XXI
There was plenty of heart-breaking work to do when Bill finally reachedthe little cabin. The snow had banked up to the depth of several feetaround it and had blown and packed against the door. He took off one ofhis snowshoes to use as a shovel and stolidly began the work of removingthe barricade. There was no opening the door against the pressure ofthe snow. Besides, the bolt was solidly rusted.
But after a few weary strokes it occurred to him that the easiest waywould be to cut some sort of an opening in the top of the door, justlarge enough for his body to crawl through. As the cabin was abandonedthere would be no possible disadvantage to such an opening: and sincethe fire had to be built outside the cabin, against the backlogs, thedoor would have to be left open anyway, to admit the heat. With a fewstrokes of his sharp little camp ax he cut away the planks, leaving ablack hole in the door. He lighted a match and peered in.
The interior was unchanged since his previous visit, years before. Thecabin had no floor, not the least vestige of furniture, and rodents hadlittered the ground with leaves.
He turned to his toil of making a fire. First he cut down a spruce--aheart-breaking task with his little ax--then laboriously hacked itinto lengths. These he bore to the cabin, staggering with the load. Hesplit the logs, cutting some of them into firewood for kindling. Thenhe made a pile of shavings.
He tested the wind and found it blowing straight west and away from thecabin. He felt oddly tired and dull, much too tired to strain andlisten for some whispered message of an inner voice that seemed to betrying hard to get his attention, a few little, vague misgivings thathaunted him. His comfort depended, he told himself, on the heat of thefire beating in through the little opening of the cabin door, so heplaced the backlog just as close as he dared in front. Then he laiddown split pieces for frame of his fire and erected his heap ofkindling.
He entered through the opening and stood on the ground below to lightthe fire. He didn't desire to crawl through the flames to enter thecabin. Reaching as far as he could, he was just able to insert thecandle. The wind caught it, the kindling flames. Then he stoodshivering, waiting for the room to warm.
He had a sweeping flood of thoughts as he watched the leaping flame.Its cheerful crackle, its bright color in the gloom was almost too goodto be true. In these dark forests he had learned to be wary and onguard at too great fortune. Quite often it was only a prank of perverseforest gods, before they smote him with some black disaster. It seemedto him that there was a wild laughter, a Satanic mocking in the joyouscrackle that was vaguely but fearfully ominous. The promise in therainbow, the siren's song to the mariners, the little dancing light inthe marsh--promising warmth and safety but only luring the wearytraveler to this death--had this same quality: the cheer, the hope,the beauty only to be blasted by misfortune.
The warmth flooded in, and he looked about for something to sit on. Hewished he had brought in one of the spruce logs he had cut. But it wastoo late to procure one now. The flames leaped at the opening of thecabin: he would be obliged to crawl laboriously through them to get intothe open. Tired out, he lay down in the dry dirt, putting his arm underhis head. He would soon go to sleep.
But his ragged, exhausted nerves would not find rest in sleep at once.His thoughts were troubling and unpleasant. The pale firelight filledthe cabin, dancing against the walls. The glare reflected wanly on theground where he lay.
All at once he was aware that his eyes were fastened upon an old cigarbox on a shelf against the wall. He seemed to have a rememberedinterest in it,--as if long ago he had examined its contents withboyish speculations. But he couldn't remember what it contained.Likely enough it was empty.
The hours were long, and the wind wailed and crept like a housebreakerabout the cabin; and at last--rather more to pass the time than forany other reason--he climbed to his feet and stepped to the shelf onwhich the box lay.
As he reached to seize it, he had a distinct premonition of misfortune.It was as if some subtle consciousness within him, knowing andremembering every detail of his past and its infinite and exactrelations with his present, was warning him that to open the box was toreceive knowledge that would be hateful to him. Yet he would not becowed by such a visionary danger. He was tired out, his nerves weretorn, and he was prey to his own dark imaginings. Likely enough the boxwas empty.
It was not, however. It contained a single photograph.
His eye leaped over it. He remembered now; he had looked at it duringhis former visit to the cabin, years before. It was a typicalold-fashioned photograph--two men standing in stiff and awkward posesin an old-fashioned picture gallery--printed in the time-worn way. Nomodern photographer, however, could have caught a better likeness ormade a more distinct picture. It had obviously been one of his father'spossessions and had been left in the cabin.
One of the men was his own father. He had seen his photograph oftenenough to recognize it; besides, he remembered the man in the flesh.And he stared at the other face--a rather handsome, thin-lipped,sardonic-eyed face--as if he were looking at a ghost.
"Great God," he cried. "It's Harold Lounsbury!"
But instantly he knew it could not be Harold Lounsbury. The picture wasfully twenty-five years old and the face was that of a mature man,probably aged thirty. Harold Lounsbury himself was only thirty. Andnow, looking closer, he saw that the features were not quite the same.There was more breeding, more sensitiveness in Harold's face. And therewas also, dim and haunting, some slight resemblance to Kenly Lounsbury,whom he had brought up into Clearwater and who had gone back withVosper.
