The Heart of the Ancient Wood

“I’ve took note o’ the change this two month back, Mirandy,” he said, “an’ was a-wonderin’ some how them big eyes of yourn, that can see things us ordinary folks can’t see, could be blind to what teched ye so close.”

“I wasn’t blind to it, Dave,” protested the girl, indignantly; “but I didn’t see how you could help any. Nor I don’t see now; but there was no one else I could speak to about it,” she added, with a break in her voice that distantly presaged tears.

“I could help some, if you’d let me, Mirandy,” he hesitated, “for I know right well what she’s needin’.”

“Well, what is it?” demanded the girl. There was that in his voice which oppressed her with a vague misgiving.

“It’s good, fresh, roast meat she wants!” said Dave.

There was a pause. Miranda turned and looked out through the stable door, across the glimmering fields.

“It’s her blood’s got thin an’ poor,” continued Dave. “Nothin’ but flesh meat’ll build her up now, an’ she’s jest got to have it.” He was beginning to feel it was time that Miranda experienced the touch of a firm hand.

“I don’t believe you!” said the girl, and turned hotly to her milking.

“Well, we’ll see,” retorted Dave. In Miranda’s silence he read a tardy triumph for his views.

That evening he took note of the fact that Kirstie came to supper with no appetite, though every dish of it was tempting and well cooked. Miranda observed this also. Her fresh pang of apprehension on her mother’s account was mixed with a resentful feeling that Dave would interpret every symptom as a confirmation of his own view. She was quite honest in her rejection of that view, for in her eyes flesh food was a kind of subtle poison. But she was too anxious about her mother’s health to commit herself in open hostility to anything, however extreme, which might be suggested in remedy. On this point she was resolved to hold aloof, letting the decision rest between her mother and Dave.

Aroused by the young hunter’s talk, Kirstie was brighter than usual during the meal; but, to her great disappointment, Dave got up to go immediately after supper. He would take no persuasion, but insisted that he had come just to see if she and Miranda were well, and declared that affairs of supreme importance called him straight back to the camp. Kirstie was not convinced. She turned a face of reproach on Miranda, so frankly that the girl was compelled to take her meaning.

“Oh! it isn’t my fault, mother,” she protested, with a little vexed laugh. “I’ve not been doing anything ugly to him. If he goes, it’s just his own obstinacy, for he knows we’d like him to stay as he always does. Let him go if he wants to!”

“Mirandy,” said her mother, in a voice of grave rebuke, “I wish you would not be so hard with Dave. If you treated your dumb beasts like you treat him, I reckon they would never come to you a second time. You seem to forget that Dave and his father are our only friends, – and just now, Dave’s father being in the lumber camp, we’ve nobody but Dave here to look to.”

“Oh! I’ve nothing against Dave, mother, except the blood on his hands,” retorted the girl, turning her face away.

The young hunter shrugged his shoulders, deprecatingly, smiled a slow smile of understanding at Kirstie, and strode to the door.

“Good night, both of ye,” he said cheerfully. “Ye’ll see me back, liker’n not, by this time to-morrow.”

As he went, Miranda noticed with astonishment and a flush of warmth that for once in his career he was without his inseparable rifle. Kirstie, in the vacant silence that followed his going, had it on her tongue to say, “I do wish you could take to Dave, Miranda.” But the woman’s heart within her gave her warning in time, and she held her peace. Thanks to this prudence, Miranda went to bed that night with something of a glow at her heart. Dave’s coming without the rifle was a direct tribute to her influence, and to some extent outweighed his horrible suggestion that her mother should defile her mouth with meat.

The next evening the chores were all done up; the “rabbits” had come and gone with their clover and carrots; and Kirstie and Miranda were sitting down to their supper, when in walked Dave. He carried a package of something done up in brown sacking. This time, too, he carried his rifle. Kirstie’s welcome was frankly eager, but Miranda saw the rifle, and froze. He caught her look, and with a flash of intuition understood it.

“Had to bring it along, Mirandy,” he explained, with a flush of embarrassment. “Couldn’t ha’ got here without it. The wolves have come back again, six of ’em. They set on to me at my own camp door.”

“Oh, wolves!” exclaimed Miranda, in a tone of aversion. “They’re vermin.”

