The Heart of Thunder Mountain

“May I, please?” she asked, smiling down at him.

“If you wish,” he answered.

She knelt, and began to wash the grime from his face, to cleanse the wound on his head, and readjust the bandage. Then his hands, after another trip to the stream to rub out the soiled end of the towel; and she was still busy with one of them, when she started back with a cry. His coat had opened wider, and she saw that his shirt was stained with blood. She had forgotten the revolver-shot!

“It’s nothing,” said Haig. “Only a flesh wound, I think.”

“But why didn’t you tell me!” she cried, almost with anger in her alarm.

“It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Let me see it, quick!” she commanded.

He looked at her a moment, then opened the front of his flannel shirt and of the undershirt, and disclosed a flesh wound where the bullet had cut a streak across his chest. Marion bent close, and touched it with her fingers.

“Oh!” she sighed at last, in deep relief.

Haig’s reply was a laugh of which the irony did not escape her.

“Philip!” she cried reproachfully.

“Well, isn’t it rather droll–and ludicrous, when you come to think of it? First, Sunnysides’ punch in my stomach. And now, with my head cut open by a stone, and a broken leg, and two bullet-wounds–I’ve still got a splendid appetite. I ought to be on exhibition somewhere!”

His sardonic humor hurt her worse than his anger; and she went quickly to the brook to cleanse the towel again. Returning presently, she washed the new wound, and bandaged it; then examined the splints on the broken leg to assure herself that, as nearly as she could determine, no serious damage had been done to it by his reckless crawl; and finally brought his blankets, and insisted on making a sort of bed for him. After that she cooked two slices of bacon, and on this, with a little bread, they made their first meal of the day. And this brought her to the next and most pressing problem.

“Will you help me think, Philip?” she asked, when they had eaten.

“About what?”

“Food.”

“What’s in the larder?”

She smiled at his tone, in spite of her own seriousness.

“Bacon–perhaps enough for three days, with the bread, if we don’t eat much; and chocolate for four or five breakfasts. That’s all.”

“And then?”

“Are there deer in those forests, do you think?”

“Very likely. This is an un-hunted country, I imagine.”

“Great!” she cried.

“What do you propose to do? Whistle for them?”

She could afford to smile at that.

“Didn’t you see my rifle?”

“Just now–yes. What’s it for?”

“You’ll see.”

“Diana of Thunder Mountain, eh? Well, I’m ready to admit you’re some huntress. But deer! That’s another thing.”

The color flooded her cheeks.

“Cousin Seth taught me to shoot,” she answered, turning her face away. “I killed a deer on Mount Avalanche.”

“But where did Cousin Seth learn to shoot? The last time he–”

“Please, Philip!”

“Well, when you’ve brought down your deer, what will you do with it?”

The color deserted her face at that.

“I watched him do it,” she said, shuddering at the recollection.

“But you can’t do that alone.”

“I’ve got to,” she replied simply. And then, on a sudden thought: “There should be grouse too, shouldn’t there?”

“Perhaps.”

“I learned to kill grouse with my rifle.”

He looked at her with a wicked grin. This time he had her!

“How many cartridges have you?” he asked.

She ran for her belt, and counted the cartridges.

“Twenty-seven.”

“So. If you never miss, you’ll get twenty-seven grouse. That would mean twenty-seven, meals. One meal a day, twenty-seven days. I’d still be on my back, our ammunition would be gone, and–”

“Don’t!” she cried, in tears. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Never mind!” he replied, almost gently. “But we’ll deny ourselves the grouse.”

“Yes, it’s got to be the deer. I’ll begin now.”

“No, there’s something else that must be done first.”

“What is it?”

“We’ve got to move.”

“For shelter, you mean?”

“Partly. But look there!”

He pointed to the dead body of Trixy.

“It will be easier–and perhaps even nicer–to move me than poor Trixy. See that big pine yonder–the one that stands out from the forest? Well, you and Tuesday must drag me there.”

“But how?”

