“I thought perhaps you wanted me,” she said at last. “All men seem to.... And you offered to come into the kitchen.... I suppose I am half crazy — with loneliness and fear — of the woods and the river—”
She leaned wearily against the doorway, one slim hand half framing her face, one finger worrying her scarlet lips.
“I thought, for a moment, there was a chance for me,” she said. “And as it’s got to be some man I — had rather it were you.”
He rose quietly and walked over to where she stood. “If it were to be any woman,” he said, “I had rather it were to be you. But — love is not bora this way.”
“Love?”
“Is not that what you expect of a man?”
She shook her pretty head vaguely.
“No; I only hoped ftfr — kindness. And would have given for it whatever you wished.”
“Love?”
“I don’t know. I could try.”
“You mean you would try to love me if I took you away and were kind to you?”
“I should try,” she repeated, her clear gaze meeting his. “I do not think it would be difficult, if you took me away and were kind to me.”
“And you do not care whether I marry you or not?”
“I — care. But — whatever you wish is better than to stay here and be beaten insensible some day — whether or not he marries me or Jim kills him for not doing it.... But you are not going to take me — are you?”
“I don’t know what I am going to do,” he said.
After a few moments’ silence she turned and went downstairs. He continued on along the passageway to his room, where he repacked his kit. Then he took his rifle and suit-case with him downstairs and out to the barn; harnessed the horse to the wagon, backed it out into the sunshine, and flung into it his own belongings.
The girl was nowhere in sight; in the frosty, sunlit silence nothing stirred except the grey-hawk’s shadow floating on the ground.
“Helen!” he called.
The river ledges echoed her name for a few seconds, then the babble of the stream filled the silence once more.
So he went up to her room, took the tattered, faded quilt from the bed; and into it he rolled her few possessions — books, photographs, Paisley shawl, scanty wardrobe, and carried everything to the wagon.
There remained the rocking-chair: he went up and got that, placed it in the wagon, and then seated himself on the chopping block.
Presently he rose, cut a sapling, sharpened the point, walked out to a brush-heap, dragged the dead branches aside, and began to probe in the soft earth.
When he had located what he was after, he went to the barn, returned with a spade, and dug out the head of a freshly killed doe.
Leaving it lying there, he sauntered about the house and barn, probing here and there with the pointed stick, pausing now and then to dig. Sometimes he disinterred nothing, sometimes a dozen bottles containing beer or whiskey. And whatever he dug out he left lying beside the excavation.
Pausing to rest upon his spade before entering upon fresh exertions, he glanced around him and saw the girl, wearing a heavy ulster, coming slowly along the road. But it was only when she turned the angle of the bam that she discovered the harnessed horse and wagon.
He saw her stop stock still, then turn slowly in his direction. Limply and with lagging steps she approached him; the hand he took and held seemed lifeless and icy cold.
“You are going?” she said.
“Yes. I was waiting to tell you.”
“Good-bye,” she whispered, in a voice so low that he only saw her lips move.
“Are you not going with me, Helen?”
She lifted a pale, incredulous face, gazed at him a moment, then slowly turned and looked at the wagon. And saw her own possessions in it lying beside his suitcase and rifle.
She seemed stunned; and when, her cold little hands still resting in his, he led her to the wagon, aided her up, and seated her, she never uttered a word but sat motionless and in silence as he sprang in beside her, gathered the reins, and guided, the horse out into the sandy road.
And there Wildrick leaped from the gully brambles, caught the horse’s head, threw him back on his haunches, and menaced them both with levelled rifle.
“Been a-diggin’, hey!” he shouted. “You poor damn, sneakin’ thing! And what the hell have you dug up that you aim to squeal about? Hey?” And turning in fury on the girl: “Ah, you dirty little slut — showin’ up your own fambly, damn you! I’ll put a load o’ buck into you fust! You lyin’ little cat—”
“No good, Wildrick,” interrupted the young man calmly. “I found the stuff myself. Put up that gun! No, it’s no use. They’ll only send you to the chair instead of Clinton Prison. There are twenty of my men watching you now. Drop it. It’s no good.” Wildrick’s eyes blazed, but his lantern features had grown chalky.