Since that far-off day when, with her childish face flattened against the pane, her childish heart swelling with wrath and tears, she had watched the wolves attack Ten-Tine’s little herd, she had hated the ravening beasts with a whole-souled hate.

“I hope to goodness you killed them all!” said Kirstie, with pious fervour.

“Two got off; got the pelts of the others,” answered Dave.

“Not too bad, that,” commented Kirstie, with approval; “now come and have some supper.”

“Not jest yet, Kirstie,” he replied, undoing his package. “I’ve noticed lately ye was looking mighty peaked, an’ hadn’t much appetite, like. Now when folks has anything the matter with ’em I know as much about it as lots of the doctors, and I know what’s goin’ to set ye right up. If ye’ll lend me the loan of yer fire, an’ a frying-pan, I’ll have something for yer supper that’ll do ye more good than a bucketful of doctor’s medicine.”

Miranda knew what was coming. She knew Dave had been all the way back to the camp, beyond the Quah-Davic, for meat, that he might run no risk of killing any of the beasts that were under her protection. She knew, too, that to make such a journey in the twenty-four hours he could scarce have had one hour’s sleep. None the less, she hardened her heart against him. She kept her eyes on her plate and listened with strained intensity for her mother’s word upon this vital subject.

Kirstie’s interest was now very much awake. “There’s the fire, Dave,” she said, “and there’s the frying-pan hanging on the side of the dresser. But what have you got? I’ve felt this long while I’d like a bit of a change – not but what the food we’re used to, Miranda and me, is real good food and wholesome.”

“Well, Kirstie,” he answered, taking a deep breath before the plunge, and at the same time throwing back the wrapping from a rosy cut of venison steak, “it’s jest nothin’ more nor less than fresh meat. It’s venison, clean an’ wholesome; and I’ll fry ye right now this tender slice I’m cuttin’ for ye.”

Kirstie was startled quite out of her self-possession. The rule of the cabin against flesh meat was so long established, so well known at the Settlement, so fenced about with every sanction of principle and prejudice, that Dave’s words were of the nature of a challenge. She felt that she ought to be angry; but, as a matter of fact, she was only uneasy as to how Miranda would take so daring a proposal. At the same time she was suddenly conscious of an unholy craving for the forbidden thing. She glanced anxiously at Miranda, but the girl appeared to be wrapped up in her own thoughts.

“But you know, Dave,” she protested rebukingly, “we neither of us ever touch meat of any kind. You know our opinions on this point.”

The words themselves would have satisfied Miranda had she not detected a certain irresolution in the tone. They did not affect Dave in the least. For a moment he made no reply, for he was busy cutting thin slices off the steak. He spread them carefully in the hot butter, now spluttering in the pan over the coals; and then, straightening himself up from the task, knife in hand, he answered cheerfully: “That’s all right. But, ye see, Kirstie, all the folks reckon me somethin’ of a doctor, an’ this here meat I’m cookin’ for ye ain’t rightly food at all. It’s medicine; ’tain’t right ye should hold off now, when ye need it as medicine. ’Tain’t fair to Mirandy. I can see ye’ve jest been pinin’ away like, all winter. It’s new blood, with iron in it, ye need. It’s flesh meat, an’ flesh meat only, that’ll give ye iron an’ new blood. When ye’re well, an’ yer old strong self agin, ye can quit meat if ye like, – an’ kick me out o’ the cabin for interferin’; but now – ”

He paused dramatically. He had talked right on, contrary to his silent habit, for a purpose. He knew the power of natural cravings. He was waiting for Kirstie’s elemental bodily needs to speak out in support of his argument. He waited just time for the savoury smell of the steak to fill the cabin and work its miracle. Now the spell was abroad. He looked to Kirstie for an answer.

The instant she smelled that savour Kirstie knew that he was right. Steak, venison steak fried in butter, was what she required. For weeks she had had no appetite; now she was ravenous. Moreover, a thousand lesser forces, set in motion by Dave’s long talks, were impelling her to just such a change as the eating of flesh would symbolize to her. But – Miranda? Kirstie stared at her in nervous apprehension, expecting an outburst of scorn. But Miranda was seemingly oblivious of all that went on in the cabin. Her unfathomed eyes, abstractedly wide open, were staring out through the white square of the window. She was trying hard to think about the mysterious blue-white wash of radiance that seemed to pour in palpable floods from the full moon; – about the furred and furtive creatures passing and repassing noiselessly, as she knew, across the lit patches of the glades; – about the herd of moose down in the firwoods, sleeping securely between walls of deep snow in the “yard,” which they had trodden for themselves a fortnight back; – of Kroof, coiled in her warm den under the pine root, with five feet of drift piled over her. But in reality she was steeling herself, with fierce desperation, against a strange appetite which was rising within her at the call of that insidious fragrance. With a kind of horror she realized that she was at war with herself – that one half her nature was really more than ready to partake of the forbidden food.

