Edison Marshall

“ Ben sensed another side of the forest to-night because of his inborn love of the waste places not often seen. The thickets were menacing, sinister to-night. The spruce crept up to the skyline with darkness and mystery: he realized the eternal malevolence that haunts their silent fastnesses. They would have tricks in plenty to play on such as would lose their way on their dusky trails! Oh, they would have no mercy or remorse for any one who was lost, out there, to-night! Ben felt a heavy burden of dread! ”

“ In the east rose the moon, shining incredibly on the tree tops, showering down through the little rifts in the withholding branches, enchanting the place as by the weaving of a dream. The moon madness caught up Ben like a flame, enthralling him as never before. He knew that white sphere of old. And all at once he realized that here, at his knees, was one who knew it too,—with a knowledge as ancient and as infinite as his own. Not for nothing had the wolf breed lived their lives beneath it through the long roll of the ages. ”

“ The breath that is so fragrant and strange between the fronting rows of shacks is simply that of the forest: inept the woodsman who would not recognize it at once. The silence is a forest silence, and if the air is tense and electric, it is because certain wilderness forces that no white man can name but which surely dwell in the darker thickets have risen and are in possession.
It is not a time when human beings are at their best and strongest. There is an instinctive, haunting feeling which, though not fear, wakens a feeling of inadequacy and meekness. ”

“ The tenderness and mercy, most of all the restraint that has become manifest in men in these centuries since they have left their forest lairs to live in permanent abodes, had no place here. About them ringed the primeval forest, ensilvered by the moon; the fire crackled with a dread ferocity; and at the edge of the thickets the motionless form of Jeffery Neilson lay with face buried in the soft, summer grass. All was silent and motionless, except the fierce crackling of the fire; except a curious, intermittent, upward twitching of the corner of Ray's lips. ”

“ Fenris too knew the moon-madness; but unlike Ben he had a means of expression of the wonder and mystery and vague longing that thrilled his wild heart. No man who has heard the pack song to the moon could doubt this fact. It is a long, melancholy wail, poignant with the pain of living, but it tells what man can not.
Ben knew, now, why he was a forester, a woodsman famed even among woodsmen. Most of his fellows had been tamed by civilization; they had lived beneath roofs instead of the canopy of heaven, and they had almost forgotten about the moon. ”

“ For a moment they looked eyes into eyes—in the glory of that moon as strange a picture as the wood gods ever beheld. Once more the wolf call sounded. Fenris whimpered softly.
"Go ahead if you like," Ben told him. "God knows it's your destiny."
The wolf seemed to understand. With a glad bark he sped away and almost instantly vanished into the gloom.
But Fenris had not broken all ties with the cave. The chain was too strong for that, the hold on his wild heart too firm. If there is one trait, far and near in the wilds, that distinguishes the woods children, it is their inability to forget. ”

“ But now the real hour of crisis was at hand,—not from his illness, but from the depletion of their food supplies. Beatrice had spent a hard afternoon in the forest in search of roots and berries, and as she crept homeward, exhausted and almost empty-handed, the full, tragic truth was suddenly laid bare. Her own strength had waned. Without the miracle of a fresh food supply she could hardly keep on her feet another day. Plainly and simply, the wolf was at the door. His cruel fangs menaced not only her, but this stalwart man for whose life she had fought so hard. ”

“ Beatrice came to herself with the realization that she had uttered a shrill cry. Part of the impulse behind it was simply terror; but it was also the expression of an intensity of sensation never before experienced. She could have understood, now, the lure of the rapids to experienced canoeists. She forced herself to look into the wild cataract.
The boat sped at an unbelievable pace. Ben held his paddle like iron, yet with a touch as delicate as that of a great musician upon piano keys, and he steered his craft to the last inch. ”

“ He had not only found his forests, just as he had left them, but now again he was among the forest people. This girl was of his own breed, not a stranger; her standards were his; she was a woods girl no less than he was a woodsman. It is good to be among one's own people, those who can follow through and understand. She too knew the urge of unbridled vitality and spirit, common to all the woods children; and life's vivid meaning was her inheritance, no less than his. Her arms and lips were warm from fast-flowing blood, her nerves were vibrant and singing like his own. ”

“ Ben fought for life—not only his own but the girl's—that old, beloved privilege to breathe the air and see and know and be. He represented, by a strange symbolism, the whole race that has always fought in merciless and never-ending battle with the cruel and oppressive powers of nature. In the grizzly were typified all those ancient enemies that have always opposed, with claw and fang, this stalwart, self-knowing breed that has risen among the primates: he symbolized not only the Beast of the forest, but the merciless elements, storm and flood and cold and all the legions of death. ”

“ As fishermen came but rarely, the fish were in countless numbers; and in such a galaxy there were bound to be few misguided fish that did not know a sportsman's tackle from a dub's.
The joy of angling, once known, dwells in the body until death, and Ben was a born fisherman. The old delight that can never die crept back to him the instant he felt the clumsy rod in his hands and the faint throb of the line through the delicate mechanism of his nerves. And apparently for no other reason than that the river hordes wished to welcome him home, almost at once a gigantic bull salmon took his spoon. ”

“ But this grizzly, native to these uninhabited wilds, had no fear of man to forget. He did not know what man was, and he had not learned the death that dwells in the shining weapon he carries in his arms. No trappers mushed through his snows of spring; no woodsman rode his winding trails. True, from the first instant that the human smell had reached him on the wind he had been disturbed and discomfited; yet it was not grizzly nature to yield his den without a fight. The sight of the wolf—known to him of old—only wakened an added rage in his fierce heart. ”

