The Huntress

"You have another paddle," he said. "Let me help."

"Lie down," she muttered without looking at him. "You don' know how. You turn us over."

He lay in water impotently grinding his teeth. He could not but admire her indomitable courage, and he hated her for being forced to admire her. To be obliged to lie still and let a woman command was a bitter draft to his pride.

A wave leaped over the bow, falling in the dugout like a barrowful of stones. Sam sprang to a sitting position. He thought the end had come. The dugout staggered drunkenly under the additional load. But Bela's face was still unmoved.

"Lean over," she commanded, nodding toward the little pile of baggage between them. "Under the blankets, in the top of the grub-box, my tea-pail."

He found it, and set to work with a will to bail. As fast as he emptied the water, more came in over the bow. The foot of the lake and safety seemed to recede before them. Surely it was not possible a woman could hold out long enough to reach it, he thought, glancing at her.

"Why don't you turn about and run before the wind?" he asked.

"Can't turn now," she muttered. "Wave hit her side, turn over quick."

Sam looked ashore again. For upwards of a furlong off the edge of the flats the breakers were ruling their parallel lines of white. Above all the other noises of the storm the continuous roaring of these waters reached their ears.

"You could land there," he suggested. "What if we did get turned out? It's shallow."

She was not going to tell him the real reason she could not land. "I lose my boat," she muttered.

"Better lose the boat than lose yourself," he muttered sullenly.

Bela did not answer this. She paddled doggedly, and Sam bailed. He saw her glance from time to time toward a certain point inland. Seeing her face change, he followed the direction of her eyes, and presently distinguished, far across the flats, three tiny horses with riders appearing from among the trees.

They were proceeding in single file around the bay. Even at the distance one could guess they were galloping. So that was why she would not land!

Sam did not need to be told who the three riders were. His sensations on perceiving them were mixed. It was not difficult for him to figure what had happened when his absence had been discovered, and he was not at all sure that he wished to escape from his mysterious captor only to fall into those hands.

This line of thought suddenly suggested a possible reason why he had been carried off – but it was too humiliating to credit. He looked at her with a kind of shamed horror. Her face gave nothing away.

By and by Sam realized with a blessed lightening of the heart that the storm had reached its maximum. The gusts were no longer increasing in strength; less water was coming over the bow. Not until he felt the relief was he aware of how frightened he had been.

Bela's face lightened, too. Progress under the cruel handicap was still painfully slow. The wind was like a hand thrusting them back; but every gain brought them a little more under the lee of the land. If Bela's arms held out! He looked at her wonderingly. There was no sign of any slackening yet.

"We not sink now," she said coolly.

"Good!" cried Sam.

In their mutual relief they could almost be friendly.

Bela was heading for the intake of the river. Along the tortuous course of that stream she knew a hundred hiding-places. The land trail followed the general direction of the river, but touched it only at one or two places.

The question was, could she reach the river before the horsemen? Sam watched them, trying to gauge their rate of progress. The horses had at least four miles to cover, while the dugout was now within a mile – but the horses were running.

Sam knew that the trail crossed the river by a ford near the intake from the lake, because he had come that way. If the horsemen cut off Bela at the ford what would she do? he wondered. The outlook was bad for him in either event. He must escape from both parties.

The horsemen passing around the bay became mere specks in the distance. Reaching the foot of the lake they had to cover a straight stretch of a mile and a half to the river. The trail lay behind willows here, and they disappeared from view. It was anybody's race.

Bela, the extraordinary girl, still had a reserve of strength to draw on. As they gradually came under the influence of the windward shore the water calmed down and the dugout leaped ahead.

Sam watched her with a cold admiration, speculating endlessly on what might be going on behind her mask-like face. With all her pluck, what could she hope to gain? Obviously it would be easier to escape from her than from three men, and he began to hope she would win.

They caught no further glimpses of the horsemen, and as they drew closer and closer to the river the tension became acute. Suppose they arrived simultaneously, thought Sam, would the men shoot?

