by Zane Grey
He built a small fire, hung two small pots over it, selected his prunes, and measured out a tablespoonful of black tea. In the respite he had while the water heated he dug a small mirror out of the sack and looked at himself. His long, untrimmed hair was blond, and the inch of stubble on his face was brick red. There were tiny creases at the corners of his eyes, caused by the blistering sleet and cold wind of the Arctic coast. He grimaced as he studied himself. Then his face lighted up with sudden inspiration.
“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed. “I need a shave! We’ll use the prune water.”
From the rubber bag he fished out his razor, a nubbin of soap, and a towel. For fifteen minutes after that he sat cross-legged on the sand, with the mirror on a rock, and worked. When he had finished he inspected himself closely.
“You’re not half bad,” he concluded, and he spoke seriously now. “Four years ago when you started up here you were thirty—and you looked forty. Now you’re thirty-four, and if it wasn’t for the snow lines in your eyes I’d say you were a day or two younger. That’s pretty good.”
He had washed his face and was drying it with the towel when a sound made him look over beyond the rocks. It was the crackling sound made by a dead stick stepped upon, or a sapling broken down. Either meant the bear.
Dropping the towel, he unbuttoned the flap to the holster of his revolver, took a peep to see how long he could leave the water before it would boil, and stepped cautiously in the direction of the sound. A dozen paces beyond the bulwark of rocks he came upon a fairly well-worn moose trail; surveying its direction from the top of a boulder, he made up his mind that the bear was dining on mountain-ash berries where he saw one of the huge crimson splashes of the fruit a hundred yards away.
He went on quietly. Under the big ash tree there was no sign of a feast, recent or old. He proceeded, the trail turning almost at right angles from the ash tree, as if about to bury itself in the deeper forest. His exploratory instinct led him on for another hundred yards, when the trail swung once more to the left. He heard the swift trickling run of water among rocks, and again a sound. But his mind did not associate the sound which he heard this time with the one made by the bear. It was not the breaking of a stick or the snapping of brush. It was more a part of the musical water-sound itself, a strange key struck once to interrupt the monotone of a rushing stream.
Over a gray hog-back of limestone Philip climbed to look down into a little valley of smooth-washed boulders and age-crumbled rock through which the stream picked its way. He descended to the white margin of sand and turned sharply to the right, where a little pool had formed at the base of a huge rock. And there he stopped, his heart in his throat, every fibre in his body charged with a sudden electrical thrill at what he beheld. For a moment he was powerless to move. He stood—and stared.
At the edge of the pool twenty steps from him was kneeling a woman. Her back was toward him, and in that moment she was as motionless as the rock that towered over her. Along with the rippling drone of the stream, without reason on his part—without time for thought-there leaped through his amazed brain the words of Jasper, the factor, and he knew that he was looking upon the miracle that makes “God’s Country”—a white woman!
The sun shone down upon her bare head. Over her slightly bent shoulders swept a glory of unbound hair that rippled to the sand. Black tresses, even velvety as the crow’s wing, might have meant Cree or half-breed. But this at which he stared—all that he saw of her—was the brown and gold of the autumnal tintings that had painted pictures for him that day.
Slowly she raised her head, as if something had given her warning of a presence behind, and as she hesitated in that birdlike, listening poise a breath of wind from the little valley stirred her hair in a shimmering veil that caught a hundred fires of the sun. And then, as he crushed back his first impulse to cry out, to speak to her, she rose erect beside the pool, her back still to him, and hidden to the hips in her glorious hair.
Her movement revealed a towel partly spread out on the sand, and a comb, a brush, and a small toilet bag. Philip did not see these. She was turning, slowly, scanning the rocks beyond the valley.
Like a thing carven out of stone he stood, still speechless, still staring, when she faced him.
CHAPTER TWO
A face like that into which Philip looked might have come to him from out of some dream of paradise. It was a girl’s face. Eyes of the pure blue of the sky above met his own. Her lips were a little parted and a little laughing. Before he had uttered a word, before he could rise out of the stupidity of his wonder, the change came. A fear that he could not have forgotten if he had lived through a dozen centuries leaped into the lovely eyes. The half-laughing lips grew tense with terror. Quick as the flash of powder there had come into her face a look that was not that of one merely startled. It was fear—horror—a great, gripping thing that for an instant seemed to crush the life from her soul. In another moment it was gone, and she swayed back against the face of the rock, clutching a hand at her breast.
“My God, how I frightened you!” gasped Philip.
“Yes, you frightened me,” she said.
Her white throat was bare, and he could see the throb of it as she made a strong effort to speak steadily. Her eyes did not leave him. As he advanced a step he saw that unconsciously she cringed closer to the rock.
“You are not afraid—now?” he asked. “I wouldn’t have frightened you for the world. And sooner than hurt you I’d—I’d kill myself. I just stumbled here by accident. And I haven’t seen a white woman—for two years. So I stared—stared—and stood there like a fool.”
Relief shot into her eyes at his words.
“Two years? What do you mean?”
“I’ve been up along the rim of h—I mean the Arctic, on a government wild-goose chase,” he explained. “And I’m just coming down.”
