“It’s a right purty an’ a right smart little wife she’ll make fer ye, Dave Titus, an’ she’ll know how to mind yer babies. Ye’re a lucky man, an’ I hope ye understand how lucky ye air!”
Poor Dave! She might as well have thrown a bucket of cold water in his face. For an instant he could have strangled the kindly, coarse-grained, well-meaning, silly woman, who stood beaming her pale goodwill upon them both. He cursed himself for not having warned her that Miranda could not be chaffed like a common Settlement girl. He saw Miranda’s face go scarlet to the ears, though she bent over Jimmy and pretended to have heard nothing; and he knew that in that moment his good work was all undone. For a few seconds he could say nothing, and the silence grew trying. Then he stammered out: —
“I’m afeard ther’s no sich luck fer me, Sary Ann, though God knows I want her. But Mirandy don’t like me very well.”
The woman stared at him incredulously.
“Lord sakes, Dave Titus, then what’s she doin’ here alone with you?” she exclaimed, the weariness coming back into her voice at the last of the phrase. “Oh, you go ’long! You don’t know nothin’ about women!”
This was quite too much for Dave, whose instincts, fined by long months in the companionship of only the great trees, the great winds, and the grave stars, had grown unerringly delicate. His own face flushed up now for Miranda’s sake.
“I’d take it kindly of ye, Sary Ann, if ye’d quit the subject right there,” he said quietly. But there was a firmness in his voice which the woman understood.
“The both of ye must be nigh dead for somethin’ to eat,” she said. “I must git ye supper right off.” And she turned to the fireplace and filled the kettle.
Thereafter, through supper, and through the short evening, Miranda had never a word for Dave. She talked a little, kindly and without showing her resentment, to Mrs. White; but her attentions were entirely absorbed in little Jimmy. Indeed, she had Jimmy very much to herself, for Mrs. White got Dave to help with the chores and the milking. Afterward, about the hearth-fire, – maintained for its cheer and not for warmth, – Mrs. White confined her conversation largely to Dave. She was not angry at him on account of his rebuke – but vaguely aggrieved at Miranda as the cause of it. She began to feel that Miranda was different from other girls, from what she herself had been as a girl. Miranda’s fineness and sensitiveness were something of an offence to her, though she could not define them at all. She characterized them vaguely by the phrase “stuck up”; and became presently inclined to think that a fine fellow like Dave was too good for her. Still, she was a fair-minded woman in her worn, colourless way; and she could not but allow there must be a lot in Miranda if little Jimmy took to her so – “For a child knows a good heart,” she said to herself.
Next morning, soon after dawn, the travellers were off, Miranda tearing herself with difficulty from little Jimmy’s embrace, and leaving him in a desolation of tears. She was quite civil and ordinary with Dave now, so much so that good, obtuse, weary Mrs. White concluded that all was at rights again. But Dave felt the icy difference; and he was too proud, if not for the time too hopeless, to try to thaw it. During all the long, laborious journey upward through the rapids, by poling, he did wonders of skill and strength, but in utter silence. His feats were not lost upon Miranda, but she hardened her heart resolutely; for now a shame, which she had never known before, gave tenacity to her anger. Through it all, however, she couldn’t help thrilling to the strife with the loud rapids, and exulting in the slow, inexorable conquest of them. The return march through the woods was in the main a silent one, as before; but how different a silence! Not electric with meaning, but cold, the silence of a walled chamber. And, as if the spirits of the wood maliciously enjoyed Dave’s discomfiture, they permitted no incident, no diversion. They kept the wood-folk all away, they emptied of all life and significance the forest spaces. And Dave grew sullen.
Arriving back at the clearing just before sundown, they paused at the cabin door. Dave looked into Miranda’s eyes with something of reproach, something of appeal. Kirstie’s voice, talking cheerfully to Kroof, came from the raspberry brambles behind the house. Miranda stretched out her hand with a cool frankness, and returned his look blankly.
“I’ve had a real good time, thank you, Dave,” she said. “You’ll find mother yonder, picking raspberries.”
