The Sky Line of Spruce by Edison Marshall

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She could discern the black shadow of the canoe. One swift surge of her
shoulders, one leap, the splash of the stern in the water and the swift
stroke of the paddle, and she would be safe. She stepped nearer.

But at that instant a subdued note of warning froze her in her tracks.
It was only a small sound, hushed and hardly sharp enough to arouse Ben
from his sleep; but it was deadly, savage, unutterably sinister. She had
forgotten that Ben did not wage war alone. For the moment she had given
no thought to his terrible ally,--a pack brother faithful to the death.

A great, gaunt form raised up from the pile of duffle in the canoe; and
his fangs showed ivory white in the wan light. It was Fenris, and he
guarded the canoe. He crouched, ready to spring if she drew near.

The girl sobbed once, then stole back to her blankets.

XXV

Ben wakened refreshed, at peace with the world as far as he could ever
be until his ends were attained; and immediately built a roaring fire.
Beatrice still slept, exhausted from the stress and suspense of her
attempt to escape. When the leaping flames had dispelled the frost from
the grass about the fire Ben stepped to her side and touched her
shoulder.

"It's time to get up and go on," he said. "We have only a few hours more
of travel."

It was true. The river had fallen appreciably during the night. Not many
hours remained in which to make their permanent landing. Although the
river was somewhat less violent from this point on, the lower water line
would make traveling practically as perilous as on the preceding day.

The girl opened her eyes. "I'd rather hoped--I had dreamed it all," she
told him miserably.

The words touched him. He looked into her face, moved by the girlishness
and appeal about the red, wistful mouth and the dark, brimming eyes.
"It's pretty tough, but I'm afraid it's true," he said, more kindly than
he had spoken since they had left the landing. "Do you want me to cook
breakfast and bring it to you here?"

"No, I want to do that part myself. It makes the time pass faster to
have something to do."

He went to look for fresh meat, and she slipped into her outer garments.
She found water already hot in a bucket suspended from the cooking rack,
permitting a simple but refreshing toilet. With Ben's comb she
straightened out the snarls in her dark tresses, parted them, and
braided them into two dusky ropes to be worn Indian fashion in front of
her shoulders. Then she prepared the meal.

It was a problem to tax the ingenuity of any housekeeper,--to prepare an
appetizing breakfast out of such limited supplies. But in this art,
particularly, the forest girls are trained. A quantity of rice had been
left from the stew of the preceding night, and mixing it with flour and
water and salt, she made a batter. Sooner or later fresh fat could be
obtained from game to use in frying: to-day she saw no course other than
to melt a piece of candle. The reverberating roar of the rifle a hundred
yards down the river bank, however, suggested another alternative.

A moment later Ben appeared--and the breakfast problem was solved. It
was another of the woods people that his rifle had brought down,--one
that wore fur rather than feathers and which had just come in from night
explorations along the river bank. It was a yearling black bear--really
no larger than a cub--and he had an inch of fat under his furry hide.

The fat he yielded was not greatly different from lard; and the
pancakes--or fritters, as Ben termed them--were soon frying merrily.
Served with hot tea they constituted a filling and satisfactory
breakfast for both travelers.

After breakfast they took to the river, yielding themselves once more to
the whims of the current. Once more the steep banks whipped past them in
ever-changing vista; and Ben had to strain at his paddle to guide the
craft between the perilous crags. The previous day the high waters had
carried them safely above the boulders of the river bed: to-day some of
the larger crags all but scraped the bottom of the canoe. It did not
tend toward peace of mind to know that any instant they might encounter
a submerged crag that would rip their craft in twain. Ben felt a growing
eagerness to land.

But within an hour they came out once more upon the open forest. The
river broadened, sped less swiftly, the bank sloped gradually to the
distant hills. This was the heart of Back There,--a virgin and primeval
forest unchanged since the piling-up of the untrodden ranges. The wild
pace of the craft was checked, and they kept watch for a suitable place
to land.

There was no need to push on through the seething cataracts that lay
still farther below. Shortly before the noon hour Ben's quick eye saw a
break in the heavy brushwood that lined the bank and quickly paddled
toward it. In a moment it was revealed as the mouth, of a small, clear
stream, flowing out of a beaver meadow where the grass was rank and
high. In a moment more he pushed the canoe into the mud of the creek
bank.

