Part 45 (1/2)

But she picked up her rabbit, and walked on. In half an hour she reached the camp, strode straight to the pine tree under which Haig lay, and held up before him the puny prize.

”Now I know you're proud of me!” she exclaimed, while her face crimsoned.

Haig smiled indulgently. It was a little better than he had expected.

”Don't be downcast!” he said. ”I didn't think you'd get a deer the first day. You didn't even see one, I suppose.”

”But I did, though! I had one right under my eyes, not thirty feet away. And what do you think I did?”

”Stood and looked at it, of course. That's buck fever.”

”But it was only a tiny little doe!”

”Doe fever then, which is probably worse, if I know anything about--”

”That will do, Philip! You're laughing at me.”

”Not at all. You've brought home something to eat, and that's more than I can do. Bunny looks big and fat. He'll make a fine dinner, and leave something for to-morrow.”

”Thank you, Philip!” she said gratefully. ”You make me feel as if I were not such a failure after all.”

”If you'll trust me with the knife,” he said in a tone that took some of the edge off her satisfaction, ”I'll clean him for you.”

She gave him the knife reluctantly, and did not leave his side until he had finished cleaning and cutting up the rabbit, when he handed the knife back to her with a gesture that made her blush again. Two things she did not know: that he had a knife in his pocket much better suited to his secret purpose; and that his purpose was a purpose no longer.

But even he was not yet aware of this last.

It was not the next day, but the third, when the rabbit had been eaten to the bone, and the pangs of hunger prodded her, that Marion restored herself in her own eyes. In the edge of the forest, not more than two miles from the camp, she detected a mere brown patch in the browning bush. This time she did not forget her rifle. The brown patch moved just as she pulled the trigger; but when she reached the spot, in a fever of anxiety, she fairly shrieked to the wilderness. For there in the gra.s.s, still jerking spasmodically in its death agony, lay a doe, a larger one than that she had seen in the glade. No more ”one a day for twenty-seven days!”

What followed haunted her dreams for many nights thereafter--a repulsive and sickening ordeal. She had seen Huntington do it, but then she had been able to turn her face away; and her hands--But necessity, responsibility, and pride, and perhaps some primitive instinct also, nerved her to the task. And she staggered back to camp, and stood before Philip, white and trembling, but triumphant.

”Take a drink of whisky!” ordered Haig sharply.

She obeyed him, gulping down the last of the precious contents of her flask.

”It's down there--covered with leaves!” she gasped out at length.

”Will anything--disturb it before I can--take Tuesday and the rope?”

”Do you mean you've cleaned the whole deer?” he asked curiously.

She nodded, still shuddering.

”Well, you're a brick!” he said heartily. Then he added: ”I thought perhaps a bobcat had stolen your--rabbit.”

She laughed with him, and then was off with Tuesday to bring her quarry home. She was not strong enough to lift and fasten the carca.s.s on the horse's back; but the route was through clean gra.s.s along the cliff, and Tuesday made short work of that, with the deer dragged at the end of the rope.

They had no salt, but there were a few rinds of bacon that Haig had told Marion to keep, and these were made to serve for seasoning. That venison, moreover, needed nothing to make it palatable; for they were ravenously hungry. Sprawled before the fire like savages, they feasted on a huge steak, broiled on two willow sticks, and well-browned on the outside at the start so that the tenderness was retained; and for an hour forgot. For so the stomach, at once the tyrant and the slave, has sometimes its hour of triumph, when heart and soul and brain are its willing captives, and the starkest fears and forebodings lose their sway, and death itself, though visible and near, has no power to ferment the grateful juices of the body.

CHAPTER XXVI