The Silent Battle

George Gibbs

The Silent Battle

I

LOST

Gallatin wearily lowered the creel from his shoulders and dropped it by his rod at the foot of a tree. He knew that he was lost—had known it, in fact, for an hour or more, but with the certainty that there was no way out until morning, perhaps not even then, came a feeling of relief, and with the creel, he dropped the mental burden which for the last hour had been plaguing him, first with fear and then more recently with a kind of ironical amusement.

What did it matter, after all? He realized that for twenty-eight years he had made a mess of most of the things he had attempted, and that if he ever got back to civilization, he would probably go diligently on in the way he had begun. There was time enough to think about that to-morrow. At present he was so tired that all he wanted was a place to throw his weary limbs. He had penetrated miles into the wilderness, he knew, but in what direction the nearest settlement lay he hadn’t the vaguest notion—to the southward probably, since his guide had borne him steadily northward for more than two weeks.

That blessed guide! With the omniscience of the inexperienced, Gallatin had left Joe Keegón alone at camp after breakfast, with a general and hazy notion of whipping unfished trout pools. He had disregarded his mentor’s warning to keep his eye on the sun and bear to his left hand, and in the joy of the game, had lost all sense of time and direction. He realized now from his aching legs that he had walked many miles farther than he had wanted to walk, and that, at the last, the fish in his creel had grown perceptibly heavier. The six weeks at Mulready’s had hardened him for the work, but never, even at White Meadows, had his muscles ached as they did now. He was hungry, too, ravenously hungry, and a breeze which roamed beneath the pines advised him that it was time to make a fire.

It was a wonderful hunger that he had, a healthful, beastlike hunger—not the gnawing fever, for that seemed to have left him, but a craving for Joe’s biscuits and bacon (at which he had at first turned up his pampered aristocratic nose), which now almost amounted to an obsession. Good old Joe! Gallatin remembered how, during the first week of their pilgrimage, he had lain like the sluggard that he was, against the bole of a tree, weary of the ache within and rebellious against the conditions which had sent him forth, cursing in his heart at the old Indian for his taciturnity, while he watched the skillful brown fingers moving unceasingly at the evening task. Later he had begun to learn with delight of his own growing capabilities, and as the habit of analysis fell upon him, to understand the dignity of the vast silences of which the man was a part.

Not that Gallatin himself was undignified in the worldly way, for he had lived as his father and his father’s fathers before him had lived, deeply imbued with the traditions of his class, which meant large virtues, civic pride, high business integrity, social punctilio, and the only gentlemanly vice the Gallatin blood had ever been heir to. But a new idea of nobility had come to him in the woods, a new idea of life itself, which his conquest of his own energy had made possible. The deep aisles of the woods had spoken the message, the spell of the silent places, the mystery of the eternal which hung on every lichened rock, which sang in every wind that swayed the boughs above.

Heigho! This was no time for moralizing. There was a fire to light, a shelter of some sort to build and a bed to make. Gallatin got up wearily, stretching his tired muscles and cast about in search of a spot for his camp. He found two young trees on a high piece of ground within a stone’s throw of the stream, which would serve as supports for a roof of boughs, and was in the act of gathering the wood for his fire, when he caught the crackling of a dry twig in the bushes at some distance away. Three weeks ago, perhaps, he would not have heard or noticed, but his ear, now trained to the accustomed sounds, gave warning that a living thing, a deer or a black bear, perhaps, was moving in the undergrowth. He put his armful of wood down and hid himself behind a tree, drawing meanwhile an automatic, the only weapon he possessed, from his hip pocket. He had enough of woodcraft to know that no beast of the woods, unless in full flight, would come down against the wind toward a human being, making such a racket as this. The crackling grew louder and the rapid swish of feet in the dry leaves was plainly audible. His eye now caught the movement of branches and in a moment he made out the dim bulk of a figure moving directly toward him. He had even raised the hand which held his Colt and was in the act of aiming it when from the shelter of the moose-wood there emerged—a girl.