They both got out, rather sober of mien, and she helped him haul the
canoe out upon the bank. They unloaded it quickly, carrying the supplies
in easy loads fifty yards up into the edge of the forest, on
well-drained dry ground.

The entire forest world was hushed and breathless, as if startled by
this intrusion. Neither of the two travelers felt inclined to speak. And
the silence was finally broken by the splashing feet of a moose, running
through a little arm of the marsh that the forest hid from view.

"Is this our permanent camp?" the girl asked at last.

"Surely not," was the reply. "It's too near the river for one
thing--too easily found. It's too low, too--there'll be mosquitoes in
plenty in that marsh two months from now. The first thing is--to look
around and find a better site."

"You want me to come?"

"I'd rather, if you don't mind."

She understood perfectly. He did not intend to give her complete freedom
until the river fell so low that the rapids farther down would be wholly
impassable.

"I'll come." Beatrice smiled grimly. "We can have that picnic we
planned, after all."

They found a moose trail leading into the forest, and leaving the wolf
on guard over the supplies, they filed swiftly along it in that
peculiar, shuffling, mile-speeding gait that all foresters learn. At
once both were aware of a subdued excitement. In the first place, this
was unknown country and they experienced the incomparable thrill of
exploration. Besides they were seeking a permanent camp where their
fortunes would be cast, the drama of their lives be enacted, for weeks
to come.

Almost at once they began to catch glimpses of wild life,--a squirrel
romping on a limb; or a long line of grouse, like children in school,
perched on a fallen log. The trapper had not yet laid his lines in this
land, and the tracks of the little fur-bearers weaved a marvelous and
intricate pattern on the moose trail. Once a marten with orange throat
peered at them from a covert, and once a caribou raced away, too fast
for a shot.

Mostly the wild things showed little fear or understanding of the two
humans. The grouse relied on their protective coloration, just as when
menaced by the beasts of prey. An otter, rarely indeed seen in daylight,
hovered a moment beside a little stream to consider them; and a coyote,
greatest of all cowards, lingered in their trail until they were within
fifty feet of his grey form, then trotted shyly away.

"We won't starve for meat, that's certain," Ben informed her. His voice
was subdued; he had fallen naturally into the mood of quietness that
dwells ever in the primeval forest.

Because the trail seemed to be leading them too far from the waterways,
they took a side trail circling about a wooded hill. Ever Ben studied
the landmarks, looked carefully down the draws and tried to learn as
much as possible of the geography of the country; and Beatrice
understood his purpose with entire clearness. He wished to locate his
camp so that it would have every natural advantage and insurance against
surprise attack. He desired that every advantage of warfare be in his
favor when finally he came to grips with Neilson and his men.

They crossed a low ridge, following down another of the thousand creeks
that water the northern lands. In a moment it led them to a long, narrow
lake, blue as a sapphire in its frame of dusky spruce.

For a moment both of them halted on its bank, held by its virgin beauty.
Lost in the solitudes as it was, perhaps never before gazed upon by the
eyes of men, still it gave no impression of bleakness and stagnation.
Rather it was a scene of scintillating life, vivid past all expression.
Far out of range on the opposite shore a huge bull moose stood like a
statue in black marble, gazing out over the shimmering expanse. Trout
leaped, flashing silver, anywhere they might look; and a flock of loon
shrieked demented cries from its center. The burnished wings of a flock
of mallard flashed in the air, startled by some creeping hunter.

Slowly, delighted in spite of themselves by the lovely spot, they
followed along its shore. They climbed the bank; and now Ben began to
examine his surroundings with great care.

He had suddenly realized that he was in a region wonderfully fitted for
his permanent camp. The low ridge between the lake and the creek gave a
clear view of a large part of the surrounding country, affording him
every chance of seeing his enemies before they saw him. If they came
along the river--the course they would naturally follow--they would be
obliged to cross the beaver marsh--a half-mile of open grassland with no
protecting coverts. Beatrice saw, dismayed, that his gray eyes were
kindling with unholy fire under his heavy, dark brows.

What if he should see them, deep in the wet grass, filing across the
open marsh! How many shots would be needed to bring his war to a
triumphant end? There were no thickets in which they might find shelter:
hidden himself, they could not return his fire. Before they could break
and run to cover he could destroy them all!

Should they cross the narrow neck of the marsh, higher up, he would have
every chance to see them on the lake shore. The site was good from the
point of health and comfort--high enough to escape the worst of the
insect pests, close to fresh water, plenty of fuel, and within a few
hundred yards of a lake that simply swarmed with fish and waterfowl.

