foilowed that
42
sleek ught rious
aken- er of f the l and emed smil- on as ining from oven
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- his mis- ss to ffee ! i oa in of coat
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At Thoreau’s
with his collar and tie, he thought of his steamer trunk with its tuxedo and full dress, its piqué shirts and poke collars, its suéde gloves and kid-topped patent leathers— and he felt the tips of his ears beginning to burn. He was sorry now that he had given the missioner the check
to that trunk.
A minute later he was sousing his face in a big tin wash-basin, and then drying it on a towel that had once been a burlaps bag. But he had noticed that it was clean—as clean as the pi~'-flushed face of Marie. And the Frenchman himseli ~ h all of his hair, and his beard, and his rougi-we .. clothing, was as clean as the burlaps towelling. seing a stranger suddenly plunged into a life entirely new to him, these things impressed themselves upon David.
When they sat down to the table—Thoreau sitting for company, and Marie standing behind them—he was at a loss at first to know how to begin. His plate was of tin and a foot in diameter, and on it was a three-pound mallard duck dripping with juice and as brown as a ripe hazel-nut. He made a business of arranging his sleeves and drinking a glass of water while he watched the famished little missioner. With a chuckle of de- light Father Roland plunged the tines of his fork hilt- deep into the breast of the duck, seized a leg in his fingers, and dismembered the luscious anatomy on his plate with a deft twist and a sudden pull. With his teeth buried in the leg he !ooked across at David. David had eaten duck before ; that is, he had eaten of the family Anas boschas disguised in thick gravies and high- brow sauces, but this duck that he ate at Thoreau’s table was like no other duck that he had ever tasted in all his life. He began with misgiving at the three-
- 43
a ae
2 The Girl Beyond the Trai!
pound carcass, and he ended with an entirely new feeling of stuffed satisfaction. He explored at will into its structure, and he found succulent morsels which he had never dreamed of as existing in this particular vird, for his experience had never before gone beyond lez of duck and thinly carved slices of breast of duck, at from eighty cents to a dollar and a quarter an order. Ile would have been ashamed of himself when he finished had it not been that Father Roland seemed only at the begin- ning when he was done, and was turning the vigour of his attack from duck to rabbit and onion. From then on David kept him company by drinking a third cup of coffee.
When he was finally done Father Roland settled back with a sigh of content, and drew a worn buckskin pouch from one of the voluminous pockets of his trousers. Out of this he produced a black pipe and tobacco. At the same time Thoreau was filling and lighting his own. In his studies and late-hour work at home David himself had been a pipe-smoker, but of late his pipe had been distasteful to him, and it had been many weeks since he had indulged in anything but cigars and an occasional cigarette. He looked at the placid satisfaction in the little missioner’s face, and saw Thoreau’s head wreathed in smoke, and he felt. for the first time in those weeks the return of his old desire. While they were eating, Mukoki and another Indian had brought in his trunk and bags, and he went now to one of the bags, opened it, and got his own pipe and tobacco. As he stuffed the bowl of his English brier, and lighted the tobacco, Father Roland’s glowing face beamed at him through the fragrant fumes of his Hudson’s Bay Mixture. Against the wall, a little in
44
At "Fhovea’s
shadow, so that she would not be a part of their company or whatever conversation they might have, Marie had seated herself, her round chin in the cup of her brown hand, her dark eyes shining at this comfort and satis- faction of men. Such scenes as this amply repaid her for all her toil in life. She was happy. ‘There was content in this cabin. David felt it. It impinged itself upon him, and through him, ina strange and mysterious way. Within these log walls he felt the presence of that spirit—the joy of companionship and of life—which had so terribly eluded and escaped him in his own home of wealth and luxury. He heard Marie speak only once that night—once in a low, soft voice to Thoreau. She was silent with the silence of the Cree wife in the presence of a stranger, but he knew that her heart was throbbing with the swift pulse of happiness, and for Some reason he was glad when Thoreau nodded proudly toward a closed door and let him know that she was amother. Marie heard him, and in that moment David caught in her face a look that made his heart ache—a look which should have been a part of his own life, and which he had missed.
A little later Thoreau led the way into the room which David was to occupy for the night. It was a small room, with a sapling partition between it and the One in which the missioner was to sleep. The fox- breeder placed a lamp on a table near the bed, and bade David good night.
» It was past two o’clock, and yet David felt at the Present moment no desire for sleep. After he had taken Off his shoes and partially undressed, he sat on the edge of his bed and allowed his mind to sweep back over the €¥ents of the past few hours. Again he thought of the a 45
Peis ae tee
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PL LOA TL NS EE IPED DA EAE Ree TT keto a at bh uh ARCA. eins ERRATUM MPR £22344 AD ESET RERRITE
The Girl Beyond the Trail
woman in the train—the woman with those wonderful dark eyes and haunting face, and he drew forth from his coat pocket the package which she had forgotten. He handled it curiously. He looked at the red string, noted how tightly the knot was tied, and turned it over and over in his hands before he snapped the cord. He was a little ashamed at his eagerness to know what was within its worn newspaper wrapping. He felt the dis- grace of his curiosity, even though he assured himself there was no reason why he should not investigate the package now, when all ownership was lost. He knew that he would never see the woman again, and that she would always remain a mystery to him, unless what he held in his hands revealed the secret of her identity.
A half minute more and he was leaning over in the full light of the lamp, his two hands clutching the thing which the paper had disclosed when it dropped to the floor—his eyes staring, his lips parted, and his heart seeming to stand still in the utter amazement of that moment !
46
‘ul 1iS te ed nd as as is- elf he ew he he
the ng the art hat
CHAPTER V THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPH Davin held in his hands a photograph—the picture of
a girl. He had half guessed what he would find when he began to unfold the wrapping and saw the edge
_ Of grey cardboard. In that same breath had come
his astonishment—a surprise that was almost a shock. The night had been tilled with Strange c’ anges for him; forces which he had not yet begun to com- prehend had drawn him into the beginning of a mys- terious adventure; they had purged his thoughts of himself; they had forced upon him other things, other people, and a glimpse or two of anvther sort of life—he had seen tragedy and happiness, a bit of something to laugh at, and he had felt the thrill of sudden changes. A few hours had made him the bewildered and yet Passive object of the unexpected And now, as he sat alone on the edge of his bed, had come the climax of that unexpected.
The girl in the picture was not dead—not merely a lifeless shadow put there by the art of a camera. She was alive! That was his first thought, his first impres- sion. It was as if he had come upon her suddenly, and by his presence had startled her, had made her face him squarely, tensely, a little frightened, and yet defiant —and ready for flight. In that first moment he would not have disbelieved his eyes if she had moved, if she
had drawn away from him, and had disappeared out of
47
The Girl Beyond the Trail
the picture with the swiftness of a bird. For he—some- one—had startled her; someone had made her afraid, and yet defiant; someone had roused in her that bird-like impulse of flight even as the camera had clicked.
He bent closer into the lamp-glow, and stared. The girl was standing on a flat slab of rock close to the edge of a pool. Behind her was a carpet of white sand, and beyond that a rock-cluttered gorge and the side of a mountain. She was barefooted. Her feet were white against the dark rock. Her arms were bare to the elbows, and shone with that same whiteness. He took these things in, one by one, as if it was impossible for the picture to impress itself upon him all at once. She stood leaning a little forward on the rock-slab, her dress only a little below her knees, and as she leaned thus, her eyes flashing and her lips parted, the wind had flung a wonderful disarray of curls over her shoulders and breast. He saw the sunlight in them; in the lamp-glow they seemed to move; ihe throb of her breast seemed to give them life; one hand seemed about to fling them back from her face, her lips quivered as if about to speak to him. Against that savage background of mountain and gorge she stood out clear-cut as a cameo, slender as a reed; wild, palpitating, beautiful. She was more than a picture. She was Life. She was there—with David in his room—as surely as the woman had been with him in the train.
He drew a deep breath, and sat back on the edge of his bed. He heard Father Roland getting into his creaky bed in the adjoining room. Then came the missioner’s voice :
“Good night, David.”
48
The Girl in the Photograph
“Good night, father.”
For a space after that he sat staring blankly at the log wall of his room. Then he leaned over again and held the photograph a second time in the lamp-glow. The first strange spell of the picture was broken, and he looked at it more coolly, more critically, a little disgusted with himself for having allowed his imagination to play a trick upon him. He turned it over in his hands, and on the back of the cardboard mount he saw there had been writing. He examined it closely, and made out faintly the words, “Firepan Creek, Stikine River, August »” and the date was gone. That was all. There was no name, no word that might give him a clue as to the identity of the mysterious woman of the train or her relationship to the strange picture she had left in her seat when she disappeared at Graham.
Once more his puzzled eyes tried to find some solu- tion to the mystery of this night in the picture of the girl herself, and as he looked, question after question pounded through his head. What had startled her? Who had frightened her? What had brought that hunted look—that half-defiance into her poise and eyes— just as he had seen the strange questing and suppressed fear in the eyes and face of the woman in the train? He made no effort to answer, but accepted the visual facts as they came to him. She was young—the girl in the picture ; almost a child, as he regarded childhood. Perhaps seventeen, or a month or two older; he was curiously precise in adding that month or two. Some- thing in the woman of her as she stood on the rock made it occur to him as a necessity. He saw, now, that she had been wading in the pool, for she had dropped
- a Stocking on the white sand, and near it lay an object
49
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aman
ae ae
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
that was a shoe or a moccasin, he could not make out which. It was while she had been wading alone that the interruption had come; she had turned, she had sprung to the flat rock, her hands a little clenched, her eyes flashing, her breast panting under the smother of her hair; and it was in this moment, as she had stood ready to fight—or fly—that the camera had caught her. As he saw this picture, as it lived before his eyes, a faint smile played over his lips, a smile in which there was little humour and much irony. He had been a fool that day, twice a fool, perhaps three times a fool. Nothing but folly, a diseased conception of things, could have made him see tragedy in the face of the woman in the train, or have induced him to follow her. Sleeplessness, a mental exhaustion to which his body had not responded in two days and two nights, had dulled his senses and his reason. He felt an unpleasant desire to laugh at himself. Tragedy! A woman in distress! He shrugged his shoulders, and his teeth gleamed in a cold smile at the girl in the picture. Surely there was no tragedy or mystery in her poise on that rock! She had been bathing, alone, hidden away as she thought; someone had crept up, had disturbed her, and the camera had clicked at that psychological mo- ment of her bird-like poise when she was not yet decided whether to turn in flight or remain and punish the intruder with her anger. It was quite clear to him. Any girl, caught in that same way, might have be- trayed the same emotions. But—Firepan Creek—Stikine River. . . . And she was wild. . . . She was a creature of those mountains and that wild gorge, wherever they were—and beautiful—slender as a flower—lovelier than——
50
The Girl in the Photograph
David set his lips tight. They shut off a quick breath, a gasp, the sharp surge of a sudden pain. Swift as his thoughts there had come a transformation in the picture before his eyes, a drawing of a curtain over it, like a golden veil; and then she was standing there, and the gold had gathered about her in the wonderful mantle of her hair; shining hair—dishevelled hair—a bare white arm thrust upward through its sheen, and her face—taunting, unafraid, laughing at him! Good God, could he never kill that memory? Was it upon him again to-night, clutching at his throat, stifling his heart, grinding him into the agony he could not fight— that vision of her—his wife? That girl on her rock—so like a slender flower! That woman in her room—so like a golden goddess! Both caught—unexpectedly ! What devil-spirit had mace him pick up this picture from the woman’s seat? What——
His fingers tightened upon the photograph, ready to tear it into bits. The cardboard ripped—an inch—and he stopped suddenly his impulse to destroy. The girl was looking at him again from oui of the picture—look- ing at him with clear, wide eyes, Surprised at his weak- ness, startled by the fierceness of his assault upon her, wondering, amazed, questioning him! For the first time he saw what he had missed before—that question- ing in her eyes. It was as if she was on the point of asking him something—as if her voice had just come from between her parted lips, or was about to come. And for him; that was it—for him!
His fingers relaxed. He smoothed down the torn edge of the cardboard as if it had been a wound in his own flesh. After all, this inanimate thing was very much like himself. It was lost—a thing out of place
§!I
The Girl Beyond the Trail
and out of home; a wanderer from now on, depending largely, like himself, on the charity of fate. Almost gently he returned it to its newspaper wrapping. Deep in him there was a sentiment which nothing would be able to kill; a sentiment which made him cherish little things which had belonged to the past-—a faded ribbon, a withered flower that she had worn on the night they were married; and memories—memories that he might better have let droop and die. Some- thing of this spirit was in the touch of his fingers as he placed the photograph on the table.
