The Golden Snare

by James Oliver Curwood

  CHAPTER XV

  For a space Philip thought that the cry must have come from BramJohnson himself--that the wolf-man had returned in the pit of thestorm. Against his breast Celie had apparently ceased to breathe. Bothlistened for a repetition of the sound, or for a signal at the barreddoor. It was strange that in that moment the wind should die down untilthey could hear the throbbing of their own hearts. Celie's was poundinglike a little hammer, and all at once he pressed his face down againsthers and laughed with sudden and joyous understanding.

  "It was only the wind, dear," he said. "I never heard anything like itbefore--never! It even fooled the wolves. Bless your dear little hearthow it frightened you! And it was enough, too. Shall we light some ofBram's candles?"

  He held her hand as he groped his way to where he had seen Bram'ssupply of bear-dips. She held two of the candles while he lighted themand their yellow flare illumined her face while his own was still inshadow. What he saw in its soft glow and the shine of her eyes made himalmost take her in his arms again, candles and all. And then she turnedwith them and went to the table. He continued to light candles untilthe sputtering glow of half a dozen of them filled the room. It was awretched wastefulness, but it was also a moment in which he felthimself fighting to get hold of himself properly. And he felt also thedesire to be prodigal about something. When he had lighted his sixthcandle, and then faced Celie, she was standing near the table lookingat him so quietly and so calmly and with such a wonderful faith in hereyes that he thanked God devoutly he had kissed her only once--justthat once! It was a thrilling thought to know that SHE knew he lovedher. There was no doubt of it now. And the thought of what he mighthave done in that darkness and in the moment of her helplessnesssickened him. He could look her straight in the eyes now--unashamed andglad. And she was unashamed, even if a little flushed at what hadhappened. The same thought was in their minds--and he knew that she wasnot sorry. Her eyes and the quivering tremble of a smile on her lipstold him that. She had braided her hair in that interval when she hadgone to her room, and the braid had fallen over her breast and laythere shimmering softly in the candle-glow. He wanted to take her inhis arms again. He wanted to kiss her on the mouth and eyes. Butinstead of that he took the silken braid gently in his two hands andcrushed it against his lips.

  "I love you," he cried softly. "I love you."

  He stood for a moment or two with his head bowed, the thrill of herhair against his face. It was as if he was receiving some kind of awonderful benediction. And then in a voice that trembled a little shespoke to him. Before he could see fully what was in her eyes she turnedsuddenly to the wall, took down his coat, and hung it over the window.When he saw her face again it was gloriously flushed. She pointed tothe candles.

  "No danger of that," he said, comprehending her. "They won't throw anyjavelins in this storm. Listen!"

  It was the wolves again. In a moment their cry was drowned in a crashof the storm that smote the cabin like a huge hand. Again it waswailing over them in a wild orgy of almost human tumult. He could seeits swift effect on Celie in spite of her splendid courage. It was notlike the surge of mere wind or the roll of thunder. Again he wasinspired by thought of his pocket atlas, and opened it at the largeinsert map of Canada.

  "I'll show you why the wind does that," he explained to her, drawingher to the table and spreading out the map. "See, here is the cabin."He made a little black dot with her pencil, and turning to the fourwalls of Bram's stronghold made her understand what it meant. "Andthere's the big Barren," he went on, tracing it out with thepencil-point. "Up here, you see, is the Arctic Ocean, and away overthere the Roes Welcome and Hudson's Bay. That's where the storm starts,and when it gets out on the Barren, without a tree or a rock to breakits way for five hundred miles--"

  He told of the twisting air-currents there and how the storm-cloudssometimes swept so low that they almost smothered one. For a fewmoments he did not look at Celie or he would have seen something in herface which could not have been because of what he was telling her, andwhich she could at best only partly understand. She had fixed her eyeson the little black dot. THAT was the cabin. For the first time the maptold her where she was, and possibly how she had arrived there.Straight down to that dot from the blue space of the ocean far to thenorth the map-makers had trailed the course of the Coppermine River.Celie gave an excited little cry and caught Philip's arm, stopping himshort in his explanation of the human wailings in the storm. Then sheplaced a forefinger on the river.

  "There--there it is!" she told him, as plainly as though her voice wasspeaking to him in his own language. "We came down that river. TheSkunnert landed us THERE," and she pointed to the mouth of theCoppermine where it emptied into Coronation Gulf. "And then we camedown, down, down--"

  He repeated the name of the river.

  "THE COPPERMINE."