Not Big Jack nor Shand, perhaps, but Joe was not to be trusted. But surely they would see he was a prisoner. Something of the kind must have been passing through Bela's mind. Putting down her paddle for a moment, she threw back the blankets and drew out her gun. It had been carefully protected from the water. She laid it on top convenient to her hand and resumed.

"She's a good plucky one," thought Sam grimly. "As for me, I play a pretty poor part in this affair, whichever way you look at it. A kind of dummy figure, it seems."

So low were its shores that the intake of the river was hidden from them until they were almost in it. Finally it opened up before them, with its wide reaches of sand stretching away on either hand, willows backing the sand, and a pine ridge rising behind the willows.

Here the wind whistled harmlessly over their heads, and the surface of the water was quiet except for the catspaws darting hither and thither. Before entering the river, Bela paused again, and bent her head to listen.

"Too late!" she said. "We can't pass!"

At the same moment the horses burst from behind the willows a quarter of a mile across the sand. They had the ford!

"We can't pass," Bela repeated, and then with a gasp, in which was more of anger than fear, she added: "An' they got guns, too!"

CHAPTER XI

THE ISLAND

Seeing the dugout, the men raised a shout and bore down upon them across the sand. Bela was not yet in the river. She swiftly brought the dugout around and paddled down the lake shore across the river from the men.

They, suspecting her of a design to land on this side, pulled up their horses, and returning to the ford, plunged across. Whereupon Bela coolly paddled out into the lake. By this manœuvre she was enabled to get out of range of their guns before they got to the water's edge.

Holding her paddle, she turned to watch them. The sounds of their curses came down the wind. They were directed against Sam, not Bela.

Sam smiled bitterly. "I catch it both ways," he muttered.

"You want them catch you?" asked Bela, with an odd look.

Sam scowled at her helplessly.

She rested on her paddle, looking up and down the shore and out on the lake, manifestly debating with herself what to do. To Sam their situation seemed hopeless. Finally Bela took up the paddle with an air of resolution.

"Well, what the devil are you goin' to do?" demanded Sam.

"We go to the island," she answered coolly.

An island! Sam's heart sank. He saw his escape indefinitely postponed. To be kept prisoner on an island by a girl! Intolerably humiliating prospect! How would he ever be able to hold up his head among men afterward?

"What the devil are you up to, anyhow?" he broke out angrily again. "Do you think this will do you any good? What do you expect to gain by it?"

"What you want me do?" asked Bela sullenly, without looking at him.

"Land, and tell them the truth about what happened!"

"They too mad," said Bela. "Shoot you before they listen. Not believe, anyway."

Sam could not deny the reasonableness of this.

"Oh, damn!" he cried impotently. "You've got me into a nice mess! Are you crazy, or just bad? Is it your whole idea to make trouble between men? I've heard of women like that. One would think you wanted – Say! I'll be likely to thank you for this, won't I? The sight of you is hateful to me!"

Bela made her face like a wall, and looked steadily over his head at her course. There is no satisfaction in flinging words against a wall. Sam's angry voice dwindled to a mutter, then fell silent.

The island lay about a mile offshore. In a chaos of lowering grey sky and torn white water, it seemed to hang like a serene and lovely little world of itself.

The distant shores of the lake were spectral in the whirl of the elements, and the island was the one fixed spot. It was as brilliant as an emerald in a setting of lead. A beach of yellow sand encircled it, with a border of willows, and taller trees sticking up in the middle.

Borne on the shoulders of the great wind, they reached it in a few minutes. Bela paddled under the lee side and landed in quiet water. Sam rose on his chilled and stiffened limbs, and stepping ashore, stood off, scowling at her blackly.

There he was! He knew he couldn't escape alone in that cranky craft; certainly not while the wind blew. Nor could he hope to swim a mile through icy water. He wondered bitterly if ever a man before him had been placed in such a galling position.

Ignoring his black looks, Bela hastened to collect dry sticks.

"I mak' fire and dry everything," she said.

Sam cursed her and strode off around the beach.

"Tak' dry matches if you want fire," Bela called after him.

He would not give any sign that he heard.

