The Sky Line of Spruce by Edison Marshall

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Ben was not so far distant that he failed to discern the instant change
in Neilson's tone. It had a strained, almost an apprehensive quality
such as few men had ever heard in his voice before. Plainly all visitors
in this end of the mountains were regarded with suspicion.

"He's a prospector--Mr. Darby," the girl replied. "Come here, Ben--and
be introduced." She turned toward her new-found friend; and the latter
walked near, into the light that streamed over him from the doorway.
"This is my father, Mr. Darby--Mr. Neilson. Some one told him this was a
good gold country."

Ben had already decided upon his course of action and had his answer
ready. He knew perfectly that it would only put Neilson on his guard if
he stated his true position; and besides, he wanted word of Ezram. "I
may have a wrong steer, Mr. Neilson," he said, "but a man I met down on
the river-trail, out of Snowy Gulch, advised me to come here. He said
that he had some sort of a claim up here that his brother left him, and
though it was a pocket country, he thought there'd soon be a great rush
up this way."

"I hardly know who it could have been that you met," Neilson began
doubtfully. "He didn't tell you his name--"

"Melville. I believe that was it. And if you'll tell me how to find him,
I'll try to go on to-night. I brought him some of his belongings from
Snowy Gulch--"

"Melville, eh? I guess I know who you mean now. But no--I don't know of
any claim unless it's over east, beyond here. Maybe further down the
river."

Ben made no reply at once; but his mind sped like lightning. Of course
Neilson was lying about the claim: he knew perfectly that at that moment
he was occupying one of Hiram Melville's cabins. He was a first-class
actor, too--his voice indicating scarcely no acquaintance with or
interest in the name.

"He hasn't come up this way?" Ben asked casually.

"He hasn't come through here that I know of. Of course I'm working at my
claim--with my partners--and he might have gone through without our
seeing him. It seems rather unlikely."

Ben was really puzzled now. If Ezram had already made his presence known
and was camping somewhere in the hills about, there was no reason
immediately evident why Neilson should deny his presence. Ben found
himself wondering whether by any chance Ezram had been delayed along the
trail, perhaps had even lost his way, and had not yet put in an
appearance.

"He told me, in the few minutes that I talked to him, that his cabin was
somewhere close to this one--I thought he said up this creek."

"There is a cabin up the creek a way," Neilson admitted, "but it isn't
the one he meant. It's on my claim, and my two partners are living in
it. But when he said near to this one, he might have meant ten miles.
That's the way we Northern men speak of distance."

There was nothing more to say, nothing to do at present. He said his
farewells to the girl, refused an invitation to pass the night in the
cabin, and made his way to the green bank of the stream. Four hundred
yards from the cabin, and perhaps a like number from the cabin of Ray
and Charley--obscured from both by the thickets--he pitched his camp.

In the cabin he had left Jeffery Neilson catechized his daughter, trying
to learn all he could concerning Ben. It was true that he carried the
dead Hiram's rifle, and that the latter's pet wolf followed at his
heels, but it was wholly probable that the old man, Hiram's brother,
with whom he had conversed at the river, had designated him to get them.
He had been courteous and respectful throughout the journey to the Yuga,
Beatrice said, and he had also saved her from possible death in the
fangs of the wolf the evening previous. Neilson decided that he would
take no steps at present but merely wait and watch developments.

Meanwhile Ben had made his fire and unpacked his horses. He confined his
riding horse with a picket rope; the others he turned loose. Then he
cooked a simple meal for himself and the gaunt servant at his heels.

When the night had come down in full, and as he sat about the glowing
coals of his supper fire, he had time to devote serious thought to the
fate of Ezram. It occurred to him that perhaps the old man had
discovered, at a distance, the presence of the claim-jumpers; and was
merely waiting in the thickets for a chance to take action. If such were
the case, sooner or later they could join their fortunes again. It was
also easy to imagine that Ezram had lost his way on the journey out.

He stood at the edge of the firelight, gazing out into the darkened
forest. The wolf crouched beside him: alert, watching his face for any
command. It was wholly plain that the gaunt woods creature had accepted
him at once as his master; and that the bond between them, because of
some secret similarity of spirit, was already far closer than between
most masters and their pets.

