XII

At the very headquarters of Poor Man's Creek, where the stream had dwindled to a silver thread between mossy banks, Beatrice and Ben made their noon camp. They were full in the heart of the wild, by now, and had mounted to those high levels and park lands beloved by the caribou.

They built a small fire beside the stream and drew water from the deep, clear pools that lay between cascade and cascade.

Ben Darby slowly became aware that this was one of the happiest hours of his life. He watched, with absorbed delight, the deft, sure motions of the girl as she fried the grouse and sliced bread, while Ben himself tended to the coffee. Already the two were on the friendliest terms, and since they were to be somewhere in the same region, the future offered the most pleasing vistas to both of them. When the horses were rested and Ben's pipe was out, they ventured on. Following a caribou trail, they ascended a majestic range of mountains--a trail too steep to ride and which the pack horses accomplished only with great difficulty--emerging onto a high plateau of open parks and small clumps of the darkest spruce. It was, of course, the most scenic part of the journey; and the inclination to talk died speedily from the lips.

They rode in silence, watching. Both of them were sure that words, no matter how beautiful and eloquent, could be only a sacrilege. The very tone of the high ranges is that of silence vast and eternal beyond scope of thought, and the only sounds that can fittingly shatter that mighty breathlessness are the great, calamitous phenomena of nature,--the thunder crashing in the sky and the avalanche on the slope. The forests they had just left were deeply silent, but the far hush had been alleviated by the soft noises of wild creatures stirring about their occupations; perhaps also by the feeling that the thickets were full of sound pitched just too high or just too low for human ears to hear; but even this relief was absent here. The high peaks stretched before them, one after another, until they faded into the horizon,--majestic, aloof, utterly and grandly silent.

The snow still lay deep over the plateau, packed to the consistency of ice, and the marmots had not yet emerged to welcome the spring with their shrill, joyous whistling. From their high place they could see the hills spread out below them,--fold after fold as of a great cloak, deeply green, seemingly infinite in expanse, broken only by the blue glint of the Agnes lakes, like two great twin sapphires hidden in the forest. But they couldn't make out a single roof top of Snowy Gulch. The forest had already claimed it utterly.

This was the caribou range; wherever they looked they saw the tracks of the n.o.ble animals in the snow. Later they caught a glimpse of the creatures themselves, a small herd of perhaps half a dozen swinging along the snow in their indescribable pacing gait. They were in fitting surroundings, their color inexpressibly vivid against the snow, and Ben's heart warmed and thumped in his breast at the sight.

But the trail descended at last into the great valley of the Yuga. Mile after mile, it seemed to them, they went down, leaving the snow, leaving the open glades, into the dark, still glens of spruce. At last they paused on the river bank.

Ben was somewhat amazed at the size of the stream when it emerged below the rapids. It was, at its present high stage, fully one hundred and fifty yards across, such a stream as would bear the traffic of commerce in any inhabited region. They turned down the moose trail that followed its bank.

But it was not to be that this journey should hold only delight for Ben.

A half-mile down the river he suddenly made a most momentous and disturbing discovery.

He had stopped his horse to reread the copy of Hiram Melville's letter, intending to verify his course. In the shadow of the tall, dark spruce--darkening ever as the light grew less--his eye sped swiftly over it. His gaze came to rest upon a familiar name.

"Look out for Jeff Neilson and his gang," the letter read. "They seen some of my dust."

Neilson--no wonder Ben had been perplexed when Beatrice had first spoken her name. No wonder it had sounded familiar. And the hot beads moistened his brow when he conceived of all the dreadful possibilities of that coincidence of names.

Yet because he was a woodsman of nature and instinct, blood and birth, he retained the most rigid self-control. He made no perceptible start.

At first he did not glance at Beatrice. Slowly he folded the letter and put it back into his pocket.

"I'm going all right," he announced. He urged his horse forward. His perfect self-discipline had included his voice: it was deep, but wholly casual and unshaken. "And how about you, Miss Neilson?"

He p.r.o.nounced her name distinctly, giving her every chance to correct him in case he had misunderstood her. But there was no hope here. "I'm going all right, I know."

"It seems to me we must be heading into about the same country," Ben went on. "You see, Miss Neilson, I'm going to make my first permanent camp somewhere along this still stretch; I've had inside dope that there's big gold possibilities around here."

"It has never been a gold country except for pockets, some of them remarkably rich," she told him doubtfully, evidently trying not to discourage him. "But my father has come to the conclusion that it's really worth prospecting. He's in this same country now."

"I suppose I'll meet him--I'll likely meet him to-night when I take you to the cabin on the river. You said his name was--"

"Jeffery Neilson."

For all that he was prepared for it, the name was a straight-out body blow to Ben. He had still dared to hope that this girl was of no blood kin of the claim-jumper, Jeffery Neilson. The truth was now only too plain. By the girl's own word he was operating in Hiram Melville's district and unquestionably had already jumped the claim. His daughter was joining him now, probably to keep house for him; and for all that Ben knew, already possessing guilty knowledge of her father's crime.

It was hard to hold the head erect, after that. Already he had builded much on his friendship with this girl, only to find that she was allied with the enemy camp. He saw in a flash how unlikely it would be that Ezram and himself could drive the usurpers out: the claim-jumper is a difficult problem, even when the original discoverer is living and in possession, much more so when he is silent in his grave.

Ben had known the breed since boyhood, and he hated them as he hated coyotes and pack-rats. They lacked the manhood to brave the unknown in pursuit of the golden fleece; they waited until after years of grinding labor the strike was made and then pounced down upon the claim like vultures on the dead. Ben was glad he had not obeyed his impulse to tell the girl of his true reason for coming to the Yuga. He knew now, with many foes against him, he could best operate in the dark.