He undressed quietly. Before he turned in he placed a hand to his head. It was hot, feverish. This was not unusual, and it did not alarm him. Quite often of late these hot and feverich spells had come upon him, ; nearly always at night. Usuall: they were followed the next day by a terrific headache. More and more frequently they had been warning him how nearly down and out he was, and he knew whe ‘> expect. He put out his light and stretched himself between the warm blankets of his bed, knowing that he was about to begin again the fight he dreaded—the struggle that always came at night with the demon that lived within him, the demon that was feeding on his life as a leech feeds on blood, the demon that was killing him inch by inch. Nerves tremendously unstrung! Nerves flayed and broken until they were bleeding! Worry—emptiness of heart and soul—a world turned black! And all because of her—the golden goddess who had laughed at him in her room, whose laughter would never die out of his ears. He gritted his teeth; his hands clenched under his blankets; a surge of anger swept through him—for an instant it was almost hatred. Was it possible that
52
mit - SP OW S DS
“TN 'lULhhlUlUr CUD
The Girl in the Photograph
she—that woman who had been his wife—could chain him now, enslave his thoughts, fi:: his mind, his brain, his body after what had happened? Why was it that he could not:rise up and laugu, and shrug his shoulders, and thank his God that, after all, there had been no children? Why couldn’t he do that? Why? Why?
A long time afterward he seemed to be asking that question. He seemed to be crying it out aloud, over and over again, in a strange and mysterious wilderness ; and at last he seemed to be very near to a girl who was standing waiting for him on a rock—a girl who bent toward him like a wonderful flower, her arms reaching out, her lips parted, her eyes shining through the glory of her wind-swept hair as she listened to his cry of Why? Why?
He slept. It was a deep, cool sleep; a slumber beside a shadowed pool, with the wind whispering gently in sirange tree-tops, and water rippling softly in a strange stream.
CHAPTER VI DAVID’S VICTORY
SUNSHINE followed storm. The winter sun was cresting the tree-tops in a cheering radiance when Thoreau got out of his bed to build a fire in the big stove. It was nine o'clock, and bitter cold. The frost lay thick upon the windows, with the sun staining it like the silver and gold of old cathedral glass, and as the fox breeder opened the cabin door to look at his thermometer he heard the snap and the crack of that cold in the trees outside and in the timber of the log walls. He always looked at the thermometer before he built his fire—a fixed habit in him; he wanted to know, first of all, if it had been a good night for his foxes and if it had been too cold for the furred creatures of the forests to travel. Fifty degrees below zero was bad for fisher and »>rten and lynx; on such nights they preferred the wa:-uth of snug holes and deep windfalls to full stomachs, and his traps were usually empty. This morning it was forty- seven degrees below zero. Cold enough! He turned, closed the door, shivered. Then he stopped half-way to the stove and stared.
Last night, or rather in that black part of the early day when they ‘ad gone to bed, Father Roland had warned him to make no noise in the morning; that they would let David sleep until noon; that he was sick, worn out, and needed rest. And there he stood now in the doorway of his room, even before the fire was
54
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David’s Victory
Started—five years younger than he looked last night, nodding cheerfully.
Thoreau grinned.
“Boo-jou, m’sieu,” he said in his Cree-French. “My order was to make no noise and let you sleep,” and he nodded toward the missioner’s room.
“The sun woke me,” said David. “Come here. I want you to see it!”
Thoreau went and stood beside him, and David pointed to the one window of his room, which faced the rising sun. This window, too, was covered with frost, and this frost as they looked at it was like a golden fire.
“I think that was what woke me,” he said, “at least, my eyes were on it when I opened them. It is wonderful ! ”
“It is very cold, and the frost is thick,” said Thoreau. “It will go quickly after I have built the fire, m’sieu. And then you will see the sun—the real sun.”
David watched him as he built the fire. The first crackling of it sent a comfort through him. He had slept well, so soundly that not once had he roused him- self during his six hours in bed. It was the first time he had slept like that for months. His blood tingled with a new warmth. He had no headache. There was not that dull pain behind his eyes. He breathed easier, the air passed like a tonic into his lungs. It was as if those wonderful hours of sleep had wrested some deadly obstruction out of his veins. The fire crackled. It roared up the big chimney. The jack-pine knots, heavy with pitch, gave to the top of the stove a rosy glow. Thoreau stuffed more fuel into the blazing firepot, and the glow spread cheerfully, and with the warmth that was filling the cabin there mingled the sweet scent of
55
The Girl Beyond the Trail
pine-pitch and burning balsam. David rubbed his hands. He was rubbing them when Marie came into the room, plaiting the second of her two thick ropes of shining black hair. He nodded. Marie smiled, show-
ing her white tect, her dark eyes clear as a fawn’s. He felt in him a strange rejoicing—for Thoreau. Thoreau was a lucky man. [1+ could see proof of it in the Cree
woman’s face. Boih were luctv. They were happy— a man and woman together, a5 iings should be. Thoreau had broken te ice in a pail, and now he filled the wash-basin for him. Ice water for his morn- ing ablution was a new thing to David. But he plunged his face into it recklessly. Little particles of ice pricked his skin, and the chill of the water seemed to sink into his vitals. It was a sudden change from water as hot as he could stand to this. His teeth clicked as he wiped himself on the burlaps towelling. Marie used the basin next, and then Thoreau. When Marie had dried her face he noticed the old-rose flush in her cheeks, the fire of rich red blood glowing under her dark skin. Thoreau himself blubbered and spouted in his ice-water bath like a joyous porpoise, and he rubbed himself on the burlaps until the two apple-red spots above his heard shone like the glow that had spread over the top of the stove. David found himself noticing these things, very small things, as they were; he discovered himself taking a sudden and curious interest in events and things of no importance at all, even in the quick, deft slashes of the Frenchman’s long knife as he cut up the huge white fish that was to be their breakfast. He watched Marie as she wallowed the thick slices in yellow corn-meal, and listened to the first hissing sputter of them as they were dropped into the hot grease of the 56
iS
ways element
David’s Victory
skillet. And the odour of fish taken only yesterday from the net which Thoreau kept in the frozen lake made him hungry. This was unusual. It was as unexpected as other things that had happened. It puzzled him.
He returned to his room, with a suspicion in his mind that he should put on a collar and tie and his coat. He changed his mind when he saw the photograph in its newspaper wrapping on the table. In another mo- ment it was in his hands. Now, with day in the room, and the sun shining, he expected to see a change. But there was no change in her; she was there, as he had left her last night; the question was in her eyes, un- spoken words still on her lips. Then, suddenly, it swept upon him where he had been in those first hours of peaceful slumber that had come to him—beside a quiet, dark pool—gently whispering forests about him— an angel standing close to him, on a rock, shrouded in her hair, watching over him! A thrill passed throuch him. Was it possible? He did not finish the question. He could not bring himself to ask if this picture—some
_ Strange spirit it might possess—had reached out to him,
quieted him, made him sleep, brought him dreams that were like a healing medicine. And yet
He remembered that in one of his leather } igs there was a magnifying glass, and he assured himself that he was merely curious—most casually curio. .—as he hunted it out from among his belongings ard scanned the almost illegible writing on the bac’: of the cardboard
- mount. He made out the date quite easily now, im-
pressed in the cardboard by the point of a pencil. It was only a little more than a year old. ‘t was un-
_ accountable why this discovery should fe ¢ iim as it
57
The Girl Beyond the Trail
did. He made no effort to measure or sound the satis- faction it gave him—this knowledge that the girl had stood so recently on that rock beside the pool. He was beginning to personalise her unconsciously, beginning to think of her mentally as “the Girl.” She was a bit friendly. With her looking at him like that he did not feel quite so alone with himself, and there could not be much of a change in her since that yesterday of a year ago, when someone had startled her there.
It was Father Roland’s voice that made him wrap up the picture again, this time not in its old newspaper covering, but in a silk handkerchief which he had pawed out of his bag, and which he dropped back again and locked in. Thoreau was telling the missioner about David’s early rising when the latter reappeared. They shook hands, and the missioner, looking David keenly in the eyes, saw the change in him.
“No need to tell me you had a good night!” he exclaimed.
“Splendid,” affirmed David.
The window was blazing with the golden sun now; it shot through where the frost was giving way, and a ray of it fell like a fiery shaft on Marie’s glossy head as she bent over the table. Father Roland pointed to the window, with one hand on David’s arm.
“Wait until you get out into that,” he said. “This is just the beginning, David—just the beginning !”
They sat down to breakfast, fish and coffee, bread and potatoes—and beans. It was almost finished when David split open his third piece of fish, white as snow under its crisp brown, and asked quite casually :
“Did you ever hear of the Stikine River, father?”
Father Roland sat up, stopped his eating, and looked
58
David’s Victory
at David for a moment as though the question struck an unusual personal interest in him.
“I know a man who lived for a great many years along the Stikine,” he replied then. “He knows every mile of it from where it empties into the sea at Point Rothshay to the Lost Country between Mount Finlay and the Sheep Mountains. It’s in the northern part of British Columbia, with its upper waters reaching up into the Yukon. A wild country. A country less known than it was sixty years ago, when there was a gold rush up over the old Telegraph Trail. Tavish has told me a lot about it. A queer man, this Tavish. We hit his cabin on our way to God’s Lake.”
“Did he ever tell you,” said David, with an odd quiver in his throat, “did he ever tell you of a stream, a tributary stream, called Firepan Creek ? ””
“Firepan Creek—Firepan Creek?” mumbled the little missioner. “He has told mea great many things
_ --this Tavish, but I can’t remember that. Firepan
Creek! Yes, he did! [| remember, now. He had a cabin on it one year, the year he had smallpox. He almost died there. I want you to meet Tavish, David. We will stay over-night at his cabin. He is a Strange character—a great object lesson.” Suddenly he came back to David’s question, “What do you want to _ know about the Stikine River and Firepan Creek?”
“T was reading Something about them that interested
' $ + me,” replied David. “A very wild country, I take it, :
from what Tavish has told you. Probably no white _ People.”
“ Always, everywhere, there are white people,” said
2 Father Roland. “Tavish is white, and he was there.
E 59
The Girl Beyond the Trail
Sixty years ago, in the gold rush, there must have been many. But I fancy there are very few now. Tavish can tell us. He came from there only a year ago this last September.”
David asked no more questions. He turned his attention entirely to his fish. In that same moment there came an outburst from the foxes that made Thoreau grin. Their yapping rose until it was a clamorous demand. Then the dogs joined in. To David it seemed as though there must be a thousand foxes out in the Frenchman’s pens, and at least a hundred dogs just beyond the cabin walls. The sound was blood-curdling in a way. He had heard nothing like it before in all his life; it almost made one shiver to think of going outside. The chorus kept up for fully a minute. Then it began to die out, and David could hear the chill clink of chains. Through it all Thoreau was grinning.
“It’s two hours over feeding time for the foxes, and they know it, m’sieu,” he explained to David. “Their outcry excites the huskies, and when the two go it to- gether—mon Dieu! it is enough to raise the dead.” He pushed himself back from the table and rose to his feet. “I am going to feed them now. Would you like to see it, m’sieu ?”
Father Roland answered for him.
“Give us ten minutes, and we will be ready,” he said, seizing David by the arm and speaking to Thoreau. ‘‘Come with me, David. I have something waiting for you.”
They went into the little missioner’s room, and, pointing to his tumbled bed, Father Roland said:
“Now, David, strip! ”
David had noticed with some concern the garments
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vie worn that morning by Father Roland and the French- rish man—their thick woollen shirts, their Strange-looking this
heavy trousers that were met just below the knees by ; the tops of bulky German socks, turned over as he had his worn his more fashionable hosiery in the college days
1ent when golf suits, bulldog pipes and white terriers were eau the rage. He had stared furtively at Thoreau’s great ous
feet in their moose-hide moccasins, thinking of his own dit _ Vici-kids, the heaviest footwear he had brought with
it in him. The problem of outfitting was solved for him just now, as he looked at the bed, and as Father Roland ling withdrew, rubbing his hands until they cracked, David 1 all began undressing. In less than a quarter of an hour ing he was ready for the big outdoors. When the mis- ‘hen sioner returned to give him a first lesson in properly link “stringing up” his moccasins, he brought with him a fur cap very similar to that worn by Thoreau. He was and amazed to find how perfectly it fitted. ‘heir “You see,” said Father Roland, pleased at David's t to- wonder, “I always take back a bale of this stuff with ad.” me, of different sizes ; it comes in handy, you know. » his And the cap——” like He chuckled as David Surveyed as much as he could see of himself in a small mirror. “The cap is Marie's work,” he finished. “She got ” he the size from your own hat, and made it while we were x to asleep. A fine fisher-cat that—Thoreau’s best. And hing a good fit, eh?” “ Marie—did this—for me?” demanded David. and, The missioner nodded.