Ben sensed another side of the forest to-night because of his inborn
love of the waste places not often seen. The thickets were menacing,
sinister to-night. The spruce crept up to the skyline with darkness and
mystery: he realized the eternal malevolence that haunts their silent
fastnesses. They would have tricks in plenty to play on such as would
lose their way on their dusky trails! Oh, they would have no mercy or
remorse for any one who was lost, _out there_, to-night! Ben felt a
heavy burden of dread!

Even now, old Ezram might be wandering, vainly, through the gloomy,
whispering woods, ever penetrating farther into their merciless
solitudes. And no homes smoked in the clearings, no camps glowed in the
immensity of the dark--out there. This was just the beginning of the
forest; clear into the shadow of the Arctic Circle, where the woodlands
gave way to the Weary wastes of barrens, there was no break, no tilled
fields or fisher's villages, only an occasional Indian encampment which
not even a wolf, running through the night, might find. His supply of
food would quickly be exhausted, fatigue would break his valiant spirit.
Ben planned an extensive search for his tracks as soon as the morning
light permitted him to see.

He missed the old man's comradeship with a deep and fervid longing. They
had come to count on each other, these past weeks. It wasn't alone
infinite gratitude that he felt for him now. The thing went too deep to
tell. Yet there was no use seeking for him to-night.

He turned to the wolf and dropped his hand upon the animal's shoulder.
Fenris started, then quivered in ecstasy. "I wish I had your nose,
to-night, old boy," Ben told him. "I'd find that old buddy of mine. I
wish I had your eyes to see in the dark, and your legs to run. Fenris,
do you know where he is?"

The wolf turned his wild eyes toward his master's face, as if he were
trying to understand.

XIV

Impelled by an urge within himself Ben suddenly knelt beside his lupine
friend. He could not understand the flood of emotion, the vague sense of
impending and dramatic events that stirred him to the quick. He only
knew, with a knowledge akin to inspiration, that in Fenris lay the
answer to his problem.

The moment was misted over with a quality of unreality. In the east rose
the moon, shining incredibly on the tree tops, showering down through
the little rifts in the withholding branches, enchanting the place as by
the weaving of a dream. The moon madness caught up Ben like a flame,
enthralling him as never before. He knew that white sphere of old. And
all at once he realized that here, at his knees, was one who knew it
too,--with a knowledge as ancient and as infinite as his own. Not for
nothing had the wolf breed lived their lives beneath it through the long
roll of the ages. Its rising and its setting had regulated the hunting
hours of the pack time without end; its beams had lighted the game
trails where the gray band had bayed after the deer; its light had
beheld, since the world was young, the rapturous mating of the old pack
leader and his female. Fenris too knew the moon-madness; but unlike Ben
he had a means of expression of the wonder and mystery and vague longing
that thrilled his wild heart. No man who has heard the pack song to the
moon could doubt this fact. It is a long, melancholy wail, poignant with
the pain of living, but it tells what man can not.

Ben knew, now, why he was a forester, a woodsman famed even among
woodsmen. Most of his fellows had been tamed by civilization; they had
lived beneath roofs instead of the canopy of heaven, and they had almost
forgotten about the moon. Ben, on the other hand, was a recurrence of an
earlier type, inheriting little from his immediate ancestors but
reverting back a thousand centuries to the Cave and the Squatting Place.
His nature was that of prehistoric man rather than that of the son of
civilization; and in this lay the explanation for all that had set him
apart from the great run of men and had made him the master woodsman
that he was. And because his spirit was of the wildwood, because he also
knew the magic of the moon, he was able to make this wildwood thing at
his feet understand and obey his will.

The world of to-day seemed to fade out for him and left only the wolf,
its fierce eyes on his own. Time swung back, and this might have been a
scene of forgotten ages,--the wolf, the human hunter, the smoldering
camp fire, the dark, jagged line of spruce against the sky. It was thus
at the edge of the ice. Wolf and man--both children of the wild--had
understood each other then; and they could understand each other now.

"Fenris, old boy," the man whispered. "Can you find him for me, Fenris?
He's out there somewhere--" the man motioned toward the dark--"and I
want him. Can you take me to him?"

The wolf trembled all over, struggling to get his meaning. This was no
creature of subordinate intelligence: the great wolf of the North. He
had, besides the cunning of the wild hunters, the intelligence that is
the trait of the whole canine breed. Nor did he depend on his sense of
hearing alone. He watched his master's face, and more than that, he was
tuned and keyed to those mysterious vibrations that carry a message from
brain to brain no less clearly and swift than words themselves,--the
secret wireless of the wild.

