Snow-Blind.

by Katharine Newlin Burt.

CHAPTER I

Under a noon sun the vast, flat country, buried deep in snow, lay like a paper hoop rimmed by the dark primeval forest; its surface shone with an unbearable brightness as of sun-struck gla.s.s, every crystal gleaming and quivering with intense cold light. To the north a single blunt, low mountain-head broke the evenness of the horizon line.

Hugh Garth seemed to leap through paper like a tiny active clown as he dropped down into the small s.p.a.ce shoveled clear in front of his hidden cabin door. The roof was weighted with drift, so that a curling ma.s.s like the edge of a wind-crowded wave about to break hung low over the eaves. Long icicles as thick as a man's arm stretched from roof to ground in a row of twisted columns. Under this overhanging cornice of snow near the door there was a sudden icy purple darkness.

As Hugh plunged down into it, his face lost a certain rapt brightness and shadowed deeply. He let slip the load of fresh pelts from his back, drew his feet from the skis which he stuck up on their ends in the snow, and removed the fur cap from his head and the huge dark spectacles from his eyes. Then, crouching, he went in at the low, ill-hung door. It stuck to its sill, and he cursed it; all his movements expressed the anger of frustration. He slammed the door behind him.

Buried in drifts, the cabin was dim even at this bright hour of noon.

The stove glowed in a corner with a subdued redness, its bulging cheeks and round mouth dully scarlet. The low room was pleasant to look at, for it had the beauty of brown bark and the salmon tints of old rough boards, and its furniture, wrought painstakingly by an unskillful hand, had the charm of all handwork even when unskilled. Some of the chairs were rudely carved, one great throne especially, awkward, pretentious, and carefully ornate.

There was, too, a solid table in the center of the floor; and on it a woman was setting heavy earthenware plates nicked and discolored. She was heavy and discolored herself, but like the stove, she too seemed to have a dull glow. She was no longer young, but she might still have encouraged her youthfulness to linger pleasantly; she was not in the least degree beautiful, but she might have fostered a charm that lurked somewhere about her small, compact body and in her square, dark face.

Her hair of a sandy brown was stretched back brutally so that her bright, devoted eyes--gray and honest eyes, very deep-set beneath their brows--lacked the usual softness and mystery of women's eyes. Her lips were tight set; her chin held out with an air of dogged effort which seemed to possess no relation to her mechanical occupation, yet to have a strong habitual relation to her state of mind. She seemed, in fact, under a sh.e.l.l of self-control, to conceal an inner light, like a dimly burning dark-lantern. Her expression was dumb. She moved about like a deaf-mute. Indeed, her stillness and stony self-repression were extraordinary.

A youth rose from a chair near the stove and greeted Hugh as he entered.

"Hullo," he said. "How many did you get?"

It was the eager questioning of a modest, affectionate boy who curbs his natural effervescence of greeting like a well-trained dog. The tone was astonishingly young, a quiet, husky boy-voice.

"d.a.m.n you, Pete!" was snarled at him for answer. "Haven't you got my boot mended yet?"

The boot, still lacking its heel, lay on the floor near the stove, and Hugh now picked it up and hurled it half across the room.

"I have to get out into this ice chest of a wilderness and this flaming glare that cuts my eyeb.a.l.l.s open, and work till the sweat freezes on my face, and then come home to find you loafing by the fire as if you were a house cat--purring and rubbing against my legs when I come in," he snarled. "Thanking me for a quiet nap and a saucer of milk, eh? You loafer! What do I keep you for? You gorge the bread and meat I earn by sweating and freezing, and you keep your sluggish mountain of bones covered. A year or two ago I'd have urged you along with a stick. I used to get some work out of you then. But you think you're too big for that, now, don't you? You fancy I'm afraid of your bigness, eh? Well, do you want me to try it out? What about it?"

During the first part of his brother's speech, Pete had faced him, but in the middle he had turned his back and stood in front of one of the clumsy windows. He looked out now at a white wall of snow, above which shone the dazzle of the midday. He whistled very softly to himself and sank his hands deep into the pockets of his corduroys. He did not answer the snarling question, but his wide, quiet mouth, exquisitely shaped, ran into a smile and a dimple, deep and narrow, cut into his thin and ruddy cheek.

Between the woman, who went on with her work as though no one had come into the room, and the silent smiling youth, Hugh Garth prowled the floor like a shadow thrown by a moving light.

He was a man of forty-five, gray-haired, misshapen, heavy above the waist and light to meanness below; a man lame in one leg and with an ill-proportioned face, malicious, lined, lead-colored; a man who limped and leaped about the room with a fierce energy, the while his tongue, gifted with a rich and resonant voice, poured vitriol upon the silence.

Suddenly the woman spoke. She turned back on the threshold of the kitchen door through which her work had been taking her to and fro during Garth's outbreak. Her voice was monotonous and smothered; it had its share in her unnatural self-repression.

"Why don't you tell him to be quiet, Pete? You've been chopping wood since daybreak to make up for what he didn't do last week, and you only came in about ten minutes before he did. Why don't you speak out? You're getting to be pretty close to a man now, and it isn't suitable for you to let yourself be talked to that way. You always stand like a fool and take it from him."

Pete turned. "Oh, well," he answered good-humoredly, "I guess maybe he's tired. Let up, Hugh, will you? I'll finish your boot after dinner."