“And who the hell be you,” he roared, “with your twenty men bluff and the damned cheek of you?”
“I happen to be the new State Commissioner for Conservation,” said the young man coolly.
“John Burling!” yelled Wildrick incredulously; and believed it at the same instant. “Gor’ a-mighty!” he stammered. “Is them your wardens lyin’ out and drivin’ me back here! I knowed it was some dirty trick. And my dog’s dead on Lynx Peak — and my party — God knows where!”
He paused, jaws agape, slowly realizing that what had threatened him was now accomplished — that the new Commissioner had kept his word; and that Wildrick’s Dump was already but a legend.
“Wildrick,” said the young man quietly, “you had better run’ for it. The Canada line isn’t far. It’s a sporting chance. Take it. But don’t ever try to come back here. Stand clear, now!”
The huge, shambling fellow glared at him, then the ferocity faded from his eyes and he slouched aside, staring at Helen as Burling gathered the reins once more.
“What you aimin’ to do with my gal?” demanded Wildrick.
“Marry her,” said Burling. “Get out of the way, do you hear?”
Wildrick shouted after him:
“If you don’t marry her I’ll go to Albany and blow your head off, chair or no chair! Do you get that!”
Burling drew rein and looked back with a friendly laugh:
“Don’t worry, Wildrick. And for Heaven’s sake stir your legs and get across the river!” And he pointed to the hillside above, where three men were creeping toward them, through the berry bushes.
In the red blaze of the setting sun they passed the first house. After that lay ten more miles of sandy road.
“Are you cold, Helen?” he asked.
“No.”
“Draw a little nearer. Are you tired?”
“No.”
“Hungry?”
“No.”
He said lightly: “Are you happy?”
Her face flushed.
“Are you?” he repeated.
She said: “You need not marry me because of what he said.”
“Don’t you want me to?”
“Not — because of what he said.”
“I understand. But — suppose I wish to marry you?” Silence.
“Suppose I am falling in love with you. Then what?”
Silence and drooping head.
“Answer me, Helen.”
Limp, unresisting, she suffered him to draw her to his shoulder; and when her head fell back upon it her cold, fresh cheek rested against his.
“I care for you — a great deal, Helen,” he whispered.... “I should not care to think of living my life to an end without you, now.”
“I could never live without you, now,” she said. “As soon as I saw you and heard your voice I cared for you. As soon as you spoke to me, kindly, I — I think I began to — to love you.... Is that possible?”
“God knows,” he said. “You are the most honest woman I ever saw. And the sweetest — and — the most beautiful..... The most beautiful — loveliest — wonderful—”
<
br /> “I?” She lifted her head from his shoulder, amazed, flushed, confused; saw in his eyes the sudden light of selfrevelation, saw it transfigure him, and felt the long sealed fountains of youth and life bubbling, quickening, bursting within her into passionate response.
“Helen,” he whispered. “I love you: I know it, now.” Her head lay close to his breast again; but she found no way to answer, knew no way to reply save dumbly with closed lids and slowly welling tears.
HELL’S ASHES
WHEN Burling ran Wildrick’s gang out of Sagamore County very few bothersome lawbreakers remained south of the Canada line.
Some did remain — petty, persistent offenders of the meanest sort — poor, half-starved human things that skulked through the wintry wilderness and the devastated borderlands, furtively scratching out and picking up whatever God sent them to prolong existence.
But the more sinister and dangerous of the forest vagabonds had cleared out or were serving terms in jail — men like wall-eyed Hank, Hal Glade, and Bram Chace. Jim Wildrick remained in hiding somewhere adjacent to the Canadas; Dan Cloon had disappeared; and Jules Vallé was dead.
