The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail

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"Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart!" it breathed over and over
again. After a while he said it gently in a half voice.

"No, no, hush!" said the girl, and she laid the soft, warm fingers
of one hand across his lips, and looked at him from a height of
superior soft-eyed tenderness as a woman might look at a child.
"You must not. It is not right."

Then he kissed the fingers very gently before they were withdrawn,
and she said nothing at all in rebuke, but looked straight before
her with troubled eyes.

The voices of evening began to raise their jubilant notes. From
a tree nearby the olive thrush sang like clockwork; over beyond
carolled eagerly a black-throat, a myrtle warbler, a dozen song
sparrows, and a hundred vireos and creepers. Down deep in the
blackness of the ancient woods a hermit thrush uttered his solemn
bell note, like the tolling of the spirit of peace. And in Thorpe's
heart a thousand tumultuous voices that had suddenly roused to
clamor, died into nothingness at the music of her softly protesting
voice.

Chapter XLII

Thorpe returned to Camp One shortly after dark. He found there
Scotty Parsons, who had come up to take charge of the crew engaged
in clearing French Creek. The man brought him a number of letters
sent on by Collins, among which was one from Wallace Carpenter.

After commending the camping party to his companion's care, and
giving minute directions as to how and where to meet it, the young
fellow went on to say that affairs were going badly on the Board.

"Some interest that I haven't been able to make out yet has been
hammering our stocks down day after day," he wrote. "I don't
understand it, for the stocks are good--they rest on a solid
foundation of value and intrinsically are worth more than is bid
for them right now. Some powerful concern is beating them down for
a purpose of its own. Sooner or later they will let up, and then
we'll get things back in good shape. I am amply protected now,
thanks to you, and am not at all afraid of losing my holdings.
The only difficulty is that I am unable to predict exactly when
the other fellows will decide that they have accomplished whatever
they are about, and let up. It may not be before next year. In
that case I couldn't help you out on those notes when they come due.
So put in your best licks, old man. You may have to pony up for a
little while, though of course sooner or later I can put it all back.
Then, you bet your life, I keep out of it. Lumbering's good enough
for yours truly.

"By the way, you might shine up to Hilda Farrand and join the rest
of the fortune-hunters. She's got it to throw to the birds, and in
her own right. Seriously, old fellow, don't put yourself into a
false position through ignorance. Not that there is any danger to
a hardened old woodsman like you."

Thorpe went to the group of pines by the pole trail the following
afternoon because he had said he would, but with a new attitude of
mind. He had come into contact with the artificiality of
conventional relations, and it stiffened him. No wonder she had
made him keep silence the afternoon before! She had done it gently
and nicely, to be sure, but that was part of her good-breeding.
Hilda found him formal, reserved, polite; and marvelled at it. In
her was no coquetry. She was as straightforward and sincere as the
look of her eyes.

They sat down on a log. Hilda turned to him with her graceful air
of confidence.

"Now talk to me," said she.

"Certainly," replied Thorpe in a practical tone of voice, "what
do you want me to talk about?"

She shot a swift, troubled glance at him, concluded herself
mistaken, and said:

"Tell me about what you do up here--your life--all about it."

"Well--" replied Thorpe formally, "we haven't much to interest a
girl like you. It is a question of saw logs with us"--and he went
on in his dryest, most technical manner to detail the process of
manufacture. It might as well have been bricks.

The girl did not understand. She was hurt. As surely as the sun
tangled in the distant pine frond, she had seen in his eyes a great
passion. Now it was coldly withdrawn.

"What has happened to you?" she asked finally out of her great
sincerity.

"Me? Nothing," replied Thorpe.

A forced silence fell upon him. Hilda seemed gradually to lose
herself in reverie. After a time she said softly.

"Don't you love this woods?"

"It's an excellent bunch of pine," replied Thorpe bluntly. "It'll
cut three million at least."

"Oh!" she cried drawing back, her hands pressed against the log
either side of her, her eyes wide.

After a moment she caught her breath convulsively, and Thorpe
became conscious that she was studying him furtively with a
quickening doubt.

After that, by the mercy of God, there was no more talk between
them. She was too hurt and shocked and disillusioned to make the
necessary effort to go away. He was too proud to put an end to the
position. They sat there apparently absorbed in thought, while all
about them the accustomed life of the woods drew nearer and nearer
to them, as the splash of their entrance into it died away.

