CHAPTER VI
THE KING OF THE FOREST
A roar of fury echoes through the primeval forest. It plays amidst thecountless aisles of jack-pine. It loses itself in the dense growingtamarack, or dies amidst the softer plumage of spruce. It is no merebellow of impotent rage. It is a note of defiance. It is a challenge tothe legions of the forest. It is the gage of battle flung withoutreserve.
Wide-set eyes blaze their search amidst the deeper shadows. They areeager as well as furious. They are seeking an adversary who shuns openconflict and wounds from afar. The great head is proudly raised aloft,and gaping nostrils on a great clubbed muzzle snuff violently at theair. A treacherous blow has torn open the channels of life and saturatedthe heaving flanks with their rich, red tide. The King Moose stands atbay.
With the last echo, the challenge is flung again. It is ruthless,insistent, and deep with the violence of outraged might.
The answer comes. It comes in man's own good time. It comes in the crackof a rifle, and the moose jolts round with a spasmodic jerk. In a momenta movement amongst the surrounding tree-trunks captures its gaze. Thereis a pause, breathless, silent. Savage wrath leaps anew, and down sweepsthe great head till the spread of antlers is couched like a forest oflance points. The huge body is hurled in a headlong charge.
It is an act of supreme courage as splendid as it is hopeless. Theelusive foe applies a wit, a skill undreamed of in the beast mind. He isgone in a flash, and the wounded creature stands amazed, furious,baulked, while vicious hoofs churn the soil, and a deep-throated roarawakens again the echoes of the forest.
But there is desperation added to defiance in the challenge now. Thereis uncertainty, too. The heaving flanks are dripping with a crimsontide. The creature is sorely wounded. For all its pride and courage, itssufferings admit of no denial. The foe has scored. He has scoredheavily.
The climax is approaching. The final challenge is taken up at last asthe king beast would have it.
The man reappears. In a moment he is standing out amidst thetree-trunks, slim, erect, a puny figure in a world of giants. He is notso cowardly after all. He stands there calmly, with eyes alert,watchful, measuring, ready to gamble his wit and skill against whateverodds may chance.
The moose only sees. It has no thought. Only its rage. No calculationbut its immense strength. Savagery, courage, alone inspire its warfare.So it is that fierce satisfaction rings in its greeting of the vision.
It is a moment pregnant with possibility. The doomed creature summonsits last ounce of physical might. Down drops the head till the hot blastof nostrils flings up the mouldering soil of the ages. The great splithoofs stamp a furious tattoo. They claw at the loose earth. Then, like aflash, an avalanche of rage is flung into the combat.
The time has come. The man has played his game to the desired end. Thecreature's fury has no terror for him. With his rifle pressed to hisshoulder, and eye glancing over the sights, he waits calmly, and full ofsimple confidence. Twenty yards! Fifteen! With the low, sweepingantlers, and the rush of hoofs that could disembowel at a single blow,it is a desperate test of nerve. Slowly, gently, a finger compressesitself about the trigger.
But something happens. The moose flounders in its rush. It is theungainly roll of a rudderless ship. It stumbles. A second, and its madrush ends. With a curious gasping sigh it plunges to the earth.
And the man? With his undischarged weapon lowered from his shoulder, andthe sharp crack of some stranger's rifle ringing in his ears, he staresabout him in utter and complete bewilderment.
Marcel's bewilderment was swiftly passing. Hot, impulsive resentment wasquick to take its place. All his mind and heart had been set upon thatkill. He had been robbed. Someone had robbed him in the very moment ofhis victory, a victory which had cost him nine days of an arduous trail.
There was no sign. No sign anywhere. The silence of the world about himwas complete, that silence which no earthly agency ever seems to havepower to break up seriously. Like the fallen moose his angry eyessearched the shadowed aisles for the intruder upon whom to vent hishasty wrath. But like that other there only remained disappointment toadd to the fire of his anger. He seemed alone in the primordial world.And yet he knew that other eyes, human eyes, were observing his everymovement.
