The only possible explanation for the shot was that a rifle had been fired by some invader in their valley—in all probability Neilson or one of his men. Beatrice's absence would also indicate this fact: perhaps she had already joined her father and was on her way back to Snowy Gulch with him. In that case, why had he himself been spared?

He looked out of the door of the cavern, trying to get some idea of the lateness of the hour. The very quality of the darkness indicated that the night was far advanced. Neilson would not be hunting game at this hour. Was his own war—planned long ago—even now being waged in ways beyond his ken?

His old concern for Beatrice swept through him. With considerable difficulty he got to his feet, then holding on to the wail, guided himself to the shelf where they ordinarily kept their little store of matches. He scratched one of them against the wall.

In the flaring light his eyes made a swift but careful appraisal of his surroundings. The girl's cot had not been slept in; and to his great amazement he saw that their food supplies were spent. Still holding to the wall he walked to the cave mouth.

Instantly his keen eyes saw the far-off gleam of the camp fire on the distant margin of the lake. For all that the hour was late, it burned high and bright. He watched it, vaguely conscious of the insidious advance of a ghastly fear. Beatrice was his ally now—if these weeks had sent home one fact to him it was this—and her absence might easily indicate that she was helpless in the enemy's hands. The thing suggested ugly possibilities. Yet he could not aid her. He could scarcely walk; even the knife that he wore at his belt was missing, probably carried by Beatrice when she gathered roots in the woods.

But presently all questions as to his course were settled for him. His straining ear caught the faintest, almost imperceptible vibration in the air—a soundwave so dim and obscure that it seemed impossible that the human mind could interpret it—but Ben recognized it in a flash. In some great trouble and horror, in the sullen light of that distant camp fire, Beatrice had screamed for aid.

Only by the grace of the Red Gods had he heard the sound at all. Except for the fact that the half-mile intervening was as still as death, and that half the way the sound sped over water, he couldn't have hoped to perceive it. If the wind had blown elsewhere than straight toward him from the enemy camp, or if his marvelous sense of hearing had been less acute, the result would have been the same; and there could have been no answer from this dark man at the cave mouth who stood so tense and still. Finally, by instinct as much as by conscious intelligence, he identified the sound, marked it as a reality rather than a fancy, and read the tragic need behind it. Swiftly he started down the glade toward her.

Yet in a moment he knew that unless he conserved his strength he could not hope to make a fourth of the distance. At the first steps he swayed, half staggering. He had paid the price for his weeks of illness and his injuries. If he had been in a sick room, under a physician's care, he would have believed it impossible to walk unsupported across the room. But need is the mother of strength, and this was the test. Besides, he had had several days of convalescence that had put back into his sinews a measure of his mighty strength. Mostly he progressed by holding on to the trees, pulling himself forward step by step.

Likely he would come too late to change the girl's fate. Yet even now he knew he must not turn back. If the penalty were death, there must be no hesitancy in him; he must not withhold one step.

But it was a losing fight. The hill itself seemed endless; a hundred cruel yards of marsh must be traversed before ever he reached the nearest point by the lake. The enemy camp from where Beatrice had called to him lay on the far side of the lake, a distance of a full mile if he followed around the curving shore. And black and bitter self-hatred swept like fire through him when he realized that he could not possibly keep on his feet for so long a way.

Was this all he had fought for—surging upward through these long, weary weeks out of the shadow of death—only to fall dead on the trail in the moment of Beatrice's need? Instantly he knew that nothing in his life, no other desire or dream, had ever meant as much to him as this: that he might reach her side in time. Even his desire for vengeance, in that twilight madness, like Roland's, that had shaped his destiny, had been wavering and feeble compared to this. And no moment of his existence had ever been so dark, so bereft of the last, dim star of hope that lights men's way in the deep night of despair.

He gave no thought to the fact of his own helplessness against three armed men in case he did succeed in reaching their camp. The point could not possibly be considered. The imperious instincts that forced him on simply could not take it into reckoning. He knew only he must reach her side and put in her service all that he had.

He fell again and again as he tried to make headway in the marsh. But always he forced himself up and on. Only too plain he saw that the time was even now upon him when he could no longer keep his feet at all. But still he plunged on, and with tragically slow encroachments the shore line drew up to him.

