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William Makepeace Thackeray - "Barry Lyndon"

Georg Ebers - "The Emperor, Part 1, Volume 3."

Arthur Scott Bailey - "The Tale of Brownie Beaver"

David Widger - "Quotations From John Lothrop Motley"

The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail




He did not know where he was going, any more than did the bull moose
plunging through the trackless wilderness to his mate. Instinct, the
instinct of all wild natural creatures, led him. And so, without
thought, without clear intention even,--most would say by accident,--
he saw her again. It was near the "pole trail"; which was less like
a trail than a rail-fence.

For when the snows are deep and snowshoes not the property of every
man who cares to journey, the old-fashioned "pole trail" comes into
use. It is merely a series of horses built of timber across which
thick Norway logs are laid, about four feet from the ground, to
form a continuous pathway. A man must be a tight-rope walker to
stick to the pole trail when ice and snow have sheathed its logs.
If he makes a misstep, he is precipitated ludicrously into feathery
depths through which he must flounder to the nearest timber horse
before he can remount. In summer, as has been said, it resembles
nothing so much as a thick one-rail fence of considerable height,
around which a fringe of light brush has grown.

Thorpe reached the fringe of bushes, and was about to dodge under
the fence, when he saw her. So he stopped short, concealed by the
leaves and the timber horse.

She stood on a knoll in the middle of a grove of monster pines.
There was something of the cathedral in the spot. A hush dwelt in
the dusk, the long columns lifted grandly to the Roman arches of
the frond, faint murmurings stole here and there like whispering
acolytes. The girl stood tall and straight among the tall, straight
pines like a figure on an ancient tapestry. She was doing nothing--
just standing there--but the awe of the forest was in her wide,
clear eyes.

The great sweet feeling clutched the young man's throat again. But
while the other,--the vision of the frost-work glade and the spirit-
like figure of silence,--had been unreal and phantasmagoric, this was
of the earth. He looked, and looked, and looked again. He saw the
full pure curve of her cheek's contour, neither oval nor round, but
like the outline of a certain kind of plum. He appreciated the half-
pathetic downward droop of the corners of her mouth,--her red mouth
in dazzling, bewitching contrast to the milk-whiteness of her skin.
He caught the fineness of her nose, straight as a Grecian's, but
with some faint suggestion about the nostrils that hinted at piquance.
And the waving corn silk of her altogether charming and unruly hair,
the superb column of her long neck on which her little head poised
proudly like a flower, her supple body, whose curves had the long
undulating grace of the current in a swift river, her slender white
hand with the pointed fingers--all these he saw one after the other,
and his soul shouted within him at the sight. He wrestled with the
emotions that choked him. "Ah, God! Ah, God!" he cried softly to
himself like one in pain. He, the man of iron frame, of iron nerve,
hardened by a hundred emergencies, trembled in every muscle before
a straight, slender girl, clad all in brown, standing alone in the
middle of the ancient forest.

In a moment she stirred slightly, and turned. Drawing herself to
her full height, she extended her hands over her head palm outward,
and, with an indescribably graceful gesture, half mockingly bowed a
ceremonious adieu to the solemn trees. Then with a little laugh she
moved away in the direction of the river.

At once Thorpe proved a great need of seeing her again. In his
present mood there was nothing of the awe-stricken peace he had
experienced after the moonlight adventure. He wanted the sight of
her as he had never wanted anything before. He must have it, and he
looked about him fiercely as though to challenge any force in Heaven
or Hell that would deprive him of it. His eyes desired to follow
the soft white curve of her cheek, to dance with the light of her
corn-silk hair, to delight in the poetic movements of her tall,
slim body, to trace the full outline of her chin, to wonder at
the carmine of her lips, red as a blood-spot on the snow. These
things must be at once. The strong man desired it. And finding it
impossible, he raged inwardly and tore the tranquillities of his
heart, as on the shores of the distant Lake of Stars, the bull-
moose trampled down the bushes in his passion.

So it happened that he ate hardly at all that day, and slept ill,
and discovered the greatest difficulty in preserving the outward
semblance of ease which the presence of Tim Shearer and the
Fighting Forty demanded.

And next day he saw her again, and the next, because the need of
his heart demanded it, and because, simply enough, she came every
afternoon to the clump of pines by the old pole trail.