“You’re from the North?”
There was an eager emphasis in her question.
“Yes. Straight from Coronation Gulf. I ran ashore to cook a mess of prunes. While the water was boiling I came down here after a bear, and found you! My name is Philip Weyman; I haven’t even an Indian with me, and there are three things in the world I’d trade that name for just now: One is pie, another is doughnuts, and the third—”
She brushed back her hair, and the fear went from her eyes as she looked at him.
“And the third?” she asked.
“Is the answer to a question,” he finished. “How do you happen to be here, six hundred miles from anywhere?”
She stepped out from the rock. And now he saw that she was almost as tall as himself, and that she was as slim as a reed and as beautifully poised as the wild narcissus that sways like music to every call of the wind. She had tucked up her sleeves, baring her round white arms close to the shoulders, and as she looked steadily at him before answering his question she flung back the shining masses of her hair and began to braid it. Her fear for him was entirely gone. She was calm. And there was something in the manner of her quiet and soul-deep study of him that held back other words which he might have spoken.
In those few moments she had taken her place in his life. She stood before him like a goddess, tall and slender and unafraid, her head a gold-brown aureole, her face filled with a purity, a beauty, and a strength that made him look at her speechless, waiting for the sound of her voice. In her look there was neither boldness nor suspicion. Her eyes were clear, deep pools of velvety blue that defied him to lie to her, He felt that under those eyes he could have knelt down upon the sand and emptied his soul of its secrets for their inspection.
“It is not very strange that I should be here” she said at last. “I have always lived here. It is my home.”
“Yes, I believe that,” breathed Philip. “It is the last thing in the world that one would believe—but I do; I believe it. Someth
ing—I don’t know what—told me that you belonged to this world as you stood there beside the rock. But I don’t understand. A thousand miles from a city—and you! It’s unreal. It’s almost like the dreams I’ve been dreaming during the past eighteen months, and the visions I’ve seen during that long, maddening night up on the coast, when for five months we didn’t see a glow of the sun. But—you understand—it’s hard to comprehend.”
From her he glanced swiftly over the rocks of the coulee, as if expecting to see some sign of the home she had spoken of, or at least of some other human presence. She understood his questioning look. “I am alone,” she said.
The quality of her voice startled him more then her words. There was a deeper, darker glow in her eyes as she watched their effect upon him. She swept out a gleaming white arm, still moist with the water of the pool, taking in the wide, autumn-tinted spaces about them.
“I am alone,” she repeated, still keeping her eyes on his face. “Entirely alone. That is why you startled me—why I was afraid. This is my hiding-place, and I thought—”
He saw that she had spoken words that she would have recalled. She hesitated. Her lips trembled. In that moment of suspense a little gray ermine dislodged a stone from the rock ridge above them, and at the sound of it as it struck behind her the girl gave a start, and a quick flash of the old fear leaped for an instant into her face. And now Philip beheld something in her which he had been too bewildered and wonder-struck to observe before. Her first terror had been so acute that he had failed to see what remained after her fright had passed. But it was clear to him now, and the look that came into his own face told her that he had made the discovery.
The beauty of her face, her eyes, her hair—the wonder of her presence six hundred miles from civilization—had held him spellbound. He had seen only the deep lustre and the wonderful blue of her eyes. Now he saw that those eyes, exquisite in their loveliness, were haunted by something which she was struggling to fight back—a questing, hunted look that burned there steadily, and of which he was not the cause. A deep-seated grief, a terror far back, shone through the forced calmness with which she was speaking to him. He knew that she was fighting with herself, that the nervously twitching fingers at her breast told more than her lips had confessed. He stepped nearer to her and held out a hand, and when he spoke his voice was vibrant with the thing that made men respect him and women have faith in him.
“Tell me—what you started to say,” he entreated quietly. “This is your hiding-place, and you thought—what? I think that I can guess. You thought that I was some one else, whom you have reason to fear.”
She did not answer. It was as if she had not yet completely measured him. Her eyes told him that. They were not looking at him, but into him. And they were softly beautiful as wood violets. He found himself looking steadily into them—close, so close that he could have reached out and touched her. Slowly there came over them a filmy softness. And then, marvellously, he saw the tears gathering, as dew might gather over the sweet petals of a flower. And still for a moment she did not speak. There came a little quiver at her throat, and she caught herself with a quick, soft breath.
“Yes, I thought you were some one else—whom I fear,” she said then. “But why should I tell you? You are from down there, from what you please to call civilization. I should distrust you because of that. So why—why should I tell you?”
In an instant Philip was at her side. In his rough, storm-beaten hand he caught the white fingers that trembled at her breast. And there was something about him now that made her completely unafraid.
“Why?” he asked. “Listen, and I will tell you. Four years ago I came up into this country from down there—the world they call Civilization. I came up with every ideal and every dream I ever had broken and crushed. And up here I found God’s Country. I found new ideals and new dreams. I am going back with them. But they can never be broken as the others were—because—now—I have found something that will make them live. And that something is you! Don’t let my words startle you. I mean them to be as pure as the sun that shines over our heads. If I leave you now—if I never see you again—you will have filled this wonderful world for me. And if I could do something to prove this—to make you happier—why, I’d thank God for having sent me ashore to cook a mess of prunes.”