But he could not go on. The fire itself was hardly a quarter of a mile distant, directly across the lake, but to follow the long shore was an insuperable mile. Already his leg muscles were failing him, refusing to the respond to the impulse of his nerves. Yet it might be that if he could make himself heard his enemies would leave the girl for a moment, at least—give her an instant's respite—while they came and dispatched his own life. Whatever they were doing to her, there in that ring of firelight, might be stayed for a moment, at least.

But at that instant he remembered the canoe. He had always kept it hidden in a little thicket of tall reeds,—if only the girl had not removed it from its place in his weeks of sickness! He plunged down into the tall tules. Yes, the boat was still in place.

It took all the strength of his weakened body to push it out from the reeds into the water. Then he seized the long pole they had sometimes used to propel themselves over the lake. Except for his injured arm, the paddle would have been better—he could have made better time and escaped the danger of being stranded in deep water—but he doubted that he could handle it with his faltering arm. He pushed off, putting most of the strain on his uninjured right arm.

The canoe was strongly but lightly made, so that it could be portaged with greatest possible ease; and his strokes, though feeble, propelled it slowly through the water. The great, white full moon, beloved of long ago, looked down from above the tall, dark heads of the spruce and changed the little water-body into a miracle of burnished silver. In its light Ben's face showed pale, but with a curious, calm strength.

The lake seemed untouched by the faint breath of wind that blew from the distant shore. The waters lay quiet, and the trout beneath saw the black shadow of the canoe as it passed. A cow moose and her calf sprang up the bank with a splash, frightened by the poling figure in the stern. And on the far shore, clear where the lake had its outlet in a small river, even more keen wilderness eyes might have beheld the black, moving dot that was the craft. But the distance was too far and the wind was wrong for the keen mind behind the eyes to make any sort of an interpretation.

It might have been that Fenris the wolf, running with a female and two younger males that he had mastered that long-ago night on the ridge, paused in his hunting to watch and wonder. But his wild brute thoughts were not under the bondage of memory to-night; his savage heart was thrilled and full; and more than likely he did not even turn his head.

Ray and Chan, standing beside their prisoner in their grisly camp on the opposite shore, might have beheld Ben's approach if weightier matters had not occupied their minds. They had only to walk to the edge of the firelight and stare down through a rift in the trees to see him. But they stood with the angry glare revealing a strange and sinister intentness in their drawn faces and ominous speculations in their evil eyes.



XLI

It was a wilderness moon that rose over the spruce to-night,—white as new silver, incredibly large, inscrutably mysterious. The winds had whisked away the last pale cloud that might have dimmed its glory, and its light poured down with equal bounty on peak and hill, forest and yellow marsh. The heavy woods partook most deeply of its enchantment: tall, stately trees pale and nebulous as if with silver frost, each little stream dancing and shimmering in its light, every glade laid with a fairy tapestry, every shadow dreadful and black in contrast. The wilderness breathed and shivered as if swept with passion.

The wilderness moon is the moon of desire; and all this great space of silence seemed to respond. It seemed to throb, like one living entity, as if in longing for something lost long ago—a half-forgotten happiness, a glory and a triumph that were gone never to return. No creatures that followed the woods trails were dull and flat to-night. They were all swept with mystery, knowing vague longings or fierce desires. It was the harvest moon; but here it did not light the fields so that men might harvest grain. Rather it illumined the hunting trails so that the beasts of prey might find relief from the wild lusts and seething ferment that was in their veins. But mostly the forest mood was disconsolate, rather than savage, to-night. The wild geese on the lake called their weird and plaintive cries, their strange complaints that no man understands; the loons laughed in insane despair; and the coyotes on the ridge wailed out the pain of living and the vague longings of their wild hearts.

In the glory of that moon Fenris the wolf knew the same, resistless longings that so many times before had turned him from the game trails. There was something here that was unutterably dear to him,—something that drew him, called him like a voice, and he could not turn aside. Because he was a beast, he likely did not know the force that was drawing him again along the lake shore. Yet the souls of the lower creatures no man knows; and perhaps he had conscious longings, profoundly intense, for a moment's touch of a strong hand on his shoulder,—one never-to-be-forgotten caress from a certain god that had gone to a cave to live. It was true that his wild instincts, ever more in dominance these past weeks, would likely halt him at the cavern maw, permitting no intimacy other than to ascertain that all was well. They were too strong ever to brook man's control again. The moon was a moon of desire, but only because it was also the moon of memory,—and perhaps memories, stirring and exalting, were sweeping through him. Straight as an arrow he turned toward the cave.

