Part 11 (1/2)
CHAPTER VI
WHEREIN BOREAS TAKES A HAND
All that day the men busied themselves in preparation for the start. Balt was ferociously exultant, Emerson was boiling with impatience, while Fraser, whose calm nothing disturbed, slept most of the time, observing that this was his last good bed for a while, and therefore he wished to make it work.
Beneath her quiet cheerfulness, Cherry nursed a forlorn heart; for when these men were gone she would be left alone and friendless again, buried in the heart of an inaccessible wilderness, given over to her fears and the intrigues of her enemies. She had eyes mainly for Emerson, and although in her glance there was good-fellows.h.i.+p, in her heart was hot resentment--first at him because he had awakened in her the warm interest she felt for him, and, second, at herself for harboring any such interest.
Why should this self-centred youth, wrapped up in his own affairs to her own utter exclusion, give her cause to worry? Why should she allow him to step into her quiet life and upset her well-ordered existence?
”How do you like him?” she asked Balt, once.
”He's my style, all right,” said the big man. ”He's desp'rate, and he'll fight; that's what I want--somebody that won't blench at anything when the time comes.” He ground his teeth, and his red eyes flamed, reflecting the sense of injury that seared his brain. ”What he don't know about the business, I do, and we'll make it win. But, say, ain't he awful at asking questions? My head aches and my back is lame from answering him. Seems like he remembers it all, too.”
Goaded by the wrong he had suffered, and almost maniacal in his eagerness for the coming struggle, the giant's frenzy told Cherry that the fight would be an unrelenting one, and again a vague tremor of regret at having drawn this youth into the affair crept over her and sharpened the growing pain at her heart.
During the evening Emerson left the two other men in the store, and, seeking her out in the little parlor, asked her to play for him. She consented gladly, and, as on their first evening together, he sang with her. Again the blending of their voices brought them closer, his aloofness wore off, and he became an agreeable, accomplished companion whose merry wit and boyish sympathy stirred emotions in the girl that threatened her peace of mind. This had been the only companions.h.i.+p with her own kind she had enjoyed for months, and with his melting mood came a softening of her own nature, in which she appeared before him gracious and irresistible.
Banteringly, and rising out of his elation, he tried to please her, and, in the same spirit that calls the bird to its mate, she responded. It was their last hour together before embarking on his perilous journey in search of the Golden Fleece, and his starved affections clamored for sympathy, while the iron in his blood felt the magnetic propinquity of s.e.x. When he said good-night it was with a wholly new conception of his hostess, and of her power to charm as well as manage men and affairs; but he could well have dispensed with an uncomfortable feeling that came over him as he reviewed the events of the evening over a last pipe, that he had been playing with fire. For her part, she lay awake far into the morning hours, now blissfully floating on the current of half-formed desires, now vaguely fearing some dread that clutched her.
The good-byes were brief and commonplace; there was time for nothing more, for the dogs were straining to be off and the December air bit fiercely.
But Cherry called Emerson aside, and in a rather tremulous voice begged him again to consider well this enterprise before finally committing himself to it. ”If this were any other country, if there were any law up here or any certainty of getting a square deal, I'd never say a word, I'd urge you to go the limit. But--”
He was about to laugh off her fears as he had done before, when the plaintive wrinkle between her brows and the forlorn droop of her lips stayed him. Without thought of consequences, and prompted largely by his leaping spirits, he stooped and, before she could divine his purpose, kissed her.
”Good-bye!” he laughed, with dancing eyes. ”That's my answer!” and the next second was at the sled. The dogs leaped at his shout, and the cavalcade was in motion.
The others had not observed his leave-taking, and now cried a final farewell; but the girl stood without sound or gesture, bareheaded under the wintry sky, a startled, wondering light in her eyes which did not fade until the men were lost to view far up the river trail. Then she breathed deeply and turned into the house, oblivious to Constantine and the young squaw, who held the sick baby up for her inspection.
The hazards of winter travel in the North are manifold at best, but the country which Emerson and his companions had to traverse was particularly perilous, owing to the fact that their course led them over the backbone of the great Alaskan Range, that desolate, skysc.r.a.ping rampart which interposes itself between the hate of the Arctic seas and the tossing wilderness of the North Pacific. This range forms a giant, ice-armored tusk thrust out to the westward and curved like the horn of an African rhino, its tip pointed eight hundred miles toward the Asiatic coast, its soaring peaks veiled in perpetual mist and volcanic fumes, its slopes agleam with lonely ice-fields. It is a saw-toothed ridge, for the most part narrow, unbroken, and cruel, and the rival winter gales roar over it in a never-ceasing war. On the north lies the Forgotten Land, to the south are the tempered reaches of the Pacific. In summer the stern sweep of rock and tundra is soaked with weeping rains, and given over to the herding caribou or the great gra.s.s-eating bear; but when from the polar regions the white hand of winter stretches forth, the grieving seas lift themselves, the rain turns to bitter, hail-burdened hurricanes that charge and retreat in a death-dealing conflict, sheathing the barrier anew, and confounding the hearts of men on land and sea. The coast is unlighted and badly mapped, hence the sh.o.r.e is a graveyard for s.h.i.+ps, while through the guts, which at intervals penetrate the range, the blizzards screech until travellers burrow into drifts to avoid their fury or lie out in stiff sleeping-bags exposed to their anger. It is a region of sudden storms, a battle-ground of the elements, which have swept it naked of cover in ages past, and it is peopled scantily by handfuls of coughing natives, whose igloos are hidden in hollows or chained to the ground with cables and s.h.i.+p's gear.
It was thither the travellers were bound, headed toward Katmai Pa.s.s, which is no more than a gap between peaks, through which the hibernal gales suck and swirl. This pa.s.s is even balder than the surrounding barrens, for it forms a funnel at each end, confining the winds and affording them freer course. Notwithstanding the fact that it had an appalling death-list and was religiously shunned, Emerson would hearken to no argument for a safer route, insisting that they could spare no time for detours. Nothing dampened his spirits, no hards.h.i.+p daunted him; he was tireless, ferocious in his haste.
A week of hard travel found them camped in the last fringe of cottonwood that fronted the glacial slopes, their number augmented now by a native from a Russian village with an unp.r.o.nounceable name, who, at the price of an extortionate bribe, had agreed to pilot them through. For three days they lay idle, the taut walls of their tent thrumming to an incessant fusillade of ice particles that whirled down ahead of the blast, while Emerson fumed to be gone.
The fourth morning broke still and quiet; but, after a careful scrutiny of the peaks, the Indian shook his head and spoke to Balt, who nodded in agreement.
”What's the matter?” growled Emerson. ”Why don't we get under way?” But the other replied:
”Not to-day. Them tips are smoking, see!” He indicated certain gauzy streamers that floated like vapor from the highest pinnacles. ”That's snow, dry snow, and it shows that the wind is blowing up there. We da.s.sent tackle it.”
”Do you mean we must lie here waiting for an absolutely calm day?”
”Exactly.”
”Why, it may be a week!”
”It may be two of them; then, again, it may be all right to-morrow.”
”Nonsense! That breeze won't hurt anybody.”