At last he abandoned his search, and turned again to the creaturestretched in the stillness of death upon the mouldering carpet of theforest. The bitterness of regret had replaced his impulsive heat.Perhaps, even the philosophy of the hunter had yielded him resignation.At any rate he quickly became absorbed in the splendid qualities of thefallen monarch. And that which he beheld stirred anew his youthfulenthusiasm.
It was an old bull, hoary with age, and scarred with the wounds of ahundred battles. It was truly a king in a world where might aloneprevails. He moved up to the wide-spreading antlers supporting the regalhead, as if to refuse it the final degradation of complete contact withthe soil. An exclamation of appreciation broke from him. His gaze wasfixed upon a minute, blood-rimmed puncture just behind the right eye. Itwas the wound where the intruder's bullet had crashed into theinfuriated creature's brain.
"Gee! That's a swell shot!" he muttered, speaking his thought aloud,with the habit bred of the great silences.
"But I'm sorry--now."
No echo of the forest could have startled more. No spur could havestirred Marcel to swifter movement. He was erect in a moment, and turnedabout, towering in his generous height over the slim creature smiling upinto his bewildered eyes. A white girl, wide-eyed, beautiful, wasstanding before him.
"Now?"
Marcel echoed the stranger's final word stupidly.
"Yes. I'm grieved all to death--now," the girl said, with a composure instriking contrast to Marcel's obvious confusion. "I just am. I hadn'tright. But I was scared--scared to death. You don't understand that.Why, sure you don't. How could you? You're a man. I'm only a girl. And Ihad to stand around, just waiting, with another feller within a yard orso of sheer death, while all the time I had means in my hand of fixingthings right for him. That's how it was when I saw that moose breakingfor you. And you--why, you just looked like two cents standing therewhile that feller's hoofs and horns wanted to leave you feed for thetimber wolves. I couldn't stand it. My nerve broke. I drew on him. I hadto. I loosed off. Then, I s'pose, I woke up. When I saw him drop I knewjust what I'd done. I'd stolen your beast, and--I'm sorry to death."
A girl. A white girl. Oh, yes, there was no mistake, for all themannishness of her clothing. Marcel stared. He had listened to her wordsof regret barely comprehending their drift. He was absorbed by thatwhich he beheld, wondering, amazed.
A white girl here, alone in the primordial world of--Unaga.
From the pretty, fair hair peeping from under her beaver cap to themoccasined feet, so absurdly small, under the wide-cut buckskin chappsor trousers that clad her nether limbs, he searched stupidly for theanswer to the thousand questions which flooded his brain. Who was she?How came she there? That amazing shot?
He noted her eyes, so wide and deep-fringed, and of a blue such as hehad never yet beheld in the Northern skies. Their dazzling light lefthim almost dizzy with intoxication. Her cheeks, perfect, with the bloomof health acquired in a life of exposure to the elements. Then her sweetlips parted in a smile that revealed a hint of even teeth of pearlywhiteness. But these things were not all. No. There was her tall, slimfigure under its buckskin clothing. The effect was superlative.
What a vision for passionate youthful eyes to gaze upon in the shadowedworld of the Northern forests, where life and death rub shoulders everymoment of time. The youth in Marcel was aflame. There flashed throughhis mind a vague memory of the wooing of the painted women of Seal Bay.
The girl's explanation, her regrets, meant nothing to him.
"What--? Where? Who are you?" he blurted, all his amazed delight flunginto a startled demand.
"I'm Keeko."
The reply was without a shadow of hesitation. It came simply, for thewide, amused eyes
had seen the youth's confusion, and the woman's mindbehind them approved.
"I'm Keeko," the girl repeated, as Marcel still struggled for composure."And I came right along in a hurry to tell you I'm sorry----"
Marcel thrust up a hand and pushed back his cap. It was a movement fullof significance.
"Sorry?" he cried, with an awkward laugh. "Guess you don't need to besorry. I need to feel that way, acting foolish, gawking around here likesome fool kid. But--you see--you're a--girl."
