The Sky Line of Spruce by Edison Marshall

E >> Edison Marshall >> The Sky Line of Spruce

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He nodded. He understood _that_ very well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XXIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XXIV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She lay awake a long time, until at last a little, faint ray of hope
beamed bright and clear. More than a hundred miles farther down the
Yuga, past the mouth of Grizzly River, not far from the great,
north-flowing stream of which the Yuga was a tributary, lay an Indian
village--and if only she could reach it she might enlist the aid of the
natives and make a safe return, by a long, roundabout route, to her
father's arms. The plan meant deliverance from Ben and the defeat of all
his schemes of vengeance,--perhaps the salvation of her father and his
subordinates.

She realized perfectly the reality of her father's danger. She had read
the iron resolve in Ben's face. She knew that if she failed to make an
immediate escape from him, all his dreadful plans were likely to
succeed: his enemies would follow him into the unexplored mazes of Back
There to effect her rescue and fall helpless in his trap. What quality
of mercy he would extend to them then she could readily guess.

Just to get down to the Indian village: this was her whole problem. But
it was Ben's plan to land and enter the interior somewhere in the vast
wilderness between, from which escape could not be made until the flood
waters of fall. The way would remain open but a few hours more, due to
the simple fact that the waters were steadily falling and the
river-bottom crags, forming impassable barriers at some points, would be
exposed. _If she made her escape at all it must be soon._

Yet she could not attempt it at night. She could not see to guide the
canoe while the darkness lay over the river. Just one further chance
remained--to depart in the first gray of dawn.

She fell into troubled sleep, but true to her resolution, wakened when
the first ribbon of light stretched along the eastern horizon. She sat
up, laying the blankets back with infinite care. This was her chance:
Ben still lay asleep.

Just to steal down to the water's edge, push off the canoe, and trust
her life to the doubtful mercy of the river. The morning soon would
break; if she could avoid the first few crags, she had every chance to
guide her craft through to deliverance and safety. By no conceivable
chance could Ben follow her. He would be left in the shadow of the
gorge, a prisoner without hope or prayer of deliverance. There was no
crossing the cliffs that lifted so stern and gray just behind. Before he
could build any kind of a craft with axe and fire, the waters would fall
to a death level, beyond any hope of carrying him to safety. The tables
would be turned; he would be left as helpless to follow her as Neilson
had been to follow him.

The plan meant deliverance for her; but surely it meant _death_ to him.
Starvation would drive him to the river and destruction, before men
could ever come the long way to rescue him. But this was not her
concern. She was a forest girl and he her enemy: he must pay the price
for his own deeds.

She got to her feet, stalking with absolute silence. She must not waken
him now. Softly she pressed her unshod foot into the grass. He stirred
in his sleep; and she paused, scarcely breathing.

She looked toward him. Dimly she could see his face, tranquil in sleep
and gray in the soft light; and an instantaneous surge of remorse sped
through her. There was a sweetness, a hint of kindly boyishness in his
face now, so changed since she had left him beside the glowing coals.
Yet he was her deadly enemy; and she must not let her woman's heart cost
her her victory in its moment of fulfillment. She crept on down to the
water.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20