XI
"A CRACKLING OF THORNS"
THOUGH she had formed her resolution with a fair degree ofself-reliance, Lucetta Millington soon found that she had set herself atask calling for plenty of fortitude and endurance. Beyond the circle offirelight the shadows of the forest gloomed forbiddingly. They had seenbut little of the wild life of the woods in their voyagings thus far,but now it seemed to be stirring uneasily on all sides of the lonelycamp-fire.
Once some large-hoofed animal went crashing through the underbrushtoward the river; and again there were other hoof-beats stoppingabruptly at a little distance from the clearing. Lucetta, shading hereyes from the glow of the fire, saw two gleaming disks of light shiningin the blackness of the backgrounding forest. Her reason told her thatthey were the eyes of the animal; that the unnerving apparition wasprobably a deer halted and momentarily fascinated by the sight of thefire. But the incident was none the less alarming to the town-bred youngwoman.
Later there were softly padding footfalls, and these gave her a sharpershock. She knew next to nothing about the fauna of the northern woods,nor did she have the comforting knowledge that the largest of theAmerican cats, the panther, rarely attacks a human being unless wounded,or under the cruelest stress of winter hunger. Breathlessly she listenedand watched, and presently she saw the eyes of the padding intruderglowing like balls of lambent green fire. Whereupon it was all she coulddo to keep from shrieking frantically and waking her companion.
After the terrifying green eyes had vanished it occurred to her towonder why they had seen and heard so little of the night prowlers attheir former camps. The reason was not far to seek. Days well filledwith toil and stirring excitement had been followed by nights when sleepcame quickly and was too sound to be disturbed by anything short of acataclysm.
As midnight drew near, Prime began to mutter disconnectedly. Lucettadid not know whether he was talking in his sleep or whether he hadbecome delirious again, but at all events this new developmentimmeasurably increased the uncanny weirdness of the night-watch. Thoughmany of the vaporings were mere broken sentences without rhyme orreason, enough of them were sufficiently clear to shadow forth a sketchystory of Prime's life.
Lucetta listened because she could not well help it, being awake andalert and near at hand. Part of the time Prime babbled of his boyhood onthe western New York farm, and she gathered that some of the bits werecurious survivals of doubtless long-forgotten talks with hisgrandfather. Breaking abruptly with these earlier scenes, the wanderingunderthought would skip to the mystery, charging it now to Watson Griderand again calling it a blessed miracle. With another abrupt change thebabbler would be in Europe, living over again his trampings in theTyrol, which, it seemed, had been taken in the company of an older man,a German, who was a Heidelberg professor.
Farther along, after an interval of silence in which Lucetta began tohope that the talkative fit had passed, Prime broke out again--this timewaxing eloquent over his struggles in New York as a beginner in thewriting trade. Here there were revelations to make her sorry that shewas obliged to listen; for years, it seemed, the fight had gonediscouragingly hard with him; there had been times when he had had tochoose between giving up in defeat or going hungry.
Lucetta pieced together a pitiful little story of this starving time.Some one--once Prime called the some one Grider, and later gave himanother name--had tempted the struggler with an offer of a comfortableincome, the single condition precedent being an abandonment of theliterary fight. Prime's mutterings made the outcome plain for thelistener on the opposite side of the camp-fire: "No, I couldn't sellsoap; it's honest enough, no doubt--and decent enough--everybody oughtto use soap. But I've set my hand to the plough--no, that isn't it....Oh, dammit, Peter, you know what I mean; I can't turn back; that is theone thing I've never learned how to do. No, and I can't take your moneyas a loan; that would be only another way of confessing defeat. No, byGeorge, I won't go out to dinner with you, either!"
Lucetta wept a little in sheer sympathy. Her own experience had not beentoo easy. Left an orphan while she was still too young to teach, sheknew what it meant to set the heart upon a definite end and to strivethrough thick and thin to reach it. She was relieved when Prime began totalk less coherently of other incidents in his life in the greatmetropolis. There were more references to Grider, and at last somethingthat figured as Prime's part in a talk with the barbarian. "Yes, byJove, Watson, the scoundrels tried to pull my leg; actually advertisedfor me in the _Herald_. No, of course, I didn't fall for it. I knowperfectly well what it was ... same old gag about the English estatewith no resident heirs in sight. No, the ad. didn't say so, but I know.What's that?--I'm a liar? Like Zeke I am!"
There were more of the vaporings, but neither these nor the youngwoman's anxiety about the wounded man's condition were disturbingenough at the last to keep her eyelids from drooping and her senses fromfluttering over the brink of the sleep abyss. Once she bestirred herselfto put more fuel on the fire, but after that the breeze blew themosquitoes away, the warmth from the upleaping blaze added its touch,and she fell asleep.
When she awoke the sun had risen and Prime was up and mending the fire.
"Better," he said cheerfully, in answer to her instant question. "Muchbetter; though my head reminds me of the day when I got the check for myfirst story--pretty badly swelled, you know. But after I've had a goodcup of hot tea"--he stopped in mid-career with a wry laugh. "Bless myfool heart! If I hadn't totally forgotten that we haven't any tea oranything else! And here I've been up a quarter of an hour and more,trying to get a good cooking-fire started! Where were we when we leftoff last night?"
"We had set out to search for the wreck of the canoe," she explained,rising to stand before the fire. "We came this far, and concluded itwas no use trying to go on in the dark. You were pretty badly off, too."
"It's coming back to me, a little at a time and often, as the catremarked when it ate the grindstone," he went on, determined to make hersmile if it were within the bounds of possibility. He knew she must havehad a bad night of it, and the brightness of the gray eyes told him thateven now she was not very far from tears. "Don't cry," he addedabruptly; "it's all over now."
Her laugh was the sort that harbors next door to pathos.
"I'm hungry!" she said plaintively. "We had no dinner yesterday, and nosupper last night, and there doesn't seem to be any very brilliantprospect for breakfast this morning."
Prime put his hand to his bruised head as if to satisfy himself that itwas all there.
"Haven't you ever gone without a meal before for the raw reason that youcouldn't get it?" he asked.
"Not since I can remember."
"I have; and it's bad medicine--mighty bad medicine. We'll put the fireout and move on. While there's life there's hope; and our hope thismorning is that we are going to find the wreck of that canoe. Let'shike."
They set out courageously, keeping close to the bank of the river andscanning every eddy and backwater as they moved along. For this causetheir progress was slow, and it was nearly or quite noon when they cameto a quiet reach in the river, a placid pond with great treesoverhanging its margins and wide stretches of reeds and bulrushesgrowing in the shallows. And on the opposite side of the pond-likeexpanse and apparently grounded among the bulrushes they saw theircanoe. It was bottom side up with care, and on the wrong side of theriver; also they knew that its lading, if any of this had survived therunaway flight, must be soaked and sodden. But the triumphant factremained--the canoe was found.
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