Now had Thorpe taken the trouble to inquire, he could have learned
easily enough all there was to be known of the affair. But he did
not take the trouble. His consciousness was receiving too many new
impressions, so that in a manner it became bewildered. At first,
as has been seen, the mere effect of the vision was enough; then
the sight of the girl sufficed him. But now curiosity awoke and
a desire for something more. He must speak to her, touch her hand,
look into her eyes. He resolved to approach her, and the mere
thought choked him and sent him weak.

When he saw her again from the shelter of the pole trail, he dared
not, and so stood there prey to a novel sensation,--that of being
baffled in an intention. It awoke within him a vast passion
compounded part of rage at himself, part of longing for that which
he could not take, but most of love for the girl. As he hesitated
in one mind but in two decisions, he saw that she was walking
slowly in his direction.

Perhaps a hundred paces separated the two. She took them
deliberately,
pausing now and again to listen, to pluck a leaf, to smell the
fragrant balsam and fir tops as she passed them. Her progression
was a series of poses, the one of which melted imperceptibly into
the other without appreciable pause of transition. So subtly did
her grace appeal to the sense of sight, that out of mere sympathy
the other senses responded with fictions of their own. Almost could
the young man behind the trail savor a faint fragrance, a faint music
that surrounded and preceded her like the shadows of phantoms. He
knew it as an illusion, born of his desire, and yet it was a noble
illusion, for it had its origin in her.

In a moment she had reached the fringe of brush about the pole trail.
They stood face to face.

She gave a little start of surprise, and her hand leaped to her
breast, where it caught and stayed. Her childlike down-drooping
mouth parted a little more, and the breath quickened through it.
But her eyes, her wide, trusting, innocent eyes, sought his and
rested.

He did not move. The eagerness, the desire, the long years of
ceaseless struggle, the thirst for affection, the sob of awe at the
moonlit glade, the love,--all these flamed in his eyes and fixed his
gaze in an unconscious ardor that had nothing to do with convention
or timidity. One on either side of the spike-marked old Norway log
of the trail they stood, and for an appreciable interval the duel
of their glances lasted,--he masterful, passionate, exigent; she
proud, cool, defensive in the aloofness of her beauty. Then at
last his prevailed. A faint color rose from her neck, deepened,
and spread over her face and forehead. In a moment she dropped
her eyes.

"Don't you think you stare a little rudely--Mr. Thorpe?" she asked.



Chapter XL


The vision was over, but the beauty remained. The spoken words of
protest made her a woman. Never again would she, nor any other
creature of the earth, appear to Thorpe as she had in the silver
glade or the cloistered pines. He had had his moment of insight.
The deeps had twice opened to permit him to look within. Now they
had closed again. But out of them had fluttered a great love and the
priestess of it. Always, so long as life should be with him, Thorpe
was destined to see in this tall graceful girl with the red lips
and the white skin and the corn-silk hair, more beauty, more of the
great mysterious spiritual beauty which is eternal, than her father
or her mother or her dearest and best. For to them the vision had
not been vouchsafed, while he had seen her as the highest symbol of
God's splendor.

Now she stood before him, her head turned half away, a faint flush
still tingeing the chalk-white of her skin, watching him with a dim,
half-pleading smile in expectation of his reply.

"Ah, moon of my soul! light of my life!" he cried, but he cried
it within him, though it almost escaped his vigilance to his lips.
What he really said sounded almost harsh in consequence.

"How did you know my name?" he asked.

She planted both elbows on the Norway and framed her little face
deliciously with her long pointed hands.

"If Mr. Harry Thorpe can ask that question," she replied, "he is
not quite so impolite as I had thought him."

"If you don't stop pouting your lips, I shall kiss them!" cried
Harry--to himself.

"How is that?" he inquired breathlessly.

"Don't you know who I am?" she asked in return.

"A goddess, a beautiful woman!" he answered ridiculously enough.

She looked straight at him. This time his gaze dropped.

"I am a friend of Elizabeth Carpenter, who is Wallace Carpenter's
sister, who I believe is Mr. Harry Thorpe's partner."

She paused as though for comment. The young man opposite was
occupied in many other more important directions. Some moments
later the words trickled into his brain, and some moments after
that he realized their meaning.

"We wrote Mr. Harry Thorpe that we were about to descend on his
district with wagons and tents and Indians and things, and asked
him to come and see us."

"Ah, heart o' mine, what clear, pure eyes she has! How they look
at a man to drown his soul!"