Keeko's smile broadened into a delicious ripple of laughter.
"Sure," she nodded. "You didn't guess I was a-jack-rabbit?"
Marcel was recovering. He, too, laughed.
"I didn't guess anything," he said. Then with a gesture of helplessnesswhich further added to Keeko's amusement: "I couldn't. You seeI'm--well--I'm just darned! That's all--just darned!"
"I know," the girl cried delightedly. "You didn't guess to find a girlaround. You weren't looking to find anything diff'rent from those thingsthey sort of experimented with when they first reckoned making a campingground in space for life to move around on. But you haven't said aboutthat old moose. I robbed you----"
"Oh, hell!" Marcel cried, flinging his head back in a happy, buoyantlaugh. "We'll just cut that darn old moose right out of this thing.You're welcome to shoot up any old thing I've got. You're Keeko----"
"Who are you?"
"I--oh, I'm Marcel, and I come from--" He broke off and shook his head."No, I can't hand you that."
Marcel gazed down into the girl's pretty eyes. He had only justremembered in time. Somehow this girl seemed to have robbed him of hiswits as well as his moose.
"Say," he went on, a moment later, with a sobering of his happy eyes. "Icame near making a bad break that time. You see, I just can't tell youwhere I come from. There's secrets in the darn old Northland some folkswould give a heap of dollars to get wise to. Where I come from is one of'em. What I'm free to tell is I'm mostly a pelt hunter. I've a biggishoutfit of Eskimo, and the usual truck of the summer trail, back there onthe river that comes out of the east. We've got this territory cachedwith food dumps and things, and we're out, scattered miles over thecountry, beating it for pelts with trap and gun. Guess we figger to stopright out till it starts in to freeze up. And just about the time theold sun gets sick worrying to make Unaga a fit place for better thanskitters and things, and chases off for its winter sleep, why we'rehitting right back to--the place I come from. I've been making thesummer trail ever since I was a kid, which isn't a long way back, and Iallow this is the first time it's ever been my luck to find better thanthe silences that's liable to set you plumb crazed if you don't happento have been born to 'em, the same as I was. Guess that's about allthere is to me I know of, except that secret I can't just hand you."
It was all said so frankly, so simply. It was not the story Marcel hadto tell that established confidence. It was the telling of it. And itneeded no words from the girl to admit her approval. It was shining inher smiling eyes, while a wonderful feeling began to stir in a heartthat was only a shade less simple than the heart of the youth.
Keeko, woman-like, applied no reason where her feelings were concerned.She liked the man, and she liked the name he called himself by. Sheliked his great, height and breadth of shoulder, and she liked hisclear, handsome eyes with their ingenuous smile. That was sufficient.
She nodded with that intimate air of sympathy.
"I know," she said readily. "It's a land of secrets north of 60 deg.. That'swhy folks live in a country that can't ever get out of its eternalsleep, and only the nightmare of storm disturbs it. The secret isn'tusually ours. The secret mostly belongs to those who brought us here,and though maybe we don't understand it right, why, the thing just growsup in our minds, and we find we couldn't talk of it to strangers anymore than if it was our own. That's the way of it. It's a country thatstarts in to break your kid's heart, and ends by making you love it--ifit doesn't kill you."
"Oh, yes. I love this old north," she went on with gentle warmth. "Maybeyou do, too. It's half-baked and dead-tough anyway. But it teaches evena girl the things it doesn't hurt anyone to know. It's good for us allto get up against Nature in the cold raw. Guess if I was back in a citythe biggest thing in my life would likely be squeezing hands made to dothings with into gloves that weren't. Or maybe reckoning up which beaucould hand me the best time before I got too old to count. It isn't thatway here. The north teaches you to think and act right, and you don'thave to worry that the girl next door's wearing a later mode in shirtwaists than you. No. Man or woman, we've got to make good or go under.We're all here for that, only some of us don't know it. I'm kind of gladI've learned it, and I'm mighty grateful to those who've taught me.That's why I'm out on the summer trail same as you. But I've only asmall outfit. Three neches and two canoes back there on the river thatcomes up out of the south, and doesn't quit till it reaches the seas ofsnow and ice that never thaw. We can't chase the territory wide like youcan. We can't carry food for caches, or make the big portages. So wehunt the river, and a day's trail on either bank. There's beaver and foxto be had that way, and it's most all I can hope for. I don't worry ifwe get it plenty. You see, I need it big--this trip."