Dave noticed the look of question which Kirstie had turned upon Miranda.

“Oh, ye needn’t look to her, Kirstie, to back ye up in no foolishness,” he went on. “I spoke to her last night about it, an’ she hadn’t a word to say agin my medicine.”

Still there was no comment from Miranda. If Miranda, to whom abstinence from flesh was a religion, could tolerate a compromise, why she herself, to whom it was merely a prejudice and a preference, might well break an ancient rule for an instant’s good. She had been inwardly anxious for months about her condition. After a second or two of doubt, her mind was made up; and when Kirstie made up her mind, it was in no halfway fashion.

“I’ll try your doctoring, Dave,” she said slowly. “I’ll give it a fair trial. But while you’re about it, why don’t you cook enough for yourself, too? Have you put salt in the pan? And here’s a dash of pepper.”

“No,” answered the young hunter, concealing his elation as he sprinkled the steak temperately with the proffered salt and pepper, “I don’t want none myself, I need meat onct in a while, er I git weak an’ no good. But there’s nothin’ suits my taste like the feeds I git here, – the pipin’ hot riz buckwheat cakes, with lots o’ butter an’ molasses, an’ the johnny-cake, an’ the potater pie, an’ the tasty ways ye cook eggs. I often think when I’m here that I wouldn’t care if I never seen a slice o’ fresh meat, er even bacon, agin. But our bodies is built a certain way, an’ there’s no gittin’ over Nature’s intention. We’ve got the teeth to prove it, an’ the insides, too, – I’ve read all about it in doctors’ books. I read a heap in camp. Fact is, Kirstie, we’re built like the bear, – to live on all kinds of food, includin’ flesh, – an’ if we don’t git all kinds onct in a while, somethin’s bound to go wrong.”

Never had Dave talked so much before; but now he was feverishly eager to have no opening for discussion. While he talked the venison was cooked and served. Kirstie ate it with a relish, which convinced him of the wisdom of his course. She ate all that he had fried; and he wisely refrained from cooking more, that her appetite might be kept on edge for it in the morning. Then she ate other things, with an unwonted zest. Miranda returned to the table, talking pleasantly of everything but health, and food, and hunting. Against herself she was angry; but on Dave, to his surprise, she smiled with a rare graciousness. She was mollified by his tact in characterizing the steak as medicine; and, moreover, by his statement of a preference for their ordinary bloodless table, he seemed in some way to range himself on her side, even while challenging her principles. But – oh, that savoury smell! It still enriched the air of the cabin; it still stirred riotous cravings in her astonished appetite. She trembled with a fear and hatred of herself.

When Kirstie, with a face to which the old glow was already venturing back, laid down her knife and fork, and explained to her guest, “You’re a good doctor, and no mistake, Dave Titus; I declare I feel better already,” Miranda got up and went silently out into the moonlight to breathe new air and take counsel with herself.

Dave would have followed her, but Kirstie stopped him. “Best let her be,” she said meaningly, in a low voice. “She’s got a heap to think over in the last half hour.”

“But she took it a sight better’n I thought she would,” responded Dave.

And all on account of a venison steak, his hopes soared higher than they had ever dared before.

