North of Fifty-Three Part 12

She took a look at the encompa.s.sing woods, and her heart sank at facing those shadowy stretches alone and unguided. The truth of his statement that she would never reach Cariboo Meadows forced itself home. There was but the one way out, and her woman's wit would have to save her.

"Go on, then," she gritted, in a swift surge of anger. "I am afraid to face this country alone. I admit my helplessness. But so help me Heaven, I'll make you pay for this dirty trick! You're not a man!

You're a cur--a miserable, contemptible scoundrel!"

"Whew!" Roaring Bill laughed. "Those are pretty names. Just the same, I admire your grit. Well, here we go!"

He took up the lead rope, and went on without even looking back to see if she followed. If he had made the slightest attempt to force her to come, if he had betrayed the least uncertainty as to whether she would come, Hazel would have swung down from the saddle and set her face stubbornly southward in sheer defiance of him. But such is the peculiar complexity of a woman that she took one longing glance backward, and then fell in behind the packs. She was weighted down with dread of the unknown, boiling over with rage at the man who swung light-footed in the lead; but nevertheless she followed him.

CHAPTER IX

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

All the rest of that day they bore steadily northward. Hazel had no idea of Bill Wagstaff's destination. She was too bitter against him to ask, after admitting that she could not face the wilderness alone.

Between going it alone and accompanying him, it seemed to be a case of choosing the lesser evil. Curiously she felt no fear of Bill Wagstaff in person, and she did have a dread vision of what might happen to her if she went wandering alone in the woods. There was one loophole left to comfort her. It seemed scarcely reasonable that they could fare on forever without encountering other frontier folk. Upon that possibility she based her hopes of getting back to civilization, not so much for love of civilization as to defeat Roaring Bill's object, to show him that a woman had to be courted rather than carried away against her will by any careless, strong-armed male. She knew nothing of the North, but she thought there must be some mode of communication or transportation. If she could once get in touch with other people--well, she would show Roaring Bill. Of course, getting back to Cariboo Meadows meant a new start in the world, for she had no hope, nor any desire, to teach school there after this episode. She found herself facing that prospect unmoved, however. The important thing was getting out of her present predicament.

Roaring Bill made his camp that night as if no change in their att.i.tude had taken place. To all his efforts at conversation she turned a deaf ear and a stony countenance. She proposed to eat his food and use his bedding, because that was necessary. But socially she would have none of him. Bill eventually gave over trying to talk. But he lost none of his cheerfulness. He lay on his own side of the fire, regarding her with the amused tolerance that one bestows upon the capricious temper of a spoiled child.

Thereafter, day by day, the miles unrolled behind them. Always Roaring Bill faced straight north. For a week he kept on tirelessly, and a consuming desire to know how far he intended to go began to take hold of her. But she would not ask, even when daily a.s.sociation dulled the edge of her resentment, and she found it hard to keep up her hostile att.i.tude, to nurse bitterness against a man who remained serenely unperturbed, and who, for all his apparent lawlessness, treated her as a man might treat his sister.

To her unpracticed eye, the character of the country remained unchanged except for minor variations. Everywhere the timber stood in serried ranks, spotted with lakes and small meadows, and threaded here and there with little streams. But at last they dropped into a valley where the woods thinned out, and down the center of which flowed a sizable river. This they followed north a matter of three days. On the west the valley wall ran to a timbered ridge. Eastward the jagged peaks of a snow-capped mountain chain pierced the sky.

Two hours from their noon camp on the fourth day in the valley Hazel sighted some moving objects in the distance, angling up on the timber-patched hillside. She watched them, at first uncertain whether they were moose, which they had frequently encountered, or domestic animals. Accustomed by now to gauging direction at a glance toward the sun, she observed that these objects traveled south.

Presently, as the lines of their respective travel brought them nearer, she made them out to be men, mounted, and accompanied by packs. She counted the riders--five, and as many pack horses. One, she felt certain, was a woman--whether white or red she could not tell.

But--there was safety in numbers. And they were going south.