"He's my buddy, old boy, and I want you to find him for me," Ben went
on, more patiently. He searched his pockets, drawing out at last the
copy of the letter Ezram had given him that morning, and, because the
old man had carried it for many days, it could still convey a message to
the keen nose of the wolf. He put it to the animal's nostrils, then
pointed away into the darkness.

Fenris followed the motion with his eyes; and presently his long body
stiffened. Ben watched him, fascinated. Then the wolf sniffed at the
paper again and trotted away into the night.

In one leap Ben was on his feet, following him. The wolf turned once,
saw that his master was at his heels, and sped on. They turned up a
slight draw, toward the hillside.

It became clear at once that Fenris was depending upon his marvelous
sense of smell. His nose would lower to the ground, and sometimes he
tacked back and forth, uncertainly. At such times Ben watched him with
bated breath. But always he caught the scent again.

Once more he paused, sniffing eagerly; then turned, whining. Just as
clearly as if they had possessed a mutual language Ben understood: the
animal had caught the clear scent at last. The wolf loped off, and his
fierce bay rang through the hushed forest.

It was a long-drawn, triumphant note; and the wild creatures paused in
their mysterious, hushed occupations to listen. It was also significant
that it made certain deadly inroads in the spirit of Ray Brent, sitting
in his distant cabin. He marked the direction of the sound, and he
cursed, half in awe, under his breath. He had always hated the gray
rangers. They were the uncanny demons of the forest.

Ben followed the running wolf as fast as he could; and in his eagerness
he had no opportunity for conjecture as to what he would find at the end
of the pursuit. Yet he did not believe for an instant this was a false
trail. The wolf's deep, full-ringing bays were ever more urgent and
excited, filling the forest with their uproar. But quite suddenly the
silence closed down again, seemingly more deep and mysterious than ever.

Ben's first sensation was one of icy terror that crept to the very
marrow of his bones. He knew instantly that there was a meaning of
dreadful portent in the abrupt cessation of the cries. He halted an
instant, listening, but at first could hear no more than the throb of
his heart in his breast and the whisper of his own troubled breathing.
But presently, at a distance of one hundred yards, he distinguished the
soft whining of the wolf.

Fenris was no longer running! He had halted at the edge of a distant
thicket. The cold sweat sprang out on Ben's forehead, and he broke into
a headlong run.

There was no later remembrance of traversing that last hundred yards.
The hillside seemed to whip under his feet. He paused at last, just at
the dark margin of an impenetrable thicket. The wolf whined
disconsolately just beyond the range of his vision.

"Ezram!" he called, a curious throbbing quality in his voice. "Are you
there, Ez? It's me--Ben."

But the thickets neither rustled nor spoke. The cracked old voice he had
learned to love did not speak in relief, in that moment of unutterable
suspense. Indeed, the silence seemed to deepen about him. The spruce
trees were hushed and impassive as ever; the moon shone and the wind
breathed softly in his face. Fenris came whimpering toward him.

Together, the man and the wolf, they crept on into the thicket. They
halted at last before a curious shadow in the silvered covert. Ben knew
at once he had found his ancient comrade.

He and Ezram had had their last laugh together. He lay very still, the
moonlight ensilvering his droll, kindly face,--sleeping so deeply that
no human voice could ever waken him. An ugly rifle wound yawned darkly
at his temple.

XV

The first effect of a great shock is usually a semi-paralysis of the
entire mental mechanism and is, as a rule, beneficent. The brain seems
to be enclosed in a great preoccupation, like a wall, and the messages
of pain and horror brought by the nerves batter against it in vain. The
senses are dulled, the perceptions blunted, and full realization does
not come.

For a long time, in which time itself stood still, Ben sat beside the
dead body of his old counselor and friend as a child might sit among
flowers. He half leaned forward, his arms limp, his hands resting in his
lap, a deep wonder and bewilderment in his eyes. Dully he watched the
moon lifting in the sky and felt the caress of the wind against his
face, glancing only from time to time at the huddled body before him.
The wolf whined softly, and sometimes Ben reached his hand to caress the
furry shoulder.