He explained his plan to her, and she set herself at once to executing it. And her spirits rose again; for she thought he had abandoned his desperate resolution. So, indeed, he had–for the moment. But he had deliberately beguiled her; their situation he knew to be quite unchanged in its inevitable termination, since a food supply would save them from starvation only to deliver them to the snow; and he must disarm her of suspicion in order to find a way to send her back on the trail. For he had reflected on the implication of tragic finality in the speech that had surprised and disturbed him; and he did not doubt that when the time should come, and she should find herself alone, her high resolve would prove to have been mere emotional exaggeration.

Mounted on Tuesday, Marion attacked the boughs of a small pine with the hatchet until she had severed three large branches, to which she tied Haig’s rope, and hauled them back to the camp. Of these branches Haig contrived a crude drag, on which he crawled, and lay flat; the free end of the rope was hitched to the horn of Tuesday’s saddle; and the journey was begun. Twice the saddle slipped, and progress was interrupted while Marion tightened the cinches. Once the drag itself came to pieces, and Haig was left sprawling on the ground. But eventually, with no more serious injury to Haig than a bruised elbow, not counting his torn clothing, they reached the goal.

There Marion made a wide bed against the exposed top roots of the tree, filling the spaces among the pine boughs with moss, and placing the two saddles at the head for pillows. Night had come before she had completed this labor, and gathered another supply of dead limbs and rotted logs, and cooked their meager supper. Then she wrapped Haig in his blankets, and rolled herself in her own, and lay down at his side. What with watching and replenishing the fire, and listening to night-cries heard or imagined, and waking from restless slumber chilled to the bone, she slept as little as on the preceding night, and was glad of the dawn, which came peacefully enough on the heels of a storm that raged on Thunder Mountain and sent a cold and beating rain upon the valley.

This day brought its own bitter disappointment. After her bath in the clear pool among the willows, and their mere taste of bacon and bread in the name of breakfast, and a promise exacted from Haig, as a condition of her leaving him, that he would do nothing of which she would disapprove, she set out to get her deer. Rifle on shoulder, and eyes alert, she skirted the edge of the wood along the base of the cliff, through tall grasses of a golden green, among yellowing aspen groves, and under a fair blue sky. But presently she plunged into the thick of the forest, of which the trees towered to a height exceeding that of any she had ever seen before. In their tops the breeze was singing sonorously, but among their massive boles the silence was so tense that twigs cracking under her feet sounded like gun-shots echoing through the dim aisles.

For some hours she wandered fruitlessly in that dark labyrinth, not only mindful of Philip’s warning that she must not penetrate too deep into its depth, but fearful on her own account of an encounter with some such wild beast as that whose cry had terrified her. In time the hollow indifference of the woods began to weigh upon her spirits, which had been high and hopeful on her setting out. Worn out at last, she was just on the point of turning back toward the camp, defeated, when she came upon an open space, a lovely little glade, in which the grass grew rank and green, unripened by the sun. She started to cross it, but stopped suddenly, staring straight ahead. In the very middle of the lush and silent glade, a young doe rose swiftly to its feet, and looked at her. Marion stood and looked at the doe. Then there was a streak of pale yellow across the grass, the forest closed around it, and the doe was gone. Thereupon, Marion remembered her rifle, and saw with something like surprise, to begin with, that it was pointed foolishly toward the ground. She gazed at it a moment, then sat plump down on the mossy earth, and cried.

“Oh, what a fool!” she groaned. “What a poor, silly little fool! I ought to starve, starve, starve!”

And on the words the hunger that she had bravely kept back rose and punished her. To be hungry in a world of plenty, where she had only to reach out and help herself! To think of Philip, hungry too, and depending on her, on her boasted prowess! Humiliation scorched her like a flame. And this was Marion Gaylord!

When she had recovered a little, she made directly for the open strip, having no more heart for her task, and nerving herself to confess the truth to Philip. Coming out upon the knoll through thick underbrush, she was startled by the leap of a rabbit from under her very feet; and before she was aware of what she was doing, she had thrown up her rifle, and fired. There was really no aim; the action was a gesture merely; and if she had tried to hit the rabbit she would have undoubtedly missed it clean. But the unlucky little beast, happening in the path of Marion’s angry disgust, turned a somersault in the air, and fell dead.

“Of course!” cried Marion. “Of course I can kill rabbits.” Then mercilessly: “A rabbit a day for twenty-seven days–” And rage choked her.