Something of the strangeness of the encounter was passing from Marcel'smind. A curious feeling of intimacy was induced by the girl's briefoutline of the things that concerned herself. Then, above all, there wasthat youthful desire, untainted by any baseness of passion, the naturaldesire inspired by the appeal of a sweet face, and the smiling eyes of ayoung girl, battling in a country where there is no margin for thestrongest of men.
Nor had Marcel forgotten all the early teachings of Uncle Steve. He knewit was demanded of him that woman, in all her moods, was man's heritageto help, to protect, to relieve, where possible, of those heavy burdenswith which nature so mercilessly weighs her down. The opening lay thereto his hand, and he seized upon it with an impulse that needed nothingto support it.
"You're needing pelts?" he cried. "Why, that's great!"
Keeko laughed shortly. She failed to realize the thought promptingMarcel's evident delight.
"It would be greater if I didn't," she returned, with a rueful shake ofthe head.
"How's that?"
"Why it's days since our traps have shown us so much as a wolf track.And it's nearly a week since we took our last beaver. There's threemonths of the season left, and I'm needing a three-thousand-dollar tradewith Lorson Harris at Seal Bay. Maybe you don't know what that means?"
"Maybe I do," Marcel laughed.
"You do?" Keeko was forced to a responsive laugh. "Yes. It means a wholelot," she went on. "And--I don't guess we've taken five hundred dollarsyet--at his price. Last year I took three silver foxes, and a brace ofjet black beauties that didn't set him squealing at fifty dollars each.No. They were jo-dandies," she sighed appreciatively. "But it hasn'tbeen that way this season," she continued, with pathetic regret. "Itseems like there isn't a single fox this side of the big north hills."
Marcel shook his head.
"But there is," he said very definitely.
"Is there?" Keeko shook her head. "Then I must have been looking theother way most all the time."
A reply hovered upon Marcel's lips. But he seemed to change his mind. Hecould not stand the obscuring of the sun of the girl's pretty eyes. Heturned away, and laid his rifle aside. Then he sprawled his big body atthe foot of an adjacent tree, and sat with his wide shoulders proppedagainst it for support.
"Say, Keeko," he cried, gazing up into the troubled eyes watching him,and addressing the girl by name for the first time, "let's sit. We'vegot to make a big talk. Anyway, I have. I feel like one of those foolneches sitting in a war council, and handing out wisdom that wouldn'tfool a half-hatched skitter. Still, I reckon I've got one hell of anotion, and notions worry me to death if I can't hand 'em on to somefeller who can't defend himself. I'm not often worried that way. Willyou listen awhile?"
Marcel's effort was not without effect. T
he girl's eyes cleared of theirshadows, swept away by a smiling amusement. She found him quiteirresistible in the gloom of her twilight surroundings, and forthwithpermitted herself to subside upon the ground opposite him, with legscrossed, and her rifle lying across her knees.
"It's easy listening," she said with a laugh.
"Good!"
Marcel laughed, too.
"Now, it's this," he began, with a profound solemnity that delighted thegirl. "If I hand you anything you don't fancy listening to, why, say soright away, and I'll quit. You see, I don't get much practice handing itout to a girl, and I'm liable to make breaks--bad breaks. You see, we'remostly a thousand miles outside the world, and you're a lone girl in ahell of a lone land. I'd be thankful for you to get hold of it that Iwas raised to reckon a girl needs all the help a decent man can handher. That's his duty. Plumb. And he hasn't a right on earth to figger onany return. Well, I haven't got over that notion yet. It goes with meevery time, and I pray the good God of this darnation wilderness italways will. I allow this is just preliminary, to make you feel goodbefore I start in to talk. It isn't the sermon you may guess it is, sothat'll make it easier remembering what lies back of my head when youstart--guessing."