“And the pay, father——_”
“Among friends of the forests, rents =f pay.”
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“But this skin! It is beautiful—valuable——”
“ And it is yours,” said Father Roland. “Iam glad you mentioned payment to me, and not to Thoreau or Marie. They might not have understood, and it would have hurt them. If there had been anything to pay, they would have mentioned it in the giving; I would have mentioned it. That is a fine point of etiquette, isn't it?”
Slowly there came a look into David’s face which the other did not at first understand. After a moment he said, without looking at the missioner, and in a voice that had a curiously hard note in it:
“But for this Marie will let me give her something in return—a little something I have no use for now? A little gift—my thanks—my friendship——”
He did not wait for the missioner’s reply, but went to one of his two leather bags. With a key he unlocked the bag in which he had placed the photograph of the girl. Out of it he took a small plush box. It was so small that it lay in the palm of his hand as he held it out to Father Roland.
Deeper lines had gathered about his mouth.
“Give this to Marie for me.”
Father Roland took the box. He did not look at it. Steadily he gazed into David’s eyes.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A locket,” replied David. ‘‘It belonged to her. In it is a picture—her picture—the only one I have. Will you, please, destroy the picture before you give the locket to Marie?”
Father Roland saw the quick, sudden throb in David’s throat. He gripped the little box in his hand until it seemed as though he would crush it, and his
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heart was beating with the triumph of a drum. He
spoke but one word, his eyes meeting David's eyes, but
that one word was a whisper from Straight out of his soul, and the word was—
“ Victory! *2
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CHAPTER VII
DAVID MEETS BAREE
FATHER ROLAND slipped the little plush box into his pocket as he and David went out to join Thoreau. They left the cabin together, Marie lifting her eyes from her work in a furtive glance to see if the stranger was wearing her cap.
A wild outcry from the dogs greeted the three men as they appeared outside the door, and for the first time David saw with his eyes what he had only heard last night. Among the balsams and spruce close to the cabin there were fully a score of the wildest and most savage-looking dogs he had ever beheld. As he stood for a moment, gazing about him, three things impressed themselves upon him in a flash: it was a glorious day, it was so cold that he felt a curious sting in the air, and not one of those long-haired, white-fanged beasts strain- ing at their leashes possessed a kennel or even a brush shelter. It was this fact that struck him most forcefully. Inherently he was a lover of animals, and he believed these four-footed creatures of Thoreau’s must have suffered terribly during the night. He noticed that at the foot of each tree to which a dog was attached there was a round, smooth depression in the snow where the animal had slept. The next few minutes added to his conviction that the Frenchman and the missioner were heartless masters, though open-handed hosts. Mukoki and another Indian had come up with two gunny-sacks,
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and from one of these a bushel of fish were emptied out upon the snow. They were frozen stiff, so that Mukoki had to separate them with his belt-axe; David fancied they must be hard as rock. Thoreau proceeded to toss these fish to the dogs, one at a time, and one to each dog. The watchful and apparently famished beasts caught the fish in mid-air, and there followed a snarling and a grinding of teeth and smashing of bones and frozen flesh that made David shiver. He was half disgusted. Thoreau might at least have boiled the fish, or thawed them out. A fish weighing from one and a half to two pounds was each dog’s allotment, and the work—if this feeding process could be called work—was done. Father Roland watched the dogs, rubbing his hands with satisfaction. Thoreau was showing his big white teeth, as if proud of something.
“Not a bad tooth among them, mon pére,” he said. “Not one!”
“Fine, fine, but a little too fat, Thoreau. You’re feeding them too well for dogs out of the traces,” replied Father Roland.
David gasped.
“Too well!” he exclaimed. “They’re half starved, and almost frozen! Look how the poor devils swallow those fish, ice and all! Why don’t you cook the fish ? Why don’t you give them some sort of shelter to sleep in?”
Father Roland and the Frenchman stared at him as if they did not quite catch his meaning. Then a look of comprehension swept over the missioner’s face. He chuckled, the chuckle grew, it shook his body, and he laughed—laughed until the forest flung back the echoes of his merriment, and even the leathery faces of the
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
Indians crinkled in sympathy. David could see no reason for his levity. He looked at Thoreau. His host was grinning broadly.
“God bless my soul!” said the little missioner at last. “Starved? Cold? Boil their fish? Give ’em beds?” He stopped himself as he saw a flush rising in David's face. “Forgive me, David,” he begged, laying a hand on the other’s arm. “You can’t understand how funny that was—what you said. If you gave those fellows the warmest kennels in New York City, lined with bearskins, they wouldn’t sleep in them, but would come outside and burrow those little round holes in the snow. That’s their nature. I’ve felt sorry for them, like you, when the thermometer was down to sixty. But it’s no use. They don’t appreciate it. And they don’t like boiled fish. They want ’em fresh or frozen. [ Suppose you might educate them to eat cooked meat, but it would be like making over a lynx or a fox or a wolf. They’re mighty comfortable, those dogs, David. That bunch of eight over there is mine. They’ll take us north. And I want to warn you—don't put yourself in reach of them until they get acquainted with you. They’re not pets, you know. I guess they’d appreciate petting just about as much as boiled fish or poison. There’s nothing on earth like a husky or an Eskimo dog when it comes to lookin’ you in the eye with a friendly and lovable look and snapping your hand off at the same time. But you'll like °em, David. Youcar’t help from feeling they’re pretty good comrades wi.::, you see what they do in the traces.”
Thoreau had shouldered the second gunny-sack, and now led the way into the thicker spruce and balsam behind the cabin. David and Father Roland foliowed,
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the latter explaining more fully why it was necessary to keep the sledge-dogs “hard as rocks,” and how the trick was done. He was still talking, with the fingers of one hand closed about the little plush box in his pocket, when they came to the first of the fox-pens. He was watching David closely, a little anxiously—thrilled by the touch of that box. He read men as he read books, seeing much that was not in print, and feeling, by a wonderful intuitive power, emotions not visible in a face, and he believed that in David there were strange and conflicting forces struggling now for mastery. It was not in the surrender of the box that he had felt David's triumph, but in the voluntary sacrifice of what that box contained. He wanted to rid himself of the picture, and quickly. He was filled with apprehension lest David should weaken again and ask for its return. The locket meant nothing. It was a bauble, cold, emotionless, easily forgotten; but the other, the picture of the woman who had almost destroyed him, was a deadly menace, a poison to David’s soul and body so long as it remained in his possession, and the little missioner’s fingers itched to tear it from the velvet casket and destroy it. He watched his opportunity. As Thoreau tossed three fish over the high wire netting of the first pen the Frenchman was explaining to David why there were two female foxes and one male in each of his nine pens, and why warm houses, partly covered with earth, were necessary for their comfort and health, while the sledge-dogs required nothing more than a bed of snow. Father Roland seized this opportunity to drop back toward the cabin, calling in Cree to
Mukoki. Five seconds after the cabin concealed him from David he had the plush box out of his pocket, 67
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another five and he had opened it, and the locket itself was in his hand. And then, his breath coming in a sudden hissing spurt between his teeth, he was looking upon the face of the Woman. Again in Cree he spoke to Mukoki, asking him for his knife. The Indian drew it from his sheath and watched in silence while Father Roland accomplished his work of destruction. The missioner’s teeth were set tight. There was a strange gleam of fire in his eyes. An unspoken malediction rose out of his soul. The work was done! He wanted to hurl the yellow trinket, shaped so sacrilegiously in the image of a heart, as far as he could fling it into the forest. It seemed to burn his fingers, and he held for it a personal hatred. But it was for Marie! Marie would prize it, and Marie would purify it. Against her breast, where beat a heart of his beloved Northland, it would cease to be a polluted thing. This was his thought as he replaced it in the casket and retraced his steps to the fox-pens.
Thoreau was tossing fish into the last pen when Father Roland came up. David was not with him. In answer to the. missioner’s inquiry he nodded toward the thicker growth of the forest, where as yet his axe had not scarred a tree.
“He said that he would walk a little distance into the timber.”
Father Roland muttered something that Thoreau did not catch, and then, a sudden illumination lighting up his eyes:
“I am going to leave you to-day.”
“To-day, mon pére!” Thoreau made a muffled ex- clamation of astonishment. “To-day? And it is fairly well along toward noon!”
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“He cannot travel far.” The missioner nodded in the direction of the unthinned timber. “It will give us four hours between noon and dark. He is soft. You understand? We will make as far as the old trapping shack you abandoned two winters ago over on Moose Creek. It is only eight miles, but it will be a bit of hardening for him. And, besides——”
He was silent for a moment, as if turning a matter over again in his own mind.
“I want to get him away.”
He turned a searching, quietly analytic gaze upon Thoreau to see if the Frenchman would understand without further ex, Janation.
The fox-breeder picked up the empty gunny-sack.
“We will begin to pack the sledge, mon pére. There must be a good hundred-pound to the dog.”
As they turned back to the cabin Father Roland cast a look over his shoulder to see if David was returning.
Three or four hundred yards in the forest David stood in a mute and increasing wonder. He was in a tiny open, and about him the spruce and balsam hung still as death under their heavy cloaks of freshly fallen snow. It was as if he had entered unexpectedly into a wonderland of amazing beauty, and that from its dark and hidden bowers. crusted with their glittering mantles of white, snow-naiads must be peeping forth at him, holding their breath for fear of betraying themselves to his eyes. There was not the chirp of a bird or the flutter of a wing—not the breath of a sound to disturb the wonderful silence. He was encompassed in a white, soft world that seemed tremendously unreal; that for some strange reason made him breathe very softly, that
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
made him stand without a movement, and made him listen as though he had come to the edge of the uni- verse and there were mysterious things to hear, and possibly to see, if he remained very quiet. It was the first sensation of its kind he had ever experienced ; it as disquieting, and yet soothing; it filled him with an indefinable uneasiness, and yet with a strange yearning. He stood, in these moments, at the inscrutable threshold of the Great North; he felt the enigmatical, voiceless spirit of it; it passed into his blood; it made his heart beat a little faster; it made him afraid, and yet daring. Adventure rolled over slowly, woke at last, and yawned in his breast. He felt that Pierian call of the North- land, and it alarmed him even as it thrilled him. He knew, now, that this was the beginning—the door open- ing to him—of a world that reached for hundreds of miles up there. Yes, there were thousands of miles of it, many thousands; white, as he saw it here; beautiful, terrible, and deathly still. And into this world Father Roland had asked him to go, and he had as good as pledged himself.
Before he could think, or stop himself, he had laughed. For an instant it struck him like mirth in a tomb, an unpleasant, soulless sort of mirth, for his laugh had in it a jarring incredulity, a mocking lack of faith in himself. What right had he to enter into a world like that? Why, even now, his legs ached be- cause of his exertion in furrowing through a few hundred steps of foot-and-a-half snow !
But the laugh succeeded in bringing him back into the reality of things. He started at right angles, pushed into the maze of white-robed spruce and balsam, and turned back in the direction of the cabin over a new
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trail. He was not in a good humour. There possessed him an in-growing and acute feeling of animosity toward himself. Since the day—or night—Fate had drawn that great black curtain over his life, shutting out his sun, he had been drifting; he had been floating along on currents of the least resistance, making no fight, and in the completeness of his grief and despair allowing himself to disintegrate physically as well as mentally. He had sorrowed with himself, he had told himself that everything worth having was gone—but now, for the first time, he cursed himself. To-day— these few hundred yards out in the snow—had come as a test. They had proved his weakness He had degenerated into less thana man! He was-—
He clenched his hands inside his thick mittens, and a rage burned in him like a fire. Go with Father Roland? Go up into that world where he knew that the one great law of life was the survival of the fittest ? Yes—he would go! This body and brain of his needed their punishment, and they should have it! He would go. And his body would fight for it, or die. The thought gave him an atrocious satisfaction. He was filled with a sudden contempt for himself. If Father Roland had known he would have muttered a pzan of joy.
