Part 10 (2/2)
”'It's all right, madam,' I repeated and stepped into the room. 'You made a fine shot, and that bearskin is going to make a great rug for your floor.'
”She lifted her face, downing a last sob, and gave me a brave little smile. 'It isn't altogether the bear,' she explained. 'It's partly because I haven't seen any one for so long, and partly because, for a moment, I thought you were my husband. I've been worried about him. He has been gone over three weeks, and he never stayed longer than five days before. But it was a relief to have you come.'
”It sounds differently when I repeat it. You lose the sweet shyness of her face, the appeal in her eyes not yet dry, and that soft minor chord in her voice that reminds me now of a wood-thrush.
”'I understand,' I hurried to say, 'the solitude has grown intolerable. I know what that means, I have lived so long in the eternal stillness sometimes that the first patter of a rain on the leaves came like the tramp of an army, and the snapping of a twig rang sharp as a pistol shot.'
”'You do understand,' she said. 'You have been through it. And, of course, you see my husband had to leave me. The trail up the canyon is the merest thread. It would have been impossible for me, and I should have only hindered him, now, when every day counts.'
”'You mean,' I said, 'he has left his placer to prospect for the main lode above?' And she answered yes. That every gravel bar made a better showing; the last trip had taken him above the tree line, and this time he expected to prospect along the glacier at the source of the stream. Sometimes erosions laid veins open, and any hour 'he might stumble on riches.' She smiled again, though her lip trembled, then said it was his limited outfit that troubled her most. He had taken only a light blanket and a small allowance of bacon and bread.
”'But,' I rea.s.sured her, 'there is almost a certainty he has found game at this season of the year.'
”She looked at the rifle she had set by the window against the wall. 'I haven't been able to persuade him to take the gun,' she explained, 'for a long time. He doesn't hunt any more.' She stopped, watching me, and locked her slim hands. Then, 'He is greatly changed,' she went on. 'The last time he came home, he hardly noticed me. He spent the whole evening sitting with his eyes fixed on the floor--without a word. And the next morning, before I was awake, he was gone.'
”At last her real fear was clear to me. There is a terrible fascination about those Alaska gold streams. Each gravel bar has just showing enough to lead a man on and on. He hugs the belief from hour to hour he is on the brink of a great find, until he has eyes for nothing but the colors in the sand. He forgets hunger, weariness, everything, and finally, if rescue fails him, he sinks in complete collapse. More than once I had come on such a wreck, straying demented, babbling, all but famished in the hills.
And I was sorry for that little woman. I understood the pitch she must have reached to speak so freely to a pa.s.sing stranger. But it was hard to find just the right thing to say, and while I stood choosing words, she hurried to explain that two days before she had taken the dog and tramped up-stream as far as she had dared, hoping to meet her husband, and that she had intended to go even farther that day, but had been prevented, as I saw, by the bear, who had prowled about the cabin the greater part of the night. The setter's continual barking and growling had failed to drive him away.
”'If you had gone this morning,' I said, 'I should have missed you; then I shouldn't have known about your husband. I am on my way up this canyon, and I shall look for him. And, when I find him, I shall do my best to bring him in touch with the outside world again.'”
Tisdale paused. The abrupt slope that over-topped the portable cabin began to take shape in the darkness. It had the appearance of a sail looming through fog. Then the shadows scattered, and the belated moon, lifting over the dunes beyond the Columbia, silvered the mouth of the gorge. It was as though that other distant canyon, of which he was thinking, opened before him into unknown solitudes.
Miss Armitage leaned forward, watching his face, waiting for the issue of the story.
”And you found him?” she asked at last.
”Yes. In the end.” Tisdale's glance returned and, meeting hers, the grim lines in his face relaxed. ”But there was a long and rough tramp first.
She urged me to take the setter, and I saw the advantage in having a good dog with me on such a search; any cleft, or thicket, or sprinkle of boulders, might easily conceal a man's body from one pa.s.sing only a few feet off--but, much as he favored me, he was not to be coaxed far from his mistress; so I suggested she should go, too.