His followers—the gaunt female and two younger males, the structure about which the winter pack would form—hesitated at first. They had no commanding memories of the cavern on the far side of the lake. Yet Fenris was their leader; by the deep-lying laws of the pack they must follow where he led. They could not decoy him into the trails of game. As ever they sped swiftly, silently after him.

In this forest of desires Ben knew but one,—that he might yet be of aid to Beatrice. But he knew in his heart that it was a vain hope. He was within a hundred yards of Ray's camp now, but the struggle to reach the lake and the poling across its waters had brought him seemingly to the absolute limit of his strength, clear to the brink of utter exhaustion. Never in his life before had he known the full meaning of fatigue,—fatigue that was like a paralysis, blunting the mechanism of the brain, burning like a slow fire in his muscles, poisoning the vital fluids of his nerves. Stroke after stroke, never ceasing!—The flame was high, crackling—just before him. Through a rift in the trees he could see the outline of two men and the slim form of the girl. Just a few yards more.

But of all the desires that the moon invoked in the woods people there were none so unredeemed, so wicked and cruel as this that slowly wakened in the evil hearts of these two degenerate men, Beatrice's captors. She sensed it only vaguely at first. All the disasters that had fallen upon her had not taught her to accept such a thing as this: surely this would be spared her, at least. There is a kindly blind spot in the brain that often will not let the ugly truth go home.

For a strange, still moment Ray's face seemed devoid of all expression. It was flat and lifeless as dark clay. Then Beatrice felt the insult of his quickening gaze.

"Put a rope around her wrists, Chan," he said. "We don't want to take chances on her getting away."

He spoke slowly, rather flatly. There was nothing that her senses could seize upon—either in his face or voice to justify the swift, strangling, killing horror that came upon her. He stood simply gazing, and as she met his gaze her lips parted and drew back in a grimace of terror; thus they stood until the blood began to leap fast in Chan's veins. She needed no further disillusionment. Chan spoke behind her, a startled oath cut off short, and she felt him moving swiftly toward her. It was her last instant of respite; and her muscle set and drew for a final, desperate attempt at self-defense.

She wore Ben's knife at her belt, and her hand sped toward it. But the motion, fast as it was, came too late. Chan saw it; and leaping swiftly, his arms went about her and pinned her own arms to her sides.

She tried in vain to fight her way out of his grasp. She writhed, screaming; and in the frenzy of her fear she all but succeeded in hurling him off. She managed to draw the knife clear of the sheath, yet she couldn't raise her arm to strike. Ray was aiding his confederate now; and in an instant more she was helpless.

Their drawn faces bent close to hers. She felt their hot hands as they drew her wrists in front of her and fastened them with a rope. "Not too tight, Chan," Ray advised. "We don't want her to get uncomfortable before we're done with her. Don't tie her ankles; she can't run through the brush with her arms tied.—Now give her a moment to breathe."

They stood on each side of her, regarding her with secret, growing excitement. Already they had descended too far to know pity for this girl. The wide-open eyes, so dark with terror and in contrast with the stark paleness of her face, the lips that trembled so piteously, the slender, girlish figure so helpless to their depraved desires moved them not at all.

The scene was one of never-to-be-forgotten vividness. 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.

"So you and Ben are bunkies now, are you?" he asked slowly, without emphasis.

But the girl made no reply, only gazing at him with starting eyes.

"A traitor to us, and Ben's squaw!" He turned fiercely to Chan. "I guess that gives us right to do what we want to with her. And now she can yell if she wants to for her lover to come and save her."

She did not even try to buy their mercy by informing them where they might find Ben. Only too well she knew that their dreadful intentions could not be turned aside: she would only sacrifice Ben without aiding herself. Ray moved toward her, his eyes deeply sunken, the pupils abnormally enlarged.

"You haven't lost all your looks," he told her breathlessly. "That mouth is still pretty enough to kiss. And I guess you won't slap—this time—"

He drew her toward him, his dark face lowering toward hers. She struggled, trying to wrench away from him. Helpless and alone, the moment of final horror was at hand. In this last instant her whole being leaped again to Ben,—the man whose strength had been her fort throughout all their first weeks in the wilds, but whom she had left helpless and sick in the distant cavern. Yet even now he would rise and come to her if he knew of her peril. Her voice rose shrilly to a scream. "Ben—help me!"