A red squirrel poised thirty feet above them, leaped, and clung
swaying to a sapling-top a dozen yards from the tree he had
quitted. Two chickadees upside down uttering liquid undertones,
searched busily for insects next their heads. Wilson's warblers,
pine creepers, black-throats, myrtle and magnolia warblers, oven
birds, peewits, blue jays, purple finches, passed silently or
noisily, each according to his kind. Once a lone spruce hen dusted
herself in a stray patch of sunlight until it shimmered on a tree
trunk, raised upward, and disappeared, to give place to long level
dusty shafts that shot here and there through the pines laying the
spell of sunset on the noisy woods brawlers.

Unconsciously the first strain of opposition and of hurt surprise
had relaxed. Each thought vaguely his thoughts. Then in the depths
of the forest, perhaps near at hand, perhaps far away, a single
hermit thrush began to sing. His song was of three solemn deep
liquid notes; followed by a slight rhetorical pause as of
contemplation; and then, deliberately, three notes more on a
different key--and so on without haste and without pause. It is
the most dignified, the most spiritual, the holiest of woods
utterances. Combined with the evening shadows and the warm soft
air, it offered to the heart an almost irresistible appeal. The
man's artificial antagonism modified; the woman's disenchantment
began to seem unreal.

Then subtly over and through the bird-song another sound became
audible. At first it merely repeated the three notes faintly, like
an echo, but with a rich, sad undertone that brought tears. Then,
timidly and still softly, it elaborated the theme, weaving in and
out through the original three the glitter and shimmer of a
splendid web of sound, spreading before the awakened imagination
a broad river of woods-imagery that reflected on its surface all
the subtler moods of the forest. The pine shadows, the calls of
the wild creatures, the flow of the brook, the splashes of sunlight
through the trees, the sigh of the wind, the shout of the rapid,--
all these were there, distinctly to be felt in their most ethereal
and beautiful forms. And yet it was all slight and tenuous as
though the crack of a twig would break it through--so that over
it continually like a grand full organ-tone repeated the notes of
the bird itself.

With the first sigh of the wonder-music the girl had started and
caught her breath in the exquisite pleasure of it. As it went on
they both forgot everything but the harmony and each other.

"Ah, beautiful!" she murmured.

"What is it?" he whispered marvelling.

"A violin,--played by a master."

The bird suddenly hushed, and at once the strain abandoned the
woods-note and took another motif. At first it played softly
in the higher notes, a tinkling, lightsome little melody that
stirred a kindly surface-smile over a full heart. Then suddenly,
without transition, it dropped to the lower register, and began
to sob and wail in the full vibrating power of a great passion.

And the theme it treated was love. It spoke solemnly, fearfully of
the greatness of it, the glory. These as abstractions it amplified
in fine full-breathed chords that swept the spirit up and up as on
the waves of a mighty organ. Then one by one the voices of other
things were heard,--the tinkling of laughter, the roar of a city,
the sob of a grief, a cry of pain suddenly shooting across the
sound, the clank of a machine, the tumult of a river, the puff of a
steamboat, the murmuring of a vast crowd,--and one by one, without
seeming in the least to change their character, they merged
imperceptibly into, and were part of the grand-breathed chords,
so that at last all the fames and ambitions and passions of the
world came, in their apotheosis, to be only parts of the master-
passion of them all.

And while the echoes of the greater glory still swept beneath their
uplifted souls like ebbing waves, so that they still sat rigid and
staring with the majesty of it, the violin softly began to whisper.
Beautiful it was as a spirit, beautiful beyond words, beautiful
beyond thought. Its beauty struck sharp at the heart. And they two
sat there hand in hand dreaming--dreaming--dreaming---

At last the poignant ecstacy seemed slowly, slowly to die. Fainter
and fainter ebbed the music. Through it as through a mist the
solemn aloof forest began to show to the consciousness of the two.
They sought each other's eyes gently smiling. The music was very
soft and dim and sad. They leaned to each other with a sob. Their
lips met. The music ceased.

Alone in the forest side by side they looked out together for a
moment into that eternal vision which lovers only are permitted to
see. The shadows fell. About them brooded the inscrutable pines
stretching a canopy over them enthroned. A single last shaft of
the sun struck full upon them, a single light-spot in the gathering
gloom. They were beautiful.

