XXIII
Standing motionless in the dreadful gloom of blindness, insensible tothe growing cold, Bill made himself look his situation in the face. Hismind was no longer blunt and dull. It was cool, analytic; he balancedone thing against another; he judged the per cent. of his chance. Atpresent it did not occur to him to give up. It is never the way of thesons of the wilderness to yield without a fight. They know life in allits travail and pain, but also they know the Cold and Darkness and Fearthat is death. No matter how long the odds are, the wilderness creaturefights to his last breath. Bill had always fought; his life had been agreat war of which birth was the reveille and death would be retreat.
He was wholly self-contained, his mind under perfect discipline. Hewould figure it all out and seek the best way through. Long, wearymiles of trackless forest stretched between him and safety. There wasno food in this cabin, no blankets; and the fire was out. HisTwenty-three Mile cabin was only slightly less distant than the one hehad left. And through those endless drifts and interminable forests theblind, unaided, could not find their way.
He could conceive of no circumstances whereby Virginia and Harold wouldcome to look for him short of another day and night. They did notexpect him back until the end of the present day; they could notpossible start forth to seek him until another daylight. And this manknew what the forest and the cold would do to him in twenty-four hours.Already the cold was getting to him.
For all that he had no food, he knew that if he could keep warm he couldsurvive until help came. Yet men cannot fast in these winter woods asthey can in the South. The simple matter of inner fuel is a desperateand an essential thing. But he had no blankets, and without a fire hewould die, speedily and surely. He didn't deceive himself on thispoint. He knew the northern winter only too well. A few hours ofsuffering, then a slow warmth that stole through the veins and was theherald of departure. He had been warmed through in the cabin, but thatwarmth would soon pass away. He wondered if he could rebuild the fire.
He was suddenly shaken with terror at the thought that already he didnot know in what direction the fire and the cabin lay. He had becometurned around when he strode out to light the match. Instantly he beganto search for the cabin door. He went down on his hands in the snow,groping, then moved in a slow, careful circle. Just one little second'sbewilderment, one variation from the circle, and he might lose the cabinaltogether. That meant _death!_ It could mean no other thing.
But in a moment the smoke blew into his face, and he advanced into theashes. The next moment, by circling again, he found the cabin door. Heleaned against it, breathing hard.
"It won't do, Bill," he told himself. "Hold steady--for one minutemore."
A spruce log, the last segment of the tree he had cut, lay somewhere afew feet from his door. But he remembered it had fallen into a thicketof evergreen: could he find it now? The log would not burn until it wascut up with his ax: the ax would be hard to find in the pressingdarkness. Even if he found it, even if he could cut kindling with hisknife, he couldn't maintain a blaze. Building and mending a fire withgreen timber is a cruel task even with vision; and he knew as well as heknew the fact of his own life that it would be wholly impossible to theblind.
Then what was left? Only a deeper, colder darkness than this he knewnow. Death was left--nothing else. In an hour, perhaps in ahalf-hour, possibly not until the night had gone and come again with itswind and its chill, the end would be the same. There was no light toguide him home, no landmarks that he could see.
Then his thought seized upon an idea so fantastic, seemingly soimpossible of achievement, that at first he could not give it credence.His mind had flashed to those unfortunates that had sometimes lost theirway in the dark chambers of an underground cavern and thence to thatmethod by which they guarded against this danger. These men carriedstrings, unwinding them as they entered the cavern and following themout. He had not carried a string-end here, but he had made a trail!His snowshoe tracks probably were not yet obliterated under thewind-blown snow. Could he feel his way along them back to the cabin?
The miles were many and long, but he wouldn't have to creep on hands andknees all the way. Perhaps he could walk, stooped, touching thedepressions in the snow at every step. In his own soul he did notbelieve that he had one chance in a hundred of making it through tosafety. Crawling, creeping, groping from track to track would wear himout quickly. But was there any other course for him? If he didn't trythat, would he have any alternative other than to lie still and die? Hewasn't sure that he could even find the tracks in the snow, but if hewere able to encircle the cabin at a radius of fifty feet he could notmiss them. He groped about at the side of the cabin for his snowshoes.
He found them in a minute, then walked straight as he could fifty feetout from the door. Once more he went on hands and feet, groping in theicy snow. He started to make a great circle.
Fifteen feet farther he felt a break in the even surface. The snow hadbeen so soft and his shoes had sunk so deep that the powdered flakes thewind had strewn during the night had only half filled his tracks. Hestarted to follow them down.
He walked stooped, groping with one hand, and after an endless time hisfingers dipped into dry, warm ashes.
Only for a fraction of a second did he fail to understand. And in thedarkness and the silence the man's breath caught in what was almost asob. He realized that he had followed the tracks in the wrongdirection, and had traced them straight to the cabin door that he hadjust left.
It was only a matter of a hundred feet, but it was tragedy here. Oncemore he started on the out-trail.
He soon found that he could not walk in his present stooped position.Human flesh is not build to stand such a strain as that. Before he hadgone half a mile sharp pains began to attack him, viciously, in the backand thighs. For all his magnificent strength--largely returned to himin his hours of rest--he could not progress in this position more thanhalf a mile farther.
He took another course. He would walk ahead five paces, then drop downand grope again for the tracks. Sometimes he found them at once, oftenhe had to go on his hands and feet and start to circle. Then, findingthe trail, he would mush on for five steps more.