And Ray's hands fell from her shoulders as he heard the incredible answer from the shore of the lake. The brush rustled and cracked: there was a strange sound of a heavy footfall,—slow, unsteady, but approaching them as certain as the speeding stars approach their mysterious destinations in the far reaches of the sky. Ray straightened, staring; Chan stood as if frozen, his hands half-raised, his eyes wide open.

"I'm coming, Beatrice," some one said in the coverts. Her cries, uttered when her father fell, had not gone unheard. In the last stages of exhaustion, deathly pale yet with a face of iron, Ben came reeling toward them out of the moonlight.



XLII

Ben walked quietly into the circle of firelight and stood at Beatrice's side. But while Ray and Chan gazed at him as if he were a spectre from the grave, Beatrice's only impulse was one of immeasurable and unspeakable thankfulness. No fate on earth was so dreadful but that it would be somewhat alleviated by the fact of his presence: just the sight of him, standing beside her, put her in some vague way out of Ray's power to harm. Exhausted, reeling, he was still the prop of her life and hope.

"Here I am," he said quietly. "The letter's in my pocket. Do what you want with me—but let Beatrice go."

His words brought Ray to himself in some degree at least. The ridiculous fear of the moment before speedily passed away. Why, the man was exhausted—helpless in their hands—and the letter was in his pocket. It meant triumph—nothing else. All Ray's aims had been attained. With Ben's death the claim, a fourth of which had been his motive when he had slain Ezram, would pass entirely to him,—except for such share as he would have to give Chan. His star of fortune was in the sky. It was his moment of glory,—long-awaited but enrapturing him at last.

Neilson lay seriously wounded, perhaps dead by now. Whatever his injuries, he would not go back with them to share in the gold of the claim. The girl, also, was his prey,—to do with what he liked.

"I see you've come," he answered. "You might as well; we'd have found you to-morrow." His voice was no longer flat, but rather exultant, boasting. "You thought you could get away—but we've shown you."

Ben nodded. "You are—" he strained for the name he had heard Beatrice speak so often—"Ray Brent?" His eyes fell to the form of Neilson, wounded beyond the fire. "I see you've been at your old job—killing. It was you who killed Ezra Melville."

Ray smiled, ever so faintly: this was what he loved. "You're talking to the right man. Anything you'd like to do about it?"

Ben's face hardened. "There is nothing I can do, now. You came too late. But I would have had something to do if I had my rifle. I'm glad it was you, not Beatrice's father. I ask you this—will you accept my proposition. To take Ezram's letter, destroy it and me too—and let the girl go in safety?"

Beatrice stretched her bound arms and touched his hairy wrist. "No, Ben," she told him quietly. "There's no use of trying to make such a bargain as that. Men that murder—and assault women,—won't keep their word."

"They were about to attack you, were they?" His voice dropped a tone; otherwise it seemed the same.

"Yes—just as you came."

He turned once more to Ray, eyeing him with such a look of contempt and scorn that it smarted like a whiplash in spite of the protecting mantel of his new-found triumph. "Oh, you depraved dogs!" he told them quietly and distinctly. "You yellow, mongrel cowards!"

Ray straightened, stung by the words. "And I'll make you wish you was dead before you ever said that," he threatened. "I'll tell you what you wanted to know a minute ago—and I tell you no. I won't make any deal with you. We'll do what we like to you, and we'll do what we like with your dirty squaw, too—the woman you've been living with all these months. We've got you where we want you. You're in no fix to make terms. Chan—put a rope around his legs and a gag in his rotten mouth!"

They moved toward him simultaneously, and Ben summoned the last jot of his almost-spent strength to hurl them off. They did not need deadly weapons for this wasted form. Yet for the duration of one second Ben fought with an incredible ferocity and valor.

He hurled Chan from his path, and his sound right arm leaped to Ray's throat in a death grip. For that one instant his old-time strength returned to him,—as to Samson as his arms went about the pillars of the temple. They found him no weakling, in that first instant, but a deadly, fighting beast, the "Wolf" Darby of the provinces,—his finger nails sinking ever deeper into the flesh of Ray's throat, his body braced against Chan's attack. And for all that Beatrice's arms were tied, she leaped like a she-wolf to her lover's aid.