He sat down on the other side of the island, as far away as he could get from her. Here he was full in the path of the driving, unwearied wind, which further irritated his exacerbated nerves.

He swore at Bela; he swore at the cold, at the wind, at the matches which went out one after another. He felt that all things animate and inanimate were leagued against him.

Finally, in the lee of some willows, he did get a fire going, and crouched in the smoke, choking and sneezing, as angry and unhappy a specimen of young manhood as might have been found in the world that morning.

Finally he began to dry out, and a measure of warmth returned to his limbs. He got his pipe going, and felt a little less like a nihilist.

Suddenly a new, ugly thought made him spring up. Suppose she took advantage of his absence to steal away and leave him marooned on the island? Anything might be expected of such a woman. He hastened back around the beach.

She had not gone. From a distance he saw her busy by a great fire, with the blankets, and all the goods hanging around to dry.

He squatted behind a clump of willows where he could watch her, himself unseen. Her attitude suggested that she was cooking something, and at the sight hunger struck through him like a knife. Not for worlds would he have asked her for anything to eat.

By and by she arose with the frying-pan in her hand, and looked up and down the beach.

"Oh, Sam!" she called. "Come and eat!"

He laid low, sneering miserably; bent on cutting off his nose to spite his face. He wondered if there were any berries on the island. No, it was too early in the season for berries. Edible roots, maybe. But he wouldn't have known an edible root from any other kind.

After calling awhile, Bela sat down in the sand and proceeded to satisfy her own appetite. Fresh pangs attacked Sam.

"Selfish creature!" he muttered. "That woman is bad through and through!"

She arose and, filling another plate, started toward him, carrying it. Her eyes were following his tracks in the sand. Sam instinctively sprang up and took to his heels.

His cheeks burned at the realization that she would presently discover that he had been sitting there watching her. He had not thought of the tell-tale sand. Wherever he might seek to hide, it would betray him.

He made a complete circuit of the little island, Bela presumably following him. The circumference of the beach was about half a mile. He ran as hard as he could, and presently discovered her ahead of him. He had almost overtaken her.

Thereafter he followed more slowly, keeping her in sight from the cover of the bushes. The secret consciousness that he was acting like a wilful child did not make him any happier.

When he came around to Bela's fire again, seeing the dugout drawn up on the sand, his heart leaped at the chance of escape. If he could push off in it without capsizing, surely, even with his lack of skill, he could drive before the wind. Or even if he could keep it floating under the lee of the island, he could dictate terms.

He waited, hidden, until she passed out of sight ahead, then ran to it. But even as he put his hands on the bow, she reappeared, running back. He fled in the other direction.

The chase went on reversed. He no longer heard her coming behind him. Now he could not tell whether she were in front or behind. He passed the dugout and the camp fire again. No sign of her there. Rounding the point beyond, he came to the place where he had made his own fire.

Trying to keep eyes in every side of his head at once, he walked around a bush and almost collided with her. There she stood with dimpled face, like a child, behind the door.

She burst out laughing. Sam turned beet colour and, scowling like a pirate, tried to carry it off with dignity.

"Don't be mad at me," she begged, struggling with her laughter. "You so fonny, run away. Here's your breakfast. It's cold now. You can bring it to the fire."

There was bread and smoked fish on the plate she was offering. Sam, though his stomach cried out, turned his back on her.

"You got eat," said Bela. "Tak' it."

"Not from you," he returned bitterly.

There was a silence. He could not see how she took it. Presently he heard her put the plate down on the sand and walk off. Her steps died away around the point.

Sam eyed the food ravenously and began to argue with himself. In the end, of course, he ate it, but it went down hard.

The day wore on. It continued to blow great guns. Sam wandered up and down his side of the island, meditating fine but impractical schemes of escape and revenge.

He might get away on a raft, he thought, if the wind changed and blew in a direction favourable to carry him ashore. The trouble was the nights were so short. He might build his raft one night, and escape on it the next. How to keep her from finding it in the meantime offered a problem.