Still following a narrow, racing trout stream that flowed into the lake
they advanced a short distance farther, clear to the base of a rock
wall. And all at once Beatrice, walking in front, drew up with a gasp.

She stood at the edge of a little glade, perhaps thirty yards across,
laying at the base of the cliff. The creek flowed through it, the grass
was green and rich, beloved by the antlered herds that came to graze,
the tall spruce shaded it on three sides. But it was not these things
that caught the girl's eye. Just at the edge of a glade a dark hole
yawned in the face of the cliff.

In an instant more they were beside it, gazing into its depths. It was a
natural cavern with rock walls and a clean floor of sand--a roomy place,
and yet a perfect stronghold against either mortal enemies or the powers
of wind and rain.

"It's home," the man said simply.

XXVI

Ben and Beatrice went together back to the canoe, and in two trips they
carried the supplies to the cave. By instinct a housekeeper, Beatrice
showed him where to stow the various supplies, what part of the cave was
to be used for provisions, where their cots would be laid, and where to
erect the cooking rack. Shadows had fallen over the land before they
finished the work.

Tired from the hard tramp, yet sustained by a vague excitement neither
of them could name or trace, they began to prepare for the night. Ben
cut boughs as before, placing Beatrice's bed within the portals of the
cave and his own on the grass outside. He cut fuel and made his fire:
Beatrice prepared the evening meal.

The flesh of the cub-bear they had procured that morning would have to
serve them to-night; but more delicious meat could be procured
to-morrow. Ben knew that the white-maned caribou fed in the high park
lands. Beatrice made biscuits and brewed tea; and they ate the simple
food in the firelight. Already the darkness was pressing close upon
them, tremulous, vaguely sinister, inscrutably mysterious.

They had talked gayly at first; but they grew silent as the fire burned
down to coals. A great preoccupation seemed to hold them both. When one
spoke the other started, and word did not immediately come in answer.
Beatrice's despair was not nearly so dominating to-night; and Ben
harbored a secret excitement that was almost happiness.

Its source and origin Ben could not trace. Perhaps it was just relief
that the perilous journey was over. The strain of his hours at the
paddle had been severe; but now they were safe upon the sustaining
earth. Yet this fact alone could hardly have given him such a sense of
security,--an inner comfort new to his adventurous life.

The forest was oppressive to-night, tremulous with the passions of the
Young World; yet he did not respond to it as before. The excitement that
sparkled in the red wine of his veins was not of the chase and death,
and he had difficulty in linking it up with the thoughts of his
forthcoming vengeance. Rather it was a mood that sprang from their
surroundings here, their shelter at the mouth of the cave. He felt
deeply at peace.

The fire blazed warmly at the cavern maw; the wolf stood tense and
still, by means of the secret wireless of the wild fully aware of the
tragic drama, the curtain of which was the dark just fallen; yet Ben's
wild, bitter thoughts of the preceding night did not come readily back
to him. There was a quality here--in the firelight and the haven of the
cave--that soothed him and comforted him. The powers of the wild were
helpless against him now. The wind might hurl down the dead trees, but
the rock of the cavern Wall would stand against them. Even the dreaded
avalanche could roar and thunder on the steep above in vain.

There was no peril in the hushed, breathless forest for him to-night.
This was his stronghold, and none could assail it. And it was a
significant fact that his sense of intimate relationship with the wolf,
Fenris, Was someway lessened. Fenris was a creature of the open forest,
sleeping where he chose on the trail; but his master had found a cavern
home. There was a strange and bridgeless chasm between such breeds as
roamed abroad and those that slept, night after night, in the shelter of
the same walls.

He watched the girl's face, ruddy in the firelight, and it was
increasingly hard to remember that she was of the enemy camp,--the
daughter of his arch foe. To-night she was just a comrade, a habitat of
his own cave.

For the first time since he had found Ezram's body--so huddled and
impotent in the dead leaves--he remembered the solace of tobacco. He
hunted through his pockets, found his pipe and a single tin of the weed,
and began to inhale the fragrant, peace-giving smoke. When he raised his
eyes again he found the girl studying him with intent gaze.

She looked away, embarrassed, and he spoke to put her at ease. "You are
perfectly comfortable, Beatrice?" he asked gently.