Which, even had it been spoken, was hardly the comment one would
have expected.

The girl looked at him for a moment steadily, then smiled. The
change of countenance brought Thorpe to himself, and at the same
moment the words she had spoken reached his comprehension.

"But I never received the letter. I'm so sorry," said he. "It
must be at the mill. You see, I've been up in the woods for nearly
a month."

"Then we'll have to forgive you."

"But I should think they would have done something for you at the
mill---"

"Oh, we didn't come by way of your mill. We drove from Marquette."

"I see," cried Thorpe, enlightened. "But I'm sorry I didn't know.
I'm sorry you didn't let me know. I suppose you thought I was still
at the mill. How did you get along? Is Wallace with you?"

"No," she replied, dropping her hands and straightening her erect
figure. "It's horrid. He was coming, and then some business came
up and he couldn't get away. We are having the loveliest time
though. I do adore the woods. Come," she cried impatiently,
sweeping aside to leave a way clear, "you shall meet my friends."

Thorpe imagined she referred to the rest of the tenting party. He
hesitated.

"I am hardly in fit condition," he objected.

She laughed, parting her red lips. "You are extremely picturesque
just as you are," she said with rather embarrassing directness. "I
wouldn't have you any different for the world. But my friends don't
mind. They are used to it." She laughed again.

Thorpe crossed the pole trail, and for the first time found himself
by her side. The warm summer odors were in the air, a dozen lively
little birds sang in the brush along the rail, the sunlight danced
and flickered through the openings.

Then suddenly they were among the pines, and the air was cool, the
vista dim, and the bird songs inconceivably far away.

The girl walked directly to the foot of a pine three feet through,
and soaring up an inconceivable distance through the still twilight.

"This is Jimmy," said she gravely. "He is a dear good old rough
bear when you don't know him, but he likes me. If you put your ear
close against him," she confided, suiting the action to the word,
"you can hear him talking to himself. This little fellow is Tommy.
I don't care so much for Tommy because he's sticky. Still, I like
him pretty well, and here's Dick, and that's Bob, and the one just
beyond is Jack."

"Where is Harry?" asked Thorpe.

"I thought one in a woods was quite sufficient," she replied with
the least little air of impertinence.

"Why do you name them such common, everyday names?" he inquired.

"I'll tell you. It's because they are so big and grand themselves,
that it did not seem to me they needed high-sounding names. What
do you think?" she begged with an appearance of the utmost anxiety.

Thorpe expressed himself as in agreement. As the half-quizzical
conversation progressed, he found their relations adjusting
themselves with increasing rapidity. He had been successively
the mystic devotee before his vision, the worshipper before his
goddess; now he was unconsciously assuming the attitude of the
lover before his mistress. It needs always this humanizing touch
to render the greatest of all passions livable.

And as the human element developed, he proved at the same time
greater and greater difficulty in repressing himself and greater
and greater fear of the results in case he should not do so. He
trembled with the desire to touch her long slender hand, and as
soon as his imagination had permitted him that much he had already
crushed her to him and had kissed passionately her starry face.
Words hovered on his lips longing for flight. He withheld them
by an effort that left him almost incoherent, for he feared with
a deadly fear lest he lose forever what the vision had seemed to
offer to his hand.

So he said little, and that lamely, for he dreaded to say too much.
To her playful sallies he had no riposte. And in consequence he
fell more silent with another boding--that he was losing his cause
outright for lack of a ready word.

He need not have been alarmed. A woman in such a case hits as
surely as a man misses. Her very daintiness and preciosity of
speech indicated it. For where a man becomes stupid and silent,
a woman covers her emotions with words and a clever speech. Not
in vain is a proud-spirited girl stared down in such a contest
of looks; brave deeds simply told by a friend are potent to win
interest in advance; a straight, muscular figure, a brown skin, a
clear, direct eye, a carriage of power and acknowledged authority,
strike hard at a young imagination; a mighty passion sweeps aside
the barriers of the heart. Such a victory, such a friend, such a
passion had Thorpe.

And so the last spoken exchange between them meant nothing; but if
each could have read the unsaid words that quivered on the other's
heart, Thorpe would have returned to the Fighting Forty more
tranquilly, while she would probably not have returned to the
camping party at all for a number of hours.

"I do not think you had better come with me," she said. "Make
your call and be forgiven on your own account. I don't want to
drag you in at my chariot wheels."

"All right. I'll come this afternoon," Thorpe had replied.