Chapter XVI

Death for a Little Life

Thenceforward Kirstie twice or thrice a week medicined herself with fresh venison, provided assiduously by Young Dave, and by the time spring was fairly in possession of the clearing, she was her old strong self again. But as for Dave’s hopes, they had been reduced to desolation. Miranda had taken alarm at her sudden carnivorous craving, and in her effort to undo that moment’s weakness she had withdrawn herself to the utmost from Dave’s influence. She had been the further incited to this by an imagined aloofness on the part of her furred and feathered pensioners. A pair of foxes, doubtless vagrants from beyond her sphere, had spread slaughter among the hares as they returned from feeding at the cabin. The hungry raiders had laid an ambush at the edge of the clearing on two successive nights. They had killed recklessly. Then they vanished, doubtless driven away by the steady residents who knew how to kill discreetly and to guard their preserves from poachers. But the hares had taken alarm, and few came now o’ nights for Miranda’s carrots and clover. Miranda, with a little ache at her heart, concluded from this that she had forfeited her ascendency among the kin of the ancient wood. There had been a migration, too, among the squirrels, so that now these red busybodies were perceptibly fewer about the cabin roof. And the birds – they were nearly all gone. An unusually early spring, laying bare the fields in the lower country, and bringing out the insects before their wont, had scattered Miranda’s flocks a fortnight earlier than usual. No crumbs could take the place of swelling seeds and the first fat May-fly. But Miranda thought they were fled through distrust of her. Kroof, old Kroof the constant, was all unchanged when she came from her winter’s sleep; but this spring she brought an unusually fine cub with her, and the cub, of necessity, took a good deal of her time and attention away from Miranda. When Miranda was with her, roaming the still, transparent corridors, all the untroubled past came back, crystalline and flawless as of old. Once more the furtive folk went about their business in the secure peace of her neighbourhood; once more she revelled with a kind of intoxication in the miraculous fineness of her vision; once more she felt assured of the mastery of her look. But this was in the intervals between Dave’s visits. When he was at the clearing, everything was different. She was no longer sure of herself on any point. And the worst of it was that the more indifference to him she feigned, the less she felt. She was quite unconscious, all the while, that her mother was shrewdly watching her struggles. She was not unconscious, however, of Dave’s attitude. She saw that he seemed dull and worried, which gratified her, she knew not why, and confirmed her in her coolness. But at last, with a slow anger beginning to burn at his heart, he adopted the policy of ignoring her altogether, and giving all his thought to Kirstie, whereupon Miranda awoke to the conclusion that it was her plain duty to be civil to her mother’s guest.

This change, not obtrusive, but of great moment to Dave, came over the girl in June, when the dandelions were starring the pasture grass. The sowing and the potato planting were just done. The lilac bushes beside the cabin were a mass of purple enchantment. It was not a time for hard indifference; and Dave was quick to catch the melting mood. His manner was such, however, that Miranda could not take alarm.

“Mirandy,” said he, with the merest good comradeship in tone and air, “would ye take a little trip with me to-morrow, now that the crops can spare ye a bit?”

“Where to, Dave?” interposed Kirstie, fearful lest the girl should refuse out of hand, before she knew what Dave proposed to do.

“Why, I’ve got to go over the divide an’ run down the Big Fork in my canoe to Gabe White’s clearin’, with some medicine I’ve brought from the Settlement for his little boy what’s sick. He’s a leetle mite of a chap, five year old, with long, yaller curls, purty as a picture, but that peaked an’ thin, it goes to yer heart to see him. Gabe came in to the Settlement yesterday to see the doctor about him an’ git medicine; but he’s had to go right on to the city to sell his pelts, an’ git some stuff the doctor says the little feller must hev, what can’t be got in the Settlement at all. So Gabe give me this” (and he pulled a bottle out of the inside pocket of his hunting shirt) “to take to him right now, coz the little feller needs it badly. It’s a right purty trip, Mirandy, an’ the Big Fork’s got some rapids ’at’ll please ye. What ye say?”

Dave was growing subtle under Miranda’s discipline. He knew that the picture of the small boy would draw her; and also that the sight of the ailing child, acting upon her quick sympathies, would awaken a new human interest and work secretly in favour of himself. The beauty of the scenery, the excitement of the rapids, – these were a secondary influence, yet he knew they would not be without appeal to the beauty-worshipping and fearless Miranda.

The girl’s deep eyes lightened at the prospect. She would see something a little different, yet not alien or hostile, – a new river, other hills and woods, a deeper valley, a ruder cabin in a remoter clearing, a lonely woman, – above all, a little sick boy with long, yellow hair.

“But it must be a long way off, Dave,” she protested, in a tone that invited contradiction.

“Not so far as to the Settlement,” answered Dave; “an’ it don’t take half so long to go because o’ the quick run down river. I reckon, though, we’d best stay over night at White’s clearin’ and come back easy nex’ day – if you don’t mind, Kirstie! Sary Ann White’s a powerful fine woman, an’ Mirandy’s sure to like her. It’ll do her a sight of good, poor thing, to hev Mirandy to talk to a bit.”