Oh, the way was cruel! He could not see to avoid the stinging lash ofthe spruce needles, the cruel blows of the branches. Already theattempt began to partake of a quality of nightmare,--a blind andstumbling advance over infinite difficulties through the infinity oftime. It was like some torment of an evil Hereafter,--eternal,remorseless, wholly without hope. Many times he sprawled at fulllength, and always it was harder to force himself to his feet.
Five steps on, halting and groping, then five steps more: thus the lonefigure journeyed through the winter forest. The seconds dragged intothe minutes, the minutes into hours. The cold deepened; likely it wasthe bitter hour just after dawn. The hand with which he groped for thetracks had lost all power of feeling.
He could not judge distance or time. Already it seemed to him that hehad been upon the journey endless hours. Because of the faint graynessbefore his eyes he judged it was broad daylight: perhaps already the daywas giving over to darkness. He didn't know how far he had come. Theonly thought he had left was always to count his terrible five steps,and count five more.
Nothing else mattered. He had for the moment at least lost sight of allother things. His thought was not so clear now; it seemed to him thatthe forest was no longer silent. There were confused murmurings in hisear, a curious confusion and perplexity in his brain. It was hard toremember who he was and where he was going. Just to count his steps,stoop, grope and find the snowshoe trail, then journey on again.
He tried to increase the number of steps between his gropings--firstsix, then seven. Above seven, however, the trail was so hard to findthat time was lost rather than gained. Yes, he thought it was stilldaylight. Sometimes he seemed to feel the sunlight on his face. He wasnot cold now, and even the pain was gone from
his hips and thighs.
He was mistaken in this, however. The pain still sent its fearfulmessages to his brain, but in his growing stupor he was no longer awareof them. Even his hand didn't hurt him now. He wondered if it werefrozen; yet it was still sensitive to the depressions in the drifts. Itcould still grope through the snow and find the tracks.
"I can't go on!" his voice suddenly spoke aloud. "I can't go--anymore."
The words seemed to come from an inner man, without volition on hispart. He was a little amazed to hear them. Yet the time had not yetcome to stop and rest. The tracks still led him on.
Always, it seemed to him, he had to grope longer to find theindentations in the snow. The simple reason was that the motor centersof his brain had begun to be impaired by cold and exhaustion, and hecould no longer walk in a straight line. He found out, however, thatthe trail usually lay to the right rather than to his left. He wastaking a shorter step with his left than with his right--the sametendency that often makes a tried woodsman walk in a great circle--andhe thus bore constantly to the left. Soon it became necessary to drophis formula down to six, then to the original five.
On and on, through the long hours. But the fight was almost done.Exhaustion and hunger, but cold most of all, were swiftly breaking himdown. He advanced with staggering steps.
The indentations were more shallow now. The point where he had begun tobreak through the snow crust, because of the softening snow, was passedlong ago: only because he was in a valley sheltered from the wind werethe tracks manifest at all.
The time came at last when he could no longer get upon his feet. Andnow, like a Tithonus who could not die, he crawled along the snowshoetrail on is hands and knees. "I can't go on," he told himself. "I'mthrough!" Yet always his muscles made one movement more.
Suddenly he missed the trail. His hand groped in vain over the whitecrust. He crept on a few more feet, then as ever, began to circle.Soon his hand found an indentation in the snow crust, and he started tocreep forward again.
But slowly the conviction grew upon him that he was crawling in a smallcircle,--the very circle he had just made. Some way, he had missedthe snowshoe trail. He did not remember how on his journey out he hadonce been obliged to backtrack a hundred yards and start on at a newangle. He had merely come to that point from which he had turned back.He could not find the trail because he was at its end.
He could not remember that it was his own trail. How he came here, hispurpose and his destination, were all lost and forgotten in theintricate mazes of the past. He had but one purpose, one theme,--tokeep to his trail an journey on. He would make a bigger circle. Hestarted to creep forward in the snow.
But as he waited, on hands and knees in the drifts, the Spirit of Mercycame down to him and gave him one moment of lucid thought. All at oncefull consciousness returned to him in a sweep as of a tide, and heremembered all that had occurred. He saw all things in their exactrelations. And now he knew his course.
No longer would he struggle on, slave to the remorseless instinct ofself-preservation. Was there any glory, any happiness at his journey'send that would pay him for the agony of one more forward step? He hadwaged a mighty battle; but now--in a flash--he realized that thespoil for which he had fought was not worth one moment of his hours ofpain. He remembered Virginia, Harold, the mind and its revelation: herecalled that his mission had been merely an expedition after provisionsso that the two could go out of his life. Was there any reason why heshould fight for life, only to find death?
There was nothing in the distant cabin worth having now. He wassuddenly crushed with bitterness at the thought that he had made thismighty effort for a goal not worth attaining. If he struggled on, evento success, the only thing that waited him was a moment of farewell withVirginia and the vision of her slipping away from him, into her lover'sarms. When she departed only the forest and the darkness would be left,and he had these here.
It would be different if he felt Virginia still needed him. If he couldwin her any happiness by fighting on, the struggle would still be worthwhile. But she had Harold to show her the way through the winter woods.It was true that they would have to rely on the fallen grizzly for meat:an uncomfortable experience, but nothing to compare with any furthermovement through the cruel drifts. Harold would come back and claim themine; perhaps he would even erect his own notice before his departure,and the Rutheford family would know the full fruits of their crime oflong ago. But it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered now wasrest and sleep.
Slowly he sank down in the snow.