But she picked up her rabbit, and walked on. In half an hour she reached the camp, strode straight to the pine tree under which Haig lay, and held up before him the puny prize.

“Now I know you’re proud of me!” she exclaimed, while her face crimsoned.

Haig smiled indulgently. It was a little better than he had expected.

“Don’t be downcast!” he said. “I didn’t think you’d get a deer the first day. You didn’t even see one, I suppose.”

“But I did, though! I had one right under my eyes, not thirty feet away. And what do you think I did?”

“Stood and looked at it, of course. That’s buck fever.”

“But it was only a tiny little doe!”

“Doe fever then, which is probably worse, if I know anything about–”

“That will do, Philip! You’re laughing at me.”

“Not at all. You’ve brought home something to eat, and that’s more than I can do. Bunny looks big and fat. He’ll make a fine dinner, and leave something for to-morrow.”

“Thank you, Philip!” she said gratefully. “You make me feel as if I were not such a failure after all.”

“If you’ll trust me with the knife,” he said in a tone that took some of the edge off her satisfaction, “I’ll clean him for you.”

She gave him the knife reluctantly, and did not leave his side until he had finished cleaning and cutting up the rabbit, when he handed the knife back to her with a gesture that made her blush again. Two things she did not know: that he had a knife in his pocket much better suited to his secret purpose; and that his purpose was a purpose no longer. But even he was not yet aware of this last.

It was not the next day, but the third, when the rabbit had been eaten to the bone, and the pangs of hunger prodded her, that Marion restored herself in her own eyes. In the edge of the forest, not more than two miles from the camp, she detected a mere brown patch in the browning bush. This time she did not forget her rifle. The brown patch moved just as she pulled the trigger; but when she reached the spot, in a fever of anxiety, she fairly shrieked to the wilderness. For there in the grass, still jerking spasmodically in its death agony, lay a doe, a larger one than that she had seen in the glade. No more “one a day for twenty-seven days!”

What followed haunted her dreams for many nights thereafter–a repulsive and sickening ordeal. She had seen Huntington do it, but then she had been able to turn her face away; and her hands–But necessity, responsibility, and pride, and perhaps some primitive instinct also, nerved her to the task. And she staggered back to camp, and stood before Philip, white and trembling, but triumphant.

“Take a drink of whisky!” ordered Haig sharply.

She obeyed him, gulping down the last of the precious contents of her flask.

“It’s down there–covered with leaves!” she gasped out at length. “Will anything–disturb it before I can–take Tuesday and the rope?”

“Do you mean you’ve cleaned the whole deer?” he asked curiously.

She nodded, still shuddering.

“Well, you’re a brick!” he said heartily. Then he added: “I thought perhaps a bobcat had stolen your–rabbit.”

She laughed with him, and then was off with Tuesday to bring her quarry home. She was not strong enough to lift and fasten the carcass on the horse’s back; but the route was through clean grass along the cliff, and Tuesday made short work of that, with the deer dragged at the end of the rope.

They had no salt, but there were a few rinds of bacon that Haig had told Marion to keep, and these were made to serve for seasoning. That venison, moreover, needed nothing to make it palatable; for they were ravenously hungry. Sprawled before the fire like savages, they feasted on a huge steak, broiled on two willow sticks, and well-browned on the outside at the start so that the tenderness was retained; and for an hour forgot. For so the stomach, at once the tyrant and the slave, has sometimes its hour of triumph, when heart and soul and brain are its willing captives, and the starkest fears and forebodings lose their sway, and death itself, though visible and near, has no power to ferment the grateful juices of the body.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE SNOW

In the night they were awakened by a terrific outburst on the mountain top, surpassing all they had yet heard since their arrival in the valley. The forest roared under the onslaughts of the wind that swept down through the gorge as through a funnel. Protected though the camp was, in a measure, fierce gusts now and then assailed it, and later the rain came, almost in torrents, beating through the canopy of foliage, and half-flooding the bed.

Marion, rising to renew the fire, felt that a sharp change had come in the atmosphere. It was colder than any night they had yet endured. Wrapped again in her blankets, she was unable to keep warm. Her feet, near the fire, were too hot, while her back and shoulders ached as if they had been packed in ice. Turn which way she would, on her back, on her side, or face downward, there was no relief from that acid cold. She did not complain, but cried softly, trying to hold back her sobs so that he should not hear her.

