The Sky Line of Spruce by Edison Marshall

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Sometimes he took ptarmigan--those whistling, sprightly grouse of the
high steeps--and Beatrice served uncounted numbers of them, like the
famous blackbirds, baked in a pie. Fried ptarmigan was a dish never to
forget; roast ptarmigan had a distinctive flavor all its own, and the
memory of ptarmigan fricassee often called Ben home to the cavern an
hour before the established mealtime. Indeed, they partook of all the
northern species of that full-bosomed clan, the upland game birds;
little, brown quail, willow grouse, fool hens, and the incomparable blue
grouse, half of the breast of which was a meal. It was true that their
little store of pistol cartridges was all but gone, but worlds of big
game remained to fall back upon.

Ben never ceased regretting that he had not brought a single fishhook
and a piece of line. He had long since carried the canoe from the river
bank and hid it in the tall reeds of the lake shore, not only for
pleasure's sake, but to preserve it for the autumn floods when they
might want to float on down to the Indian villages; and surely it would
have afforded the finest sport in the way of trolling for lake trout.
But with utter callousness he made his pistol serve as a hook and line.
Often he would crawl down, cautiously as a stalking wolf, to the edge of
a trout pool, then fire mercilessly at a great, spotted beauty below.
The bullet itself did not penetrate the water, but the shock carried
through and the fish usually turned a white belly to the surface. A fat
brook or lake trout, dipped in flour and fried to a chestnut brown, was
a delight that never grew old.

At every fresh find Beatrice would come triumphant into Ben's presence;
and at such times they scarcely conducted themselves like enemies. An
unguessed boyishness and charm had come to Ben in these ripe, full
summer days: the hard lines softened in his face and mostly the hard
shine left his eyes. Beatrice found herself curiously eager to please
him, taking the utmost care and pains with every dish she prepared for
the table; and it was true that he made the most joyful, exultant
response to her efforts. The searing heat back of his eyes was quite
gone, now. Even the scarlet fluid of his veins seemed to flow more
quietly, with less fire, with less madness. A gentling influence had
come to bear upon him; a great kindness, a new forbearance had
brightened his outlook toward all the world. A great redemption was even
now hovering close to him,--some unspeakable and ultimate blessing that
he could not name.

Their days were not without pleasure. Often they ventured far into the
heavy forest, and always fresh delight and thrilling adventure awaited
them. Ever they learned more of the wild things that were their only
neighbors,--creatures all the way down the scale from the lordly moose,
proud of his growing antlers and monarch of the marshes, to the small
pika, squeaking on the slide-rock of the high peaks. They knew and loved
them all; they found ever-increasing enjoyment in the study of their shy
ways and furtive occupations; they observed with delight the droll
awkwardness of the moose calves, the impertinence and saucy speech of
the jays, the humor of the black bear and the surly arrogance of the
grizzly. They knew that superlative cunning of his wickedness, the
wolverine; the stealth of the red fox; the ferociousness of the ermine
whose brown skin, soon to be white, suggested only something silken and
soft and tender instead of a fiendish cutthroat, terror of the Little
People; the skulking cowardice of the coyote; and the incredible
savagery and agility of the fisher,--that middle-sized hunter that
catches and kills everything he can master except fish. They climbed
high hills and descended into still, mysterious valleys; they paddled
long, dreamy twilight hours on the lake; they traversed marshes where
the moose wallowed; and they walked through ancient forests where the
decayed vegetation was a mossy pulp under their feet. Sometimes they
forgot the poignancy of their strange lives, romping sometimes,
gossiping like jays in the tree-limbs, and sometimes, forgetting enmity,
they told each other their secret beliefs and philosophies. They had
picnics in the woods; and long, comfortable evenings before their
dancing fire. But there was one enduring joy that always surpassed all
the rest, a happiness that seemed to have its origin in the silent
places of their hearts. It was just the return, after a fatiguing day in
forest and marsh, to the sheltering walls of the cave.

With his axe and hunting knife Ben prepared a complete set of furniture
for their little abode. His first Work was a surpassing-marvelous
dining-room suite of a table and two chairs. Then he put up shelves for
their rapidly dwindling supplies of provisions and cut chunks of spruce
log, with a bit of bark remaining, for fireside seats. And for more than
a week, Beatrice was forbidden to enter a certain covert just beyond the
glade lest she should prematurely discover an even greater wonder that
Ben, in off hours, was preparing for a surprise.