And over behind the trees, out of the light and the love and the
beauty, little Phil huddled, his great shaggy head bowed in his
arms. Beside him lay his violin, and beside that his bow, broken.
He had snapped it across his knee. That day he had heard at last
the Heart Song of the Violin, and uttering it, had bestowed love.
But in accordance with his prophecy he had that day lost what he
cared for most in all the world, his friend.

Chapter XLIII

That was the moon of delight. The days passed through the hazy
forest like stately figures from an old masque. In the pine grove
on the knoll the man and the woman had erected a temple to love,
and love showed them one to the other.

In Hilda Farrand was no guile, no coquetry, no deceit. So perfect
was her naturalism that often by those who knew her least she was
considered affected. Her trust in whomever she found herself with
attained so directly its reward; her unconsciousness of pose was so
rhythmically graceful; her ignorance and innocence so triumphantly
effective, that the mind with difficulty rid itself of the belief
that it was all carefully studied. This was not true. She honestly
did not know that she was beautiful; was unaware of her grace; did
not realize the potency of her wealth.

This absolute lack of self-consciousness was most potent in overcoming
Thorpe's natural reticence. He expanded to her. She came to idolize
him in a manner at once inspiring and touching in so beautiful a
creature. In him she saw reflected all the lofty attractions of
character which she herself possessed, but of which she was entirely
unaware. Through his words she saw to an ideal. His most trivial
actions were ascribed to motives of a dignity which would have been
ridiculous, if it had not been a little pathetic. The woods-life,
the striving of the pioneer kindled her imagination. She seized upon
the great facts of them and fitted those facts with reasons of her
own. Her insight perceived the adventurous spirit, the battle-
courage, the indomitable steadfastness which always in reality lie
back of these men of the frontier to urge them into the life; and
of them constructed conscious motives of conduct. To her fancy the
lumbermen, of whom Thorpe was one, were self-conscious agents of
advance. They chose hardship, loneliness, the strenuous life
because they wished to clear the way for a higher civilization. To
her it seemed a great and noble sacrifice. She did not perceive
that while all this is true, it is under the surface, the real spur
is a desire to get on, and a hope of making money. For, strangely
enough, she differentiated sharply the life and the reasons for it.
An existence in subduing the forest was to her ideal; the making of
a fortune through a lumbering firm she did not consider in the
least important. That this distinction was most potent, the sequel
will show.

In all of it she was absolutely sincere, and not at all stupid. She
had always had all she could spend, without question. Money meant
nothing to her, one way or the other. If need was, she might have
experienced some difficulty in learning how to economize, but none
at all in adjusting herself to the necessity of it. The material
had become, in all sincerity, a basis for the spiritual. She
recognized but two sorts of motives; of which the ideal, comprising
the poetic, the daring, the beautiful, were good; and the material,
meaning the sordid and selfish, were bad. With her the mere money-
getting would have to be allied with some great and poetic excuse.

That is the only sort of aristocracy, in the popular sense of the
word, which is real; the only scorn of money which can be respected.

There are some faces which symbolize to the beholder many subtleties
of soul-beauty which by no other method could gain expression. Those
subtleties may not, probably do not, exist in the possessor of the
face. The power of such a countenance lies not so much in what it
actually represents, as in the suggestion it holds out to another.
So often it is with a beautiful character. Analyze it carefully,
and you will reduce it generally to absolute simplicity and absolute
purity--two elements common enough in adulteration; but place it
face to face with a more complex personality, and mirror-like it
will take on a hundred delicate shades of ethical beauty, while at
the same time preserving its own lofty spirituality.

Thus Hilda Farrand reflected Thorpe. In the clear mirror of her
heart his image rested transfigured. It was as though the glass
were magic, so that the gross and material was absorbed and lost,
while the more spiritual qualities reflected back. So the image was
retained in its entirety, but etherealized, refined. It is necessary
to attempt, even thus faintly and inadequately, a sketch of Hilda's
love, for a partial understanding of it is necessary to the
comprehension of what followed the moon of delight.

That moon saw a variety of changes.

The bed of French Creek was cleared. Three of the roads were
finished, and the last begun. So much for the work of it.