But such an unequal battle could last only an instant. Ray focused his attack upon Ben's injured left arm, Chan struck once at the girl, hurling her to the ground with a base blow, then lashed brutal blows into Ben's face. The burst of strength ebbed as quickly as it had come: his legs wilted under him, and he sank slowly to the ground.

Maddened with battle, for a moment more Chan lashed cowardly blows into his face; and he left the brutal labor only to help Ray affix ropes about his ankles. Then the two conquerors stood erect, breathing loudly.

Seemingly the utter limit of their brutality was reached,—but for the moment only. A strange and foreboding silence fell over the camp: only the sound of troubled breathing was heard above the lessening crackle of the fire. They did not turn at once again to the work of crushing Ben's life out with their fists and boots, nor did they restrain Beatrice as she crawled over the blood-stained grass to reach her lover's side.

"Let her go," Ray said to Charley. "She can't help him any."

It was true. They had put up their last defense. The girl crept nearer, lying almost prone beside him, and her soft hands stole over his bruised flesh. But no tears came now. She was past the kindly mercy of tears. She could only gaze at him, and sometimes dry half-sobs clutched at her throat. The man half-opened his eyes, smiling.

Life still remained in his rugged body. Even the cruel test of the last hour had not taken that from him. The sturdy heart still beat, and the breath still whispered through his lips: there was life in plenty to afford such sport as Ray and Chan might have for him.

The last, least quality of redemption—such magic and beauty as might have been wrought by the firelight dancing over the moonlit glade—was quite gone now. The powers of wickedness were in the ascendency, and this was only the abode of horror. Yet it was all tragically true, not a nightmare from which she would soon waken. This was the remote heart of Back There—a primeval land where the demons of lust and death walked unrestrained—and the shadow of the moonlit trees fell dark upon her.

The back logs were burning dully now, and the coals were red, and Chan and Ray took seats on a huge, dead spruce to talk over their further plans. It was all easy enough. They could linger here, living mostly on meat, until the rising waters of the Yuga could carry them down to the Indian villages. Their methods and procedure in regard to Ben were the only remaining questions.

For a few minutes they took little notice of the prone figures at the far edge of the fading firelight. In their hands they were as helpless as Jeffery Neilson, left already by the receding radiance to the soft mercy of the shadows. Attention could be given them soon enough. Their own triumph was beginning to give way to deep fatigue.

Ben and Beatrice had talked softly at first, accepting their fate at last and trying to forget all things but the fact of each other's presence. They had kept the faith to-night, they had both been true; and perhaps they had conquered, in some degree, the horror of death. His right hand held hers close to his lips, and only she could understand the message in its soft pressure, and the gentle, kindly shadows in his quiet eyes. But presently her gaze fastened on some object in the grass beside him.

He did not understand at first. He knew enough not to attract his enemies' attention by trying to turn. The girl relaxed again, but her hand throbbed in his, and her eyes shone somberly as if the luster of some strange, dark hope.

"What is it?" he asked whispering.

"I see a way out—for us both," she told him. She knew he would not misunderstand and dream that she saw an actual avenue to life and safety. "Don't give any sign."

"Then hurry," he urged. "They may be back any instant. What is it?"

"A way to cheat 'em—to keep them from torturing you—and to save me—from all the things they'll do to me—when you're dead. Oh, Ben—you won't fail me—you'll do it for me."

He smiled, gently and strongly. "Do you think I'd fail you now?"

"Then reach your good arm on the other side—soft as you can. There's a knife lying there—your own knife—they knocked out of my hand. They'll jump at the first gleam. You know what to do—first me, in the throat—then yourself."

His face showed no horror at her words. They were down to the most terrible realities; and as she had said, this was the way out! The great kindness still dwelt in his eyes—and she knew he would do as she asked.

One gleam of steal, one swift touch at the throat—and they would never know the unspeakable fate that their depraved captors planned for them. It was no less than victory in the last instant of despair! It was freedom: although they did not know into what Mystery and what Fear the act would dispatch them, it was freedom from Ray and Chan, none the less. And Ben welcomed the plan as might a prisoner, waiting in the death-cell, welcome a reprieve.

He turned, groping with his hand. There was no use of waiting longer. The knife lay just beyond his reach; and softly he moved his body through the grass.

