The Snowshoe Trail

  II

  Bill Bronson found that he had the usual number of difficulties tocontend with, when arranging for the journey. He had to procure morehorses for the larger outfit, and he was obliged to comb the town ofthem before he had enough. This was not an agricultural land, this wildrealm of the Selkirks, and all of the animals were originally Indianstock,--the usual type of mountain cayuses with which most big-gamehunters are acquainted. Some of them were faithful and trustworthyanimals, but many were half-broken, many cowardly and vicious. On thosehe rented he took the risk; he would be charged on the books for allthose that were not returned to their owners at Bradleyburg by Octobertwentieth.

  Bill knew perfectly that he would play in good fortune if the loss inhorseflesh did not cost him most of the gains of the undertaking. Eventhe sturdy mustangs were not bred for traversing the trails ofClearwater. There were steep hills where a single misstep meant death,there were narrow trails and dangerous fords, and here and there wereinoffensive-looking pools where the body of a horse may sink out ofsight in less time than it takes to tell it. These were not theimmense-chested moose or the strong-limbed caribou, natives of the placeand monarchs of its trails. Besides, if the winter caught them on thehigher levels, they would never eat oats in Johnson's barn again. Thesix feet of snow covers all horse feed, and the alternatives that remainare simply a merciful bullet from the wrangler's pistol or death of slowstarvation.

  Bill had certain stores in his cabins,--the long line of log hutsfrom which he operated in the trapping season,--yet further supplieswere needed for the trip. He bought sugar, flour, great sacks ofrice--that nutritious and delightful grain that all outdoor men learnto love--coffee and canned goods past all description. Savory bacon,a great cured ham of a caribou, dehydrated vegetables and cans ofmarmalade and jam: all these went into the big saddle-bags for thejourney. He was fully aware that the punishing days' ride could neverbe endured on half-rations. Camp equipment, rifles, shells and alinen tent made up the outfit.

  He encountered real difficulty when he tried to hire a man to act ascook. Evidently the Bradleyburg citizens had no love for the mountainrealms in the last days of fall. For the double wage that he promisedhe was only able to secure a half-rate man,--Vosper by name, ashifty-eyed youth from one of the placer mines, farther down toward thesettlements.

  Up to the time that he heard the far-off sound of their automobilestruggling up the long hill, he had made no mental picture of hisemployers. He rather hoped that Mr. Kenly Lounsbury--uncle of themissing man--would represent the usual type of middle-aged Americanwith whom he had previously dealt,--cold-nerved, likeable business menthat came for recreation on the caribou trails. Virginia Tremont wouldof course be a new type, but he felt no especial interest in her. Butas he waited at the door of the hotel he began to be aware of a curiousexcitement, a sense of grave and portentous developments. He did notfeel the least self-conscious. But he did know a suddenly awakenedinterest in this girl who would come clear to these northern realms tofind her lover.

  The car was in evident difficulties. It was the end of the road: infact, the old highway for the last three miles of its length was simplytwo ruts on the hillside. As soon as it came in sight Bill recognizedthe driver,--a man who operated a line of auto-stages, during thesummer months, on the long river-road below. The next instant the cardrew up beside the hotel.

  To a man of cities there would have been nothing particularly unusual inthis sight of a well-groomed man and girl in the tonneau of anautomobile. The man was a familiar type, of medium size, precise, hisouting clothes just a trifle garish; the girl trim and sweet-faced, andstylish from the top of her head to the soles of her expensive littleboots. But no moment of Bill's life had ever been fraught with agreater wonder. None had ever such a quality of the miraculous. Nonehad ever gone so deep.

  He had not known many women, this dark man of the forests. He had seenIndian squaws in plenty, stolid and fat, he had known a few of the wivesof the Bradleyburg men,--women pretty enough, good housekeepers,neatly clad and perhaps a little saddened and crushed by the veryremorselessness of this land in which they lived. But there had been nogirls in Bradleyburg to grow up with, no schoolday sweethearts. He hadknown the dark and desolate forests, never a sweetheart's kiss. Hismother was now but a memory: tenderness, loveliness, personal beauty tohold the eyes had been wholly without his bourne. And he gazed atVirginia Tremont as a man might look at a celestial light.