”'Oh,' she said, catching at the chance, 'do you think Jerry can make up for the delay, if I do? I will travel my best, I promise you.' And she led the way, picking up the faint trail and setting a pace that I knew must soon tire her, while the dog brushed by us, bounding ahead and rus.h.i.+ng back and expressing his satisfaction in all sorts of manoeuvers.
”In a little while, above the timber--the tree line is low on those Alaska mountainsides--we came to a broad, gra.s.sy bog set deep between two spurs, and she was forced to give me the lead. Then the canyon walls grew steeper, lifting into rugged k.n.o.bs. Sometimes I lost the prospector's trail in a rock-choked torrent and picked it up again, where it hung like a thin ribbon on a heather-grown slope; but it never wound or doubled if there was foothold ahead. It led up stairs of graywacke, along the brink of slaty cliffs that dropped sheer, hundreds of feet to the stream below.
Still she kept on pluckily, and whenever I turned to help her, I found her there at my elbow, ready. Now and then in breadths of level, where it was possible to walk abreast, we talked a little, but most of the distance was covered in silence. I felt more and more sorry for her. She was so eager, patient, watchful, forever scanning the pitches on either side. And if the setter made a sudden break, scenting a bare perhaps, or starting a ptarmigan, she always stopped, waiting with a light in her face; and when he jogged back to her heels, the expectation settled into patience again.
”Finally we came to a rill where I urged her to rest; and when I had spread my blanket on a boulder, she took the seat, leaning comfortably against a higher rock, and watched me while I opened the tin box in which Sandy had stored my lunch. She told me my cook made a good sandwich and knew how to fry a bird Southern fas.h.i.+on. Then she spoke of the Virginia town where she had lived before her marriage. The trip west had been her wedding journey, and her husband, who was an architect, had intended to open an office in a new town on Puget Sound, but at Seattle he caught the Alaska fever.
”'The future looked very certain and brilliant then,' she said, with her smile, 'but as long as I have my husband, nothing else counts. I could live out my life, be happy here in this wilderness, anywhere, with him. If I could only have him back--as he used to be.'”
Tisdale's voice softened, vibrating gently, so that the pathos of it all must have impressed the coldest listener. The woman beside him trembled and lifted her hand to her throat.
”I can't remember all she told me,” he went on, ”but her husband had left her in Seattle when he started north, and the next season, when he failed to return for her, she had sailed to Seward in search of him. She had tried to influence him to give up the placer, when she saw the change in him; at least to go down to one of the coast towns and take up the work for which he had prepared, but he had delayed, with promises, until he was beyond listening to her.
”'Of course he may stumble on riches any hour, as he believes,' she said finally, 'but not all the comforts or luxuries in the world are worth the price.' She did not break down, as she had in the cabin, but somehow I could hear the tears falling in her voice. I can yet, and see them big and s.h.i.+ning deep in her eyes.
”But she was off again, making up the delay, before I could fasten my pack, and when I overtook her in a level stretch and halted a moment to frolic with the dog, her face brightened. Then she spoke of a little trick she had taught him,--to go and meet his master and fetch his hat to her.
Sometimes she had hidden it in shrubs, or among rocks, but invariably he had brought it home.
”At last we made a turn and saw the front of the glacier that closed the top of the gorge. The stream gushed from a cavern at the foot, and above the noise of water sounded the grinding and roaring of subterranean forces at work. Once in a while a stone was hurled through. But that is impossible to explain. You must have been on intimate terms with a glacier to grasp the magnitude. Still, try to imagine the ice arching that cave like a bridge and lifting back, rimmed in moraine, far and away to the great white dome. And it was all wrapped in a fine Alpine splendor, so that she stopped beside me in a sort of hushed wonder to look. But I could hear her breath, laboring hard and quick, and she rocked uncertainly on her feet. I laid my hand on her arm to steady her. It was time we turned back. For half an hour I had been gathering courage to tell her so. While I hesitated, allowing her a few minutes to take in the glory, the setter ran nosing ahead, up over the wreckage along the edge of the glacier, and on across the bridge. I waited until he disappeared in a small pocket, then began: 'You know, madam, what all this color means. These twilights linger, and it will be easier traveling down-grade, but we must hurry, to have you home before dark.'
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