Talbot, of Burling’s men, Kent’s successor, killed him one snowy morning back of the railroad beyond Lynx Peak — a simple matter of self-defence — for Valle’s 45- 70 bullet had mushroomed when it hit Talbot, and the latter was down and nearly dead when he shot Jules, who came trotting cheerfully toward him, whining with eagerness to cut his throat.
After the hospital came the trial; and the Sagamore County jurymen set Talbot free — just as they would have set free Jules Vallé had he killed Talbot. No jury from Sagamore County ever found anybody guilty of anything — perhaps for obvious reasons — and so Talbot limped out of court on his crutches, a free man, but physically no longer fit for the duties which had brought him into the wilderness to succeed Kent.
Steel, of Burling’s men, his closest friend, bade him good-bye at the railroad station.
Talbot said:
“I heard last week that Vallé had a shanty west of Lynx Crossing.”
“Where is the shanty?”
“Somewhere in that God-forsaken waste of burnt-over country near the Drowned Lands beyond the Black Vlaie. Did you ever hear of anybody living there?”
“No.”
“Do you know the country?”
“Yes. Nobody could live in it or on it. There are about sixty square miles of it — nothing but sand-hills and swamp and burnt woods. They call it Hell’s Ashes. The fire warden thinks Vallé burnt the border woods.”
“I’ve been wondering,” said Talbot thoughtfully, “in case French Jules did have a shanty in that district, whether there might remain any living creature that had been dependent on him.... And which might perish now that he’s dead.”
“That would be rather ghastly,” remarked Steel.
“Rather.... I’m done for, Steel. I’ll never tote a pack again. If you could manage to pass that way some day soon — it’s included in your enlarged district, I understand.”
“All right.... Talbot, you don’t really suppose that anything human—”
“Human or animal — if it’s only a dog — or a cat — or a chicken — you understand — it keeps me awake nights.”
“Certainly. My winter quarters won’t be far from the Black Vlaie.”
“I can’t sleep for thinking of it,” muttered Talbot. “I’ll attend to the matter,” said Steel briefly.
The State-protected beaver had been molested on the upper reaches of Lynx Brook; and Steel went there; and the marauder, Dan Cloon, winded Nemesis and fled on snowshoes beyond jurisdiction and pursuit.
So, remembering his promise to Talbot, Steel made a long, oblique trail to the southwest; and on the third morning his snowshoes slid on the glare ice of the Drowned Lands. Hell’s Ashes lay before him.
In every direction stretched desolation, frozen and partly snow-dusted — the stark ruins of charred woods, miles of dead fireweed and pin cherry, marshes, icy sandhills, naked and barren save for a sparse and leprous growth, making their nudity the more hideous.
Fire had passed; man had passed; a fairy world of trees and stream and lake and marsh had gone down to abominable destruction, leaving the eroded earth uncovered in all its dreadful deformity.
“God! What a country!” muttered Steel, staring around him, and already convinced that no living human creature had ever made its habitation within the horizon’s boundaries of such a spot.
Bitter and sudden little winds blew icy particles from the sand-hills — snow or grit, he could net tell which. He looked out across Hell’s Ashes toward the Black Vlaie; he turned and scanned the fire-blackened woods — all the vast circle of the dreary horizon he scanned with his binoculars, standing there in his Mackinaw and furs, pack slung, rifle in hand.
And all at once, so near that his keen eyes had overlooked the very foreground of the sad cyclorama, he saw something move on the hillside. And after a moment he pocketed the glasses and walked swiftly toward the most sordid, most wretched, and the coldest sight he had ever beheld.
A boy knelt on the frozen sand, skinning a skunk. The child was wretchedly clad; his pinched features blue with cold, his small hands bleeding as he crouched in the icy wind over his bloody and malodorous business. “Hello, there!” said Steel, with an effort.
The boy turned his head and stared from under a shock of ruddy, curly hair as Steel came up and stood looking down at him.
“Did I scare you, my boy?” he asked, smilingly. “No.”
“Oh. Were you expecting anybody?”