“You’re cold,” he said, hearing her nevertheless.

“A little–not very,” she answered bravely.

But he knew very well how keenly she was suffering. His injured leg pained him almost beyond endurance, as if the frost had been concentrated there. There was nothing he could say or do for her or for himself.

Toward morning, the fury of the storm having abated, they slept a little, fitfully and uneasily, in the half-insensibility to suffering that complete exhaustion brings. But they were glad when the first gray light of morning stole in among the shadows and touched their eyelids. With one accord, as if in a common apprehension, and moved by a single fear, they raised their heads, and at the first glance about them, sat up staring.

The meadow lay white under its first coverlet of snow, the trees were draped in their winter mantles, their very bed had its downy quilt of snowflakes that had sifted through the branches of the tree.

“It’s come,” said Haig simply.

“Yes,” she answered, in a voice that echoed a tragic calm.

“But it was due.”

“Seth kept saying we’d have a hard and early winter.”

“Huntington’s not such a fool as he looks,” retorted Haig drily, as he lay back to look up resignedly into the foliage, where white now mingled with the green.

For some time there was no more speech. Marion arose, and went silently about her work. She heaped wood on the fire until the flames leaped high, and the heat began to drive out the settled chill from her limbs, and she could move again without dull pain. Then to the brook; but her baths in the pool were ended. She washed face and hands, and brought back the wet towel for Philip. And breakfast was eaten almost in silence, and without appetite; for the good venison that had so rejoiced them the night before had already lost its flavor.

“Do you see the circles on the trees yonder, where the moss begins?” asked Haig at length.

“Yes,” Marion answered.

“That’s the snow line. It will lie thirty feet deep here.”

She had no answer to that. But she was thinking. There must be a way. She had no idea what it would be; but there must be some way out of it.

When the camp had been cleaned up, and the pan and cup had been washed and put aside, and the fire replenished, she brought her rifle from its place behind the tree.

“I’m going for a walk,” she said.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Down along the cliff perhaps. I may see another deer.”

“Yes. You might as well. Deer meat will keep–longer than we–”

He checked the unnecessary speech. She rewarded him with a smile and left him.

And now he faced a curious situation within himself. He saw clearly, but strangely without sensation, that it was too late for Marion to attempt the passage of the mountain. Whatever chance she might have had before–and that was perhaps even less than the one in a thousand of which he had spoken–she had now no chance at all, supposing that he should force her to seek it by measures of desperation. And why had he delayed? He did not know. Had he weakened? Had his injuries taken something from his courage? He drew his treasured knife from his pocket, opened the largest of the three keen blades, and passed it slowly but lightly across his wrist. No; his hand was steady; he could do it without a tremor. He could have done it yesterday, the day before, or any day. Well, then; had he become sceptical of such a solution of his problem? Perhaps. Six times in his life he had attempted that solution, and always he had failed. And yet, what could have thwarted him when Marion was far away in the forest, and he lay quiet and undisturbed on his blankets, in full possession of his faculties?

By such process of elimination he arrived at the final question: was it she? Was it this girl that now stayed his hand, in spite of all his logic and clear vision and resolution? This girl, with her foolish faith, and misplaced love, and futile talk of miracles? Was it written that they should die together–written in some volume of the book of life into which he had never looked? Or was she right? And would there be–

He looked out again upon the gleaming whiteness of the meadow, at the snow line on the pines, at the remorseless mountain. He passed slowly in review again the chances of a rescue, the chances of their wintering in that (soon-to-be) snowbound valley, the chances of a–miracle. And he shook his head. The odds were beyond all reckoning; their fate was now as certain as if the cliff yonder, rent by another cataclysm, had tumbled down upon them while they slept. But he had known this in the very hour of his awakening to find her kneeling at his side; he had delayed giving her the one chance of escape. And so, was it because she had commanded him and he had unconsciously obeyed?