From time to time she heard him busily at work, the ring of his axe and
his gay whistling as he whittled bolts of wood; but other than that it
concerned the grizzly skin she had not the least idea of his task. But
the work was completed at last, and then came two days of rather
significant silence,--quite incomprehensible to the girl. She was at a
loss why Ben did not reveal his treasure.

But one morning she missed the familiar sounds of his fire-building,
usually his first work on wakening. The very fact of their absence
startled her wide-awake, while otherwise she would have perhaps slept
late into the morning. Ben had seemingly vanished into the heavy timber
across the glade.

Presently she heard him muttering and grunting as he moved some heavy
object to the door of the cave. Boyishly, he could not wait for the
usual late hour when she wakened. He made a wholly unnecessary amount of
noise as he built the fire. Then he thrust his lean head into the cavern
opening.

"I hope I haven't waked you up?" he said.

The girl smiled secretly. "I wanted to wake up, anyway--to-day."

"I wish you'd get up and come and look at something ugly I've got just
outside the door."

She hurried into her outer garments, and in a moment appeared. It was
ugly, certainly, the object that he had fashioned with such tireless
toil: not fitted at all for a stylish city home; yet the girl, for one
short instant, stopped breathing. It was a hammock, suspended on a stout
frame, to take the place of her tree-bough bed on the cave floor. He had
used the grizzly skin, hanging it with unbreakable sinew, and fashioning
it in such a manner that folds of the hide could be turned over her on
cold nights. For a moment she gazed, very earnestly, into the rugged,
homely, raw-boned face of her companion.

Beatrice was deeply and inexplicably sobered, yet a curious happiness
took swift possession of her heart. Reading the gratitude in her eyes,
Ben's lips broke into a radiant smile.

"I guess you've forgotten what day it is," he said.

"Of course. I hardly know the month."

"I've notched each day, you know. And maybe you've forgotten--on the
ride out from Snowy Gulch--we talked of birthdays. To-day is yours."

She stared at him in genuine astonishment. She had not dreamed that this
little confidence, given in a careless moment of long weeks before, had
lingered in the man's memory. She had supposed that the fury and
savagery of his war with her father and the latter's followers had
effaced all such things as this.

And it was true that had this birthday come a few weeks before, on the
river journey and previous to their occupation of the cave, Ben would
have let it pass unnoticed. The smoldering fire in his brain would have
seared to ashes any such kindly thought as this. But when the wild
hunter leaves his leafy lair and goes to dwell, a man rather than a
beast, in a permanent abode, he has thought for other subjects than his
tribal wars and the blood-lust of his hates. The hearth, and the care
and friendship of the girl had tamed Ben to this degree, at least.

But wonders were not done. The look in the girl's eyes suddenly melted,
as the warm sun melts ice, some of the frozen bitterness of his spirit.
"It's your birthday--and I hope you have many of 'em," he went on. "No
more like this--but all of 'em happy,--as you deserve."

He walked toward her, and her eyes could not leave his. He bent soberly,
and brushed her lips with his own.

There were always worlds to talk about in the warm gleam of their fire.
When the day's work was done, and the hush of early night gathered the
land to its arms, they would sit on their fireside seats and settle all
problems, now and hereafter, to the perfect satisfaction of them both.

From Ben, Beatrice gained a certain strength of outlook as well as depth
of insight, but she gave him in return more than she received. He felt
that her influence, in his early years, would have worked wonders for
him. She straightened out his moral problems for him, taught him lessons
in simple faith; and her own childish sweetness and absolute purity
showed his whole world in a new light.

Sometimes they talked of religion and ethics, sometimes of science and
economics, and particularly they talked of what was nearest to
them,--the mysteries and works of nature. She had been a close observer
of the forest. She had received some glimpse of its secret laws that
were, when all was said and done, the basic laws of life. But for all
her love of science she was not a mere biologist. She had a full and
devout faith in Law and Judgment beyond any earthly sphere.