Morton and Cary shot four deer between them, which was unpardonably
against the law, caught fish in plenty, smoked two and a half pounds
of tobacco, and read half of one novel. Mrs. Cary and Miss Carpenter
walked a total of over a hundred miles, bought twelve pounds of
Indian work of all sorts, embroidered the circle of two embroidery
frames, learned to paddle a birch-bark canoe, picked fifteen quarts
of berries, and gained six pounds in weight. All the party together
accomplished five picnics, four explorations, and thirty excellent
campfires in the evening. So much for the fun of it.

Little Phil disappeared utterly, taking with him his violin, but
leaving his broken bow. Thorpe has it even to this day. The
lumberman caused search and inquiry on all sides. The cripple was
never heard of again. He had lived his brief hour, taken his subtle
artist's vengeance of misplayed notes on the crude appreciation of
men too coarse-fibered to recognize it, brought together by the
might of sacrifice and consummate genius two hearts on the brink
of misunderstanding;--now there was no further need for him, he had
gone. So much for the tragedy of it.

"I saw you long ago," said Hilda to Thorpe. "Long, long ago, when
I was quite a young girl. I had been visiting in Detroit, and was
on my way all alone to catch an early train. You stood on the corner
thinking, tall and straight and brown, with a weather-beaten old hat
and a weather-beaten old coat and weather-beaten old moccasins, and
such a proud, clear, undaunted look on your face. I have remembered
you ever since."

And then he told her of the race to the Land Office, while her eyes
grew brighter and brighter with the epic splendor of the story. She
told him that she had loved him from that moment--and believed her
telling; while he, the unsentimental leader of men, persuaded himself
and her that he had always in some mysterious manner carried her image
prophetically in his heart. So much for the love of it.

In the last days of the month of delight Thorpe received a second
letter from his partner, which to some extent awakened him to the
realities.

"My dear Harry," it ran. "I have made a startling discovery.
The other fellow is Morrison. I have been a blind, stupid dolt,
and am caught nicely. You can't call me any more names than I
have already called myself. Morrison has been in it from the start.
By an accident I learned he was behind the fellow who induced me
to invest, and it is he who has been hammering the stock down ever
since. They couldn't lick you at your game, so they tackled me
at mine. I'm not the man you are, Harry, and I've made a mess of
it. Of course their scheme is plain enough on the face of it.
They're going to involve me so deeply that I will drag the firm
down with me.

"If you can fix it to meet those notes, they can't do it. I have
ample margin to cover any more declines they may be able to bring
about. Don't fret about that. Just as sure as you can pay that
sixty thousand, just so sure we'll be ahead of the game at this
time next year. For God's sake get a move on you, old man. If you
don't--good Lord! The firm'll bust because she can't pay; I'll bust
because I'll have to let my stock go on margins--it'll be an awful
smash. But you'll get there, so we needn't worry. I've been an
awful fool, and I've no right to do the getting into trouble and
leave you to the hard work of getting out again. But as partner
I'm going to insist on your having a salary--etc."

The news aroused all Thorpe's martial spirit. Now at last the
mystery surrounding Morrison & Daly's unnatural complaisance was
riven. It had come to grapples again. He was glad of it. Meet
those notes? Well I guess so! He'd show them what sort of a
proposition they had tackled. Sneaking, underhanded scoundrels!
taking advantage of a mere boy. Meet those notes? You bet he
would; and then he'd go down there and boost those stocks until M.
& D. looked like a last year's bird's nest. He thrust the letter
in his pocket and walked buoyantly to the pines.

The two lovers sat there all the afternoon drinking in half sadly
the joy of the forest and of being near each other, for the moon
of delight was almost done. In a week the camping party would be
breaking up, and Hilda must return to the city. It was uncertain
when they would be able to see each other again, though there was
talk of getting up a winter party to visit Camp One in January.
The affair would be unique.

Suddenly the girl broke off and put her fingers to her lips. For
some time, dimly, an intermittent and faint sound had been felt,
rather than actually heard, like the irregular muffled beating of
a heart. Gradually it had insisted on the attention. Now at last
it broke through the film of consciousness.

"What is it?" she asked.

Thorpe listened. Then his face lit mightily with the joy of battle.

"My axmen," he cried. "They are cutting the road."

A faint call echoed. Then without warning, nearer at hand the sharp
ring of an ax sounded through the forest.