Out of the darkness of the humour into which he had fallen David was suddenly flung by a low and ferocious growl. He had stepped around a young balsam that stood like a seven-foot ghost in his path, and found himself face to face with a beast that was cringing at the foot of a thick spruce. It was a dog. The animal was not more than four or five short paces from him, and was chained to the tree. David surveyed
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him with sudden interest, wondering first of all why he was fastened in this isolated spot a hundred yards from the cabin. He was larger than the other dogs, and as he lay crouched there against his tree, his ivory fangs gleaming between half-uplifted lips, he looked like a great wolf. In those other dogs David had witnessed an avaricious excitement at the approach of men, a hungry demand for food, a straining at leash-ends, a whining and snarling comradeship. Here he saw none of those things. The big wolf-like beast at the tree- foot made no sound after that first growl, and made no movement. And yet every muscle in his body seemed gathered in a tense readiness to spring, and his gleam- ing fangs threatened. He was ferocious, and yet shrinking; ready to leap, and yet afraid. He was like a thing at bay—a hunted creature that had been prisoned. And then David noticed that he had but one good eye. It was bloodshot, balefully alert, and fixed on him like a round ball of fire. The lids had closed over his other eye; they were swollen; there was a big lump just over where the eye should have been. Then he saw that the beast’s lips were cut and bleeding. There was blood on the snow; and suddenly the big brute covered his fangs to give a racking cough, as though he had swallowed a sharp fishbone, and fresh blood drooled out of his mouth on the snow between his forepaws. One of these forepaws was twisted; it had been broken.
“You poor devil!” said David aloud.
He sat down on a birch log within six feet of the end of the chain, and looked steadily into the big husky’s one bloodshot eye as he said again:
“You poor devil!”
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David Meets Baree
Baree, the dog, did not understand. It puzzled him that this man did not carry a club. He was used to clubs. So far back as he could remember the club had been the one dominant thing in his life. It was a club that had closed his eye. It was a club that had broken one of his teeth and cut his lips, and it was a club that had beat against his ribs until, now, the blood came up into his throat and choked him, and drooled out of his mouth. But this man had no club, and he looked friendly.
“You poor devil!” said David for the third time.
Then he added, dark indignation in his voice :
“What in God’s name has Thoreau been doing to you?”
There was something sickening in the spectacle— that battered, bleeding, broken creature huddling there against the tree, coughing up the red stuff that dis- coloured the snow. Loving dogs, he was not .‘:aid of them, and forgetting Father Roland’s warning he rose from the log and wert nearer. From where he stood, looking down, Baree could have reached his throat. But he made no movement, unless it was that his thickly- haired body was trembling a little. His one 1ed eye looked steadily up at David.
For the fourth time David spoke.
“You poor, God-forsaken brute! ”
There was friendliness, compassion, wonderment in his voice, and he held down a hand that he had drawn from one of the thick mittens. Another moment and he would have bent over, but a cry stopped him so sharply and suddenly that he jumped back.
Thoreau stood within ten feet of him, horrified. He clutched a rifle in one hand.
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“ Back—back, m’sieu! ” he cried sharply. “For the love of God, jump back ! ”
He swung his rifle into the crook of his arm. David did not move, and from Thoreau he looked down coolly at the dog. Baree was a changed beast. His one eye was fastened upon the fox-breeder. His bared, bleeding lips revealed inch-long fangs between which there came now a low and menacing snarl. The tawny crest along his spine was like a brush ; from a puzzled toleration of David his posture and look had changed into deadly hatred for Thoreau and fear of him. For a moment after his first warning the Frenchman’s voice Seemed to stick in his throat as he saw what he believed to be David’s fatal disregard of his peril. He did not speak to him again. His eyes were on the dog. Slowly he raised his rifle; David heard the click of the hammer, and Baree heard it. There was something in the sharp, metallic thrill of it that stirred his brute instinct. His lips fell over his fangs, he whined, and then, on his belly, he dragged himself slowly toward David !
It was a miracle that Thoreau the F renchman looked upon then. He would have staked his very soul, wagered his hopes of Paradise against a babiche thread, that what he saw could never have happened between Baree and man. In utter amazement he lowered his gun. David, looking down, was smiling into that one wide-open, bloodshot eye of Baree’s, his hand reaching out. Foot by foot Baree slunk to him on his belly, and when at last he was at David's feet he faced Thoreau again, his terrible teeth Snarling, a low, rumbling growl in his throat. David reached down and touched him, even as he heard the fox-breeder make an incoherent sound in his beard. At the caress of his hand a great
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David Meets Baree
shudder passed through Baree’s body, as if he had been stung. That touch was the connecting link through which passed the electrifying thrill of a man’s soul reaching out to a brute instinct.
Baree had found a man-friend !
When David stepped away from him to Thoreau’s side all of the Frenchman’s face that was not hidden under his beard was of a curious ashen pallor. He seemed to make a struggle before he could get his voice.
And then: “M’sieu, I tell you it is incredible! 1 cannot believe what I have seen. It was a miracle!”
He shuddered. David was looking at him a bit puzzlea. He could not quite comprehend the fear that had possessed him. Thoreau saw this, and pointing to Baree—a gesture that brought a snarl from the beast— he said :
“He is bad, m’sieu, bad! He is the worst dog in all this country. He was born an outcast, among the wolves, and his heart is filled with murder. He is a quarter wolf, and you can’t club it out of him. Half a dozen masters have owned him, and none of them has been able to club it out of him. I, myself, have beaten him until he lay as if dead, but it did no good. He has killed two of my dogs. He has leaped at my own throat. I am afraid of him. I chained him to that tree a month ago to keep him away from the other dogs, and since then I have not been able to unleash him. He would tear me into pieces. Yesterday I beat him until he was almost dead, and still he was ready to go at my throat. So I am determined to kill him. He is no good. Step a little aside, m’sieu, while I put a bullet through his head!”
He raised his rifle again. David put a hand on it.
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“TI can unleash him,” he said.
Before the other could speak he had walked boldly to the tree. Baree did not turn his head, did not for an instant take his eye from Thoreau. There came the click of the snap that fastened the chain around the body of the spruce, and David stood with the loose end of the chain in his hand.
“There! ”
He laughed a little proudly.
“And I didn’t use a club,” he added.
Thoreau gasped “Mon Diew!” and sat down on the birch log as though the strength had gone from his legs.
David rattled the chain and then refastened it about the spruce. Baree was still watching Thoreau, who Sat staring at him as if the beast had suddenly changed his shape and species.
In Davi+’s breast there was the thrill of a new triumph. ‘Je had done something that Thoreau had not dared to do, and he had done it unconsciously, without fear, and without feeling that there had been any great danger. In those few minutes something of his old self had returned into him ; he felt a new excite- ment pumping the blood through his heart, and he felt the warm glow of it in his body. Baree had awak- ened something within him—Baree and the club. He went to Thoreau, who had risen from the log. He laughed again, a bit exultantly.
“I am going north with Father Roland,” he said. “Will you let me have the dog, Thoreau? It will save you the trouble of killing him.”
Thoreau stared at him blankly for a moment before he answered.
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“That dog? You? Into the North?” He shot a look full of hatred and disgust at Baree. ‘“ Would you risk it, m’sieu?”
“Yes. It is an adventure I should very much like to try. You may think it strange, Thoreau, but that dog, ugly and fierce as he is, has found a place with me. I like him. And I fancy he has begun to like me.”
“But look at his eye, m’sieu——”
“Which eye?” demanded David. ‘The one you have shut with a club?”
‘He deserved it,” muttered Thoreau. ‘He snapped at my hand. But I mean the other eye, m’sieu—the one that is glaring at us now like a red bloodstone with the heart of a devil in it! I tell you he is a quarter wolf——”
“And the broke. paw. I suppose that was done by a club too?” interrupted David.
“It was broken like that when I traded for him a year ago, m’sieu. I have not maimed him. And—yes, you may have the beast! May the Saints preserve youl”
“And his name?”
“The Indian who owned him as a puppy five years ago called him Baree, which among the Dog Ribs means ‘Wild Blood.’ He should have been called ‘ The Devil.’”
Thoreau shrugged his shoulders, as though the matter and its consequences were now off his hands, and turned in the direction of the cabin. As he followed the Frenchman, David looked back at Baree. The big husky had risen from the snow. He was standing at the full length of his chain, and as David disappeared among the spruce a low whine that was filled with a
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Strange yearning followed him. He did not hear the whine, but there came to him distinctly a moment later the dog’s racking cough, and he shivered, and his eyes burned into Thoreau’s broad back as he thought of the fresh blood-clots that were staining the white snow.
e r S Cc
CHAPTER VIII
THE START FOR THE NORTH
Mucu to Thoreau’s amazement, Father Roland made no objection to David’s ownership of Baree, and when the Frenchman described with many gesticulations of wonder what had happened between that devil-dog and the man, he was still more puzzled by the look of satis- faction in the little missioner’s face. In David there had come the sudden awakening of something which had for a long time been dormant in him, and Father Roland saw this change, and felt it, even before David said, when Thoreau had turned away with a darkly suggestive shrug of his shoulders:
“That poor devil of a beast is down and out, mon pére. I have never been so bad as that. Never. Kill him? Bahl If this magical north country of yours will make a man out of a human derelict it will surely work some sort of a transformation in a dog that has been clubbed into imbecility. Will it not?”
It was not the David of yesterday or the day before that was speaking. There was a passion in his voice, a deep contempt, a half taunt, a tremble of anger. There was a flush in his cheeks, too, and a spark of fire in his eyes. In his heart Father Roland whispered to himself that this change in David was like a conflagration, and he rejoiced without speaking, fearing that words might quench the effect of it.
David was looking at him as if he expected an answer,
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““What an accursed fool a man is to waste his soul and voice in lamentation—especially his voice,” he went on harshly, his teeth gleaming for an instant in a cold smile. “One ought to act and not whine. That beast back there is ready to act. He would tear Thoreau’s jugular out if he had half a chance. And I—why, I sneaked off like a whipped cur. That’s why Baree is better than I am, even though he is nothing more than a four-footed brute. In that room I should have had the moral courage that Baree has—I should have killed, killed them both!” He shrugged his shoulders. “I am quite convinced that it would have been justice, mon pére. What do you think?”
The missioner smiled enigmatically.
“The soul of many a man has gone from behind steel bars to Heaven or I vastly miss my guess,” he said. “But, we don’t like the thought of steel bars, do we, David? Man-made laws and justice don’t always run tandem. But God evens things up in the final balance. You'll live to see that. He’s back there now, meting out your vengeance to them. Your vengeance. Do you understand? And you won't be called to take a hand in the business.” Suddenly he pointed toward the cabin, where Thoreau and Mukoki were already at work packing a sledge. “It’s a glorious day. We Start right after dinner. Let us get your things in a bundle.”
David made no answer, but three minutes later he was on his knees unlocking his trunk, with Father Roland standing close beside him. Something of the humour of the situation possessed him as he flung out, one by one, the various articles of his worthless apparel, and when he had all but finished he looked up into the
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The Start for the North
missioner’s face. Father Roland was staring into the trunk, an expression of great surprise in his counten- ance, which slowly changed to one of eager joy. He made a sudden dive, and stood back with a pair of boxing-gloves in his hands. From the gloves he looked at David, and then back at the gloves, fondling them as if they had been alive, his hands almost trembling at the smooth touch of them, his eyes glowing like the eyes of a child that had come into possession of a won- derful toy. David reached into the trunk and produced a second pair. The missioner seized upon them.
“Dear Heaven, what a gift from the gods!” he chortled. “David, you will teach me to use them?” There was almost anxiety in his manner as he added: “You know how to use them well, David?”
“My chief pastime at home was boxing,” assured David. There was a touch of pride in his voice. “It is a scientific recreation. I loved it—that, and swim- ming. Yes, I will teach you.”
Father Roland went out of the room a moment later, chuckling mysteriously, with the four gloves hugged against the pit of his stomach.