Chapter XVIII
The Forfeit of the Alien
All through the summer and early autumn Dave continued his fortnightly visits to the cabin in the clearing, and always Miranda treated him with the same cold, casual civility. She felt, or pretended to herself that she felt, grateful now to the blunt-fingered, wan woman over at Gabe White’s, who had rudely jostled her back to her senses when she was on the very edge of giving up her freedom and her personality to a man – a strong man, who would have absorbed her. She flung herself passionately once more into the fellowship of the furtive folk, the secrecy and wonder of the wood. As it was a human love which she was crushing out, and as she felt the need of humanity cravingly, though not understandingly, at her heart, she lavished upon Kirstie a demonstrativeness of affection such as she had never shown before. It pleased Kirstie, and she met it heartily in her calm, strong way; but she saw through it, and smiled at the back of her brain, scarcely daring to think her thought frankly, lest the girl’s intuition should discern it. She made much of Dave, but never before Miranda; and she kept encouraging the rather despondent man with the continual assertion: “It’ll be all right, Dave. Don’t fret, but bide your time.” To which Dave responded by biding his time with a quiet, unaggressive persistence; and if he fretted, he took pains not to show it.
If Dave had an ally in Kirstie, he had consistent antagonists in all the folk of the wood; for never before in all Miranda’s semi-occult experience had the folk of the wood come so near to her. Kroof was her almost ceaseless companion, more devoted, if possible, than ever, and certainly more quick in comprehension of Miranda’s English. And Kroof’s cub, a particularly fine and well-grown young animal, was well-nigh as devoted as his mother. When these two were absent on some rare expedition of their own, undertaken by Kroof for the hardening of the cub’s muscles, then the very foxes took to following Miranda, close to heel, like dogs; and one drowsy fall afternoon, when she had lain down to sleep on a sloping patch of pine needles, the self-same big panther from whom she had rescued Dave came lazily and lay down beside her. His large purring at her ear awoke her. He purred still more loudly when she gently scratched him under the throat. She was filled with a curious exaltation as she marked how her influence over the wild things grew and widened. Nothing, she vowed, should ever lure her away from these clear shades, these silent folks whom she ruled by hand and eye, and this mysterious life which she alone could know. When Old Dave, for whom she cared warmly, made his now infrequent visits to the clearing, she had an inclination to avoid him, lest he should attack her purpose; and the thought of little Jimmy’s white face and baby mouth she put away obstinately, as most dangerous of all. And so it came that when October arrived, and all the forest everywhere was noiselessly astir with falling leaves, and the light of the blue began to peer in upon the places which had been closed to it all summer, by that time Miranda felt quite secure in her resolve; and Dave’s fight now was to keep the despair of his heart from writing itself large upon his face.
Toward the end of that October Dave’s hunting took him to the rocky open ground where, in the previous June, he and Miranda had encountered the lynxes. He was looking for fresh meat for Kirstie, and game, that day, had kept aloof. Just as he recognized, with a kind of homesick ache of remembrance, the spot where he and Miranda had seemed, for a brief space, to be in perfect accord with each other, – how long ago and how unbelievable it appeared to him now! – his hunter’s eye caught a sight which brought the rifle to his shoulder. Just at the edge of the open a young bear stood greedily stripping blueberries from the laden bushes, and grunting with satisfaction at the sweet repast.
“A bit of bear steak,” thought Dave, “will be jest the thing for Kirstie. She’s gittin’ a mite tired o’ deer’s meat!”
An unhurried aim, a sharp, slapping report, and the handsome cub sank forward upon his snout, and rolled over, shot through the brain. Dave strode up to him. He had died instantly – so instantly and painlessly that his half-open mouth was still full of berries and small, dark green leaves. Dave felt his soft and glossy dark coat.
“Ye’re a fine young critter,” he muttered half regretfully. “It was kind o’ mean to cut ye off when ye was havin’ such a good time all to yerself.”