"The h.e.l.l you will! You'll do it now!" Venting on his brother his anger at the woman's intervention, Garth swung his misshapen body around the end of the table and thrust an elbow violently against Pete's chest.

The attack was so unexpected that Pete staggered, lost his balance, and stepping down into the shallow depression of a pebbled hearth, fell, twisting his ankle. The agony was sharp. After a dumb minute he lifted a white face and pulled himself up, one hand clutching the board mantel.

"Now you've done it!" he said between his teeth. "How will you get your pelts to the station now? I won't be able to take them."

There ensued a dismayed silence. The woman had come back from the kitchen and stood with a steaming dish in her hands. After the brief pause of consternation she set down the dish and went over to Pete.

"Here," she said, "sit down and let me take off your moccasin and bathe your ankle before it begins to swell."

Hugh Garth had seated himself in the thronelike chair at the head of the table. His expression was still defiant, indifferent, and lordly.

"Come and eat your dinner, both of you," he commanded. "You've had your lesson, Pete. After this, I guess you'll do what I tell you to--not choose the work that happens to suit your humor. Don't, for G.o.d's sake, baby him, Bella. Don't start being a grandmother before you've ever been a sweetheart. You're too young for the one even if you're getting a bit too old for the other!"

Bella flushed deep and hot. She went to her place, and Pete hobbled to his, opposite his brother. Between them the woman sat, dyed deep in her sudden unaccustomed wave of scarlet. Pete's whiteness too was stained in sympathy. But Hugh only chuckled. "As for the pelts," he said royally, "I'll take them down myself."

Bella looked slowly up.

"You think I don't mean it, I suppose?" Hugh demanded.

They did not answer, but the eyes of the boy and the woman met. This silence and this dumb exchange of understanding infuriated Garth. He clinched his hands on the carved arms of his chair and leaned a little forward.

"I'll take the pelts myself," he repeated boisterously. "I'm not afraid to be seen at the station. I'm sick of skulking. Buried here--with _my_ talents--in this d.a.m.n country, spending my days trapping and skinning beasts to keep the breath in our three useless bodies. Wouldn't death be better for a man like me? Easier to bear? Fifteen years of it! Fifteen years! My best years!" He stared over Pete's head. "In all that time no beauty to feed my starved senses, no work for my starved brain, no hope for my starved heart." The woman and the youth watched him still in silence. "That fox I killed this morning had a better life to lose than I."

"It wouldn't be safe for you to go, Hugh," said Pete gently.

"Why not--watchdog?"

The sneer deepened the flush on Pete's face, but he answered with the same gentleness, fixing his blue eyes on his brother's.

"Because not two months ago there was a picture of you tacked up in the post-office."

Bella's face whitened, and Hugh's cheeks grew a shade more leaden.

"T-two months ago!" he stammered painfully; "but that's not p-possible.

They--they've given me up. They've f-forgotten me. They th-think I'm dead. After fifteen years? My G.o.d, Pete! Why didn't you tell me?" He pleaded the last with a shaken sort of sharpness, in pitiful contrast to the bombast of the preceding speech.

"I didn't see the good of telling you. I was waiting until this trip to see if the picture was still there, and maybe to ask some questions."

"What does it mean?" whispered Bella.

"It means they've some fresh reason to hunt me--some fresh impulse--G.o.d knows what or why. How can we tell out here, buried in the snows of fifteen winters. Well!" He struck his hands down on the table edge and stood up. He drew his mouth into a crooked smile and looked at the other two as a naughty child looks at its doting but disapproving elders. The smile transfigured his ugliness. "I've a fancy to see that picture. Want to be reminded of what I looked like fifteen years ago. I was a handsome fellow then. I'm going to take the pelts."

Pete looked dumbly up at him, his lips parted. Bella twisted her ap.r.o.n about her hands. Both seemed to know the hopelessness of protest. In the same anxious dumbness they watched Garth make ready for his trip. As he pulled his cap down close about his ears, Pete at last found his voice.

"Hugh," he began doubtfully, "I wish you wouldn't risk it. We can get on without supplies until next trading-day, when I'll surely be all right."

"Hold your tongue! I'm going," was the answer. "I tell you, the spirit of adventure has me. Who knows what I may meet with out there?" He flung back the door and, pointing with a long arm, stood silhouetted against the dazzle.

"Beauty? Opportunity? Danger? Hope? Death? I shan't shirk it this time.

I'll meet whatever comes. But--" He came back a step into the room. His harsh face melted to a shamefaced gentleness; his voice softened. "If they get me down there, if I _don't_ come back, you two try to think kindly of me, will you? I know what you think of me now. I know you won't see me as I am--no one but G.o.d will ever do me that kindness; but you two--be easy with me in your memories."

Bella, her arms now twisted to their red elbows in her ap.r.o.n, took a few stiff steps across the floor. Her face was expressionless, her eyes lowered. Garth smiled at them both and went out, shutting the door. They heard him singing as he put on his skis:

A hundred men were riding, A-hunting for Pierre.

They rode and rode, but nothing could they find.

They rode around by moonlight; They rode around by day; They rode and rode, but nothing could they find.

Then came the sharp sc.r.a.ping of his runners across the surface of the snow on a level with the buried roof. It lessened from a hissing speech to a hissing whisper. It sighed away. Bella sat down abruptly on a chair, pulled in her chin like an unhappy child; her bosom lifted as though a sob would force its way out.

"If he doesn't come back!" she murmured. "If he doesn't come back!" She was speaking to G.o.d.