He wanted to say that just a look at Miranda’s wild loveliness would do Mrs. White a lot of good; but he had not quite the courage for such a bold compliment.

“No, I don’t mind, if Miranda likes to go,” said Kirstie; “I shan’t be lonesome, as Kroof’ll be round most of the time.”

It had come to be understood, and accepted without comment, that when Dave went anywhere with Miranda the jealous old bear remained at home.

Until they were fairly off, Dave was in a fever of anxiety lest Miranda should change her mind. But this venture had genuinely caught her interest, and no whim tempted her to withdraw. After a breakfast eaten so early that the early June dawn was still throwing its streaks of cool red through the cabin window and discouraging the fire upon the hearth, Dave and Miranda set out. They followed the path to the spring among the alders, and then plunged direct into the woods, aiming a little to the east of north. The dew was thick in silver globules on the chips of the yard and on the plantain leaves. It beaded the slender grasses about the spring, and the young foliage of the alders, and the dazzling veils of the gossamer spiders. This time Dave took his rifle with him, and Miranda paid no heed to it.

The woods were drenching wet, but unusually pervaded with light. The new risen sun sent its fresh rays far up the soundless vistas, and every damp leaf or shining facet of bark diffused its little dole of lustre to thin the gloom. As the sun got higher and the dew exhaled away, the twilight slightly deepened, the inexpressible clarity of the shadowed air returned, and the heart of the ancient wood resumed its magic. The awe, as of an enchantment working unseen, the meaning and expectant stillness, the confusion of near and far, the unreality of the familiar, – all this gripped the imagination of the two travellers just as sharply as if they had not been all their lives accustomed to it. The mystery of the ancient wood was not to be staled by use. These two, sensitive to its spell as a surface of glass to a breath, lay open to it in every nerve, and a tense silence fell upon their lips. In the silence was understanding of each other. It was Dave’s most potent wooing, against which Miranda had no warning, no defence.

As they walked thus noiselessly, light-footed as the furtive folk themselves, suddenly from a bit of open just ahead of them there came the slender, belling cry of a young deer. They had arrived now, after three hours’ rapid walking, at a part of the forest unknown to Miranda. The open space was rock thinly covered with mosses and vines, an upthrust of the granite foundations of a hill which towered near by.

It was an unheard-of thing for a young deer to give cry so heedlessly amid the perilous coverts of the wood. Both the travellers instinctively paused, and then stole forward with greater caution, peering through the branches. To the forest dwellers, beast or human, the unusual is always the suspicious, and therefore to be investigated. A few paces carried them both to a point where Miranda caught sight of the imprudent youngling.

“Hush!” she whispered, laying her hand on Dave’s arm, “Look! the poor little thing’s lost. Don’t frighten it!”

“There’ll be something else’ll frighten it afore long,” muttered Dave, “if it don’t quit its bla’tin’.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the little animal jumped, trembled, started to run, and then looked piteously from side to side, as if uncertain which way to flee and from what peril. An instant more and the greyish-brown form of a lynx shot like lightning from the underbrush. It caught the young deer by the throat, dragged it down, tore it savagely, and began drinking its blood.

“Kill it! kill it!” panted Miranda, starting forward. But Dave’s hand checked her.

“Wait!” he said firmly. “The little critter’s dead; we can’t do it no good. Wait an’ we’ll git both the varmints. There’ll be a pair of ’em.”

Under ordinary circumstances, Miranda would have resented the idea of getting “both the varmints”; but just now she was savage with pity for the young deer, and she chose to remember vindictively that far-off day when Ganner had come to the clearing, and only the valour of Star, the brindled ox, had saved herself and Michael, the calf, from a cruel death. She obeyed Dave’s command, therefore, and waited.

But there was another who would not wait. The mother doe had heard her lost little one’s appeal. In wild haste, but noiseless on the deep carpet of the moss, she came leaping to the cry. She saw what Miranda and Dave saw. But she did not pause to calculate, or weigh the odds against her. With one bound she was out in the open. With the next she was upon the destroyer. The hungry lynx looked up just in time to avoid the fair impact of her descending hooves, which would have broken his back. As it was, he caught a glancing blow on the flank, which ripped his fine fur and hurled him several paces down the slope.