But slowly his wandering faculties returned to him. He began to
understand. Ezram was dead--that was it--gone from his life as smoke
goes in the air. Never to hear him again, or see him, or make plans with
him, or have high adventures beside him along the lonely trails. Fenris
had found him in the darkness: here he lay--the old family friend, the
man who had saved him, redeemed him and given him his chance, his old
"buddy" who had brought him home. The thing was not credible at first:
that here, dead as a stone, lay the shell of that life that had been his
own salvation. He studied intently the gray face, missed its habitual
smile and for really the first time his gaze rested upon the yawning
wound in the temple.

He gazed at it in speechless, growing horror, and something like an
incredible cold descended upon him. The entire hydraulic system of his
blood seemed to be freezing. His hands were cold, his vitals icy and
lifeless. There was, however, the beginning of heat somewhere back of
his eyes. He could feel it but dimly, but it was increasing, slowly,
like a smoldering coal that eats its way into wood and soon will burst
into a flame. Slowly he began to grow rigid, his muscles flexing. His
face underwent a tangible change. The lines deepened, the lips set in a
hard line, the eyes were like those of a reptile,--cold, passionless,
unutterably terrible. His face was pale like the paleness of death, but
it appeared more like hard, white metal than flesh. His mind began to
work clear again; he began to understand.

Ezram had been shot, murdered by the men who had jumped his claim.
Beatrice's father, who had talked to him, had probably committed the
crime: if not he, one of his understrappers at his order. He found
himself recalling what Jeffery Neilson had said. Oh, the man had been
sharp! Believing that in the depth of the forest the body would never be
discovered, he had tried to send Ben farther into the interior in search
of him.

He arose, wholly self-mastered, and with hard, strong hands made a
detailed examination of Ezram's wound. He had evidently been shot by a
rifle of large caliber, probably at close range. Ezram's own gun lay at
his feet, loaded but not cocked.

"They shot you down in cold blood, old boy, didn't they?" he found
himself asking. "You didn't have a chance!"

But the gray lips were setting with death, and could not answer. Ben
had forgotten for the instant; he must keep better hold of himself. The
time was not ripe to turn himself loose. But he did wish for one more
word with Ezram, just a few little minutes of planning. They could
doubtless work out something good together. They could decide what to
do.

From this point his mind naturally fell to Ezram's parting advice to
him. "I've only got one decent place to keep things safe, and that ain't
so all-fired decent," the old man had told him. "I always put 'em down
my bootleg, between the sock and the leather. If I ever get shuffled
off, all of a sudden, I want you to look there careful."

Still with the same deathly pallor he crept over the dead leaves to
Ezram's feet. His hands were perfectly steady as he unlooped the laces,
one after another, and quietly pulled off the right boot. In the boot
leg, just as Ezram had promised, Ben found a scrap of white paper.

He spread it on his knee, and unfolded it with care. The moonlight was
not sufficiently vivid, however, for him to read the penciled scrawl. He
felt in his pocket for a match.

Because his mind was operating clear and sure, his thoughts flashed at
once to his enemies in their cabins along the creek. He did not want
them to know he had found the body. His first instinct was to work in
the dark, to achieve his ends by stealth and cunning! It was strange
what capacity for cunning had come upon him. Oh, he would be
crafty--sharp--sure in every motion.

It was unlikely, however, that the faint glare of a match could carry so
far. To make sure he walked behind the covert, then turned his back to
the canyon through which the creek flowed. The match cracked,
inordinately loud in the silence, and his eyes followed the script.
Ezram had been faithful to the last:

To WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

In case of my death I leave all I die possessed of including my
brother Hiram's claim near Yuga River to my pard and buddy, Ben
Darby.

(Signed) EZRA MELVILLE.

The document was as formal as Ezram could make it, with a carefully
drawn seal, and for all its quaint wording, it was a will to stand in
any court. But Ezram had not been able to hold his dignity for long. He
had added a postscript:

Son, old Hiram made a will, and I guess I can make one too. I just
found out about them devils that jumped our claim. I left you back
there at the river because I didn't want you taking any dam fool
risks till I found out how things lay.

I just got one thing to ask. If them devils get me--get them. My
life ain't worth much but I want you to make them pay for the little
it is worth. Never stop till you've done it.

Ben lighted match after match until he had absorbed every word. Then he
folded the paper and placed it in his pocket; but the action did not in
the least take his eyes from the words. He could still see them, written
in fire. They were branded on his spirit.