  If the girl could have seen the swift flood of worship that flowed intohis face, she would have felt no scorn. She was of the cities, castehad hardened her as far as it could harden one of her nature, she was athoroughbred to the last inch, used to flattery and the attentions ofmen of her own class; yet she would have held no contempt for this tall,bronzed man that looked at her with such awe and wonder. The surge offeeling was real in him; and reality is one thing, over the broad earth,that no human being dares to scorn. If she could have read deeper shewould have found in herself an unlooked-for answer, in a small measureat least, to a lifelong dream, an ideal come true, and even she--inher high place--would have known a little whisper of awe.

  All his life, it seemed to him, Bill had dreamed dreams--dreams thathe would not admit into his conscious thought and which he constantlytried to disavow because he considered their substance did not exist inreality and thus they were out of accord with the realism with which heregarded life. On the long winter nights, when the snow lay endless anddeep over the wilderness, and the terrible cold locked the land tight,he would sit in his trapping cabins, gazing into the smoke clouds fromhis pipe, and a tender enchantment would steal over him. He would haveadmitted to no human being those wistful and beautiful hours that hespent alone. He was known as a man among men, one who could battle thesnows and meet the grizzly in his lair, and he would have been ashamedto reveal this dreamy, romantic side of his nature, these longings thatswept him to the depths. He would go to his bed and lie for long,tingling, wakeful hours stirred by dreams that through no earthly chancecould he conceive as coming true. Arms about him, lips near, beauty andtenderness and hallowed wakenings,--he had imagined them all in hissecret hours.

  In the deep realms of his spirit, it seemed to him, he had always knownthis girl,--this straight, graceful, lovely being with eyes of anangel and smile of a happy child. He had denied her existence, and hereshe was before him. Dark hair, waving and just a little untidy in thebrisk wind, oval face and determined little chin, shadowing lashes andthe exquisite contrasts of brunette beauty, a glimpse of soft, whiteflesh at the throat through her dark furs, smart tailored suit anddainty hands,--they were all known to him of old. For all theindifference and distance with which she looked at him and at the othertownspeople, there was a world of girlish sweetness in her face. Forall her caste, there was spiritual beauty and gracious charm in everyfacial line.

  Curiously, Bill had no tinge of the resentment he might have expectedthat his dream should come half-true only to be shattered like thebubble it was. Because he had no delusions. He knew that he was onlyan employee, that a girl of her caste would ever regard him as the greatregard those that serve them--kindly but impersonally--but for nowhe asked for nothing more. To him she was a creature past belief, abeing from another world, and he was content to serve her humbly. Heknew that he was of the forest and she of the cities of men, and soonthey would take separate trails. His only comfort, heretofore, hadbeen that his dream could not possibly come true, that the stuff ofwhich it was made could never exist in the barren, dreadful, accursedplace that was his home; but his nature was too big and true for anybitterness--to hate her because she was of a sphere so infinitely apartfrom his. But he wouldn't give her his love, he told himself, only hisadoration. He wasn't going to be foolish enough to fall in love with astar! Yet he was swept with joy, for did not a whole month intervenebefore she would go back to her kind? Would she not be in his ownkeeping for a while, before she left him to his forests and his snows?Could he
not see her across the fire, exult in her beauty, even aid herin finding her lost lover? His eye kindled and his face flushed, andhe leaped to help her from the tonneau.

  "I suppose you are Mr. Bronson?" she asked.

  It was the same friendly but impersonal tone that he had expected, buthe felt no resentment. His spirits had rallied promptly; and he wasalready partly adjusted to the fact that his joy in the journey wouldconsist of the mere, unembellished fact of her presence.

  "Yes. Of course this is Miss Tremont and Mr. Lounsbury. And just assoon as I pack the horses we'll be ready to start."

  "I don't see why you haven't got 'em already packed," Lounsburg brokein. "If I ran my business in this shiftless way----"

  Bill turned quickly toward him. He saw at once that other elementsbeside pleasure were to enter into this journey. The man spokequerulously, in a tone to which Bill was neither accustomed norreconciled. If the girl had chosen to abuse him, he would have taken itmeekly as his due; but it hadn't been his training to accept too manyrude words from a fellow man. Yet, he remembered, he was the uncle ofthe girl's fiance, and that meant he was a privileged person. Besides,his temper had likely been severely strained by the rough road.

  "Don't be ridiculous, Uncle," the girl reproved her. "How did he knowexactly when we were going to arrive?" She tuned back to Bill. "Nowtell us where we can get lunch. I'm starved."

  "This country does--stimulate the appetite," Bill responded gravely.Then he showed them into the hotel.

  He did a queer and sprightly little dance as he hurried toward the barnto get his horse.