David followed a little later, all of his belongings in one of the leather bags. For some time he had hesi- tated over the portrait of the Girl; twice he had shut the lock on it, the third time he placed it in the big breast pocket inside the coat Father Roland had pro- vided for him, making a mental apology for that act by assuring himself that sooner or later he would show the picture to the missioner, and would want it near at hand. Father Roland had disposed of the gloves, and introduced David to the rest of his equipment when he came from the cabin. It was very business-like, this
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
accoutrement that was‘ to be the final physical touch to his transition; it did not allow of scepticism; it was very positive, and about it there was also a quiet and cold touch of romance. The rifle chilled David’s bare fingers when he touched it. It was short-barrelled, but heavy in the breech, with an appearance of tremendous efficiency about it. It looked like an honest weapon to David, who was unaccustomed to firearms—and this was more than he could say for the heavy thirty-eight calibre automatic pistol which Fathe: Roland thrust in his hand, and which looked and felt murderously mys- terious. He frankly confessed his ignorance of these things, and the missioner chuckled good-humouredly as he buckled the belt and holster about his waist and told him on which hip to keep the pistol, and where to carry the leather sheath that held a long and keen-edged hunting-knife. Then he turned to the snowshoes. They were the long, narrow, bush-country shoe. He placed them side by side on the snow and showed David how to fasten his moccasined feet in them without using his hands. For three-quarters of an hour after that, out in the soft, deep snow in the edge of the spruce, he gave him his first lesson in that slow, swinging, out- stepping stride of the North-man on the trail. At first it was embarrassing for David, with Thoreau and the Indians grinning openly, and Marie’s face peering cau- tiously and joyously from the cabin door. Three times he entangled his feet hopelessly and floundered like a great fish in the snow; then he caught the “swing ’’ of it, and at the end of half an hour began to find a pleasurable exhiiaration, even excitement, in his ability to skim over the feathery surface of this great white sea without so much as sinking to his ankle-bones. Wen 82
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he slipped off the shoes, and stodd them up beside his rifle against the cabin, he was panting. His heart was pounding. His lungs drank in the cold, balsam-scented air like a suction-pump and expelled each breath with the sibilancy of steam escaping from a valve.
“Winded,” he gasped. And then, gulping for breath as he looked at Father Roland, he demanded: “How the devil am I going to keep up with you fellows on the trail? I'll go bust inside of a mile! ”
“And every time you go bust we’ll load you on the sledge,” comforted the missioner, his round face glow- ing with enthusiastic approval. “You've done finely, David. Within a fortnight you’ll be travelling twenty miles a day on snowshoes.”
He suddenly seemed to think of something that he had forgotten, and fidgeted with his mittens in his hesi- tation, as if there lay an unpleasant duty ahead of him. Then he said :
“If there are any letters to write, David—any busi- ness matters——”
“There are no letters,” cut in David quickly. “I attended to my affairs some weeks ago. I am ready.”
With a frozen whitefish he returned to Baree. The dog scented him before the crunch of his footsteps could be heard in the snow, and when he came out from the thick spruce and balsam into the little open Baree was stretched out flat on his belly, his gaunt grey muzzle resting on the snow between his forepaws. He made no movement as David drew near, except that curious shivers ran through his body and his throat twitched. Thoreau would have analysed that impassive posture as one of waiting and watchful treachery; David saw in it a strange yearning, a deep fear, a hope. Baree, out-
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
lawed by man, battered and bleeding as he lay there, felt, for perhap. the first time in his life, the thrilling Presence of a friend—a man-friend. David approached boldly, and stood over him. He had forgotten the Frenchman’s warning. He was not afraid. He leaned over, and one of his mittened hands touched Baree’s neck. A tremor shot through the dog that was like an electrical shock ; a snarl gathered in his throat, broke down, and ended in a low whine. He lay as if dead under the weight of David’s hand. Not until David had ceased talking to him, and had disappeared once more in the direction of the cabin, did Baree begin devouring the frozen whitefish.
Father Roland meditated in some perplexity when it came to the final question of Baree.
“We can’t put him in with the team,” he protested. “All my dogs would be dead before we reached God’s Lake.”
David had been thinking of that.
“He will follow me,” he said confidently. “We'll simply turn him loose when we're ready to start.”
The missioner nodded indulgently. Thoreau, who had overheard, shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. He hated Baree, the beast that would not yield to a club, and he muttered gruffly :
“And to-night he will join the wolves, m’sieu, and prey like the very devil on my traps. There will only be one cure for that—a fox-bait !—poison ! ”
And the last hour seemed to prove that what Thoreau had said was true. After dinner the three of them went to Baree, and David unfastened the chain from the big husky’s collar. For a few moments the dog did not seem to sense his freedom; then, like a shot—so unex-
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pectedly that he almost took David off his feet—he leaped over the birch log and disappeared in the forest. The Frenchman was amused.
“The wolves,” he reminded softly. ‘He will be with them to-night, m’sieu, that outlaw!”
Not until the crack of Mukoki’s long caribou-gut whip had set the missioner’s eight dogs tense and alert in their traces did Father Roland return for a moment into the cabin to give Marie the locket. He came back quickly, and at a signal from him Mukoki wound up the nine-feet lash of his whip and set out ahead of the dogs. They followed him slowly and steadily, keeping the broad runners of the sledge in the trail he made. The missioner dropped in immediately behind the sledge, and David behind him. Thoreau spoke a last word to David in a voice intended for his ears alone.
“It is a long way to God’s Lake, m’sieu, and you are going with a strange man—a strange man. Some day, if you have not forgotten Pierre Thoreau, you may tell me what it has been a long time in my heart to know. The Saints be with you, m’sieu! ”
He dropped back. His voice rolled after them in a last farewell, in French and in Cree, and as David followed close behind the missioner he wondered what Thoreau’s mysterious words had meant, and why he had not spoken them until that final moment of their departure. A strange man! The Saints be with you! That last had seemed to him almost a warning. He looked at Father Roland’s broad back—for the first time he noticed how heavy and powerful his shoulders were for his height. Then the forest swallowed them—a vast, white, engulfing world of silence and mystery. What did it hold for him? What did it portend? His
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blood was stirred by an unfamiliar and subdued excite- ment. An almost unconscious movement carried one of his mittened hands to his breast pocket. Through the thickness of his coat he could feel it—the picture. It did not seem like a dead thing. It beat with life. It made him strangely unafraid of what might be ahead of him.
Back at the door of the cabin Thoreau stood with one of his big arms encircling Marie’s slim shoulders.
“T tell you it is like taking the life of a puppy, ma chére,” he was saying. “It is inconceivable. It is bloodthirsty. And yet-— -””
He opened the door behind them.
“They are gone,” he finished. “Ka sakhet—they are gone—and they will not come back!”
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CHAPTER IX
ON THE TRAIL
IN spite of the portentous significance of this day in his life David could not help seeing and feeling in his suddenly changed environment, as he puffed along be- hind Father Roland, something that was neither adventure nor romance, but humour. A _ whimsical humour at first, but growing grimmer as his thoughts sped. All his life he had lived in a great city, he had been a part of its life—a discordant note in it, and yet a part of it for all that. He had been a fixture in a certain lap of luxury. That luxury had refined him. It had manicured him down to a fine point of civilisation. A fine point! He wanted to laugh, but he had need of all his breath as he clip-clip-clipped on his snowshoes behind the missioner. This was the last thing in the world he had dreamed of, all this snow, all this empti- ness that loomed up ahead of him, a great world filled only with trees and winter. He disliked winter; he had always possessed a physical antipathy for snow; romance, for him, was environed in warm climes and sunny seas. He had made a mistake in telling Father Roland that he was going to British Columbia. A great mistake. Undoubtedly he would have kept on. Japan had been in his mind. And now here he was headed straight for the North Pole—the Arctic Ocean. It was enough to make him want to laugh. Enough to make any sane person laugh. Even now, only half a 87
The Girl Beyond the Trail
mile from Thoreau’s cabin, his knees were beginning to ache and his ankles were growing heavy. It was ridiculous. Inconceivable, as the Frenchman had said to Marie. He wass ft. He was only half aman. How long would he last? How long before he would have to cry quits, like a whipped boy? How iong before his legs would crumple up under him, and his lungs give out? How long before Father Roland, hiding his contempt, would have to send him back ?
A sense of shame—shav e and anger—swept through him, heating his brain, setting his teeth hard, filling him again with a grim determination. For the second time that day his fighting blood rose. It surged through his veins in a flood, beating down the old barriers, clearing away the obstructions of his doubts and his fears, and filling him with the desire to go on—the desire to fight it out, to punish himself as he deserved to be punished, and to win in‘tne end. Father Roland, glancing back in benignant solicitude, saw the new glow in David’s eyes. He saw, also, his parted lips and the quickness of his breath. With a sharp command he stopped Mukoki and the dogs.
“Half a mile at a time is enough for a beginner,” he said to David. “Kick off your shoes and ride the next half mile.”
David shook his head.
“Go on,” he said terse'y, saving his wind. ‘I’m just finding myself.”
Father Roland loaded and lighted his pipe. The aroma of tobacco filled David’s nostrils as they went on. Clouds of smoke wreathed the little missioner’s shoulders as he followed the trail ahead of him. It was comforting, that smoke. It warmed David with a
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fresh desire. His exertion was clearing out his lungs. He was inhaling balsam and spruce, a mighty tonic of dry forest air, and he felt also the craving to smoke. But he knew that he could not afford the waste of breath. His snowshoes were growing heavier and heavier, and back ot his knees his tendons seemed pre- paring to snap. He kept on, at last counting his steps. He was determi. ed to .aake a mile. He was ready to groan when a sudden twist in the trail brought them out of the forest to the edge of a lake whose frozen sur- face stretched ahead of them for miles. Mukoki stopped the dogs. With a gasp David floundered to the sledge and sat down.
“Finding myself,” he managed to say. ‘“Just— finding myself!”
It was a triumph for him, | = last half of that mile. He knew it. He felt it. Through the white haze of his breath he looked out over the lake. It was wonder- fully clear, and the sun was shining. The surface of the lake was like an untracked carpet of white, scattered thickly with tiny dian.onds, wher the sunlight fell on its countless billions of snow-crystals. Three or four miles away he could see the dark edge of the forest on the other side. Up and down the lake the distance was greater. He had . seen anything like it. It was marvellous. Like a dream picture. And he was not cold as he looked at it. He was warm, even uncom- fortably warm. The air he breathed was like a new kind of fuel. It gave him the peculiar sensation of feeling larger inside; he seemed to drink it in; it ex- panded his lungs; he could feel his heart pumping with an audible sound. There was nothing in the majesty and wonder of the scene about him to make him laugh,
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but he laughed. It was exultation, an involuntary out- burst of the change that was working in him. He felt, suddenly, that a dark and purposeless world had slipped behind him. It was gone. It was as if he had come out of a dark and gloomy cavern, in which the air had been vitiated and in which he had been cramped for breath; a cavern which fluttered with the uneasy ghosts of things, poisonous things. Here was the sun. A sky blue as sapphire. A great expanse. A wonder- world. Into this he had escaped !
That was the thought in his mind as he looked at Father Roland. The little missioner was looking at him with an effulgent satisfaction in his face, a satisfaction that was half pride, as though he had achieved some- thing that was to his own personal glory.
“You’ve beat me, David,” he exulted. ‘The first time I had on snowshoes I didn’t make one-half that distance before I was tangled up like a fish in a net!” He turned to Mukoki. ‘“ Meyoo iss e chikao!’’ he cried. ““Remember ?” and the Indian nodded, his leathery face breaking into a grin.
David felt a new pleasure at their approt.. ~ He had evidently done well, exceedingly well. he had been afraid of himself! Apprehensior . ‘ay to confidence. He was beginning to expe......e thr
exquisite thrill of fighting against odds.
He made no objection this time when Father Roland made a place for him on the sledge.
“We'll have four miles of this lake,” the missioner explained to him, “and the dogs will make it in an hour. Mukoki and I will both break trail.”
As they set off David found his first opportunity to see the real Northland in action—the clean, sinuous
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movement of the men ahead of him, the splendid eager- ness with which that long, wolfish line of beasts stretched forth in their traces and followed in the snowshoe trail. There was something imposing about it all, something that struck deep within him and roused strange thoughts. This that he saw was not the mere labour of man and beast; it was not the humdrum toil of life, not the daily slaving of living creatures for existence, for food, and drink, and a sleeping place. It had risen above that. He had seen ships and castles rise up from heaps of steel and stone; achievements of science and the handi- work of genius had interested and sometimes amazed him; but never had he looked upon physical effort that thrilled him as this that he was looking upon now. There was almost the spirit of the epic about it. They were the survival of the fittest—these men and dogs. They had gone through the great test of life in the raw, as the Pyramids and the Sphinx had outlived the ordeals of the centuries; they were different; they were proven; they were of another kind ~“ flesh and blood than he had known, and they fascina ed him. They stood for more than romance and adventure, for more than tragedy or possible joy; they were making no fight for riches, no fight for power, or fame, or great personal achievement. Their struggle in this great white world, terrible in its emptiness, its vastness, and its mercilessness for the weak, was simply a struggle that they might live. The thought staggered him. Could there be joy in that—in a mere existence without the thousand pleasures and luxuries and excitements that he had known? He drank deeply of the keen air as he asked himself the question. His eyes rested on the shaggy, undulating backs of the big huskies; he noted G 91
The Girl Beyond the Trail
their half-open jaws, the sharp alertness of their pointed ears, the almost joyous unction with which they entered into their task, their eagerness to keep their load close upon the heels of their masters. He heard Mukoki’'s short, sharp, and unnecessary commands, his “Hi- yi’s!” and his “Ki-yi’s!” as though he were crying out for no other reason than from sheer physical ex- uberation. He saw Father Roland’s face turned back- ward for a moment, and it was smiling. They were happy—now! Men and beasts were happy. And he could see no reason for their happiness except that their blood was pounding through their veins, even as it was pounding through his own. That was it—the blood. The heart. The lungs. The brain. All were clear— clear and unfettered in that marvellous air and sunlight, washed clean by the swift pulse of life. It was a wonder- ful world! A glorious world! He was almost on the point of crying out his discovery aloud.