PART IV

THE FOLLOWING OF THE TRAIL

Chapter XLIV

For a moment they sat listening to the clear staccato knocking of
the distant blows, and the more forceful thuds of the man nearer at
hand. A bird or so darted from the direction of the sound and shot
silently into the thicket behind them.

"What are they doing? Are they cutting lumber?" asked Hilda.

"No," answered Thorpe, "we do not cut saw logs at this time of year.
They are clearing out a road."

"Where does it go to?"

"Well, nowhere in particular. That is, it is a logging road that
starts at the river and wanders up through the woods where the pine
is."

"How clear the axes sound. Can't we go down and watch them a little
while?"

"The main gang is a long distance away; sound carries very clearly
in this still air. As for that fellow you hear so plainly, he is
only clearing out small stuff to get ready for the others. You
wouldn't see anything different from your Indian chopping the
cordwood for your camp fire. He won't chop out any big trees."

"Let's not go, then," said Hilda submissively.

"When you come up in the winter," he pursued, "you will see any
amount of big timber felled."

"I would like to know more about it," she sighed, a quaint little
air of childish petulance graving two lines between her eyebrows.
"Do you know, Harry, you are a singularly uncommunicative sort of
being. I have to guess that your life is interesting and picturesque,
--that is," she amended, "I should have to do so if Wallace Carpenter
had not told me a little something about it. Sometimes I think you
are not nearly poet enough for the life you are living. Why, you are
wonderful, you men of the north, and you let us ordinary mortals who
have not the gift of divination imagine you entirely occupied with
how many pounds of iron chain you are going to need during the
winter." She said these things lightly as one who speaks things
not for serious belief.

"It is something that way," he agreed with a laugh.

"Do you know, sir," she persisted, "that I really don't know
anything at all about the life you lead here? From what I have
seen, you might be perpetually occupied in eating things in a log
cabin, and in disappearing to perform some mysterious rites in the
forest." She looked at him with a smiling mouth but tender eyes,
her head tilted back slightly.

"It's a good deal that way, too," he agreed again. "We use a
barrel of flour in Camp One every two and a half days!"

She shook her head in a faint negation that only half understood
what he was saying, her whole heart in her tender gaze.

"Sit there," she breathed very softly, pointing to the dried needles
on which her feet rested, but without altering the position of her
head or the steadfastness of her look.

He obeyed.

"Now tell me," she breathed, still in the fascinated monotone.

"What?" he inquired.

"Your life; what you do; all about it. You must tell me a story."

Thorpe settled himself more lazily, and laughed with quiet enjoyment.
Never had he felt the expansion of a similar mood. The barrier
between himself and self-expression had faded, leaving not the
smallest debris of the old stubborn feeling.

"The story of the woods," he began, "the story of the saw log. It
would take a bigger man than I to tell it. I doubt if any one man
ever would be big enough. It is a drama, a struggle, a battle.
Those men you hear there are only the skirmishers extending the
firing line. We are fighting always with Time. I'll have to hurry
now to get those roads done and a certain creek cleared before the
snow. Then we'll have to keep on the keen move to finish our
cutting before the deep snow; to haul our logs before the spring
thaws; to float them down the river while the freshet water lasts.
When we gain a day we have scored a victory; when the wilderness
puts us back an hour, we have suffered a defeat. Our ammunition
is Time; our small shot the minutes, our heavy ordnance the hours!"

The girl placed her hand on his shoulder. He covered it with his
own.

"But we win!" he cried. "We win!"

"That is what I like," she said softly, "the strong spirit that
wins!" She hesitated, then went on gently, "But the battlefields,
Harry; to me they are dreadful. I went walking yesterday morning,
before you came over, and after a while I found myself in the most
awful place. The stumps of trees, the dead branches, the trunks
lying all about, and the glaring hot sun over everything! Harry,
there was not a single bird in all that waste, a single green thing.
You don't know how it affected me so early in the morning. I saw
just one lonesome pine tree that had been left for some reason or
another, standing there like a sentinel. I could shut my eyes and
see all the others standing, and almost hear the birds singing and
the wind in the branches, just as it is here." She seized his
fingers in her other hand. "Harry," she said earnestly, "I don't
believe I can ever forget that experience, any more than I could
have forgotten a battlefield, were I to see one. I can shut my eyes
now, and can see this place our dear little wooded knoll wasted and
blackened as that was."

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