But this gate to mercy was closed before they reached it. A sudden flaring of the fire revealed them—the gleam of the blade and Ben's stretching hand—and Ray left his log in a swift, catlike leap.

If Ben had possessed full use of both hands there still might have been time to send home the two crucial blows, or at least to dispatch Beatrice out of Ray's power to harm. But his injured arm impeded him, and his hand fumbled as he tried to seize the hilt. With a sharp oath Ray crushed the blade into the ground with his heel; then kicked viciously at the prone body of his enemy.

And at that first base blow his rage and blood-lust that had been gathering was swiftly freed. It was all that was needed to set him at the work of torture. For an instant he stood almost motionless except for the spasmodic twitching—now almost continuous—at his lips and for the slow turning of his head as he looked about for a weapon with which he could more quickly satiate the murder-madness in his veins. The knife appealed to him not at all; but his eye fell on a long, heavy club of spruce that had been cut for fuel. He bent and his strong hands seized it.

As he swung it high the girl leaped between—with a last, frantic effort, wholly instinctive—to shield Ben's body with her own. But it was only an instant's reprieve. Chan had followed Ben, and sharing Ray's fiendish mood, jerked her aside. Ben raised himself up as far as he could at a final impulse to thrust the girl out of harm's way.

Yet it was to be that Ray's murderous blow was never to go home. A mighty and terrible ally had come to Ben's aid. He came pouncing from the darkness, a gaunt and dreadful avenger whose code of death was as remorseless as Ray's own.

It was Fenris the wolf, and he had found his master at last. Missing him at the accustomed place in the cave, he had trailed him to the lake margin: a smell on the wind had led him the rest of the way. He was not one to announce his coming by an audible footfall in the thicket. Like a ghost he had glided almost to the edge of the firelight, lingering there—with a caution learned in these last wild weeks of running with his brethren—until he had made up his brute mind in regard to the strangers in the camp. But he had waited only until he saw Ray kick the helpless form before him,—that of the god that Fenris, for all the wild had claimed him, still worshipped in his inmost heart. With fiendish, maniacal fury he had sprung to avenge the blow.

And his three followers, trained by the pack laws to follow where he led, and keyed to the highest pitch by their leader's fury, leaped like gray demons of the Pit in his wake.



XLII

As a young tree breaks and goes down in the gale Ray Brent went down before the combined attack of the wolves. What desperate struggle he made only seemed to increase their fury and shatter him the faster. Utterly futile were all his blows: his frantic, piercing screams of fear and agony raised to heaven, but were answered with no greater mercy than that he would have shown to Ben a moment before.

Seemingly in an instant he was on his back and the ravening pack were about him in a ring. In that lurid firelight their fangs gleamed like ivory as they flashed, here and there, over his body and throat, and their fierce eyes blazed with pale-blue fire,—the mark and sign of the blood madness of the beasts of prey.

Seemingly in a single instant the life had been torn from him, leaving only a strange, huddled, ghastly thing beside the dying fire. But the pack leaped from him at once. Fenris had caught sight of Chan's figure as he ran for the nearest tree and seemingly with one leap he was upon him. He sprang at him from the side; and his fangs gleamed once.

He had struck true, his fangs went home, and the life went out of Chan Heminway in a single, neighing scream. He pitched forward, shuddered once in the soft grass, and lay still. The pack surged around his body, struck at it once or twice, then stood growling as if waiting for their leader's command.

Before ever Ray fell, Ben had taken what measures of self-defense he could in case the pack, forgetting its master's master, might turn on himself and the girl. He had reached the knife hilt and severed the ropes about the girl's wrists. "Stay behind me," he cautioned. "Don't move a muscle."

He knew that any attempt to reach and climb a tree would attract the attention of the pack and send them ravening about her. Again he knew that her life as well as his own depended on his control of the pack leader. He saw Chan go down, seemingly in a single instant, and he braced himself against attack. "Down, Fenris!" he shouted. "Down—get down!"

The great wolf started at the voice, then stood beside the fallen, gazing at Ben with fierce, luminous eyes. "Down, down, boy," Ben cautioned, in a softer voice. "There, old fellow—down—down."