He began to look about in the interior of the island for suitable pieces of dry timber. He could use a blanket for a sail, he thought. This reminded him that his blankets were at least his own, and he determined to go and get them.

Rounding the point, he saw her sitting in the sand, making something with her hands. Though she must have heard him coming, she did not look up until he addressed her. Sam, in his desire to assert his manhood, swaggered a bit as he came up.

She raised a face as bland as a baby's. Sam was disconcerted. Desiring to pick a quarrel, he roughly demanded his blankets. Bela nodded toward where they hung and went on with her work. She was making a trolling spoon.

So much for their second encounter. Sam retired from it, feeling that he had come off no better than from the first.

Later, back on his own side, bored and irritated beyond endurance, he rolled up in his blankets and sought sleep as an escape from his own company.

He slept and dreamed. The roaring of the wind and the beating of the waves wove themselves into his fancies. He dreamed he was engulfed in a murky tempest, He was tossing wildly in a shell of a boat, without oars or sail. Sometimes green and smiling fields appeared close at hand, only to be swallowed up in the murk again.

The noise was deafening. When he endeavoured to shout for aid, his tongue was clamped to his jaw. Behind him was a terror worse than the storm, and he dared not look around. It seemed to him that he struggled for an infinity of time, a hopeless, heart-breaking struggle against increasing odds.

Suddenly the sun broke through, cheering his heart. It was a sun that came down close to him, warming him through and through. It was not a sun. It was a face – a woman's face. At first it was a face he did not know, but beautiful. Then it was Bela's face, and he was glad.

Closer and closer to his own face it drew, and he did not draw away. Finally she touched his lips with hers, and a wonderful sweetness pervaded his whole frame. He awoke.

For a moment he lay blinking, still wrapped in the dream. At any rate, the storm was real. The bushes still thrashed, and the waves beat. Before him stretched the same wide waste of grey water slashed with white.

The sight of the water brought full recollection back. He had been looking at it all day, and he hated it. It was the water that made his prison. He sat up swearing at his dream. It was a fine thing a man should have no better control over his emotions while he slept.

Beside him on the sand lay another tin plate, with bread and fish. Fresh fish this time, half a pink salmon trout lately pulled from the water. Touching the plate he found it warm. Was it possible —

Looking in the sand beside where he had lain he saw the rounded depressions made by two knees, on the other side of him was a hand-print. Sam scowled and violently scrubbed his lips with the back of his hand. Even so, he would not admit to himself that the hateful thing had happened.

Nevertheless he ate the fish.

"I've got to keep my strength up if I'm going to help myself," he excused it.

The sun was hidden, but he knew by that instinct which serves us when we give up mechanical contrivances, that it was no more than noon. Half of this hideous day remained to be got over.

He sat dwelling on his grievances until the top of his head seemed about to fly off. Then he set to work to search for and collect dry logs and stow them under the willows, and in so doing managed to tire himself out.

It was dusk, which is to say nearly ten o'clock, when he awoke from another nap. A silence, astonishing after the day-long uproar, greeted his ears. The wind had gone down with the sun, and the world was enfolded in a delicious peace.

The lake was like a polished floor. Above the tree-tops behind him the sky was still bright, while over across the water sat Night in robes, awaiting her cue. On the island there was not a cheep nor a flutter to break the spell.

Sam wondered idly what had aroused him. He saw with a frown that there was food beside him as before. But it had been there some time. It was cold, and sand had drifted into the plate.

At last he heard the sound which had awakened him. It was a strain of music which came stealing as gently on the air as the first breath of dawn. Sam's breast was like wax to music.

Without thinking what he was doing, he kicked himself free of the blankets, and arose to go closer. It was like a lovely incantation, drawing him irrespective of his will.

He did not instantly recognize the source of the music. It might have been the song of a twilight bird, a thrush, a mocking-bird. He forgot for the moment that there are no song-birds so far north.

Presently he knew it for the voice of a woman singing softly, and a good way off – Bela! Still he did not stop.

"I guess I can listen to her sing without giving anything away," he told himself. But his breast was dangerously seduced by the sweetness of the sound.