The thrill grew in him as he found time now to look about. Under him the broad steel runners of the sledge made a cold, creaking sound as they slipped over the snow that lay only four or five “~ches deep out her’ 1 the lake; he heard the swift tap, tap, tap of the do,’ feet, their panting breath that was almost like laughter, low throat-whines, and the steady swish of the snow- shoes ahead. Beyond those sounds a vast silence en- compassed him. He looked out into it, east and west to the dark rims of forest, north and south over the dis- tance of that diamond-sprinkled tundra of unbroken white. He drew out his pipe, loaded it with tobacco, and began to smoke. The bitterness of the weed was gone. It was delicious. He puffed luxuriously. And then suddenly, as he looked at the purplish bulwarks
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On the Trail
of the forests, his mind Swept back. For the first time since that night many months ago he thought of the woman—the golden guddess—without a red-hot fire in his brain. He thought of her coolly. This new world was already giving back to him a power of analysis, of perspective, a healthier conception of truths and measurements. What a horrible blot they had made in his life—that man and woman! What a foul trick they had played him! What filth they had wallowed in! And he—he had thought her the most beautiful creature in the world, an angel, a thing to be wor- shipped! He laughed, almost without sound, his teeth biting hard on the stem of his pine. And the world he was looking upon laughed; the snow-diamonds, lying thickly as dust, laughed; there was laughter in the sun, the warmth of chuckling humour in those glowing walls of forest, laughter in the blue sky above.
His hands gripped hard.
In this world he knew there could not be another woman such as she. Here, in all this emptiness and glory, her shallow soul would have shrieked in agony ; she would have shrivelled up and died. It was toc clean. Too white. Too pure. It would have frigh:- ened her, tortured her. She could not have found the
Poison she required to give her life. Her unclean de- Sires would have driven
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
a big world, so vast that he still could not comprehend it. Bur she was there. Living. Breathing. Alive! A sudden impulse made him draw the picture from his pocket. He held it down behind a bale, so that Father Roland would not chance to see it if he looked back. He unwrapped the picture, and ceased to puff at his pipe. The Girl was wonderful to-day, under the sun- light and the blue halo of the skies, and she wanted to speak to him. That thought always came to him first of all when he looked at her. She wanted to speak. Her lips were trembling, her eyes were looking straight into his, the sun above him seemed to gleam in her hair. It was as if she knew of the thoughts that were in his mind, and of the fight he was making; as though through space she had seen him, and watched him, and wanted to cry out for him the way to come. There was a curious tremble in his fingers as he restored the picture to his pocket. He whispered something. His pipe had gone out. In the same moment a sharp cry from Father Roland startled him. The dogs halted sud- denly. The creaking of the sledge runners ceased.
Father Roland had turned his face down the lake and was pointing.
“Look!” he cried.
David jumped from the sledge and stared back over their trail. The scintillating gleams of the snow- crystals were beginning to prick his eyes, and for a few *,aments he could see nothing new. He heard a muffled ejaculation of surprise from Mukoki. And then, far back—probably half a mile—he saw a dark object travelling slowly toward them. It stopped. It was motionless as a dark rock now. Close beside him the little missioner said :
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“You've won again, David. Baree is following us!’
The dog came no nearer as they watched. After \ moment David pursed his lips and sent back a curious, piercing whistle. In days to come Baree was to recog- nise that call, but he gave no attention to it now. For several minutes t' :y stood gazing back at him. When they were ready ‘© go on David for a third time tha: day put on his s.1owshoes. His task » med !ess diffi- cult. He was getting on to the “swing of the shoes, and his breath came easier. At the end of half an hour Father Roland halted the team again to give him a “winding” spell. Baree had come nearer. He was not more than a quarter of a mile behind. It was three o’clock when they strick off the lake into the edge of the forest to the north-west. The sun had grown cold and pale. The snow crystals no longer sparkled so furiously. In the forest there was gathering a grey, silent gloom. They halted again in the edge of that gloom. The missioner slipped off his mittens and filled his ; ‘"e with fre. tobacco. The pipe fell fron. his fingers, and buried self in the soft snow at his feet. As he bent down for it Father Roland said, quite audibly :
i D wad ! ”
He :.cs smiling when he rose. David, also, was smiling.
“I was thinking,” he said, as though the other had demanded an explanation of his thoughts, “what a curious man of God you are, mon pére!”
The little missioner chuckled, and then he muttered, half to himself, as he lighted the tobacco: “ True—verv true.” When the top of the bowl was glowing, }
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added: “How are your legs? It is still a good mile to the shack.”
“I am going to make it or drop,” declared David.
He wanted to ask a question. It had been in his mind for some time, and he burned with a strange eagerness to have it answered. He looked back, and saw Baree circling slowly over the surface of the lake toward the forest. Casually he inquired :
“How far is it to Tavish’s, mon pére?”
“Four days,” said the missioner. “Four days, if we make good time, and another week from there to God’s Lake. I have paid Tavish a visit in five days, and once Tavish made God’s Lake in two days and a night with seven dogs. Two days and a night! Through darkness he came—darkness and a storm. That is what fear will do, David. Fear drove him. I have promised to tell you about it to-night. You must know, to understand him. He is a Strange man—a very Strange man!”
He spoke to Mukoki in Cree, and the Indian re- sponded with a sharp command to the dogs. The huskies sprang from their bellies, and strained forward in their traces. The Cree picked his way slowly ahead of them. Father Roland dropped in behind him. Again David followed the sledge. He was struck with wonder at the suddenness with which the sun had gone out. In the thick forest it was like the beginning of night. The deep shadows and darkly growing caverns of gloom seemed to give birth to new sounds. He heard the whit, whit, whit of something close to him, and the next moment a great snow owl flitted like a ghostly apparition over his head; he heard the patter of snow as it fell from the bending limbs; from out of a patch
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of darkness two trees, rubbing slightly against each other, emitted a shivering wail that startled him for a moment, it had seemed so like the cry of a child. He was straining his ears so tensely to hear, and his eyes to see, that he forgot the soreness of his knees and ankles. Now and then the dogs stopped while Mukoki and the missioner dragged a log or a bit of brushwood from their path. During one of these intervals there came to them, from a great distance, a long, mournful howl.
“A wolf,” said Father Roland, his face a grey shadow as he nodded at David. “Listen! ”
From behind them came another cry. It was Baree.
They went on, circling around the edge of a great windfall. A low wind was beginning to move in the tops of the spruce and cedar, and soft splashes of snow fell on their heads and shoulders, as if unseen and play- ful hands were pelting them from above. Again and again David caught the swift, ghostly flutter of the snow owls, three times he heard the wolf howl, once again Baree’s dismal, homeless cry ; and then they came suddenly out of the thick gloom of the forest into the twilight grey of a clearing. Twenty paces from them was a cabin. The dogs stopped. Father Roland fumbled at his big silver watch, and held it close up to his eyes.
“Half-past four,” he said. “Fairly good time for a beginner, David! ”
He broke into a whistle. It was cheerful. The dogs were whining and snapping like joyous puppies as Mukoki unfastened them. The Cree himself was voluble in a chuckling and meaningless way. There was a great contentment in the air, some sort of inde-
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finable inspiration that seemed to lift the gloom. David could not understand it, though in an elusive sort of way he felt it. He did not understand until Father Roland said, across the sledge, which he had begun to unpack :
“Seems good to be on the trail again, David.”
That was it—the trail! This was the end of a day’s achievement. He looked at the cabin, dark and un- lighted in the open, with its big white cap of snow. It looked friendly for all its darkness. He was filled, sud- denly, with the desire to become a partner in the activities of Mukoki and the missioner. He wanted to help, not because he placed any value on his assist- ance, but simply because his blood and his brain were impinging new desires upon him. He kicked off his snowshoes, and went with Mukoki to the door of the cabin, which was fastened with a wooden bolt. When they entered he could make out things indistinctly—a Stove at first, a stool, a box, a small table, and a bunk against the wall. Mukoki was rattling the lids of the stove when Father Roland entered with his arms filled. He dropped his load on the floor, and David went back to the sledge with him. By the time they had brought its burden into the cabin a fire was roaring in the stove, and Mukoki had hung a lighted lantern over the table. Then Father Roland seized an axe, tested its keen edge with his thumb, and said to David: “Let’s go cut our beds before it’s too dark.” Cut their beds! The missioner’s broad back was disappearing through the door in a very purposeful way, and David caught up a second axe and followed. Young balsams, twice as tall as a man, were growing about the cabin, and from these Father Roland began stripping the branches.
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They carried armfuls into the cabin, until the one bunk was heaped high, and meanwhile Mukoki had half a dozen pots and kettles and pans on the glowing top of the sheet-iron stove, and thick caribou steaks were sizzling in a homelike and comforting way. A little later David ate as though he had gone hungry all day. Ordinarily he wanted his steaks well done; to-night he devoured an inch-and-a-quarter sirloin that floated in its Own gravy, and was red to the heart of it. When they had finished they lighted their pipes and went out to feed the dogs a frozen fish apiece.
An immense satisfaction possessed David. It was like something soft and purring inside of him. He made no effort to explain things. He was accepting facts and changes. He felt bigger to-night, as though his lungs were stretching themselves and his chest expanding. His fears were gone. He no longer saw anything to dread in the white wilderness. He was eager to go on, eager to reach Tavish’s. Ever since Father Roland had spoken of Tavish that desire had been growing in him. Tavish had not only come from the Stikine River; he had lived on Firepan Creek. It was incredible that he should not know of the Girl. Who she was. Just where she lived. Why she was there. White people were few in that far country. Tavish would surely know of her. He had made up his mind that he would show Tavish the picture, keep- ing to himself the manner in which he had come into possession of it. The daughter of a friend, he would tell them—both Father Roland and Tavish. Or of an acquaintance. That, at least, was half truth.
A dozen things Father Roland spoke about that night before he brought up Tavish. David waited. He
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
did not want to appear too deeply interested. He de- sired to have the thing work itself out in a fortuitous sort of way, governed, as he was, by a strong feeling that he could not explain his position, or his strange and growing interest in the girl, if the missioner should by any chance discover the part he had played in the adventure on the train.
“Fear—a great fear—his life is haunted by it,” said Father Roland, when at last he began talking about Tavish. He was seated on a pile of balsams, his legs stretched out flat on the floor, his back to the wall, and he smoked thoughtfully as he looked at David. “A coward? I don’t know. I have seen him jump at the snap of a twig. I have seen him tremble at nothing at all. I have seen him shrink at darkness, and then, again, he came through a terrible darkness to reach my cabin that night. Mad? No, he is not that. It is hard to believe he is a coward. Would a coward live alone, as he does? That seems impossible too. And yet he is afraid. That fear is always close at his heels, especially at night. It follows him like a hungry dog. There are times when I would swear it is not fear of a living thing. That is what makes it—disturbing. It is weird. Distressing. It makes one shiver.”