She wore a blue flannel blouse, a short skirt and long leather gaiters and over one hip hung a creel like his own. Her dress was smart and sportsmanlike, but her hat was gone; her hair had burst its confines and hung in a pitiful confusion about her shoulders. She suggested to him the thought of Syrinx pursued by the satyrs; for her cheeks were flushed with the speed of her flight and her eyes were wide with fear.

Comely and frightened Dryads who order their clothes from Fifth Avenue, are not found every day in the heart of the Canadian wilderness; and Gallatin half expected that if he stepped forward like Pan to test her tangibility, she would vanish into empty air. Indeed such a metamorphosis was about to take place; for as he emerged from behind his tree, the girl turned one terrified look in his direction and disappeared in the bushes.

For a brief moment Gallatin paused. He had had visions before, and the thought came into his mind that this was one like the others, born of his overtaxed strength and the rigors of the day. But as he gazed at the spot where the Dryad had stood, branches of young trees swayed, showing the direction in which she was passing and the sounds in the crackling underbrush, ever diminishing, assured him that the sudden apparition was no vision at all, but very delectable flesh and blood, fleeing from him in terror. He remembered, then, a tale that Joe Keegón had told him of a tenderfoot, who when lost in the woods was stricken suddenly mad with fear and, ended like a frightened animal running away from the guides that had been sent for him. Fear had not come to Gallatin yet. He had acknowledged bewilderment and a vague sense of the monstrous vastness of the thing he had chosen for his summer plaything. He had been surprised when the streams began running up hill instead of down, and when the sun appeared suddenly in a new quarter of the heavens, but he had not been frightened. He was too indifferent for that. But he knew from the one brief look he had had of the eyes of the girl, that the forest had mastered her, and that, like the fellow in Joe’s tale, she had stampeded in fright.

Hurriedly locking his Colt, Gallatin plunged headlong into the bushes where the girl had disappeared. For a moment he thought he had lost her, for the tangle of underbrush was thick and the going rough, but in a rift in the bushes he saw the dark blouse again and went forward eagerly. He lost it, found it again and then suddenly saw it no more. He stopped and leaned against a tree listening. There were no sounds but the murmur of the rising wind and the note of a bird. He climbed over a fallen log and went on toward the slope where he had last seen her, stopping, listening, his eyes peering from one side to the other. He knew that she could not be far away, for ahead of him the brush was thinner, and the young trees offered little cover. A tiny gorge, rock strewn, but half filled with leaves, lay before him, and it was not until he had stumbled halfway across it that he saw her, lying face downward, her head in her hands, trembling and dumb with fear.

From the position in which she lay he saw that she had caught her foot in a hidden root and, in her mad haste to escape she knew not what, had fallen headlong. She did not move as he approached; but as he bent over her about to speak, she shuddered and bent her head more deeply in her arms, as though in expectation of a blow.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly.

At the sound of his voice she trembled again, but he leaned over and touched her on the shoulder.

“I’m very sorry I frightened you,” he said again. And then after a moment, “Have you lost your way?”

She painfully freed one arm, and looked up; then quickly buried her head again in her hands, her shoulders heaving convulsively, her slender body racked by childish sobs.

Gallatin straightened in some confusion. He had never, to his knowledge, been considered a bugaboo among the women of his acquaintance. But, as he rubbed his chin pensively, he remembered that it was a week or more since he had had a shave, and that a stiff dark stubble discolored his chin. His brown slouch hat was broken and dirty, his blue flannel shirt from contact with the briers was tattered and worn, and he realized that he was hardly an object to inspire confidence in the heart of a frightened girl. So, with a discretion which did credit to his knowledge of her sex, he sat down on a near-by rock and waited for the storm to pass.

His patience was rewarded, for in a little while her sobs were spent, and she raised her head and glanced at him. This time his appearance reassured her, for Gallatin had taken off his hat, and his eyes, no longer darkly mysterious in shadow, were looking at her very kindly.

“I want to try and help you, if I can,” he was saying gently. “I’m about to make a camp over here, and if you’ll join me–”

Something in the tones of his voice and in his manner of expressing himself, caused her to sit suddenly up and examine him more minutely. When she had done so, her hands made two graceful gestures—one toward her disarranged hair and the other toward her disarranged skirt. Gallatin would have laughed at this instinctive manifestation of the eternal feminine, which even in direst woe could not altogether be forgotten, but instead he only smiled, for after all she looked so childishly forlorn and unhappy.

