The Heart of Thunder Mountain Part 45

But she picked up her rabbit, and walked on. In half an hour she reached the camp, strode straight to the pine tree under which Haig lay, and held up before him the puny prize.

"Now I know you're proud of me!" she exclaimed, while her face crimsoned.

Haig smiled indulgently. It was a little better than he had expected.

"Don't be downcast!" he said. "I didn't think you'd get a deer the first day. You didn't even see one, I suppose."

"But I did, though! I had one right under my eyes, not thirty feet away. And what do you think I did?"

"Stood and looked at it, of course. That's buck fever."

"But it was only a tiny little doe!"

"Doe fever then, which is probably worse, if I know anything about--"

"That will do, Philip! You're laughing at me."

"Not at all. You've brought home something to eat, and that's more than I can do. Bunny looks big and fat. He'll make a fine dinner, and leave something for to-morrow."

"Thank you, Philip!" she said gratefully. "You make me feel as if I were not such a failure after all."

"If you'll trust me with the knife," he said in a tone that took some of the edge off her satisfaction, "I'll clean him for you."

She gave him the knife reluctantly, and did not leave his side until he had finished cleaning and cutting up the rabbit, when he handed the knife back to her with a gesture that made her blush again. Two things she did not know: that he had a knife in his pocket much better suited to his secret purpose; and that his purpose was a purpose no longer.

But even he was not yet aware of this last.

It was not the next day, but the third, when the rabbit had been eaten to the bone, and the pangs of hunger prodded her, that Marion restored herself in her own eyes. In the edge of the forest, not more than two miles from the camp, she detected a mere brown patch in the browning bush. This time she did not forget her rifle. The brown patch moved just as she pulled the trigger; but when she reached the spot, in a fever of anxiety, she fairly shrieked to the wilderness. For there in the gra.s.s, still jerking spasmodically in its death agony, lay a doe, a larger one than that she had seen in the glade. No more "one a day for twenty-seven days!"

What followed haunted her dreams for many nights thereafter--a repulsive and sickening ordeal. She had seen Huntington do it, but then she had been able to turn her face away; and her hands--But necessity, responsibility, and pride, and perhaps some primitive instinct also, nerved her to the task. And she staggered back to camp, and stood before Philip, white and trembling, but triumphant.

"Take a drink of whisky!" ordered Haig sharply.

She obeyed him, gulping down the last of the precious contents of her flask.

"It's down there--covered with leaves!" she gasped out at length.

"Will anything--disturb it before I can--take Tuesday and the rope?"

"Do you mean you've cleaned the whole deer?" he asked curiously.

She nodded, still shuddering.

"Well, you're a brick!" he said heartily. Then he added: "I thought perhaps a bobcat had stolen your--rabbit."

She laughed with him, and then was off with Tuesday to bring her quarry home. She was not strong enough to lift and fasten the carca.s.s on the horse's back; but the route was through clean gra.s.s along the cliff, and Tuesday made short work of that, with the deer dragged at the end of the rope.

They had no salt, but there were a few rinds of bacon that Haig had told Marion to keep, and these were made to serve for seasoning. That venison, moreover, needed nothing to make it palatable; for they were ravenously hungry. Sprawled before the fire like savages, they feasted on a huge steak, broiled on two willow sticks, and well-browned on the outside at the start so that the tenderness was retained; and for an hour forgot. For so the stomach, at once the tyrant and the slave, has sometimes its hour of triumph, when heart and soul and brain are its willing captives, and the starkest fears and forebodings lose their sway, and death itself, though visible and near, has no power to ferment the grateful juices of the body.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE SNOW

In the night they were awakened by a terrific outburst on the mountain top, surpa.s.sing all they had yet heard since their arrival in the valley. The forest roared under the onslaughts of the wind that swept down through the gorge as through a funnel. Protected though the camp was, in a measure, fierce gusts now and then a.s.sailed it, and later the rain came, almost in torrents, beating through the canopy of foliage, and half-flooding the bed.

Marion, rising to renew the fire, felt that a sharp change had come in the atmosphere. It was colder than any night they had yet endured.

Wrapped again in her blankets, she was unable to keep warm. Her feet, near the fire, were too hot, while her back and shoulders ached as if they had been packed in ice. Turn which way she would, on her back, on her side, or face downward, there was no relief from that acid cold.

She did not complain, but cried softly, trying to hold back her sobs so that he should not hear her.

"You're cold," he said, hearing her nevertheless.

"A little--not very," she answered bravely.

But he knew very well how keenly she was suffering. His injured leg pained him almost beyond endurance, as if the frost had been concentrated there. There was nothing he could say or do for her or for himself.

Toward morning, the fury of the storm having abated, they slept a little, fitfully and uneasily, in the half-insensibility to suffering that complete exhaustion brings. But they were glad when the first gray light of morning stole in among the shadows and touched their eyelids. With one accord, as if in a common apprehension, and moved by a single fear, they raised their heads, and at the first glance about them, sat up staring.

The meadow lay white under its first coverlet of snow, the trees were draped in their winter mantles, their very bed had its downy quilt of snowflakes that had sifted through the branches of the tree.

"It's come," said Haig simply.

"Yes," she answered, in a voice that echoed a tragic calm.

"But it was due."

"Seth kept saying we'd have a hard and early winter."

"Huntington's not such a fool as he looks," retorted Haig drily, as he lay back to look up resignedly into the foliage, where white now mingled with the green.

For some time there was no more speech. Marion arose, and went silently about her work. She heaped wood on the fire until the flames leaped high, and the heat began to drive out the settled chill from her limbs, and she could move again without dull pain. Then to the brook; but her baths in the pool were ended. She washed face and hands, and brought back the wet towel for Philip. And breakfast was eaten almost in silence, and without appet.i.te; for the good venison that had so rejoiced them the night before had already lost its flavor.

"Do you see the circles on the trees yonder, where the moss begins?"

asked Haig at length.

"Yes," Marion answered.

"That's the snow line. It will lie thirty feet deep here."

She had no answer to that. But she was thinking. There must be a way.

She had no idea what it would be; but there must be some way out of it.

When the camp had been cleaned up, and the pan and cup had been washed and put aside, and the fire replenished, she brought her rifle from its place behind the tree.

"I'm going for a walk," she said.

"Where?"