The missioner was silent for some moments, as if lost in a reverie. Then he said, reflectively :
“I have seen strange things. I have had many penitents. My ears have heard much that you weuld not believe. It has all come in my long day’s work in the wilderness. But never, never have I seen a fight like this that is being made by Tavish, a fight against that mysterious fear of which he will not speak. I would give a year of my life, yes, even more, to help
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le- him. There is scinething about him that is lovable, us that makes you want to cling to him, be near him. But ig he will have none of that. He wants to be alone, with ze his fear. Is it not strange? I have pieced little things Id togethe:, and that night, when terror drove him to my he cabin, he betrayed himself, and I learned one thing. He is afraid of a woman! ” id “ “A woman!” gasped David. ut “Yes, a woman—a woman who lives, or lived, up in 2s that Stikine River country you mentioned to-day.” id David’s heart stirred strangely. A “The Stikin River, or—or Firepan Creek?” he 1e asked. at It seemed a long time to him before Father Roland n, answered. He was thinking deeply, with his eyes half y closed, as though striving to recall things that he had is forgotten. re “Yes, it was on the Firepan. I am sure of it,” he id said slowly. “He was sick—smallpox, as I told you— s, and it was on the Firepan. I remember that. And , whoever the woman was, she was there. A woman ! A And he—afraid! Afraid even now, with her a thousand It miles away, if she lives. Can you account for it? I would give a great deal to know. But he will say st nothing. And—it is not my business to intrude. Yet I have guessed. I have my own conviction. It is y terrible.” d He spoke in a low voice, lookir Straight at n David. t “And that conviction, father?” David barely t whispered. I “Tavish is afraid of someone who is dead.” “Dead!” 101
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“Yes, a woman—or a girl—who is dead; dcad in the flesh, but living in the spirit to haunt him. It is that. I know it. And he will not bare his soul io me.”
“A girl—who is dead—on J irepan Creek. Her spirit——”
A cold, invisible hand was clutching at David's throat. Shadows hid his face, or Father Roland would have seen. His voice was strained. He forced it be- tween his lips.
“Yes, her spirit,” came the missioner’s answer, and David heard the scrape of his knife as he cleaned out the bowl of his pipe. “It haunts Tavish. It is with him always. Avid he is afiaid of it!”
David rose slowly to his feet and went toward the door, siipping on his coat and cap. “I am going to whistle for Baree,” he said, and went out. The white world was brilliant under the glow of a full moon and a billion stars. It was the most wonderful night he had ever seen, and yet for a few moments he was as oblivious of its amazing beauty, its almost startling vividness, as though he had passed out into darkness.
“A gitl—Firepan—dead—haunting Tavish——”
He did not hear the whining of the dogs. He was piecing together in his mind that picture again—the barefoc‘ed girl standing on the rock, disturbed, startled, terrified, poised as if about to fly from a great danger. What had happened after the taking of that picture ? Was it Tavish who had taken it? Was it Tavish who had surprised her there? Was it Tavish—Tavish— Tavish——
His mind could not goon. He steadied himself, one hand clutching at the breast of his coat, where the picture lay.
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The cabin door opened behind him. The missioner came out. He coughed, and looked up at the sky.
“A splendid night, David,” he said softly. “A splendid night!”
He spoke in « strange, quiet voice that made David turn. The little missioner was facing the moon. He was gazing off into that wonder-world of forests, and snow, and stars and mooniight in a fixed and steady gaze, and :: seemed to David that he aged, and shrank into smaller form, and that his shoulders drooped as if under a weight. And all at once David saw in his face what he had seen once before in the train—a forgetful- ness of all things but one, the lifting of a strange curtain, the baring of a soul; and for a few moments Father Roland stood with his face turned to the light of the skies, as if preoccupied by an all-pervading and hopeless grief.
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CHAPTER X IN SIGHT OF TAVISH’S
Ir was Baree who disturbed the silent tableau in the moonlight. David was staring at the missioner, held by that look of anguish that had settled so quickly and so strangely in his face, as if this bright night with its moon and stars had recalled to him a great sorrow, when they heard again the wolf-dog’s howl out in the forest. It was quite near. David, with his eyes still on the other, saw Father Roland start, as if for an instant he had forgotten where he was. The missioner looked his way and straightened his shoulders slowly, with a smile on his lips that was strained and wan as the smile of one worn out by arduous toil.
“A splendid night,” he repeated, and he raised a ncked hand to his head, as if slowly brushing away something from before his eyes. “It was a night like this—this—fifteen years ago——”
He stopped. In the moonlight he brought himself together with a jerk. He came and laid a hand on David’s shoulder.
“That was Baree,” he said. ‘The dog has followed us.”
“He is not very far in the forest,” answered David.
“No. He smells us. He is waiting out there for you.”
There was a moment’s silence between them as they listened.
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“T will take him a fish,” said David then. “I am sure he will come to me.”
Mukoki had hoisted the gunny sack full of fish well up against the roof of the cabin to keep it from chance marauders of the night, and Father Roland stood by while David lowered it and made a choice for Baree’s supper. Then he re-entered the cabin when David went toward the forest with his fish.
It was not Baree who drew David slowly into the forest. He wanted to be alone, away from Father Roland and the quiet, insistent scrutiny of the Cree. He wanted to think, ask himself questions, find answers for them if he could. His mind was just beginning to rouse itself to the significance of the events of the past day and night, and he was like one bewildered by a great mystery, and startled by visions of a possible tragedy. Fate had played with him Strangely. It had linked him with happenings that ~ere inexplicable and unusual, and he believed that tiey were not without their meaning for him. More or less of a fatalist, he was inspired by the sudden and disturbing thought that they had happened by inevitable necessity. Vividly he Saw again the dark, haunting eyes of the woman in the train, and heard again the few low, tense words with which she had revealed to him her quest of a man—a man by the name of Michael O’Doone. In her pre- sence he had felt the nearness of tragedy. It had stirred him deeply, almost as deeply as the picture she had left in her seat—the picture hidden now against his breast, like a thing which must rot be betrayed, and which a strange and compelling instinct had made him associate in such a Startling way with Tavish. He could not get Tavish out of his mind; Tavish, the
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haunted man; Tavish, the man who had fled from the Firepan Creek country at just about the time the girl in the picture had stood on that rock beside the pool; Tavish, terror-driven by a spirit of the dead! He did not attempt to reason the matter, or bare the folly of his alarm. He did not ask himself about the improbability of it all, but accepted without equivocation that strong impression as it had come to him—the conviction that the girl on the rock and the woman in the train were in some way identified with the flight of ‘:avish, the man he had never seen, from that far valley in the north- west mountains.
The questions he asked himself now were not to establish in his own mind either the truth or the absur- dity of this conviction. He was determining within himself whether or not to confide in Father Roland. It was more than delicacy that made him hesitate; it was almost a personal shame. For a long time he had kept within his breast the secret of his own tragedy and dis- honour. That it was his dishonour, almost as much as the woman’s, had been his peculiar viewpoint; and how, at last, he had come to reveal that corroding sickness in his soul to a man who was almost a stranger was more than he could quite understand. But he had done just that. Father Roland had seen him stripped down to the naked truth in an hour of great need, and .1e had p + out a hand in time to save him. He no longer doubted this last consuming fact. Twenty times since then, coldly and critically, he had thought of the woman who had been his wife, and slowly and terribly the enormity of her crime had swept farther and farther away from him the anguish of her loss. He was like a man risen from a sick bed, breathing freely again, tasting once
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more the flavour of the air that filled his lungs. All this he owed to Father Roland, and because of this, and his confessions of only two nights ago, he felt a burn- ing humiliation in the thought of telling the missioner that another face had come to fill his thoughts and stir his anxieties. And what less could he tell him if he confided in him at all ?
He had gone a hundred yards or more into the forest, and in a little open space, lighted up like a tiny amphitheatre in the glow of the moon, he stopped. Suddenly there had come to him, thrilling in its pro- mise, a key to the situation. He would wait until they reached Tavish’s. And then, in the presence of the missioner, he would suddenly show Tavish the picture. His heart throbbed uneasily as he anticipated the pos- sible tragedy—the sudden betrayal—of that moment, for Father Roland had said, like one who had glimpsed beyond the ken of human eyes, that Tavish was haunted by a vision of the dead. The dead! Could it be that she, the girl in the picture—— He shook himself, set his lips tight to get the thought away from him. And the woman—the woman in the train, the woman who had left in her seat this picture that was growing in his heart like a living thing—who was she? Was her qucst one of vengeance—of retribution ? Was Tavish the man she was seeking ? Up in that mountain valley, where the girl had stood on the rock, had his name been Michael O’Doone ?
He was trembling when he went on, deeper into the forest. But of his determination there was no longer a doubt. He would Say nothing to Father Roland until Tavish had seen the picture.
Until now he had forgotten Baree.
In the disquiet- H 107
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ing fear with w' ‘ch his thoughts were weighted he had lost hold of the tact that in his hand ue still carried the slightly curved and solidly frozen substance ofafish. A movement of a body near him, so unexpected and alarm- ingly close that a cry broke from his lips as he leaped to one side, roused him with a sudden mental shock. The beast, whatever it was, had passed within six feet of him, and now, twice that distance away, stood like a statue hewn out of stone levelling at him the fiery gleam of a solitary eye. Until he saw that one eye, and not two, David did not breathe. Then he gasped. The fish had fallen from his fingers. He stooped, picked it up, and called softly: ‘‘Baree!”
The dog was waiting for his voice. His one eye shifted, slanting like a searchiight in the direction of the cabin, and turned swiftly back to C :vid. He whined, and David spoke to him again, calling his name, and holding out the fish. For severa! moments Baree did not move, but eyed him with the immobility of a half- blinded sphinx. Then, suddenly, he dropped on his belly and began crawling slowly toward him.
A spatter of moonlight fell upon them as David, crouching on his heels, gave Baree the fish, holding for a moment to the tail of it while the hungry beast seized its head between his powerful jaws with a grinding crunch. The power of those jaws sent a little shiver through the man so close to them. They were terrible —and splendid. A man’s leg-bone would have cracked between them like a pipe-stem. And Baree, with that power of death in his jaws, had a second time crept to him on his belly—not fearingly, in the shadow of a club, but like a thing tamed into slavery by a yearning adora- tion. It was a fact that seized upon David with a pecu-
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liar hold. It built up between them, between this down-and-out beast and a man fighting to find himself, a comradeship which perhaps only the man and the beast could understand. Even as he devorred the fish Baree kept his one eye on David, as though fearing he might lose him again if he allowed his gaze to falter for an instant. The truculency and the menace of that eye were gone. It was still bloodshot, still burned with a reddish fire, and a great pity swept through David as he thought of the blows the club must have given. He noticed, then, that Baree was making efforts to open the other eye; he saw the swollen lid flutter, the muscl- twitch. Impulsively he put out a hand. It fell ur flinchingly on Baree’s head, and in an instant che crunching of the dog’s jaws had ceased, and he lay as if dead. David bent nearer. With the thumb and fore- finger of his other hand he gently lifted the swollen lid. It caused a hurt. baree whined softly. His great body trembled. His ivory fangs clicked, like the teeth of a man with the ague. To his wolfish soul, trembling in a body that had been cond-mned, beaten, clubbed almost to the door of death, that nurt caused by David's fingers was a caress. His instinct, in this miraculous moment, was greater than any reason. He understood. He saw with a vision that was keener than sight. Faith was born in '.im, and burned like a conflagration. His head dropped to the snow; a great gasping sigh ran through him, and his trembling ceased. His good eye closed slowly as David gently and persistently massaged the muscles of the other with his thumb and forefinger. When at last he rose to his feet and returned to the cabin Baree followed him to the edge of the little clear- ing. 109
The Girl Beyond the Trail
Mukoki and the missioner had made their beds of balsam boughs, two on the floor and one in the bunk, and the Cree had already rolled himself in his blanket when David entered the shack. Father Roland was wiping David’s gun.
“We'll give you a little practice with this to- morrow,” he promised. ‘Do you suppose you can hit a moose ?”
“IT have my doubts, mon pére.”
Father Roland gave vent to his curious chuckle.
“I have promised to make a marksman of you in exchange for your—your trouble in teaching me how to use the gloves,” he said, polishing furiously. There was a twinkle in his eyes, as if a moment before he had been laughing to himself. The gloves were on the table. He had been examining them again, and David found himself smiling at the childlike and eager interest he had taken in them. Suddenly Father Roland rubbed still a little faster, and said :
“If you can’t hit a moose with a bullet you surely can hit me with these gloves, eh?”
“Yes, quite positively. But I shall be merciful if you, in turn, show some charity in teaching me how to shoot.”
The little missioner finished his polishing, set the rifle against the wall, and took the gloves in his hands.
“It is bright, almost like day outside,” he said a little yearningly. ‘Are you—tired ?”
His hint was obvious, even to Mukoki, who stared at him from under his blanket. And David was not tired. If his afternoon’s work had fatigued him his exhaustion was forgotten in the mental excitement that had followed the missioner’s story of Tavish. He took
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a pair of the gloves in his hands, and nodded toward the door. ‘“ You mean——”
Father Roland was on his feet.
“If you are not tired. It would give us a better stomach for sleep.”