He released her hand, and stepped back from her.
“That is why you should tell me,” he finished.
A swift change had come into her eyes and face. She was breathing quickly. He saw the sudden throbbing of her throat. A flush of colour had mounted into her cheeks. Her lips were parted, her eyes shone like stars.
“You would do a great deal for me?” she questioned breathlessly. “A great deal—and like—a man?”
“Yes.”
“A man—one of God’s men?” she repeated.
He bowed his head.
Slowly, so slowly that she scarcely seemed to move, she drew nearer to him.
“And when you had done this you would be willing to go away, to promise never to see me again, to ask no reward? You would swear that?”
Her hand touched his arm. Her breath came tense and fast as she waited for him to answer. “If you wished it, yes,” he said.
“I almost believe,” he heard, as if she were speaking the words to herself. She turned to him again, and something of faith, of hope transfigured her face.
“Return to your fire and your prunes,” she said quickly, and the sunlight of a smile passed over her lips. “Then, half an hour from now, come up the coulee to the turn in the rocks. You will find me there.”
She bent quickly and picked up the little bag and the brush from the sand. Without looking at him again she sped swiftly beyond the big rock, and Philip’s last vision of her was the radiant glory of her hair as it rippled cloudlike behind her in the sunlight.
CHAPTER THREE
That he had actually passed through the experience of the last few minutes, that it was a reality and not some beautiful phantasm of the red and gold world which again lay quiet and lifeless about him, Philip could scarcely convince himself as he made his way back to the canoe and the fire. The discovery of this girl, buried six hundred miles in a wilderness that was almost a terra incognita to the white man, was sufficient to bewilder him. And only now, as he kicked the burning embers from under the pails, and looked at his watch to time himself, did he begin to realize that he had not sensed a hundredth part of the miracle of it.
Now that he was alone, question after question leapt unanswered through his mind, and every vein in his body throbbed with strange excitement. Not for an instant did he doubt what she had said. This world—the forests about him, the lakes, the blue skies above, were her home. And yet, struggling vainly for a solution of the mystery, he told himself in the next breath that this could not be possible. Her voice had revealed nothing of the wilderness—except in its sweetness. Not a break had marred the purity of her speech. She had risen before him like the queen of some wonderful kingdom, and not like a forest girl. And in her face he had seen the soul of one who had looked upon the world as the world lived outside of its forest walls. Yet he believed her. This was her home. Her hair, her eyes, the flowerlike lithesomeness of her beautiful body—and something more, something that he could not see but which he could feel in her presence, told him that this was so. This wonder-world about him was her home. But why—how?
He seated himself on a rock, holding the open watch in his hand. Of one thing he was sure. She was oppressed by a strange fear. It was not the fear of being alone, of being lost, of some happen-chance peril that she might fancy was threatening her. It was a deeper, bigger thing than that. And she had confessed to him—not wholly, but enough to make him know—that this fear was of man. He felt at this thought a little thrill of joy, of undefinable exultation. He sprang from the rock and went down to the shore of the lake, s
canning its surface with eager, challenging eyes. In these moments he forgot that civilization was waiting for him, that for eighteen months he had been struggling between life and death at the naked and barbarous end of the earth. All at once, in the space of a few minutes, his world had shrunken until it held but two things for him—the autumn-tinted forests, and the girl. Beyond these he thought of nothing except the minutes that were dragging like thirty weights of lead.
As the hand of his watch marked off the twenty-fifth of the prescribed thirty he turned his steps in the direction of the pool. He half expected that she would be there when he came over the ridge of rock. But she had not returned. He looked up the coulee, end then at the firm white sand close to the water. The imprints of her feet were there—small, narrow imprints of a heeled shoe. Unconsciously he smiled, for no other reason than that each surprise he encountered was a new delight to him. A forest girl as he had known them would have worn moccasins—six hundred miles from civilization.
As he was about to leap across the narrow neck of the pool he noticed a white object almost buried in the dry sand, and picked it up. It was a handkerchief; and this, too, was a surprise. He had not particularly noticed her dress, except that it was soft and clinging blue. The handkerchief he looked at more closely. It was of fine linen with a border of lace, and so soft that he could have hidden it in the palm of his hand. From it rose a faint, sweet scent of the wild rock violet. He knew that it was rock violet, because more than once he had crushed the blossoms between his hands. He thrust the bit of fabric in the breast of his flannel shirt, and walked swiftly up the coulee.
A hundred yards above him the stream turned abruptly, and here a strip of forest meadow grew to the water’s edge. He sprang up the low bank, and stood face to face with the girl.
She had heard his approach, and was waiting for him, a little smile of welcome on her lips. She had completed her toilet. She had braided her wonderful hair, and it was gathered in a heavy, shimmering coronet about her head. There was a flutter of lace at her throat, and little fluffs of it at her wrists. She was more beautiful, more than ever like the queen of a kingdom as she stood before him now. And she was alone. He saw that in his first swift glance.