Then Fenris whined in answer, and Ben knew that he was no longer to be feared. The three lesser wolves seemed startled, standing in a nervous group, yet growling savagely and eyeing him across the dying fire. For a moment Fenris's fury had passed to them, but now that his rage was dead, all they had left was an inborn fear of such a breed as this,—these tall forms that died so easily in their fangs. Fenris trotted slowly toward Ben, but with the true instincts of the wild his followers knew that this was no affair of fangs and death. He came in love, in a remembered comradeship, just as often he had led them to the mouth of the cavern, and they did not understand. They slowly backed away into the shadows, fading like ghosts.

Ben's arms, in unspeakable gratitude, went about the shoulders of the wolf. Beatrice, sobbing uncontrollably yet swept with that infinite thankfulness of the redeemed, crept to his side. Fenris whined and shivered in the arms of his god.

Quietude came at last to that camp beside the lake, in the far, hidden heart of Back There. Once more the blood moved with sweet, normal tranquillity in the veins, the thrill and stir died in the air, and the moonlight was beautiful on the spruce.

The wolves had gone. Fenris's three brethren had slipped away, perhaps wholly mystified and deeply awed by their madness of a moment before; and from the ridge top they had called for their leader to join them. He had done his work, he had avenged the base blow that had seemed to strike at his own wild heart, he had received the caress he had craved,—and there was no law for him to stay. The female called enticingly; the wild game was running for his pleasure on the trails.

Ben had watched the struggle in his fierce breast, and Beatrice's eyes were soft and wonderfully lustrous in the subdued light as she gave the wolf a parting caress. But he could not stay with them. The primal laws of his being bade otherwise. His was the way of the open trails, the nights of madness and the rapture of hunting—and these were folk of the caves! They were not his people, although his love for them burned like fire in his heart.

He could not deny the call of his followers on the ridge. It was like a chain, drawing him remorselessly to them. Whining, he had sped away into the darkness.

The fire had been built up, Beatrice had rallied her spent strength by full feeding of the rich, dried meat, and had done what she could for Neilson's injury. Ben, exhausted, had lain down in some of the blankets of his enemy's outfit. Neilson was not, however, mortally hurt. The bullet had coursed through the region of his shoulder, missing his heart and lungs, and although he was all but unconscious, they had every reason to believe that a few weeks of rest would see him well again.

Beatrice bathed the wound, bandaged it the best she could, then covered him up warmly and let him go to sleep. And the time came at last, long past the midnight hour, that she crept once more to Ben's side.

There was little indeed for them to say. The stress of the night had taken from them almost all desire to talk. But Ben took her hand in his feebly, and held it against his lips.

"We're safe now," Beatrice told him, her eye's still bright with tears. "We've seen it through, and we're safe."

Ben nodded happily. It was true: there was nothing further for them to fear. With the aid of the rifles of the three fallen, they could procure meat in plenty for their remaining time at Back There; besides, the store of jerked caribou and moose was enough to hold them over. When the rains came again, the three of them—Neilson and Ben and Beatrice—could glide on down to the Indian encampments in the canoe. Thence they could reach the white settlements beyond the mountains.

Her glance into the future went still farther, because she knew certain news that as yet Ben had not heard. She had heard from Ray's lips that night that Ben's claim had been legally filed; he had only to return and take possession. It straightened out the future, promised success in the battle of life, gave him an interest to hold him in these northern forests. But she would not tell him to-night. It could wait for a more quiet hour.

Presently she saw that he was trying to speak to her, whispering; trying to draw her ear down to his lips. She smiled, with an infinite tenderness. Dimly though he spoke, she heard him every word.

"I love you," he told her simply. He watched her face, as intently as the three Wise Men watched the East, for a sign. And he saw it, clear and ineffably wonderful, in the stars that came into her eyes.

"I love you," she answered, with equal simplicity. They lay a while in silence, blissful in this wonder each had for the other, wholly content just that their hands and lips should touch.

The same miracle was upon them both; and the girl's thought, ranging far, seized upon a deep and moving discovery. "All this belongs to us," she told him, indicating with one movement of her arm the boundless solitudes about them. "This is our own country, isn't it, Ben? We can't ever—go away."

It was true: they could never leave the forest for long. They were its children, bred in the bone. Their strong thews would waste in a gentler land. It was their heritage. They must not go where they could not behold the dark line of the forest against the sky.

The fire burned down. The moon wheeled through the sky. The tall spruce saw the dawn afar and beckoned.

THE END.