  She nodded, her breath breaking a little in an increasing excitement.She seized the pencil and two-thirds of the distance down theCoppermine made a cross. It was wonderful, he thought, how easily shemade him understand. In a low, eager voice she was telling him thatwhere she had put the cross the treacherous Kogmollocks had firstattacked them. She described with the pencil their flight away from theriver, and after that their return--and a second fight. It was thenBram Johnson had come into the scene. And back there, at the point fromwhich the wolf-man had fled with her, was her FATHER. That was thechief thing she was striving to drive home in his comprehension of thesituation. Her FATHER! And she believed he was alive, for it was anexcitement instead of hopelessness or grief that possessed her as shetalked to him. It gave him a sort of shock. He wanted to tell her, withhis arms about her, that it was impossible, and that it was his duty tomake her realize the truth. Her father was dead now, even if she hadlast seen him alive. The little brown men had got him, and hadundoubtedly hacked him into small pieces, as was their custom wheninspired by war-madness. It was inconceivable to think of him as stillbeing alive even if there had been armed friends with him. There wasOlaf Anderson and his five men, for instance. Fighters every one ofthem. And now they were dead. What chance could this other man have?

  Her joy when she saw that he understood her added to the uncertaintywhich was beginning to grip him in spite of all that the day had meantfor him. Her faith in him, since that thrilling moment in the darkness,was more than ever like that of a child. She was unafraid of Bram now.She was unafraid of the wolves and the storm and the mysteriouspursuers from out of the north. Into his keeping she had placed herselfutterly, and while this knowledge filled him with a great happiness hewas now disturbed by the fact that, if they escaped from the cabin andthe Eskimos, she believed he would return with her down the Copperminein an effort to find her father. He had already made the plans fortheir escape and they were sufficiently hazardous. Their one chance wasto strike south across the thin arm of the Barren for Pierre Breault'scabin. To go in the opposite direction--farther north without dogs orsledge--would be deliberate suicide.

  Several times during the afternoon he tried to bring himself to thepoint of urging on her the naked truth--that her father was dead. Therewas no doubt of that--not the slightest. But each time he fell a littleshort. Her confidence in the belief that her father was alive, and thathe was where she had marked the cross on the map, puzzled him. Was itconceivable, he asked himself, that the Eskimos had some reason for NOTkilling Paul Armin, and that Celie was aware of the fact? If so hefailed to discover it. Again and again he made Celie understand that hewanted to know why the Eskimos wanted HER, and each time she answeredhim with a hopeless little gesture, signifying that she did not know.He did learn that there were two other white men with Paul Armin.

  Only by looking at his watch did he know when the night closed in. Itwas seven o'clock when he led Celie to her room and urged her to go tobed. An hour later, listening at her door, he believed that she wasasleep. He had waited for that, and quietly he prepared for thehazardous undertaking he had set for himself. He put on his cap andcoat and seized the club h
e had taken from Bram's bed. Then verycautiously he opened the outer door. A moment later he stood outside,the door closed behind him, with the storm pounding in his face.

  Fifty yards away he could not have heard the shout of a man. And yet helistened, gripping his club hard, every nerve in his body strained to asnapping tension. Somewhere within that small circle of the corral wereBram Johnson's wolves, and as he hesitated with his back to the door heprayed that there would come no lull in the storm during the next fewminutes. It was possible that he might evade them with the crash andthunder of the gale about him. They could not see him, or hear him, oreven smell him in that tumult of wind unless on his way to the gate heran into them. In that moment he would have given a year of life tohave known where they were. Still listening, still fighting to hearsome sound of them in the shriek of the storm, he took his first stepout into the pit of darkness. He did not run, but went as cautiously asthough the night was a dead calm, the club half poised in his hands. Hehad measured the distance and the direction of the gate and when atlast he touched the saplings of the stockade he knew that he could notbe far off in his reckoning. Ten paces to the right he found the gateand his heart gave a sudden jump of relief. Half a minute more and itwas open. He propped it securely against the beat of the storm with theclub he had taken from Bram Johnson's bed.

  Then he turned back to the cabin, with the little revolver clutched inhis hand, and his face was strained and haggard when he found the doorand returned again into the glow of the candle-light. In the center ofthe room, her face as white as his own, stood Celie. A great fear musthave gripped her, for she stood there in her sleeping gown with herhands clutched at her breast, her eyes staring at him in speechlessquestioning. He explained by opening the door a bit and pantomiming tothe gate outside the cabin.

  "The wolves will be gone in the morning," he said, a ring of triumph inhis voice. "I have opened the gate. There is nothing in our way now."