“I’m not really going to eat you, you know,” he said again, smiling.

“I—I’m glad,” she stammered with a queer little smile. “I didn’t know what you were. I’m afraid I—I’ve been very much frightened.”

“You were lost, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” She struggled to her knees and then sank back again.

“Well, there’s really nothing to be frightened about. It’s almost too late to try to find your friends to-night, but if you’ll come with me I’ll do my best to make you comfortable.”

He had risen and offered her his hand, but when she tried to rise she winced with pain.

“I—I’m afraid I can’t,” she said. “I think I—I’ve twisted my ankle.”

“Oh, that’s awkward,” in concern. “Does it hurt you very much?”

“I—I think it does. I can’t seem to use it at all.” She moved her foot and her face grew white with the pain of it.

Gallatin looked around him vaguely, as though in expectation that Joe Keegón or somebody else might miraculously appear to help him, and then for the first time since he had seen her, was alive again to the rigors of his own predicament.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he stammered helplessly. “Don’t you think you can stand on it?”

He offered her his hand and shoulder and she bravely tried to rise, but the effort cost her pain and with a little cry she sank back in the leaves, her face buried in her arms. She seemed so small, so helpless that his heart was filled with a very genuine pity. She was not crying now, but the hand which held her moist handkerchief was so tightly clenched that her knuckles were outlined in white against the tan. He watched her a moment in silence, his mind working rapidly.

“Come,” he said at last in quick cheerful notes of decision. “This won’t do at all. We’ve got to get out of here. You must take that shoe off. Then we’ll get you over yonder and you can bathe it in the stream. Try and get your gaiter off, too, won’t you?”

His peremptory accents startled her a little, but she sat up obediently while he supported her shoulders, and wincing again as she moved, at last undid her legging. Gallatin then drew his hasp-knife and carefully slit the laces of her shoe from top to bottom, succeeding in getting it safely off.

“Your ankle is swelling,” he said. “You must bathe it at once.”

She looked around helplessly.

“Where?”

“At the stream. I’m going to carry you there.”

“You couldn’t. Is it far?”

“No. Only a hundred yards or so. Come along.”

He bent over to silence her protests and lifted her by the armpits. Then while she supported herself for a moment upright, lifted her in his arms and made his way up the slope.

Marvelous is the recuperative power of the muscular system! Ten minutes ago Gallatin had been, to all intents and purposes of practical utility, at the point of exhaustion. Now, without heart-breaking effort, he found it possible to carry a burden of one hundred and thirty pounds a considerable distance through rough timber without mishap! His muscles ached no more than they had done before, and the only thing he could think of just then was that she was absurdly slender to weigh so much. One of her arms encircled his shoulders and the fingers of one small brown hand clutched tightly at the collar of his shirt. Her eyes peered before her into the brush, and her face was almost hidden by the tangled mass of her hair. But into the pale cheek which was just visible, a gentle color was rising which matched the rosy glow that was spreading over the heavens.

“I’m afraid I—I’m awfully heavy,” she said, as he made his way around the fallen giant over which a short while ago they had both clambered. “Don’t you think I had better get down for a moment?”

“Oh, no,” he panted. “Not at all. It—it isn’t far now. I’m afraid you’d hurt your foot. Does it—does it pain you so much now?”

“N-o, I think not,” she murmured bravely. “But I’m afraid you’re dreadfully tired.”

“N-not at all,” he stammered. “We’ll be there soon now.”

When he came to the spot he had marked for his camp, he bore to the right and in a moment they had reached the stream which gushed musically among the boulders, half hidden in the underbrush. It was not until he had carefully chosen a place for her that he consented to put her on the ground. Then with a knee on the bank and a foot in the stream, he lowered her gently to a mossy bank within reach of the water.

“You’re very kind,” she whispered, her cheeks flaming as she looked up at him. “I’m awfully sorry.”

“Nothing of the sort,” he laughed. “I’d have let you carry me—if you could.” And then, with the hurried air of a man who has much to do: “You take off your stocking and dangle your foot in the water. Wiggle your toes if you can and then try to rub the blood into your ankle. I’m going to build a fire and cook some fish. Are you hungry?”