His thought flashed to Ezram. The recovery of the mine had been the old man's fondest dream, the last hope of his declining years, and this setback would go hard with him. The blow was ever so much more cruel on Ezram's account than his own. Ben could picture his downcast face, trying yet to smile; his sobered eyes that he would try to keep bright.

But there would be certain planning, when they met again over their camp fire. And there were three of them allied now. Fenris the wolf had come into his service.

He glanced back at the gray-black creature that followed at the heels of his horse; and now, at twilight's graying, he saw that a significant and startling change had come over him. He no longer trotted easily behind them. He came stalking, almost as if in the hunt, his ears pointing, his neck hairs bristling, and there were the beginnings of curious, lurid lightnings in his eyes. There could be but one answer. He had been swept away in the current of madness that sweeps the forest at the fall of darkness: the age-old intoxication of the wilderness night. The hunting hours were at hand. The creatures of claw and fang were coming into their own. Fenris was shivering all over with those dark wood's pa.s.sions that not even the wisest naturalist can fully understand.

The air was tingling and electric, just as Ben recalled it a thousand nights. Everywhere the hunters were leaving their lairs and starting forth; gra.s.ses moved and brush-clumps rustled; blood was hot and savage eyes were shot with fire. The mink, with unspeakable savagery, took the trail of a snow-shoe rabbit beside the river-bed; a lynx with pale, green, luminous eyes began his stalk of a tree squirrel, and various of Fenris' fellows--pack brothers except for his own relations with men--sang a song that was old when the mountains were new as they raced, black in silhouette against the paling sky, along a snowy ridge.

Ben felt a quickening of his own senses, not knowing why. _His_ blood, too, spurted inordinately fast through his veins, and his flesh seemed to creep and tingle. There could be no surer proof of his legitimacy as a son of the wilderness. The pa.s.sions that maddened the first men, near to the beasts they hunted in their ancient forests, returned in all their fullness. The dusk deepened. The trail dimmed so that the eye had to strain to follow it.

Complex and weird were the pa.s.sions invoked to-night, but not even to the gray wolf that is, beyond all other creatures, the embodiment of the wilderness spirit, did there come such a madness, such a dark and terrible l.u.s.t, as that which cursed a certain wayfarer beyond the next bend in the river. This was not one of the forest people, neither the lynx, nor the hunting otter, nor even the venerable grizzly with whom no one contests the trail. It was a human being,--a man of youthful body and strong, deeply lined, yet savage face.

A close observer would have noticed the faintest tremor and shiver throughout his body. His eyes were very bright, vivid even in the dying day. He was deeply lost in his own mood, seemingly oblivious to the whole world about him. He carried a rifle in his hands.

He was on his way to report to his chief; and just what would be forthcoming he did not know. But if too much objection were raised and affairs got to a crucial stage, he had nothing to fear. He had learned a certain lesson--an avenue to triumph. It was strange that he had never hit upon it before.

His blood was scalding hot, and he was swept by exultation. Not for an instant had he hesitated, nor Would he ever hesitate again. There was no one in the North of greater might than he! No one could bend his will from now on. He had found the road to triumph.

Ray Brent had discovered a new power within himself. Perhaps even his chief, Jeffery Neilson, must yield before his new-found strength.

XIII

As twilight darkened to the full gloom of the forest night, Ben and Beatrice rode to a lonely cabin on the Yuga River,--one that had been built by Hiram Melville years past and was just at the mouth of the little creek on which, less than a half-mile distant, he had his claim.

They had seen a lighted window from afar, marking the end of Beatrice's hard day's ride.

"Of course you won't try to go on to-night?" she asked Ben. "You'll stay at the cabin?"

"There likely won't be room for three," he answered. "But it's a clear night. I can make a fire and sleep out."

It was true. The stars were emerging, faint points of light through the darkening canopy of the sky; and to the East a silver glint on the horizon forecast the rising moon.

They halted at last; and Beatrice saw her father's form, framed in the doorway. She hastened into his arms: waiting in the darkness Ben could not help but hear his welcome. Many things were doubtful; but there could be no doubt of the love that Neilson bore his daughter. The amused, half-teasing words with which he received her did not in the least disguise it. "The joy and the light of his life," Ben commented to himself. The gray old claim-jumper had this to redeem him, at least.

"But why so many horses, Beatrice?" he asked. "You--brought some one with you?"

Ben was not so far distant that he failed to discern the instant change in Neilson's tone. It had a strained, almost an apprehensive quality such as few men had ever heard in his voice before. Plainly all visitors in this end of the mountains were regarded with suspicion.

"He's a prospector--Mr. Darby," the girl replied. "Come here, Ben--and be introduced." She turned toward her new-found friend; and the latter walked near, into the light that streamed over him from the doorway.

"This is my father, Mr. Darby--Mr. Neilson. Some one told him this was a good gold country."

Ben had already decided upon his course of action and had his answer ready. He knew perfectly that it would only put Neilson on his guard if he stated his true position; and besides, he wanted word of Ezram. "I may have a wrong steer, Mr. Neilson," he said, "but a man I met down on the river-trail, out of Snowy Gulch, advised me to come here. He said that he had some sort of a claim up here that his brother left him, and though it was a pocket country, he thought there'd soon be a great rush up this way."

"I hardly know who it could have been that you met," Neilson began doubtfully. "He didn't tell you his name--"

"Melville. I believe that was it. And if you'll tell me how to find him, I'll try to go on to-night. I brought him some of his belongings from Snowy Gulch--"

"Melville, eh? I guess I know who you mean now. But no--I don't know of any claim unless it's over east, beyond here. Maybe further down the river."