Mukoki rolled from his blanket, a grin on his leathery face. He tied the wrist-laces for them, and followed them out into the moonlit night, a copper- coloured gargoyle, illuminated by that fixed and joyous grin. David saw the look in his face and he wondered if it would change when he sent the little missioner bowling over in the snow, which he was quite sure to do, even if he was careful. He was a splendid boxer. In the days of his practice he had struck a terrific blow for his weight. At the Athletic Club he had been noted for subtle strategy and a cleverness of defence that were unusual for an amateur. He had invented half a dozen little tricks of his own. But he felt that he had grown rusty during the past year and a half. This thought was in his mind when he tapped the missioner on the end of his ruddy nose. They had squared away in the moonlight, eight inches deep in the snow, and there was a joyous and eager light in Father Roland’s eyes. The tap on his nose did not dim it. His teeth gleamed, even as David’s gloves went plunk, plunk against his nose again. Mukoki, still grinning like a carven thing, chuckled audibly. David pranced carelessly about the little missioner, poking him beautifully as he offered suggestions and criticism.
“You should protect your nose, mon pére "— plunk!' “And the pit of your stomach ”—plunk! “And also your ears "—plunk, plunk! “But especially your nose, mon pére”—pflunk, plunk, plunk!
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
“And sometimes the tip of your jaw, David,” gurgled Father Roland, and for a few moments night closed in darkly about David.
When he came fully into his senses again he was sitting in the snow, with the little missioner bending over him anxiously, and Mukoki grinning down at him like a fiend.
“Dear Heaven forgive me!” he heard Father Roland saying. “I didn’t mean it so hard, David—I didn’t! But, oh, man, it was such a chance, such a beautiful chance! And now I’ve spoiled it. I’ve spoiled our fun.”
“Not unless you’re—tired,” said David, gettiog up on his feet. ‘You took me at a disadvantage, mon pére. I thought you were green.”
“And you were pulverising my nose,” apologised Father Roland.
They went at it again, and this time David spared none of his caution, and offered no advice, and the missioner no longer posed, but became suddenly as elusive and as agile as a cat. David was amazed, but he wasted no breath to demand an explanation. Father Roland was parrying his straight blows like an adept. Three times in as many minutes he felt the sting of the missioner’s glove in his face. In straight-away boxing, without the finer tricks and artifice of the game, he was soon convinced that the forest man was almost his match. Little by little he began to exert the cleverness of his training. At the end of ten minutes Father Roland was sitting dazedly in the snow, and the grin had gone from Mukoki’s face. He had succumbed to a trick—a swift sidestep, a feint that had held in it an ambush, and the seat of the little missioner’s reasoning faculties had rocked. But he was gurgling joyously
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when he rose to his feet, and with one arm he hugged David as they returned to the cabin.
“Only one other man has given me a jolt like that in many a year,” he boasted, a bit proudly. “And that was Tavish. Tavish is good. He must have lived long among fighting men. Perhaps that is why I think so kindly of him. I love a fighting man, if he fights honourably either with brain or brawn, even more than I despise a coward.”
“And yet this Tavish, you say, is pursued by a great fear. Can he be so much of a fighting man, in the way you mean, and still live in terror of”
“What?”
That single word broke in from the missioner like the sharp crack of a whip between them.
“Of what is he afraid?” he repeated. “Can you tell me? Can you guess more than I have guessed? Is one a coward because he fears whispers that tremble in the air and sees a face in the darkness of night that is neither living nor dead? Is he?”
For a long time after he had gone to bed David lay wide-awake in the darkness, his mind working until it seemed to him that it was prisoned in an iron chamber from which it was making futile eiforts to escape. He could hear the steady breathing of Father Roland and Mukoki, who were asleep. His own eyes he could close only in forced efforts to bring upon himself the unconsciousness of rest. Tavish §!led his mind, Tavish and the girl—and along with them the mysterious woman in the train. He struggled with himself. He told himself how absurd it all was, how grotesquely his imagination was employing itself with him; how in- credible it was that Tavish and the girl in the picture
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
should be associated in that terrible way that had oc- curred to him. But he failed to convince himself. He fell asleep at last, and his slumber was filled with fleet- ing visions. When he awoke the cabin was filled with the glow of the lantern. Father Roland and Mukoki were up, and a fire was crackling in the stove.
The four days that followea broke the last link in the chain that held David Raine to the life from which he was fleeing when the forest missioner met him in the Transcontinental. They were four wonderful days, in which they travelled steadily northward; days of splendid sunshine, of intense cold, of brilliant stars and a full moon at night. The first of these four days David travelled fifteen miles on his snowshoes, and that night he slept in a balsam shelter close to the face of a great rock, which they heated with a fire of logs, so that all through the cold hours between darkness and grey dawn the boulder was like a huge warming-stone. The second day marked also the second great stride in his education in the life of the wild. Fang and hoof and padded claw were at large again in the forests after the blizzard, and Father Roland stopped at each broken path that crossed their trail, pointing out to him the Stories that were written in the snow. He showed him where a fox had followed silently after a snowshoe rabbit; where a band of wolves had ploughed through the snow in the trail of a deer that was doomed; and in a dense run of timber where both moose and caribou had sought refuge from the storm he explained care- fully the slight difference between the hoof-prints of the two. That night Baree came into camp while they were sleeping, and in the morning they found where he had burrowed his round bed in the snow not a dozen
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yards from their snelter. The third mornin- David shot his moose. And that night he lured Baree almost to the side of their camp-fire, and tossed him chunks of raw flesh from where he sat smoking his pipe.
He was changed. ‘hree days on the trail and three nights in camp under the stars had begun their promised miracle-working. His face was darkened by a stubble of beard; his ears and cheek-bones were red- dened by exposure to cold and wind; he felt that in those three days and nights his muscles had hardened, and his weakness had left him. “It was in your mind —your sickness,” Father Roland had told him, and he believed it now. He began to find a pleasure in that physical achievement which he had wondered at in Mukoki and the missioner. Each noon when they Stopped to boil their tea and cook their dinner, and each night when they made camp, he had chopped down a tree. To-night it had been an eight-inch jack- pine, tough with pitch. The exertion ‘1ad sent his blood pounding through him furiously. He was still breath- ing deeply as he sat near the fire, tossing bits of meat out to Baree. They were sixty miles from Thoreau’s cabin, straight north, and for the twentieth time Father Roland was te'ling him how well he had ‘one.
“And ¢ row,” he added, “we will reach Tavish’s.”
It had grown upon David that to see Tavish had become his one great mission in the North. What ad- venture lay beyond that meeting he did not surmise. All his thoughts had centred in the single desire to let Tavish see the picture. To-night, after the missioner had joined Mukoki in the silk tent buried warmly under a mass of cut balsam, he sat a little longer beside the
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fire, and asked himself questions which he had not thought of before. He would see Tavish. He would show him the picture. And—what then? Would that be the end of it? He felt, for a moment, uncomfort- able. Beyond Tavish there was a disturbing and un- answerable problem. The girl, if she still lived, was a thousand miles from where he was sitting at this moment; to reach her, with that distance of mountain and forest between them, would be like travelling to the end of the world. It was the first time there had risen in his mind a definite thought of going to her—if she were alive. It startled him. It was like a shock. Go to her? Why? He drew forth the picture from his coat pocket and stared at the wonder-face of the girl in the light of the blazing logs. Why? His heart trembled. He lifted his eyes to the greyish film of smoke rising between him and the balsam-covered tent, and slowly he saw another face take form, framed in that wraith-like mist of smoke—the face of a golden goddess, laughing at him, taunting him. Laughing— laughing! .. . He forced his gaze from it with a shudder. Again he looked at the picture of the girl in his hand. “She knows. She understands. She comforts me.” He whispered the words. They were like a breath rising out of his soul. He replaced the picture in his pocket, and for a moment held it close against his breast.
The next day, as the swift-thickening gloom of northern night was descending about them again, the missioner halted his team on the crest of a boulder- strewn ridge, and pointing down into the murky plain at their feet he said, with the satisfaction of one who has come to a journey’s end:
“There is Tavish’s.”
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CHAPTER XI
THE FINDING OF TAVISH
THEY went down into the plain. David strained his eyes, but he could see nothing where Father Roland had pointed except the purplish sea of forest growing black in the fading twilight. Ahead of the team Mukoki picked his way slowly and cautiously among the snow- hidden rocks, and with the missioner David flung his weight backward on the sledge to keep it from running upon the dogs. It was a thick, wild place, and it struck him that Tavish could not have chosen a spot of more sinister aspect in which to hide himself and his secret, even on nights when the stars were out and the moon shone. It must have been oppressive even then. A terribly lonely place, and still as death as they went down into it. They heard not even the howl of a dog, and surely Tavish had dogs. «ze we~ on the point of speaking, of asking the missioner why Tavish, haunted by fear, should bury himself in a place like this when the lead-dog suddenly stopped, and a low, lingering whine drifted back to them. David had never heard anything like that whine. It swept through the line of dogs, from throat to throat, and the beasts stood stiff- legged and stark in their traces, staring with eight pairs of restlessly blazing eyes into the wall of darkness ahead. The Cree had turned, but the sharp command on his lips had frozen there. David saw him standing ahead of the team as silent and as motionless as rock. From him 117
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The Girl Beyond the Trail
he looked into the missioner’s face. Father Roland was staring. There was a strange suspense in his breathing. And then, suddenly, the lead-dog sat back on his haunches, and turning his grey muzzle up to the sky emitted a long and mournful howl. There was something about it that made David shiver. Mukoki came staggering back through the snow like a sick man.
“ Nipoo-win Ooyoo!” he said, his eyes shining like points of flame. A shiver seemed to be running through him.
For a moment the missioner did not seem to hear him. Then he cried:
“Give them the whip! Drive them on!”
The Cree turned, unwinding his long lash.
“Nipoo-win Ooyoo!” he muttered again.
The whip cracked over the backs of the huskies, the end of it stinging the rump of the lead-dog, who was master of them all. A snarl rose for an instant in his throat, then he straightened out, and the dogs lurched forward. Mukoki ran ahead, so that the lead-dog was close at his heels.
“What did he say?” asked David.
In the gloom the missioner made a gesture of pro- test with his two hands. David could no longer see his face.
“He is superstitious,” he growled. ‘He is absurd. He would make the very devil creep. He says that old Beaver has given the Death Howl. Bah——”
David could feel the other’s shudder in the darkness. They went on for another hundred yards; with a low word Mukoki stopped the team. The dogs were whin- ing softly, staring straight ahead, when David and the missioner joined the Cree.
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Father Roland pointed to a dark blot in the night fifty paces beyond them. He spoke to David.
“There is Tavish’s cabin. Come! We will see.”
Mukoki remained with the team. They could hear the dogs whining as they advanced. The cabin took shape in their faces, grotesque, dark, lifeless. It wasa foreboding thing, that cabin. He remembered in a flash all that the missioner had told him about Tavish. His pulse was beating swiftly. A shiver ran up his back, and he was filled with a strange dread. Father Roland’s voice startled him.
“Tavish! Tavish!” it called.
They stood close to the door, and heard no answer. Father Roland stamped with his foot, and scraped with his toe on the ground.
“See, the snow has been cleared away recently,” he said. ‘Mukoki is a fool. He is superstitious. He made me, for an instant, afraid.”
There was a vast relief in his voice. The cabin door was unbolted, and he flung it open confidently. It was pitch dark inside, but a flood of warm air struck their faces. The missioner laughed.
“Tavish, are you esleep?” he called.
There was no answer. Father Roland entered.
“He has been here recently. There is a fire in the stove. We will make ourselves at home.” He fumbled in his clothes and found a match. A moment later he struck it, and lighted a tin lamp that hung from the ceiling. In its glow his face was of a strange colour. He had been under a strain. The hand that held the burning match was unsteady. “Strange, very strange,” he was saying, as if to himself. And then: “ Prepos- terous! I will go back and tell Mukoki. He is shiver-
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The Girl Beyond ‘‘:e Trail
ing. He is afraid. He believes that Tavish is in league with the devil. He says that the dogs know, and that they have warned him. Queer. Monstrous! queer. And interesting—eh?”
He went out. David stood where he was, looking about him in the blurred light of the larnp over his head. He almost expected Tavish to creep out from some dark corner; he half expected to see him move from under the dishevelled blankets in the bunk at the far end of the room. It was a big room, twenty feet from end ta end, and almost as wide, and after a moment or two he knew that he was the only living thing in it, except a small grey mouse that came fearlessly quite close to his