Marcel produced a pipe and stuffed it with the tobacco he flaked off asad-looking plug. The pipe was crudely carved in Eskimo fashion out ofthe ivory of a walrus tusk. Keeko watched him silently with an interestshe made no attempt to disguise, while deep in her heart was stirringthat feeling she was wholly unconscious of. His "preliminary" wasunnecessary. In her woman's way she read him to her own satisfaction.
He lit his pipe carefully, and as carefully extinguished his match. Theywere in a forest where the decaying vegetation was as dry as tinder.
"You need pelts," he said, after a considering pause. "You need threethousand dollars trade in 'em. You want silver fox and black fox.Well--you can have enough to set Lorson Harris squealing."
Keeko was startled.
"But--I don't get you!" she cried, with the helplessness of completeamazement.
"It's easy."
Marcel smoked on in leisurely enjoyment of the surprise he had giventhis nymph of the primordial.
Keeko shook her head.
"You mean--" she broke off. "No, you're a pelt hunter yourself. You saidso. We're rivals on the fur trail."
"Rivals?" Marcel sat up in his turn. "We can't be," he said earnestly."I'm some sort of a man. You're a--girl. You've forgotten."
They sat regarding each other. A great hope was in Marcel's heart. Infancy he was picturing to himself months of this girl's companionship inthe deep silences and tremendous solitudes which had become so much apart of his life. He had visions of this tall, beautiful creature alwaysby his side, ready, skilful, eager. With the sympathy of their craftalways between them, and, for himself, a purpose, an incentive such asnever in his life had he possessed. The contemplation of it all was toowonderful for words. It was a dream, a happy, wonderful dream.
But for Keeko it was all different. She was not concerned with a dreamfuture. She was thinking of the generosity, the reckless generositythat set this splendid youth desirous of yielding all to satisfy herneeds. He asked no question as to those needs. He knew nothing of her,or of those shadows lurking in her background. He only understood thatshe wanted, and it was his pleasure and purpose to supply that want athis own expense.
"I haven't forgotten," she said, with something like a sigh. "But youwant to hand me furs that are your own trade. And I--I can't acceptthem."
She shook her head definitely. Then with an effort she thrust the regretshe felt into the background, and her eyes lit with a smile of humour.
"You haven't heard the notion _I_ was raised to--yet," she said.
"No."
Marcel was satisfied with the return of her smile.
"Would you like to?"
"Sure."
The girl laughed.
"I guess it's not as simple as yours," she said. "A woman's reason isn'tgenerally simple. You see, she musses up feelings with argument whichgenerally confuse the issue. Guess a woman's life is mostly a thing ofconfusion. You see, she started bad, though it wasn't her fault. Whenthe folks, who ought to know better, started in to make man before hismother you can't wonder it's that way. Now I was raised to believe manis woman's rightful protector. There's women who reckon she's got manleft standing when it comes to helping things along. But she's the sortof woman who always cooks her own favourite dish when she reckons togive her man a real treat. There's the other woman who's so sure man isher rightful protector that she's not content to wait around for hisprotection. She gets right out and grabs it, along with anything elsehe's foolish enough to leave within her reach. Then there's the womanwho shouts around that she doesn't need protecting anyway. She mostlyends up with grabbing all the man-protection that happens to be lyingaround, without worrying whose 'claim' she's jumping. But to get back tothe notion I was raised to, it seems to me that man is surely a woman'srightful protector, but there isn't a thing on earth can make me seethat she's the right to take any sort of protection he hasn't the rightto give. That sort of woman's a vampire. And vampires are things I'dlike to see drowned so deep they can't ever resurrect. If I took yourpelts I'd be a vampire for taking something you haven't the right togive. They're your trade, and I guess out of your trade you've got topay your outfit of Eskimo. Do you see? To my way of thinking those fursare not yours to give, just because you find a fool girl squealing forthree thousand dollars of trade. But say," she added, with a warmth ofreal feeling in her smiling eyes, "I thank you for the thought. I thankyou right from the bottom of my heart."