It was mystery; it was enigma. He tried to think if he had erred in any way, if there was any fault to be attributed to him. No; he had dealt more than fairly with this girl; he had spoken frankly and brutally; he had never once consciously, by word or look, enticed her. Unconsciously, perhaps; but how could he ever have foreseen such consequences of the infatuation of which he had become slowly and incredulously informed? He would have gone raging out of the Park, between two suns (and Thursby be damned!), if he had ever dreamt of this tragic end of her midsummer madness.

For two hours he lay thinking, torturing his brain for an explanation of this mystery, an understanding of this coil. And he was no nearer a solution than at the beginning, when his thoughts were interrupted by Marion. She came running out of the forest–not running, but fairly bounding, as if her feet were too light to rest on earth. Her face was flushed, her eyes danced with excitement. But then, seeing his grave and questioning face, she stopped short in front of him, suddenly embarrassed.

“Well?” he asked gently.

“Would–a cave do?”

Her voice trembled between timidity and shortness of breath.

“A cave?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of a cave?”

“A big cave–really two caves joined together.”

“Where?”

“In the cliff–down there.”

She pointed in the direction from which she had come at full speed.

“How high above the level of the valley?”

She stared at him, and was again embarrassed.

“I forgot that!” she said, in deep chagrin. “But wait, please!” She looked around her. “I think–I know what you mean! It’s higher up than the marks on the trees there, surely it is!”

“Tell me about it!”

“It’s only a little way from here. There’s a narrow, clear space all along between the forest and the cliff, where the grass grows high. But there’s one place–I missed it before, when I was just looking for deer–where the cliff–How can I describe it? It sinks in, and there’s a slope up to it, solid rock. And at the top of the slope I saw a black hole, and got off my pony to look in. The slope is easy to climb. Tuesday climbed it with me. The mouth of the cave is partly hidden by a rock that sticks out so that you can see the opening only from one side. The entrance is no bigger than the door of your stable. I was afraid at first, but–”

“You thought of your miracle,” he suggested, with a smile.

“I knew something must be done, so I held my rifle ready, thinking it might be a wild beasts’ den, and listened a minute, and went in. There’s the big cave first, as large as the sitting-room and kitchen together at Cousin Seth’s, and there’s a smaller one at the side, with a narrow opening between them. The small one has an opening outside too, just big enough for me to squeeze through, and look out on the forest below.”

“Was it cold in there? Did the wind blow through?”

“No, I think not. It seemed very dry and warm.”

He looked at her intently, and so strangely that she blushed again, she knew not why.

“Who are you, anyhow?” he asked, in a curious tone.

“I?”

“Yes, you?”

“I don’t understand,” she faltered in confusion.

“No matter!” he said. “We’ll try the cave.”

He had no faith in the experiment. Even with food and shelter, there was still the cold that would steadily sap their strength, and stretch them lifeless before half the winter should have passed. But she should have her way; it would divert her mind from the inevitable; and they would, at least, be doing all their best. The trip to the cave would be hell for him, in his condition, but all that would be, at its worst, soon ended.

A whole day being needed for the removal, they ventured to wait until the following morning. Storms raged through all the night on Thunder Mountain, and they woke again in utter wretchedness to find another and heavier sheet of snow upon the meadow.

But Marion was soon up and at work in eagerness and hope. The fire and the broiled venison renewed them; and even the snow offered something by way of compensation, for Haig’s journey on the freshly constructed drag was smoother over the snow than it had been in the first instance over the stone-littered earth. The ascent to the opening of the cave was, however, another matter; and there was imminent danger of Tuesday’s sliding backward on the slippery rock, and crushing Haig beneath him. Twice, indeed, such a fatal accident was narrowly averted, and a less sure-footed animal than Tuesday would have resolved all Haig’s doubts in one swift catastrophe. But there was no alternative, and Haig at length lay safe enough, though racked and exhausted, at the mouth of the cave; and when he had rested he raised himself on his elbows and looked around him.

The top of the slope was almost level, and made a kind of porch in front of their new abode, about thirty feet in length and of half that measurement in its greatest width. Haig calculated the height of the platform above the valley–fully forty feet. Below was the strip of grass, and then the forest towering high above them, protecting the cave, in some degree, from the winds that would come roaring down the gulch. At this height they should be able, in all probability, to defy the snows. With a sufficient store of food and fuel, and any kind of luck, there would have been–God! Was there a chance?