"I love her, I must have her. I must go--at once," his soul had
cried, "quick--now--before I kiss her!"

"How strong he is," she said to herself, "how brave-looking; how
honest! He is different from the other men. He is magnificent."



Chapter XLI


That afternoon Thorpe met the other members of the party, offered
his apologies and explanations, and was graciously forgiven. He
found the personnel to consist of, first of all, Mrs. Cary, the
chaperone, a very young married woman of twenty-two or thereabouts;
her husband, a youth of three years older, clean-shaven, light-haired,
quiet-mannered; Miss Elizabeth Carpenter, who resembled her brother
in the characteristics of good-looks, vivacious disposition and curly
hair; an attendant satellite of the masculine persuasion called
Morton; and last of all the girl whom Thorpe had already so variously
encountered and whom he now met as Miss Hilda Farrand. Besides these
were Ginger, a squab negro built to fit the galley of a yacht; and
hree Indian guides. They inhabited tents, which made quite a little
encampment.

Thorpe was received with enthusiasm. Wallace Carpenter's stories of
his woods partner, while never doing more than justice to the truth,
had been of a warm color tone. One and all owned a lively curiosity
to see what a real woodsman might be like. When he proved to be
handsome and well mannered, as well as picturesque, his reception
was no longer in doubt.

Nothing could exceed his solicitude as to their comfort and amusement.
He inspected personally the arrangement of the tents, and suggested
one or two changes conducive to the littler comforts. This was not
much like ordinary woods-camping. The largest wall-tent contained
three folding cots for the women, over which, in the daytime, were
flung bright-colored Navajo blankets. Another was spread on the
ground. Thorpe later, however, sent over two bear skins, which were
acknowledgedly an improvement. To the tent pole a mirror of size was
nailed, and below it stood a portable washstand. The second tent,
devoted to the two men, was not quite so luxurious; but still boasted
of little conveniences the true woodsman would never consider worth
the bother of transporting. The third, equally large, was the dining
tent. The other three, smaller, and on the A tent order, served
respectively as sleeping rooms for Ginger and the Indians, and as a
general store-house for provisions and impedimenta.

Thorpe sent an Indian to Camp One for the bearskins, put the rest
to digging a trench around the sleeping tents in order that a rain
storm might not cause a flood, and ordered Ginger to excavate a
square hole some feet deep which he intended to utilize as a larder.

Then he gave Morton and Cary hints as to the deer they wished to
capture, pointed out the best trout pools, and issued advice as
to the compassing of certain blackberries, not far distant.

Simple things enough they were to do--it was as though a city man
were to direct a newcomer to Central Park, or impart to him a test
for the destinations of trolley lines--yet Thorpe's new friends were
profoundly impressed with his knowledge of occult things. The forest
was to them, as to most, more or less of a mystery, unfathomable
except to the favored of genius. A man who could interpret it,
even a little, into the speech of everyday comfort and expediency
possessed a strong claim to their imaginations. When he had finished
these practical affairs, they wanted him to sit down and tell them
more things,to dine with them, to smoke about their camp fire in
the evening. But here they encountered a decided check. Thorpe
became silent, almost morose. He talked in monosyllables, and soon
went away. They did not know what to make of him, and so were, of
course, the more profoundly interested. The truth was, his habitual
reticence would not have permitted a great degree of expansion in
any case, but now the presence of Hilda made any but an attitude of
hushed waiting for her words utterly impossible to him. He wished
well to them all. If there was anything he could do for them, he
would gladly undertake it. But he would not act the lion nor tell
of his, to them, interesting adventures.

However, when he discovered that Hilda had ceased visiting the
clump of pines near the pole trail, his desire forced him back
among these people. He used to walk in swiftly at almost any
time of day, casting quick glances here and there in search of
his divinity.

"How do, Mrs. Cary," he would say. "Nice weather. Enjoying
yourself?"

On receiving the reply he would answer heartily, "That's good!"
and lapse into silence. When Hilda was about he followed every
movement of hers with his eyes, so that his strange conduct lacked
no explanation nor interpretation, in the minds of the women at
least. Thrice he redeemed his reputation for being an interesting
character by conducting the party on little expeditions here and
there about the country. Then his woodcraft and resourcefulness
spoke for him. They asked him about the lumbering operations, but
he seemed indifferent.

"Nothing to interest you," he affirmed. "We're just cutting roads
now. You ought to be here for the drive."