"As good as I could expect--considering everything. I'm awfully relieved
that we're off the water."

"Of course." He paused, looking away into the tremulous shadows. "Is
that all? Don't you feel something else, too--a kind of satisfaction?"

The coals threw their lurid glow on her lovely, deeply tanned face.
"It's for you to feel satisfaction, not me. You couldn't expect me to
feel very satisfied--taken from my home--as a hostage--in a feud with my
father. But I think I know what you mean. You mean--the comfort of the
fire, and a place to stay."

"That's it. Of course."

"I feel it--but every human being does who has a fire when this big,
northern night comes down and takes charge of things. It's just an
instinct, I suppose, a comfort and a feeling of safety--and likely only
the wild beasts are exempt from it." Her voice changed and softened, as
her girlish fancy reached ever farther. "I suppose the first men that
you were telling me about on the way out, the hairy men of long ago,
felt the same way when the cold drove them to their caves for the first
time. A great comfort in the protecting walls and the fire."

"It's an interesting thought--that perhaps the love of home sprang from
that hour."

"Quite possibly. Perhaps it came only when they had to fight for their
homes--against beasts, and such other hairy men as tried to take their
homes away from them. Perhaps, after all, that's one of the great
differences between men and beasts. Men have a place to live in and a
place to fight for--and the fire is the symbol of it all. And the beasts
run in the forest and make a new lair every day."

Thoughts of the stone age were wholly fitting in this stone-age forest,
and Ben's fancy caught on fire quickly. "And perhaps, when the hairy men
came to the caves to live, they forgot their wild passions they knew on
the open trails--their blood-lust and their wars among themselves--and
began to be men instead of beasts." Ben's voice had dropped to an even,
low murmur. "Perhaps they got gentle, and the Brute died in their
bodies."

"Yes. Perhaps then they began to be tamed."

The silence dropped about them, settling slowly; and all except the
largest heap of red coals burned down to gray ashes. The darkness
pressed ever nearer. The girl stretched her slender, brown arms.

"I'm sleepy," she said. "I'm going in."

He got up, with good manners; and he smiled, quietly and gently, into
her sober, wistful face. "Sleep good," he prayed. "You've got solid
walls around you to-night--and some one on guard, too. Good night."

A like good wish was on her lips, but she pressed it back. She had
almost forgotten, for the moment, that this man was her abductor and her
father's enemy. She ventured into the darkness of the cave.

Scratching a match Ben followed her, so that she could see her way. For
the instant the fireside was deserted. And then both of them grew
breathless and alert as the brush cracked and rustled just beyond the
glowing coals.

Some huge wilderness creature was venturing toward them, at the edge of
the little glade.

XXVII

The match flared out in Ben's fingers, and the only light that was left
was the pale moonlight, like a cobweb on the floor of the glade, and the
faint glow from the dying fire. About the glade ranged the tall spruce,
Watching breathlessly; and for a termless second or two a profound and
portentous silence descended on the camp. No leaf rustled, not a tree
limb cracked. The creature that had pushed through the thickets to the
edge of the glade was evidently standing motionless, deciding on his
course.

Only the wild things seem to know what complete absence of motion means.
To stand like a form in rock, not a muscle quivering or a hair stirring,
is never a feat for ragged, over stretched human nerves; and it requires
a perfect muscle control that is generally only known to the beasts of
the forest. Only a few times in a lifetime in human beings are the
little, outward motions actually suspended; perhaps under the paralysis
of great terror or, with painstaking effort, before a photographer's
camera. But with the beasts it is an everyday accomplishment necessary
to their survival. The fawn that can not stand absolutely motionless,
his dappled skin blending perfectly with the background of shrubbery
shot with sunlight, comes to an end quickly in the fangs of some great
beast of prey. The panther that can not lurk, not a muscle quivering, in
his ambush beside the deer trail, never knows full feeding. The creature
on the opposite side of the glade seemed as bereft of motion as the
spruce trees in the moonlight, or the cliff above the cave.

"What is it?" Beatrice whispered. The man's eyes strained into the
gloom.

"I don't know. It may be just a moose, or maybe a caribou. But it may
be--"

He tiptoed to the door of the cave, and his eye fell to the crouching
form of Fenris. The creature outside was neither moose nor caribou. The
great wolf of the North does not stand at bay to the antlered people. He
was poised to spring, his fangs bared and his fierce eyes hot with fire,
but he was not hunting. Whatever moved in the darkness without, the wolf
had no desire to go forth and attack. Perhaps he would fight to the
death to protect the occupants of the cave; but surely an ancient and
devastating fear had hold of him. Evidently he recognized the intruder
as an ancestral enemy that held sovereignty over the forest.