“I don’t know. I—I think I am.”

“Good!” he said smiling pleasantly. “We’ll have supper in a minute.”

He was turning to go, when she questioned: “You spoke of a camp. Is—is it near here?”

“N-o. It isn’t,” he hesitated, “but it soon will be.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

He laughed. “Well, you see, the fact of the matter is, I’m lost, too. I don’t think it’s anything to be very much frightened about, though. I left my guide early this morning at the fork of two streams a pretty long distance from here. I’ve been walking hard all day. I fished up one of the streams for half of the day and then cut across through the forest where I thought I would find it again. I found a stream but it seems it wasn’t the same one, for after I had gone down it for an hour or so I didn’t seem to get anywhere. Then I plunged around hunting and at last had to give it up.”

“Don’t you think you could find it again?”

“Oh, I think so,” confidently. “But not to-night. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with what I can offer you.”

“Of course—and I’m very grateful—but I’m sorry to be such a burden to you.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense.” He turned away abruptly and made his way up the bank. “I’m right here in the trees and I can hear you. So if I can help you I want you to call.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly, “I will.”

II

BABES IN THE WOODS

Gallatin’s responsibilities to his Creator had been multiplied by two.

Less than an hour ago he had dropped his rod and creel more than half convinced that it didn’t matter to him or to anybody else whether he got back to Joe Keegón or not. Now, he suddenly found himself hustling busily in the underbrush, newly alive to the exigencies of the occasion, surprised even at the fact that he could take so extraordinary an interest in the mere building of a fire. Back and forth from the glade to the deep woods he hurried, bringing dry leaves, twigs, and timber. These he piled against a fallen tree in the lee of the spot he had chosen for his shelter and in a moment a fire was going. Many things bothered him. He had no axe and the blade of his hasp-knife was hardly suited to the task he found before him. If his hands were not so tender as they had been a month ago, and if into his faculties a glimmering of woodcraft had found its way, the fact remained that this blade, his Colt, fishing-rod and his wits (such as they were), were all that he possessed in the uneven match against the forces of Nature. Something of the calm ruthlessness of the mighty wilderness came to him at this moment. The immutable trees rose before him as symbols of a merciless creed which all the forces around him uttered with the terrible eloquence of silence. He was an intruder from an alien land, of no importance in the changeless scheme of things—less important than the squirrel which peeped at him slyly from the branch above his head or the chickadee which piped flutelike in the thicket. The playfellow of his strange summer had become his enemy, only jocular and ironical as yet, but still an enemy, with which he must do battle with what weapons he could find.

It was the first time in his life that he had been placed in a position of complete dependence upon his own efforts—the first time another had been dependent on him. He and Joe had traveled light; for this, he had learned, was the way to play the game fairly. Nevertheless, he had a guilty feeling that until the present moment he had modified his city methods only so far as was necessary to suit the conditions the man of the wilderness had imposed upon him and that Joe, after all, had done the work. He realized now that he was fronting primeval forces with a naked soul—as naked and almost as helpless as on the day when he had been born. It seemed that the capital of his manhood was now for the first time to be drawn upon in a hazardous venture, the outcome of which was to depend upon his own ingenuity and resourcefulness alone.

And yet the fire was sparkling merrily.

He eyed the blade in his hand as he finished making two roof supports and sighed for Joe Keegón’s little axe. His hands were red and blistered already and the lean-to only begun. There were still the boughs and birch-bark for a roof and the cedar twigs for a bed to be cut. He worked steadily, but it was an hour before he found time to go down to the stream to see how his fugitive fared. She was still sitting as he had left her, on the bank of the stream, gazing into the depths of the pool.

“How are you getting on?” he asked.

“I—I’m all right,” she murmured.

“Is the ankle any better? I think I’d better be getting you up to the fire now. Perhaps, you’d be willing to cook the fish while I hustle for twigs.”

“Of—of course.”

He noticed the catch in her voice, and when he came near her discovered that she was trembling from head to foot.

“Are you suffering still?” he questioned anxiously.