  She understood. Her eyes were a glory to look into then. Her fingersunclenched at her breast, she gave a short, quick breath and a littlecry--and her arms almost reached out to him. He was afraid of himselfas he went to her and led her again to the door of her room. And therefor a moment they paused, and she looked up into his face. Her handcrept from his and went softly to his shoulder. She said something tohim, almost in a whisper, and he could no longer fight against thepride and the joy and the faith he saw in her eyes. He bent down,slowly so that she might draw away from him if she desired, and kissedher upturned lips. And then, with a strange little cry that was likethe soft note of a bird, she turned from him and disappeared into thedarkness of her room.

  A great deal of that night's storm passed over his head unheard afterthat. It was late when he went to bed. He crowded Bram's long box-stovewith wood before he extinguished the last candle.

  And for an hour after that he lay awake, thinking of Celie and of thegreat happiness that had come into his life all in one day. During thathour he made the plans of a lifetime. Then he, too, fell into sleep--arestless, uneasy slumber filled with many visions. For a time there hadcome a lull in the gale, but now it broke over the cabin in increasedfury. A hand seemed slapping at the window, threatening to break it,and a volley of wind and snow shot suddenly down the chimney, forcingopen the stove door, so that a shaft of ruddy light cut like a redknife through the dense gloom of the cabin. In varying ways the soundsplayed a part in Philip's dreams. In all those dreams, and segments ofdreams, the girl was present. It was strange that in all of them sheshould be his wife. And it was strange that the big woods and the deepsnows played no part in them. He was back home. And Celie was with him.Once they went for wildflowers and were caught in a thunderstorm, andran to an old and disused barn in the center of a field for shelter. Hecould feel Celie trembling against him, and he was stroking her hair asthe thunder crashed over them and the lightning filled her eyes withfear. After that there came to him a vision of early autumn nights whenthey went corn-roasting, with other young people. He had always beenafflicted with a slight nasal trouble, and smoke irritated him. It sethim sneezing, and kept him dodging about the fire, and Celie waslaughing as the smoke persisted in following him about, like a youngscamp of a boy bent on tormenting him. The smoke was unusuallypersistent on this particular night, until at last the laughter wentout of the girl's face, and she ran into his arms and covered his eyeswith her soft hands. Restlessly he tossed in his bunk, and buried hisface in the blanket that answered for a pillow. The smoke reached him;even there, and he sneezed chokingly. In that instant Celie's facedisappeared. He sneezed again--and awoke.

  In that moment his dazed senses adjusted themselves. The cabin was fullof smoke. It partly blinded him, but through it he could see tongues offire shooting toward the ceiling. He heard then the crackling ofburning pitch--a dull and consuming roar, and with a stifled cry heleaped from his bunk and stood on his feet. Dazed by the smoke andflame, he saw that there was not the hundredth part of a second tolose. Shouting Celie's name he ran to her door, where the fire wasalready beginning to shut him out. His first cry had awakened her andshe was facing the lurid glow of the flame as he rushed in. Almostbefore she could comprehend what was happening he had wrapped one ofthe heavy bear skins about her and had swept her into his arms. Withher face crushed against his breast he lowered his head and dashed backinto the fiery holocaust of the outer room. The cabin, with itspitch-filled logs, was like a box made of tinder, and a score of mencould not have beat out the fire that was raging now. The wind beatingfrom the west had kept it from reaching the door opening into thecorral, but the pitch was hissing and smoking at the threshold asPhilip plunged through the blinding pall and fumbled for the latch.

  Not ten seconds too soon did he stagger with his burden out into thenight. As the wind drove in through the open door the flames seemed toburst in a sudden explosion and the cabin was a seething snarl offlame. It burst through the window and out of the chimney and Philip'spath to the open gate was illumined by a fiery glow. Not until he hadpassed beyond the stockade to the edge of the forest did he stop andlook back. Over their heads the wind wailed and moaned in the sprucetops, but even above that sound came the roar of the fire. Against hisbreast Philip heard a sobbing cry, and suddenly he held the girlcloser, and crushed his face down against hers, fighting to keep backthe horror that was gripping at his heart. Even as he felt her armscreeping up out of the bearskin and clinging about his neck he feltupon him like a weight of lead the hopelessness of a despair as blackas the night itself. The cabin was now a pillar of flame, and in it waseverything that had made life possible for them. Food, shelter,clothing--all were gone. In this moment he did not think of himself,but of the girl he held in his arms, and he strained her closer andkissed her lips and her eyes and her tumbled hair there in thestorm-swept darkness, telling her what he knew was now a lie--that shewas safe, that nothing could harm her. Against him he felt the trembleand throb of her soft body, and it was this that filled him with thehorror of the thing--the terror of the thought that her one garment wasa bearskin. He had felt, a moment before, the chill touch of a nakedlittle foot.

  And yet he kept saying, with his face against hers:

  "It's all right, little sweetheart. We'll come out all right--we surewill!"