"No one can live in this boundless wilderness and not believe," she told
him earnestly, her dark eyes brimming with her fervor. "Perhaps I can't
tell you why--maybe it's just a feeling of need, of insufficiency of
self. Besides, God is close, like He was to the Israelites when they
were in the wilderness; but you will remember that He never came close
again.--This forest is so big and so awful, He knows he must stay close
to keep you from dying of fear.--God may not be a reality to the people
of the cities, where they see only buildings and streets, but Ben, He is
to me. You can't forget Him up here. He stands on every mountain, just
as the sons of Aaron saw Him."

He found, to his surprise, that she was not ill-read, particularly in
the old-time classics. But her environment had also influenced her
choice of reading. She loved the old legends in the minor,--far-off and
plaintive things that reflected the mood of the dusky forest in which
she lived.

One night, when the moon was in the sky, he told her of his war record,
of the shell-shock and the strange, criminal mania that followed it; and
then of his swift recovery. With an over-powering need of
self-justification he told her of his further adventures with Ezram, of
the old man's murder and the theft of the claim. She heard him out,
listening attentively; but in loyalty to her father she did not let
herself believe him entirely. The answer she gave him was the same as
she had always given at his every reference to his side of the case.

"If you were in the right, you'd take me back and let the law take its
course," she told him. "You'd not be out here laying an ambush for them,
to kill them when they try to rescue me."

He could never make her understand how, by the intricacies of law, it
would be a rare chance that he would be able to fasten the crime on the
murderers: that he had taken the only sure way open to make them pay for
Ezram's death. He told her of the old man's, final request; how that his
war with her father and his men was a debt that, by secret, inscrutable
laws of his being, could never be written off or disavowed. But he could
never fully find words to uphold his position. The thing went back to
his instincts, traced at last to the remorseless spirit of the wolf that
was his heritage.

Yet these hours of talk were immensely good for him. While they never
met on common grounds, the girl's true outlook and nobility of character
were ever more manifest to him; and were not without a gentling, healing
influence upon him. He could not blind himself to them. And sometimes
when he sat alone by his dying fire, as the dark menaced him, and the
girl that was his charge slept within the portals of stone, he had the
unescapable feeling that the very structure of his life was falling and
shattering down; but even now he could see, an enchanted vista in the
distance, a mightier, more glorious tower, builded and shaped by this
woman's hand.

XXXI

While Beatrice was at her household tasks--cooking the meals, cleaning
the cave, washing and repairing their clothes--Ben never forgot his more
serious work. Certain hours every day he spent in exploration, seeking
out the passes over the hills, examining every possible means of
entrance and egress into his valley, getting the lay of the land and
picking out the points from which he would make his attack. Already he
knew every winding game trail and every detail of the landscape for five
miles or more around. His ultimate vengeance seemed just as sure as the
night following the day.

Ever he listened for the first sound of the pack train in the forest;
and even in his hours of pleasure his eyes ever roamed over the sweep of
valley and marsh below. He was prepared for his enemies now. One or
five, they couldn't escape him. He had provided for every contingency
and had seemingly perfected his plan to the last detail.

He had not the slightest fear that his eagerness would cost him his aim
when finally his eye looked along the sights at the forms of his
enemies, helpless in the marsh. He was wholly cold about the matter now.
The lust and turmoil in his veins, remembered like a ghastly dream from
that first night, returned but feebly now, if at all. This change, this
restraint had been increasingly manifest since his occupation of the
cave, and it had marked, at the same time, a growing barrier between
himself and Fenris. But he could not deny but that such a development
was wholly to have been expected. Fenris was a child of the open forest
aisles, never of the fireside and the hearth. It was not that the wolf
had ceased to give him his dint of faithful service, or that he loved
him any the less. But each of them had other interests,--one his home
and hearth; the other the ever-haunting, enticing call of the wildwood.
Lately Fenris had taken to wandering into the forest at night, going and
coming like a ghost; and once his throat and jowls had been stained with
dark blood.

"It's getting too tame for you here, old boy, isn't it?" Ben said to him
one hushed, breathless night. "But wait just a little while more. It
won't be tame then."

It was true: the hunting party, if they had started at once, must be
nearing their death valley by now. Except for the absolute worst of
traveling conditions they would have already come. Ben felt a growing
impatience: a desire to do his work and get it over. His pulse no longer
quickened and leaped at the thought of vengeance; and the wolflike
pleasure in simple killing could no longer be his. It would merely be
the soldier's work--a dreadful obligation to perform speedily and to
forget. Even the memory of the huddled form of his savior and friend, so
silent and impotent in the dead leaves, did not stir him into madness
now.