As he drew closer the detached notes associated themselves into a regular air. It had nothing in common with the rude, strident chants of the Indians that he had heard on the rivers. It was both familiar and elusive. It was like an air he knew, but with a wild, irregular quality different from our airs. It was mournful, sweet, and artless, and it made the heart swell in his breast.

As he progressed around the beach he saw her fire. It was dark enough now for the blaze to shine. Drawing still closer he saw her beside it, and frowned, remembering his injuries – but the song drew him still.

He began to listen for the words. Suddenly he recognized it – one of the loveliest of old English songs. Evidently it had been transmitted from ear to ear until it had acquired the character of a new race of singers.

He progressed from bush to bush. He wasn't going to have anything to do with her, he would have said, but she could sing. He came to a final stop only a few yards away, and watched her through the leaves with burning eyes. She was in her favourite attitude, sitting on her heels, her strong young back curving in to her swaying waist.

Her hair, all unbound, fell around her in shifting masses like smoke. While she sang she combed it with long strokes, holding her head now on this side, now on that, and ever revealing a lovelier pose of her round arms. The half light lent her an unearthly beauty.

The sight was no less affecting than the sound. A great pain filled Sam's breast, and the old inward struggle dragged him back and forth. She was at once so desirable and so hateful in his eyes. It was the cry of bewildered youth: "What right has anything so bad to be beautiful!"

No doubt of her badness occurred to him. Had she not ruined his chances in that country? The old antagonism was there, the readiness to believe ill of the other sex that is born of mutual fear. She had become the immemorial siren in Sam's eyes, and he was fighting to save his soul. But she was beautiful enough to make a man wish to be damned.

She came to the end of her song, and presently started another, a more rollicking air, but still charged with wistfulness. Who had taught her those hushed, thrilling tones? Sam recognized this air, too, and thought of the mother who had sung it to him years ago.

It was "Twickenham Ferry." Why that of all songs? he wondered rebelliously. It was not fair that she should be armed thus to seek out the weakest joints in his armour.

The desire to stop the song with his own mouth became more than he could bear. The struggle was almost over when she paused and bent her head to listen, and looked up and down the beach.

It broke the spell.

"She's just trying to bring you to her!" Sam told himself, aghast. "That's why her hair is down and all. And you're falling for it, you fool!"

He turned and fled back around the beach.

Whether or not she heard him run away, the song presently ceased, and troubled him no more that night. He returned to his blankets, but not to sleep again.

He built a fire and lay beside it smoking. He drove away the recollection of the disturbing loveliness he had seen by counting over his injuries at her hands, nourishing them and magnifying them in his mind until they filled it to the exclusion of everything else.

It became as dark as it would get. Midnight at that season is no more than an intensified twilight. By and by the moon arose far across the water, looking like an old-fashioned gas-globe, and set sail on her brief voyage low down in the sky from south-east to south-west.

Sam received the friend of lovers with a scowl. He had omitted her from his calculations. "The nights are short enough without that!" he thought.

Thinking of escape, a new idea caused him to sit up suddenly.

"Why bother with a raft?" he thought. "She's got to sleep sometime. If I could sneak around the beach and push the dugout in! No matter how quick she woke once I was afloat. Oh! it would do my heart good to float just out of her reach and tell her a few things. On a night like this I could paddle anywhere. She's got some food and a blanket. Serve her right, anyhow. I could send some one back after her."

To think of it was to desire to put it into instant action. The moon, however, forbade. Sam cursed her again, and sat down to wait with what patience he could muster until it should slowly sink out of sight.

When the bright scimitar edge sunk behind Nine-Mile Point he arose with a beating heart. Making his blankets into a bundle, he took his way once more around the strip of beach, his moccasined feet falling noiselessly on the sand.

It was about two o'clock, and the afterglow had moved around to the north-east. In an hour it would be light again. The island objects loomed twice their size in this dusk of dusk. Sam kept close under the willows to avoid making a silhouette against the sky. As he drew close to Bela's camp he saw that her fire was out, from which he argued that she had been asleep for some time.