He stood wholly motionless for a space of almost a minute, as if
listening. The heat back of his eyes was more intense now. The red coals
were about to burst into flame. All the blood of his huge body seemed to
be collecting there, searing his brain.

The moon was no longer white in the sky. It had turned a fiery red. The
stars were red too,--all of them more red than the Star of War. "I want
you to make them pay," a voice said clearly in his ears. "Never stop
till you've done it."

And now Ben was no longer pale. His face was no longer hard and set.
Rather it was dark--dark as dark earth. His eyes glowed like coals
beneath his black brows. He was not standing still and lifeless now. He
was shivering all over with the blackest hate, the most deadly fury.

"Make them pay," he said aloud again, "and never stop till you've done
it."

A sudden snarl from the lips of the wolf drew his eyes downward. Heaven
help him; for the moment he had forgotten Fenris! But he must not forget
him again. They had work to do, the two of them.

Fenris was no longer whining disconsolately. His master's fury had
passed to him, and Ben looked and saw before him not the docile pet, but
the savage beast of the wild. The hair was erect on his shoulders, his
lips were drawn, too; he was crouched as if for battle. The eyes, sunken
in their sockets, were red and terrible to see. Yet he was still Ben's
servant. That quality could never pass from him. The eyes of two
met,--the wolf and the man.

At that instant the little tongue of flame that had been mounting in
Ben's brain burst into a dreadful conflagration. It was the explosion at
last, no less terrible because of its silence--because the sound of the
least, little wind was still discernible in the distant thickets. He
dropped to his knees before the wolf, seizing its head in a terrific
grasp. He half jerked it off its feet, till he held it so that its eyes
burned straight into his.

"Fenris, Fenris!" he breathed. "We've got to make them pay. And we must
not stop till we're done."

It was more than a command. It had the quality of a vow. And now, as
they knelt, eyes looking into eyes, it was like a pagan rite in the
ancient world.

Their separate identities were no longer greatly pronounced. They were
not man and beast, they were simply the wolves of the forest. The old
qualities most often associated with manhood--gentleness, forbearance,
mercy--seemed to pass away from Ben as a light passes into darkness.
Only the Wolf was left, the dominant Beast--that darker, hidden side of
himself from which no man can wholly escape and which civilization has
only smothered, as fresh fuel smothers a flame. Not for nothing had his
fellows known him as "Wolf" Darby; and now the name was true.

The Beast that dwells under every man's skin, in a greater or less
degree, was in the full ascendancy at last. The unnamable ferocity that
marks the death-leap of the wild hunters was in his face. In his eyes
was cunning,--such craft as marks the pack in its hunting. All over him
was written that unearthly rage that is alone the property and trait of
the woods creatures: the fury with which a she-wolf fights for her cubs
or a rattlesnake avenges the death of its mate. Mercy, remorse,
compassion there was none.

And the demon gods of the wilderness rejoiced. For uncounted thousands
of years the tide of battle had flowed against them; and it was long and
long since they had won such a victory as this. Mostly their men
children had forsaken their leafy bowers to live in houses. They tilled
the ground rather than hunt in the forest. The cattle that had once run
wild in the marshes now fed dully in enclosed pastures; the horses--that
mighty breed that once mated and fought and died in freedom on the high
lands--pulled lowly burdens in the cultivated fields. Even some of the
canine people too--first cousins to the wolves themselves--had sold
themselves into slavery for a gnawed bone and a chimney corner. But
to-night the wild had claimed its own again.

Here was one, at least, who had come back into his own. The forest
seemed to whisper and thrill with rapture.

PART TWO

THE WOLF-MAN

XVI

As a wolf might plan a hunt in the forest, Ben planned his war against
Neilson and his subordinates. He knew perfectly that he must not attempt
open warfare. The way of the wolf is the way of cunning and stealth: the
stalk through the thicket and the ferocious attack upon the
unsuspecting; and such example must guide Ben in his operations. He
could not be too careful, too furtive.

His foes were three against one, and they were on their own ground. They
knew the trails and the lay of the country; and as always, in the
science of warfare, this was an advantage hardly to be overcome. Ben
knew that his only hope lay in the finest strategy. First he must make a
surprise attack, and second, he must utilize all natural advantages.

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