“ It was as if he had searched forever for this place and had just found it, and it answered, to the full, a queer mood of silence in his own heart. The wind had died down now. The last wail of a coyote—disconsolate on a far-away ridge—had trembled away into nothingness; the voices of the Little People who had chirped and rustled in the tree aisles during the daylight hours were stilled with a breathless, dramatic stillness. Such sound as remained over the interminable breadth of that dark forest was only the faint stirrings and rustlings of the beasts of prey going to their hunting ”

“ It was a long trail, that which they followed along Poor Man's creek in the morning hours. The girl led, by right of having some previous acquaintance with the trail. The three pack horses walked in file between, heads low, tails whisking; and Ben, with Fenris at his horse's hoofs, brought up the rear. Almost at once the spruce forest dropped over them, the silence and the gloom that Ben had known of old.
This was not like gliding in a boat down-river. The narrow, winding trail offered a chance for the most intimate study of the wilderness. ”

“ There were no trails here, leading slowly but immutably to the busy centers of civilization; not a blaze on a tree for the eyes of a woodsman riding on some forest venture, not the ashes of a dead camp fire or a charred cooking rack, where an Indian had broiled his caribou flesh. Except by the slow process of exploration with pack horses, traveling a few miles each day, fording unknown rivers and encircling impassable ranges, or by waiting patiently until the fall rains swelled the river, they might never leave this land they had so boldly entered. ”

“ Because they had never known the love of man they utterly failed to understand. But in an instant Fenris would come back to them, the wild urge in his heart seemingly appeased by the mere assurance of Ben's presence and safety.
Ben himself was never aware of these midnight visits. The feet of the wolves were like falling feathers on the grass; and if sometimes, through the cavern maw, he half-wakened to catch the gleam of their wild eyes, he attributed it merely to the presence of skulking coyotes, curious concerning the dying coals of the fire. ”

“ Her dark eyes fell under his gaze.
The truth was that Ben's life had been singularly untouched by the influence of women. Mostly his life had been spent in the unpeopled forest, away from women of all kinds; and such creatures as had admired him in Seattle's underworld had never got close to him. He had had many dreams; but some way it had never been credible to him that he should ever know womanhood as a source of comradeship and happiness. Love and marriage had always seemed infinitely apart from his wild, adventurous life. ”

“ They knew and loved them all; they found ever-increasing enjoyment in the study of their shy ways and furtive occupations; they observed with delight the droll awkwardness of the moose calves, the impertinence and saucy speech of the jays, the humor of the black bear and the surly arrogance of the grizzly. They knew that superlative cunning of his wickedness, the wolverine; the stealth of the red fox; the ferociousness of the ermine whose brown skin, soon to be white, suggested only something silken and soft and tender instead of a fiendish cutthroat, terror of the Little People ”

“ To Ben the falling night brought a return of his most terrible moods. Beatrice sensed them in his pale, set face and his cold, wolfish eyes. The wolf sat beside him, swept by his master's mood, gazing with deadly speculations into the darkness. Beatrice saw them as one breed to-night. The wild had wholly claimed this repatriated son. The paw of the Beast was heavy upon him; the softening influences of civilization seemed wholly dispelled. There was little here to remind her that this was the twentieth century. The primitive that lies just under the skin in all men was in the ascendancy ”

“ Besides they were seeking a permanent camp where their fortunes would be cast, the drama of their lives be enacted, for weeks to come.
Almost at once they began to catch glimpses of wild life,—a squirrel romping on a limb; or a long line of grouse, like children in school, perched on a fallen log. The trapper had not yet laid his lines in this land, and the tracks of the little fur-bearers weaved a marvelous and intricate pattern on the moose trail. Once a marten with orange throat peered at them from a covert, and once a caribou raced away, too fast for a shot. ”

“ Ever the walls of the gorge grew more steep, until the sunlight was cut off and they rode as if in twilight. The stone of the precipices presented a marvellous array of color; and the spruce, almost black in the subdued light, stood in startling contrast. Ben saw at once that even were they able to land they could not—until they had emerged from the gorge—climb to the highlands. A mountain goat, most hardy of all mountaineers, could scarcely scale the abrupt wall. ”

“ Ben had always recalled the earlier types of man—his great-thewed ancestors, wild hunters in the forests of ancient Germany—but never so much as to-night. He was in his natural surroundings—at the mouth of his cave in which the Woman watched and exulted in his blows, enclosed by the primeval forest and beside the ashes of his fire. There could be nothing strange or unreal about this scene to Beatrice. It was more true than any soft vista of a far-away city could possibly be. It was life itself,—man battling for his home and his woman against the raw forces of the wild. ”

“ Mostly the wild things showed little fear or understanding of the two humans. The grouse relied on their protective coloration, just as when menaced by the beasts of prey. An otter, rarely indeed seen in daylight, hovered a moment beside a little stream to consider them; and a coyote, greatest of all cowards, lingered in their trail until they were within fifty feet of his grey form, then trotted shyly away.
"We won't starve for meat, that's certain," Ben informed her. His voice was subdued; he had fallen naturally into the mood of quietness that dwells ever in the primeval forest. ”

“ The Beast that dwells under every man's skin, in a greater or less degree, was in the full ascendancy at last. The unnamable ferocity that marks the death-leap of the wild hunters was in his face. In his eyes was cunning,—such craft as marks the pack in its hunting. All over him was written that unearthly rage that is alone the property and trait of the woods creatures: the fury with which a she-wolf fights for her cubs or a rattlesnake avenges the death of its mate. Mercy, remorse, compassion there was none. ”