At that instant Ben leaped through the cavern maw to reach his gun.
There was nothing to be gained by waiting further. This was a savage and
an uninhabited land; and the great beasts of prey that ranged the forest
had not yet learned the restraint born of the fear of man. And he knew
one breathless instant of panic when his eye failed to locate the weapon
in the faint light of the fire.

Holding hard, he tried to remember where he had left it. The form across
the glade was no longer motionless. Straining, Ben saw the soft roll of
a great shadow, almost imperceptible in the gloom--advancing slowly
toward him. Then the faint glow of the fire caught and reflected in the
creature's eyes.

They suddenly glowed out in the half-darkness, two rather small circles
of dark red, close together and just alike. This night visitor was not
moose or caribou, or was it one of the lesser hunters, lynx or
wolverine, or a panther wandered far from his accustomed haunts. The
twin circles were too far above the ground. And whatever it was, no
doubt remained but that the creature was steadily stalking him across
the soft grass.

At that instant Ben's muscles snapped into action. Only a second
remained in which to make his defense--the creature had paused, setting
his muscles for a death-dealing charge. "Go back into the cave--as far
as you can," he said swiftly to Beatrice. His own eyes, squinted and
straining for the last iota of vision in that darkened scene, made a
last, frantic search for his rifle. Suddenly he saw the gleam of its
barrel as it rested against the wall of the cliff, fifteen feet distant.

At once he knew that his only course was to spring for it in the instant
that remained, and trust to its mighty shocking power to stop the charge
that would in a moment ensue. Yet it seemed to tear the life fiber of
the man to do it. His inmost instincts, urgent and loud in his ear, told
him to remain on guard, not to leave that cavern maw for an instant but
to protect with his own body the precious life that it sheltered. His
mind worked with that incredible speed that is usually manifest in a
crisis; and he knew that the creature might charge into the cavern
entrance in the second that he left it. Yet only in the rifle lay the
least chance or hope for either of them.

"At him, Fenris!" he shouted. The wolf leaped forward like a thrown
spear,--almost too fast for the eye to follow. He was deathly afraid,
with full knowledge of the power of the enemy he went to combat, but his
fears were impotent to restrain him at the first sound of that masterful
voice. These were the words he had waited for. He could never disobey
such words as these--from the lips of his god. And Ben's mind had worked
true; he knew that the wolf could likely hold the creature at bay until
he could seize his rifle.

In an instant it was in his hands, and he had sprung back to his post in
front of the cavern maw. And presently he remembered, heartsick, that
the weapon was not loaded.

For his own safety he had kept it empty on the outward journey, partly
to prevent accident, partly to be sure that his prisoner could not turn
it against him. But he had shells in the pocket of his jacket. His hand
groped, but his reaching fingers found but one shell, dropping it
swiftly into the gun. And now he knew that no time remained to seek
another. The beast in the darkness had launched into the charge.

Thereafter there was only a great confusion, event piled upon event with
incredible rapidity, and a whole lifetime of stress and fear lived in a
single instant. The creature's first lunge carried him into the brighter
moonlight; and at once Ben recognized its breed. No woodsman could
mistake the high, rocking shoulders, the burly form, the wicked ears
laid back against the flat, massive head, the fangs gleaming white, the
long, hooked claws slashing through the turf as he ran. It was a
terrible thing to see and stand against, in the half-darkness. The
shadows accentuated the towering outline; and forgotten terrors,
lurking, since the world was young, in the labyrinth of the germ plasm
wakened and spread like icy streams through the mortal body and seemed
to threaten to extinguish the warm flame of the very soul.

The grizzly bawled as he came, an explosive, incredible storm of sound.
Few indeed are the wilderness creatures that can charge in silence:
muscular exertion can not alone relieve their gathered flood of madness
and fury. And at once Ben sensed the impulse behind the attack. He and
the girl had made their home in the grizzly's cave--perhaps the lair
wherein he had hibernated through the winter and which he still slept in
from time to time--and he had come to drive them out. Only death could
pay for such insolence as this,--to make a night's lair in the den of
his sovereignty, the grizzly.

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