Yet he never thought of disavowing his vengeance. It was still the main
purpose of his life. He had no theme but that: when that work was done
he could conceive of nothing further of interest on earth, nothing else
worth living for. Not for an instant had he relented: except for that
one kiss, on the occasion of her birthday, he had never broken his
promise in regard to his relations with Beatrice. His first trait was
steadfastness, a trait that, curiously enough, is inherent in all living
creatures who are by blood close to the wild wolf, from the German
police dog to the savage husky of the North. But he was certainly and
deeply changed in these weeks in the cave. He no longer hated these
three murderous enemies of his. The power to hate had simply died in his
body. He regarded their destruction rather as a duty he owed old Ezram,
an obligation that he would die sooner than forego.

The hushed, dark, primal forest had a different appeal for him now. He
loved it still, with the reverence and adoration of the forester he was,
but no longer with that love a servant bears his master. He had
distinctly escaped from its dominance. The passion and mounting fire
that it wakened at the fall of darkness could no longer take possession
of him, as strong drink possesses the brain, bending his will, making of
him simply a tool and a pawn to gratify its cruel desires and to achieve
its mysterious ends. He had been, in spirit, a brother of the wolf,
before: a runner in the packs. Such had been the outgrowth of innate
traits; part of his strange destiny. Now, after these weeks in the cave,
he was a man. It was hard for him to explain even to himself. It was as
if in the escape from his own black passions, he had also escaped the
curious tyranny of the wild; not further subject to its cruel moods and
whims, but rather one of a Dominant Breed, a being who could lift his
head in defiance to the storm, obey his own will, go his own way. This
was no little change. Perhaps, when all is said and done, it marks the
difference between man and the lesser mammals, the thing that has
evolved a certain species of the primates--simply woods creatures that
trembled at the storm and cowered in the night--into the rulers and
monarchs of the earth.

Ben had come out from the darkened forest trails where he made his lairs
and had gone into a cave to live! He had found a permanent abode--a
lasting, shelter from the cold and the storm. It suggested a curious
allegory to him. Some time in the long-forgotten past, probably when the
later glaciers brought their promise of cold, all his race left their
leafy bowers and found cave homes in the cliffs. Before that time they
were merely woods children, blind puppets of nature, sleeping where
exhaustion found them; wandering without aim in the tree aisles; mating
when they met the female of their species on the trails and venturing on
again; knowing the ghastly, haunting fear of the night and the blind
terror of the storm and elements: merely higher beasts in a world of
beasts. But they came to the caves. They established permanent abodes.
They began to be men.

All that now stands as civilization, all the conquest of the earth and
sea and air began from that moment. It was the Great Epoch,--and Ben had
illustrated it in his own life. The change had been infinitely slow, but
certain as the movement of the planets in their spheres. Behind the
sheltering walls they got away from fear,--that cruel bondage in which
Nature holds all her wild creatures, the burden that makes them her
slaves. Never to shudder with horror when the darkness fell in silence
and mystery; never to have the heart freeze with terror when the thunder
roared in the sky and the wind raged in the trees. The cave dwellers
began to come into their own. Sheltered behind stone walls they could
defy the elements that had enslaved them so long. This freedom gained
they learned to strike the fire; they took one woman to keep the cave,
instead of mating indiscriminately in the forest, thus marking the
beginning of family life. Love instead of deathless hatred, gentleness
rather than cruelty, peace in the place of passion, mercy and tolerance
and self-control: all these mighty bulwarks of man's dominance grew into
strength behind the sheltering walls of home.

Thus in these few little weeks Ben Darby--a beast of the forest in his
unbridled passions--had in some measure imaged the life history of the
race. He had lived again the momentous regeneration. The protecting
walls, the hearth, particularly Beatrice's wholesome and healing
influence, had tamed him. He was still a forester, bred in the
bone--loving these forest depths with an ardor too deep for words--but
the mark of the beast was gone from his flesh.

He could still deal justice to Ezram's murderers and thus keep faith
with his dead partner; but the primal passions could no longer dominate
him. His pet, however, remained the wolf. The sheltering cavern walls
were never for him. He loved Ben with an undying devotion, yet a barrier
was rising between them. They could not go the same paths forever.