Upon her first impulse she swung off Silk, and started for the hillside, at an angle calculated to intercept the pack train. There was a chance, and she was rapidly becoming inured to taking chances.

At a distance of a hundred yards, she looked back, half fearful that Roaring Bill was at her heels. But he stood with his hands in his pockets, watching her. She did not look again until she was half a mile up the hill. Then he and his packs had vanished.

So, too, had the travelers that she was hurrying to meet. Off the valley floor, she no longer commanded the same sweeping outlook. The patches of timber intervened. As she kept on, she became more uncertain. But she bore up the slope until satisfied that she was parallel with where they should come out; then she stopped to rest.

After a few minutes she climbed farther, endeavoring to reach a point whence she could see more of the slope. In so far had she absorbed woodcraft that she now began watching for tracks. There were enough of these, but they were the slender, triangle prints of the shy deer.

Nothing resembling the hoofmark of a horse rewarded her searching. And before long, what with turning this way and that, she found herself on a plateau where the pine and spruce stood like bristles in a brush, and from whence she could see neither valley below nor hillside above.

She was growing tired. Her feet ached from climbing, and she was wet with perspiration. She rested again, and tried calling. But her voice sounded m.u.f.fled in the timber, and she soon gave over that. The afternoon was on the wane, and she began to think of and dread the coming of night. Already the sun had dipped out of sight behind the western ridges; his last beams were gilding the blue-white pinnacles a hundred miles to the east. The shadows where she sat were thickening.

She had given up hope of finding the pack train, and she had cut loose from Roaring Bill. It would be just like him to shrug his shoulders and keep on going, she thought resentfully.

As twilight fell a brief panic seized her, followed by frightened despair. The wilderness, in its evening hush, menaced her with huge emptinesses, utter loneliness. She worked her way to the edge of the wooded plateau. There was a lingering gleam of yellow and rose pink on the distant mountains, but the valley itself lay in a blur of shade, out of which rose the faint murmur of running water, a monotone in the silence. She sat down on a dead tree, and cried softly to herself.

"Well?"

She started, with an involuntary gasp of fear, it was so unexpected.

Roaring Bill Wagstaff stood within five feet of her, resting one hand on the muzzle of his grounded rifle, smiling placidly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Roaring Bill Wagstaff stood within five feet of her, resting one hand on the muzzle of his grounded rifle.]

"Well," he repeated, "this chasing up a pack train isn't so easy as it looks, eh?"

She did not answer. Her pride would not allow her to admit that she was glad to see him, relieved to be overtaken like a truant from school. And Bill did not seem to expect a reply. He slung his rifle into the crook of his arm.

"Come on, little woman," he said gently. "I knew you'd be tired, and I made camp down below. It isn't far."

Obediently she followed him, and as she tramped at his heels she saw why he had been able to come up on her so noiselessly. He had put on a pair of moccasins, and his tread gave forth no sound.

"How did you manage to find me?" she asked suddenly--the first voluntary speech from her in days.

Bill answered over his shoulder:

"Find you? Bless your soul, your little, high-heeled slices left a trail a one-eyed man could follow. I've been within fifty yards of you for two hours.

"Just the same," he continued, after a minute's interval, "it's bad business for you to run off like that. Suppose you played hide and seek with me till a storm wiped out your track? You'd be in a deuce of a fix."

She made no reply. The lesson of the experience was not lost on her, but she was not going to tell him so.

In a short time they reached camp. Roaring Bill had tarried long enough to unpack. The horses grazed on picket. It was borne in upon her that short of actually meeting other people her only recourse lay in sticking to Bill Wagstaff, whether she liked it or not. To strike out alone was courting self-destruction. And she began to understand why Roaring Bill made no effort to watch or restrain her. He knew the grim power of the wilderness. It was his best ally in what he had set out to do.

Within forty-eight hours the stream they followed merged itself in another, both wide and deep, which flowed west through a level-bottomed valley three miles or more in width. Westward the land spread out in a continuous roll, marked here and there with jutting ridges and isolated peaks; but on the east a chain of rugged mountains marked the horizon as far as she could see.

