Part 20 (2/2)

She got to her feet, stalking with absolute silence. She must not waken him now. Softly she pressed her unshod foot into the gra.s.s. 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.

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 gra.s.s 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, br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 pa.s.s 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 quant.i.ty 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 const.i.tuted 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 gra.s.s 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.

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