Matters reached a crisis between Fenris and himself one still, warm
night in late July. The two were sitting side by side at the cavern maw,
watching the slow enchantment of the forest under the spell of the
rising moon; Beatrice had already gone to her hammock. As the last
little blaze died in the fire, and it crackled at ever longer intervals,
Ben suddenly made a moving discovery. The fringe of forest about him,
usually so dreamlike and still, was simply breathing and throbbing with
life.

Ben dropped his hand to the wolf's shoulders. "The little folks are
calling on us to-night," he said quietly.

In all probability he spoke the truth. It was not an uncommon thing for
the creatures of the wood--usually the lesser people such as rodents and
the small hunters--to crowd close to the edge of the glade and try to
puzzle out this ruddy mystery in its center. Unused to men they could
never understand. Sometimes the lynx halted in his hunt to investigate,
sometimes an old black bear--kindly, benevolent good-humored old
bachelor that every naturalist loves--grunted and pondered at the edge
of shadow, and sometimes even such lordly creatures as moose and caribou
paused in their night journeys to see what was taking place.

Curiously, the wolf started violently at Ben's touch. The man suddenly
regarded him with a gaze of deepest interest. The hair was erect on the
powerful neck, the eyes swam in pale, blue fire, and he was staring away
into the mysterious shadows.

"What do you see, old-timer?" Ben asked. "I wish I could see too."

He brought his senses to the finest focus, trying hard to understand. He
was aware only of the strained silence at first. Then here and there,
about the dimmining circle of firelight, he heard the soft rustle of
little feet, the subdued crack of a twig or the scratch of a dead leaf.
The forest smells--of which there is no category in heaven or
earth--reached him with incredible clarity. These were faint, vaguely
exciting smells, some of them the exquisite fragrances of summer
flowers, others beyond his ken. And presently two small, bright circles
appeared in a distant covert, glowed once, and then went out.

By peering closely, with unwinking eyes, he began to see other
twin-circles of green and yellow light. Yet they were furtive little
radiances--vanishing swiftly--and they were nothing of which to be
afraid.

"They _are_ out to-night," he murmured. "No wonder you're excited,
Fenris. What is it--some celebration in the forest?"

There was no possible explanation. Foresters know that on certain nights
the wilderness seems simply to teem with life--scratchings and rustlings
in every covert--and on other nights it is still and lifeless as a
desert. The wild folk were abroad to-night and were simply paying
casual, curious visits to Ben's fire.

Once more Ben glanced at the wolf. The animal no longer crouched. Rather
he was standing rigid, his head half-turned and lifted, gazing away
toward a distant ridge behind the lake. A wilderness message had reached
him, clear as a voice.

But presently Ben understood. Throbbing through the night he heard a
weird, far-carrying call--a long-drawn note, broken by half-sobs--the
mysterious, plaintive utterance of the wild itself. Yet it was not an
inanimate voice. He recognized it at once as the howl of a wolf, one of
Fenris' wild brethren.

The creature at his feet started as if from a blow. Then he stood
motionless, listening, and the cry came the second time. He took two
leaps into the darkness.

Deeply moved, Ben watched him. The wolf halted, then stole back to his
master's side. He licked the man's hand with his warm tongue, whining
softly.

"What is it, boy?" Ben asked. "What do you want me to do?"

The wolf whined louder, his eyes luminous with ineffable appeal. Once
more he leaped into the shadows, pausing as if to see if Ben would
follow him.

The man shook his head, rather soberly. A curious, excited light was in
his eyes. "I can't go, old boy," he said. "This is my place--here.
Fenris, I can't leave the cave."

For a moment they looked eyes into eyes--in the glory of that moon as
strange a picture as the wood gods ever beheld. Once more the wolf call
sounded. Fenris whimpered softly.

"Go ahead if you like," Ben told him. "God knows it's your destiny."

The wolf seemed to understand. With a glad bark he sped away and almost
instantly vanished into the gloom.

But Fenris had not broken all ties with the cave. The chain was too
strong for that, the hold on his wild heart too firm. If there is one
trait, far and near in the wilds, that distinguishes the woods children,
it is their inability to forget. Fenris had joined his fellows, to be
sure; but he still kept watch over the cave.

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