Roaring Bill halted on the river brink and stripped his horses clean, though it was but two in the afternoon and their midday fire less than an hour extinguished. She watched him curiously. When his packs were off he beckoned her.

"Hold them a minute," he said, and put the lead ropes in her hand.

Then he went up the bank into a thicket of saskatoons. Out of this he presently emerged, bearing on his shoulders a canoe, old and weather-beaten, but stanch, for it rode light as a feather on the stream. Bill seated himself in the canoe, holding to Silk's lead rope.

The other two he left free.

"Now," he directed, "when I start across, you drive n.i.g.g.e.r and Satin in if they show signs of hanging back. Bounce a rock or two off them if they lag."

Her task was an easy one, for Satin and n.i.g.g.e.r followed Silk unhesitatingly. The river lapped along the sleek sides of them for fifty yards. Then they dropped suddenly into swimming water, and the current swept them downstream slantwise for the opposite sh.o.r.e, only their heads showing above the surface. Hazel wondered what river it might be. It was a good quarter of a mile wide, and swift.

Roaring Bill did not trouble to enlighten her as to the locality. When he got back he stowed the saddle and pack equipment in the canoe.

"All aboard for the north side," he said boyishly. And Hazel climbed obediently amids.h.i.+ps.

On the farther side, Bill emptied the canoe, and stowed it out of sight in a convenient thicket, repacked his horses, and struck out again.

They left the valley behind, and camped that evening on a great height of land that rolled up to the brink of the valley.

Thereafter the country underwent a gradual change as they progressed north, slanting a bit eastward. The heavy timber gave way to a spa.r.s.er growth, and that in turn dwindled to scrubby thickets, covering great areas of comparative level. Long reaches of gra.s.sland opened before them, waving yellow in the autumn sun. They crossed other rivers of various degrees of depth and swiftness, swimming some and fording others. Hazel drew upon her knowledge of British Columbia geography, and decided that the big river where Bill hid his canoe must be the Fraser where it debouched from the mountains. And in that case she was far north, and in a wilderness indeed.

Her muscles gradually hardened to the saddle and to walking. Her appet.i.te grew in proportion. The small supply of eatable dainties that Roaring Bill had brought from the Meadows dwindled and disappeared, until they were living on bannocks baked a la frontier in his frying pan, on beans and coffee, and venison killed by the way. Yet she relished the coa.r.s.e fare even while she rebelled against the circ.u.mstances of its partaking. Occasionally Bill varied the meat diet with trout caught in the streams beside which they made their various camps. He offered to teach her the secrets of angling, but she shrugged her shoulders by way of showing her contempt for Roaring Bill and all his works.

"Do you realize," she broke out one evening over the fire, "that this is simply abduction?"

"Not at all," Bill answered promptly. "Abduction means to take away surrept.i.tiously by force, to carry away wrongfully and by violence any human being, to kidnap. Now, you can't by any stretch of the imagination accuse me of force, violence, or kidnaping--not by a long shot. You merely wandered into my camp, and it wasn't convenient for me to turn back. Therefore circ.u.mstances--not my act, remember--made it advisable for you to accompany me. Of course I'll admit that, according to custom and usage, you would expect me to do the polite thing and restore you to your own stamping ground. But there's no law making it mandatory for a fellow to pilot home a lady in distress.

Isn't that right?"

"Anyhow," he went on, when she remained silent, "I didn't. And you'll have to lay the blame on nature for making you a wonderfully attractive woman. I did honestly try to find the way to Cariboo Meadows that first night. It was only when I found myself thinking how fine it would be to pike through these old woods and mountains with a partner like you that I decided--as I did. I'm human--the woman, she tempted me. And aren't you better off? I could hazard a guess that you were running away from yourself--or something--when you struck Cariboo Meadows. And what's Cariboo Meadows but a little blot on the face of this fair earth, where you were tied to a deadly routine in order to earn your daily bread? You don't care two whoops about anybody there.