“Dan Cloon or father.”
“I see. By the way, who is your father?”
“Jules Vallé.”
After a silence Steel said gravely:
“You say you are expecting your father?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Some day,” replied the boy vaguely.
“You are quite sure your father will come here sooner or later?”
“He always does.”
Steel said pleasantly: “Has your father ever before remained away for as long a time as this?”
“I don’t remember,” said the boy, tugging at the pelt By this time he had turned the skin inside out and had drawn it from the raw carcass. Pelt and livid flesh had already frozen: the child shoved the carcass inside the deadfall, set up the sticks, laid the stone-weighted log in position, and rose to his knees, shivering. “You’re a good deal of a trapper,” observed Steel. “I’ve done well this week.”
“That’s a prime skunk — the blackest I’ve seen this season.”
“Most of my pelts are prime,” said the child.
“What are they mostly?”
“Muskrat, skunk, and mink. I have otters, a lynx, a fisher-cat, and some coons.”
“I see,” nodded Steel, much interested. “And — what did you say is your name?”
“Raoul.”
“What?”
“Raoul Vallé. Father is French.”
“Certainly.... And where did you say you live?” The child looked up at him out of big, grey eyes — eyes which seemed enormous in a face so thin, so drawn from cold — and perhaps from lack of nourishment.
“I did not say where I live.”
“Didn’t you?” asked Steel, wincing before the child’s candour.
“No. You did not ask me, either.”
“Perhaps I forgot. Where do you live, Raoul?”
The boy said slowly:
“Do you know my father?”
And, more slowly still, the man replied:
“I once — saw your father.”
“Do you think he would be angry if I tell you where I live?” asked the boy.
“No, I am sure he would not mind, Raoul.”
The boy gathered himself on his knees, rose, and stood irresolute, the raw, ill-smelling pelt dangling from his frostbitten fist.
“Well,” he said, “I guess you may come, then.”
Side by side they breasted the sand-hill and the icy wind. From the summit Steel looked down into a birch and hemlock pocket, untouched by fire or axe, and bordering on a deep channel of dead water — the confluence of some mountain stream with the waters of the Black Vlaie.
Frozen reeds bordered it; tamarack, balsam, pine, and hemlock bounded it; and grey birches and white clothed the southern sand-hill slope above, so that Steel looked over them into the short stretch of woodland and swamp below.
“It’s down there,” said the boy briefly.
“Have you a shanty there?”
“Yes.”
“Your home?”
“Yes.”
“Have you always lived there?”
“Since we came from Schenectady.”
“How many years?”
“Four.”
Steel said pleasantly:
“This seems to me to be a very lonely place to live in, Raoul.”
“It is very cold,” said the boy.
“And — do you find enough to eat in this country?” inquired Steel.
“Sometimes.”
“And — sometimes you go hungry.”
The child nodded, eyes remote, as though preoccupied with matters more vital than cold and hunger. After a moment he said, looking up wistfully at Steel:
“I hope my father is not sick.... Do you know?” Steel thought hard for a moment:
“I know your father is not sick,” he replied.
“Have you seen him lately?”
“Not very lately.”
“Where was he when you saw him?”
“A long, long way from here, Raoul.”
“Was he well?”
“I am sure he was not ill,” said Steel quietly.
The boy sighed.
“It has been such a long while,” he said. “And I have all those pelts for him.... Maybe he went to Montreal to run in our beaver pelts.... I think if he knew how little there has been to eat he would hurry home. He said he would come back as soon as he had seen Jim Wildrick.... It has been — very hard for — us.”
“Who else lives with you, Raoul?”
“My sister.”
Jules Vallé had concealed his hut with all the cleverness, caution, and cunning instinct of a wild thing doomed to a habitation enforced. And like a wild thing which is often more perfectly concealed when squatting in the open than when hiding under the cover of a wilderness, where logic might look for wild things, the renegade from civilization had fashioned his shanty to accord with the exigencies of Fate.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1178