But Dave was not one to nurse an idle sentimentality. Without delay he skinned the carcase, and cached the pelt carefully under a pile of heavy stones, intending to return for it the first day possible. He was going to the clearing now, and could not take a raw pelt with him, to damn him finally in Miranda’s eyes; but the skin was too fine a one to be left to the foxes and wolverines. When it was safely bestowed, he cut off the choicest portions of the carcase, wrapped them in leaves and tied them up in birch bark, slung the package over his shoulder, and set out in haste for the clearing. He was anxious that Kirstie should have bear steaks for supper that night.
He had been but a little while gone from the rocky open, where the red carcase lay hideously affronting the sunlight, when another bear emerged in leisurely fashion from the shadows. It was an animal of huge size and with rusty fur that was greying about the snout. She paused to look around her. On the instant her body stiffened, and then she went crashing through the blueberry bushes to where that dreadful thing lay bleeding. She walked around it twice, with her nose in the air, and again with her nose to the ground. Then she backed away from it slowly down the slope, her stare fixed upon it as if she expected it might rise and follow. At the edge of the wood she wheeled quickly, and went at a savage gallop along the trail which Dave had taken.
It was old Kroof; and Dave had killed her cub.
She rushed on madly, a terrible avenger of blood; but so fast was Dave journeying that it was not much short of an hour before her instinct or some keen sense told her that he was close at hand. She was not blinded by her fury. Rather was she coolly and deliberately set upon a sufficing vengeance. She moderated her pace, and went softly; and soon she caught sight of her quarry some way ahead, striding swiftly down the brown-shadowed vistas.
There was no other bear in all the forests so shrewd as Kroof; and she knew that for the hunter armed all her tremendous strength and fury were no match. She waited to catch him at a disadvantage. Her huge bulk kept the trail as noiselessly as a weasel or a mink. Young Dave, with all his woodcraft, all his alertness of sense, all his intuition, had no guess of the dark Nemesis which was so inexorably dogging his stride. He was in such haste that in spite of the autumn chill his hair clung moistly to his forehead. When he reached the rivulet flowing away from the cabin spring, he felt that he must have a wash-up before presenting himself. Under a big hemlock he dropped his bundle, threw off his cap, his belt, his shirt, and laid down his loaded rifle. Then, bare to the waist, he went on some twenty paces to a spot where the stream made a convenient pool, and knelt down to give himself a thorough freshening.
Kroof’s little eyes gleamed redly. Here was her opportunity.
She crept forward, keeping the trunk of the hemlock between herself and her foe, till she reached the things which Dave had thrown down under the tree. She sniffed at the rolled-up package and turned it over with her paw. Then, with one short, grunting cough of rage and pain, she launched herself upon the murderer of her cub.
That savage cry was Dave’s first hint of danger. He looked up quickly, his head and shoulders dripping. He recognized Kroof. There was no time for choice. The huge animal was just upon him; but in that instant he understood the whole tragedy. His heart sickened. There was a great beech tree just across the pool, almost within arm’s length. With one bound he reached it. With the next he caught a branch and swung himself up, just eluding the vengeful sweep of Kroof’s paw.
Nimbly he mounted, seeking a branch which would lead him to another tree and so back to the ground and his rifle; and Kroof, after a moment’s pause, climbed after him. But Dave could not find what he sought. Few were the trees in the ancient wood whose topmost branches did not twine closely with their neighbour trees. But with a man’s natural aversion to bathing in water that is not enlivened and inspirited by the direct sunlight, Dave had chosen a spot where the trees were scattered and the blue of the sky looked in. He climbed to a height of some forty or fifty feet from the ground before he found a branch that seemed to offer any hope at all. Out upon this he stepped, steadying himself by a slenderer branch above his head. Following it as far as the branch would support him, he saw that his position was all but hopeless. He could not, even by the most accurate and fortunate swing, catch the nearest branch of the nearest tree. He turned back, but Kroof was already at the fork. Her claws were already fixed upon the branch; she was crawling out to him slowly, inexorably; she had him in a trap.