Marcel remained quite undisturbed. He sat deliberately puffing at hisabsurdly ornamented pipe, his honest eyes meditatively smiling. Thegirl's rejection of his offer only made him the more determined. At lasthe stirred, and sat up cross-legged, and, removing his pipe, pointed hiswords with its stem, as though to drive them more fully home.
"That's all right," he said. "I'm making no kick on that. It just makesme feel how sore you need those pelts, and how right I am to want tohand 'em to you. I've told you what I fancy doing. Now we'll form acommittee and negotiate. Folks always form committees when they can'tagree, and then they can't agree worse. Committees always elect one oftheir members chairman, and he has a casting vote. We're a committee oftwo, so we'll elect a chairman, and that'll make three--chairman withcasting vote. I'll elect myself chairman. That way we'll have no sort ofdifficulty. All in favour, etc." He thrust up both hands and his pipewhile he boyishly gazed up at them with a triumphant smile.
"Carried unanimously," he cried. "Now I've two says to your one----"
"I was reckoning it was more than that," Keeko interrupted, laughing.
"Were you? Maybe you're right," Marcel agreed. "Well, say, let's cut thefooling. See here, Keeko," he went on earnestly. "I've got all the peltsyou need to my own share. I wouldn't be robbing even an Eskimo, who mostfolks reckon to rob. As for me, I'm no sort of real trader. I just huntpelts because it suits me, and I like to hear Lorson Harris squeal whenI make him pay my prices. Still, you don't reckon to accept, that way.That being so, how's this? I'm just free as air to hunt where I choose.My outfit's scattered, and each hunts on his own. Well, I've all thecatch I need. You can guess that, seeing I've given nine days and nightsto trailing this old moose that isn't worth the cost of the powder thatshot him up. Cut me out as a trader. Just take me on as guide. I'll joinyour outfit till it freezes up, and I'll find you the best foxes theNorth Country ever produced. I'll promise you that three thousanddollars and to spare. It isn't bluff. It's just God's truth. And if youfeel like you're sick to death of the sight of what folks who's friendlycall my face any old time, why you only need to say things, and I'll hita trail out of sight at a gait that would leave a caribou flapping itsears with worry. I mean that, every darn word, and the chairman and halfthis fool committee are voting for it. Well?"
The appeal was irresistible. Keeko would have been less than the
womanshe was had she further resisted the happy enthusiasm and youthfulimpulse of this great creature who had been a stranger to her less thanan hour ago. There was honesty and confidence in every word he uttered,and there was that simple boyish admiration in his good-looking eyeswhich made the final unconscious appeal. She yielded, yielded in thatspirit which promptly left Marcel her slave for all time.
Her eyes were brimming with a smile that possessed the moisture of tearsof thankfulness.
"Guess this committee is unanimous," she said. "There's no argument leftin them. But it wants to record the biggest vote of thanks to thechairman that was ever passed--and doesn't know how to express it.We----"
But Marcel was on his feet and holding out his great hands to help thegirl to hers. His eyes were wide and shining in a way that must have lita happy smile in the steady eyes of Uncle Steve, had he been there towitness.
"Where's your camp?" he cried. "I need to start my job right away."
The man's demand was thrilling with the feelings of the moment. Keekoignored his help. She, too, was on her feet in a moment, and pointingaway amongst the shadows of the forest to the west.
"Back on the river," she cried, catching something of the infection ofthe other's headlong impulse. Then with a glance down at the fallenmoose which had been the means of bringing them together, her tonealtered to one of almost tenderness. "But this?" she questioned.
Marcel laughed.
"Don't worry with that. I'll come along for the skull and the horns whenthe wolves have done with it. I've quit big game. I'm out for fox,silver and black. I'm out to break Lorson Harris's bank roll--for you.Come on!"