To him there was really nothing interesting in the cutting of roads
nor the clearing of streams. It was all in a day's work.

Once he took them over to see Camp One. They were immensely pleased,
and were correspondingly loud in exclamations. Thorpe's comments
were brief and dry. After the noon dinner he had the unfortunate
idea of commending the singing of one of the men.

"Oh, I'd like to hear him," cried Elizabeth Carpenter. "Can't you
get him to sing for us, Mr. Thorpe?"

Thorpe went to the men's camp, where he singled out the unfortunate
lumber-jack in question.

"Come on, Archie," he said. "The ladies want to hear you sing."

The man objected, refused, pleaded, and finally obeyed what
amounted to a command. Thorpe reentered the office with triumph,
his victim in tow.

"This is Archie Harris," he announced heartily. "He's our best
singer just now. Take a chair, Archie."

The man perched on the edge of the chair and looked straight out
before him.

"Do sing for us, won't you, Mr. Harris?" requested Mrs. Cary in
her sweetest tones.

The man said nothing, nor moved a muscle, but turned a brick-red.
An embarrassed silence of expectation ensued.

"Hit her up, Archie," encouraged Thorpe.

"I ain't much in practice no how," objected the man in a little
voice, without moving.

"I'm sure you'll find us very appreciative," said Elizabeth
Carpenter.

"Give us a song, Archie, let her go," urged Thorpe impatiently.

"All right," replied the man very meekly.

Another silence fell. It got to be a little awful. The poor
woodsman, pilloried before the regards of this polite circle, out
of his element, suffering cruelly, nevertheless made no sign nor
movement one way or the other. At last when the situation had
almost reached the breaking point of hysteria, he began.

His voice ordinarily was rather a good tenor. Now he pitched it
too high; and went on straining at the high notes to the very end.
Instead of offering one of the typical woods chanteys, he conceived
that before so grand an audience he should give something fancy. He
therefore struck into a sentimental song of the cheap music-hall type.
There were nine verses, and he drawled through them all, hanging
whiningly on the nasal notes in the fashion of the untrained singer.
Instead of being a performance typical of the strange woods genius, it
was merely an atrocious bit of cheap sentimentalism, badly rendered.

The audience listened politely. When the song was finished it
murmured faint thanks.

"Oh, give us 'Jack Haggerty,' Archie," urged Thorpe.

But the woodsman rose, nodded his head awkwardly, and made his
escape. He entered the men's camp, swearing, and for the remainder
of the day made none but blasphemous remarks.

The beagles, however, were a complete success. They tumbled about,
and lolled their tongues, and laughed up out of a tangle of
themselves in a fascinating manner. Altogether the visit to Camp
One was a success, the more so in that on the way back, for the
first time, Thorpe found that chance--and Mrs. Cary--had allotted
Hilda to his care.

A hundred yards down the trail they encountered Phil. The dwarf
stopped short, looked attentively at the girl, and then softly
approached. When quite near to her he again stopped, gazing at
her with his soul in his liquid eyes.

"You are more beautiful than the sea at night," he said directly.

The others laughed. "There's sincerity for you, Miss Hilda," said
young Mr. Morton.

"Who is he?" asked the girl after they had moved

"Our chore-boy," answered Thorpe with great brevity, for he was
thinking of something much more important.

After the rest of the party had gone ahead, leaving them sauntering
more slowly down the trail, he gave it voice.

"Why don't you come to the pine grove any more?" he asked bluntly.

"Why?" countered Hilda in the manner of women.

"I want to see you there. I want to talk with you. I can't talk
with all that crowd around."

"I'll come to-morrow," she said--then with a little mischievous
laugh, "if that'll make you talk."

"You must think I'm awfully stupid," agreed Thorpe bitterly.

"Ah, no! Ah, no!" she protested softly. "You must not say that."

She was looking at him very tenderly, if he had only known it, but
he did not, for his face was set in discontented lines straight
before him.

"It is true," he replied.

They walked on in silence, while gradually the dangerous fascination
of the woods crept down on them. Just before sunset a hush falls
on nature. The wind has died, the birds have not yet begun their
evening songs, the light itself seems to have left off sparkling and
to lie still across the landscape. Such a hush now lay on their
spirits. Over the way a creeper was droning sleepily a little chant,
--the only voice in the wilderness. In the heart of the man, too,
a little voice raised itself alone.

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