Dave stood tense and moveless, awaiting her. His face was white, his mouth set. He knew that in all human probability his hour was come; yet what might be done, he would do. Far below, between him and the mingling of rock and moss which formed the ground (he looked down upon it, chequered with the late sunlight), was a stout hemlock branch. At the last moment he would drop; and the branch – he would clutch at it – might perhaps break his fall, at least in part. It was a meagre chance, but his only one. He was not shaken by fear, but he felt aggrieved and disappointed at such a termination of his hopes; and the deadly irony of his fate stung him. The branch bent lower and lower as Kroof’s vast weight drew near. The branch above, too frail to endure his weight alone, still served to steady him. He kept his head erect, challenging death.
It chanced that Miranda, not far off, had heard the roar with which Kroof had rushed to the attack. The fury of it had brought her in haste to the spot, surprised and apprehensive. She recognized Dave’s rifle and hunting-shirt under the hemlock tree, and her heart melted in a horrible fear. Then she saw Dave high up in the beech tree, his bare shoulders gleaming through the russet leaves. She saw Kroof, now not three feet from her prey. She saw the hate in the beast’s eyes and open jaws.
“Kroof!” she cried, in a tone of fierce command; and Kroof heeded her no more than if she had been the wind whispering. “Kroof! Kroof!” she cried again, in anguished appeal, in piercing terror, as the savage animal crept on. Dave did not turn his head, but he called down in a quiet voice: “Ye can’t do it this time, Mirandy. I guess it’s good-by now, for good!”
But Miranda’s face had suddenly set itself to stone. She snatched up the rifle. “Hold on!” she cried, and taking a careful, untrembling aim she pulled first one trigger, then the other, in such quick succession that the two reports came almost as one. Then she dropped the weapon, and stood staring wildly.
The bear’s body heaved convulsively for a moment, then seemed to fall together on the branch, clutching at it. A second later and it rolled off, with a leisurely motion, and came plunging downward, soft, massive, enormous. It struck the ground with a sobbing thud. Miranda gave a low cry at the sound, turned away, and leaned against the trunk of the hemlock. Her face was toward the tree, and hidden in the bend of her arm.
Dave knew now that all he had hoped for was his. Yet, after the first overwhelming, choking throb of exultation, his heart swelled with pity for the girl, with pity and immeasurable tenderness. He descended from his refuge, put on his hunting-shirt and belt, looked curiously at the empty rifle where it lay on the moss, and kicked the corded package of meat into a thicket. Then he went and stood close beside Miranda.
After a moment or two he laid an arm about her shoulders and touched her with his large hand, lightly firm. “Ye wonderful Mirandy,” he said, “you’ve give me life over agin! I ain’t a-goin’ to thank ye, though, till I know what ye’re goin’ to do with me. My life’s been jest all yours since first I seen ye a woman grown. What’ll ye do with the life ye’ve saved, Mirandy?”
He pressed her shoulder close against his heart, and leaned over, not quite daring to kiss the bronze-dark hair on which he breathed. The girl turned suddenly, with a sob, and caught hold of him, and hid her face in his breast. “Oh, Dave!” she cried, in a piteous voice, “take mother and me away from this place; I don’t want to live at the clearing any more. You’ve killed the old life I loved.” And she broke into a storm of tears.
Dave waited till she was quieter. Then he said: “If I’ve changed your life, Mirandy, ye’ve changed mine a sight, too. I’ll hunt and trap no more, dear, an’ the beasts’ll hev no more trouble ’long o’ me. We’ll sell the clearin’, an’ go ’way down onto the Meramichi, where I can git a good job surveyin’ lumber. I’m right smart at that. An’ I reckon – oh, I love ye, an’ I need ye, an’ I reckon I can make ye happy, ye wonderful Mirandy.”
The girl heard him through, then gently released herself from his arms. “You go an’ tell mother what I’ve done, Dave,” she said, in a steady voice, “and leave me here a little while with Kroof.”
That evening, after Miranda had returned to the cabin, Kirstie and Dave came with spades and a lantern to the beech tree by the pool. Where they could find room in the rocky soil, they dug a grave; and there they buried old Kroof deeply, that neither might the claws of the wolverine disturb her, nor any lure of spring suns waken her from her sleep.