“N-no, not so much. But I—I’m very cold.”

“That’s too bad. We’ll have you all right in a minute. Put your arms around my neck. So.” And bending over, with care for her injured foot, he lifted her again in his arms and carried her up the hill. This time she yielded without a word, nor did she speak until he had put her down on his coat before the fire.

“I don’t know how—to thank you—” she began.

“Then don’t. Put your foot out toward the blaze and rub it again. You’re not so cold now, are you?”

“No—no. I think it’s just n-nervousness that makes me shiver,” she sighed softly. “I never knew what a fire meant before. It’s awfully good—the w-warmth of it.”

He watched her curiously. The fire was bringing a warm tint to her cheeks and scarlet was making more decisive the lines of her well-modeled lips. It did not take Gallatin long to decide that it was very agreeable to look at her. As he paused, she glanced up at him and caught the end of his gaze, which was more intense in its directness than he had meant it to be, and bent her head quickly toward the fire, her lips drawn more firmly together—a second acknowledgment of her sense of the situation, a manifestation of her convincing femininity which confirmed a previous impression.

There was quick refuge in the practical.

“I’m going to clean the fish,” he said carelessly, and turned away.

“I’d like to help, if I could,” she murmured.

“You’d better nurse your ankle for a while,” he said.

“It’s much better now,” she put in. “I can move it without much pain.” She thrust her stockinged foot farther toward the blaze and worked the toes slowly up and down, but as she did so she flinched again. “I’m not of much use, am I?” she asked ruefully. “But while you’re doing other things, I might prepare the fish.”

“Oh, no. I’ll do that. Let’s see. We need some sticks to spit them on.”

“Let me make them;” she put her hand into the pocket of her dress and drew forth a knife. “You see I can help.”

“Great!” he cried delightedly. “You haven’t got a teapot, a frying-pan, some cups and forks and spoons hidden anywhere have you?”

She looked up at him and laughed for the first time, a fine generous laugh which established at once a new relationship between them.

“No—I haven’t—but I’ve a saucepan.”

“Where?” in amazement.

“Tied to my creel—over there,” and she pointed, “and a small package of tea and some biscuits. I take my own lunch when I fish. I didn’t eat any to-day.”

“Wonderful! A saucepan! I was wondering how—tied to your creel, you say?” and he started off rapidly in the direction of the spot where he had found her.

“And please b-bring my rod—and—and my shoe,” she cried.

He nodded and was off through the brush, finding the place without difficulty. It was a very tiny saucepan, which would hold at the most two cupfuls of liquid, but it would serve. He hurried back eagerly, anxious to complete his arrangements for the meal, and found her propped up against the back log, his creel beside her, industriously preparing the fish.

“How did you get over there?” he asked.

“Crawled. I couldn’t abide just sitting. I feel a lot better already.”

“That was very imprudent,” he said quickly. “We’ll never get out of here until you can use that foot.”

“Oh! I hadn’t thought of that,” demurely. “I’ll try to be careful. Did you bring my shoe—and legging?”

He held them out for her inspection.

“You’d better not try to put them on—not to-night, anyway. To-morrow, perhaps–”

“To-morrow!” She looked up at him, and then at the frames of the lean-to, as though the thought that she must spend the night in the woods had for the first time occurred to her. A deep purple shadow was crawling slowly up from the eastward and only the very tops of the tallest trees above them were catching the warm light of the declining sun. The woods were dimmer now and distant trees which a moment ago had been visible were merged in shadow. Some of the birds, too, were beginning to trill their even-song.

“Yes,” he went on, “you see it’s getting late. There’s hardly a chance of any one finding us to-night. But we’re going to make out nicely. If you really insist on cleaning those fish–”

“I do—and on making some tea–”

“Then I must get the stuff for your bed before it’s too dark to see.”

He filled the saucepan with water at the stream, then turned back into the woods for the cedar twigs.

“The bed comes first,” he muttered to himself. “That’s what Joe would say. There’s caribou moss up on the slope and the balsam is handy. It isn’t going to rain to-night, but I’ll try to build a shelter anyway—boughs now—and canoe birches to-morrow, if I can find any. But I’ve got to hustle.”