Yet already his inner consciousness was screaming in his ear theidentity of this man. Already he knew. It was no other than Rutheford,the man who later, in the cavern darkness, had struck his father down.
His deductions followed with deadly and remorseless certainty. He knewnow why Harold Lounsbury had come into Clearwater. Virginia had toldBill that her lover seemed to have some definite place in view for hisprospecting: he had simply come to search for the same lost mine thatBill had discovered the previous day. He knew now why Kenly Lounsburyhad been willing to finance Virginia's trip into the North,--not inhopes of finding his lost nephew, but to find the mine of which he alsohad some knowledge and thus repair the broken remnants of his fortune.In the same sweep of realization he knew why Harold Lounsbury's face hadalways haunted him and filled him with hazy, uncertain memories. He hadnever seen Harold before; but he had seen this photograph in his ownboyhood, and Harold's face had so resembled the one in the picture thatit had haunted and disturbed him.
Only too well he knew the truth. Harold Lounsbury was Rutheford'sson,--the son of his father's murderer. Kenly Lounsbury was Rutheford'sbrother. Both had come to Clearwater to repair their broken fortunesfrom the mine of which they both had knowledge. Whether it was guiltyknowledge or not no man could tell.
Such directions as Rutheford had given his son had been unavailingbecause of the snowslide that had changed the contour of the littlevalley where the mine lay. He understood now Harold's disappointmentand emotion when Bill had discovered the mine. Likely his own name wasHarold Rutheford, or else Rutheford's true name had been Lounsbury.Bill stood shivering all over with rage and hate.
Now he knew the road of vengeance! He had only to trace HaroldLounsbury back to his city--there to find his father's murderer. Hiseyes were glittering and terrible to see at the potentialities of thatfinding. Yet in an instant he knew that death had likely alreadyclaimed the elder Rutheford. Otherwise he himself would have comeback, long since, to recover the mine. He would be financing theexpedition, rather than his brother Kenly.
But by that stern old law, the law that goes down to the roots of theearth and whose justice lies in mystic balances beyond the sight of men,has it not been written that the sins of the father shall be visitedupon the son? It wasn't too late yet to command some measure ofpayment. In Virginia's own city lived the Lounsburys,--a proud andwealthy family, m
oving in the most haughty circles, patronizing thehumble, flattered and honored and exalted. But oh, he could break themdown! He could stamp their name with shame. He could not pay eye foreye and tooth for tooth, because Rutheford was likely already dead. Hecould not pay for his father's murder by striking down his murderer.But he could make Harold pay for his own wrongs. He could make himatone for the bitter moments of his youth and manhood, that irremediableloss of his boyhood. If Rutheford had left a widow he could make herpay for his own mother's sufferings.
As he stood in that bleak and lonely cabin, lost in the desolate wastesof snow, he was simply the clansman--the feudist--the primitiveavenger. Virginia too should know the crime, and the haunting sight ofthose pitiful bones in the dark cavern would rise before her eyeswhenever she sought Harold's arms. He would show her the picture; shecould see the murderer's face in her own lover's. She could never yieldto him then----
Virginia! Soft above the wail and complaint of the wind, he spoke hername. His star, his universe, the gracious, beautiful girl whosehappiness had been his one aim! And could he change that aim now?
The wind wept, the snow was swept before it in great, unearthly cloudsof white, the fire crackled and leaped at the opening in the cabin door.The northern winter night closed down, ever deeper, ever darker, evermore fraught with those mighty passions of the human soul. But heresponded no more to the wild music of the wind. The wildernesspassions no longer found an echo in his own heart. He had suddenlyremembered Virginia.
His face was like clay in the dancing light. His eyes were sunken andwere dark as night. He knew now where his course would lie. All atonce he knew by a knowledge true as life that this dark cabin, in thedark forest, must keep its secrets.
He could not wreak vengeance upon the man Virginia loved. He could nottake payment from her. The same law that had governed him before wasstill the immutable voice of his being, the basic and irrevocable law ofhis life. He could not blast her happiness with such a revelation asthis. His boyhood dream of vengeance would go the way of all his otherdreams,--like the smoke of a camp fire lost in the unmeasured spacesof the forest. The shadow that the dark woods had cast upon his spiritseemed to grow and deepen.
But he must act now, while his strength was upon him. To look againinto Harold's face might cost him his own resolve. To think of Virginiain his arms, her lips against his, the wicked blood of the man pulsingso close that she could thrill at it and hear it, might set him on fireagain. He must destroy the evidence. The night might bring his owndeath--he had a vague presentiment of disaster--and this photographmust never be found beside his body. She knew his father's story; herquick mind would leap to the truth at once. Besides, the destruction ofthe photograph--so that he could never look at it again--mightlessen his own bitterness and give him a little peace. He crumpled itin his hand, and turning, gave it to the flames at the cabin mouth.
And from the savage powers of Nature there came a strange and incredibleresponse. The wind shrieked, then seemed to ship about in the sky,completely changing direction. And all at once the smoke from the firebegan to pour in upon him, choking his lungs and filling his eyes withtears.
The Snowshoe Trail Page 21
