The Snowshoe Trail. Edison Marshall

II

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      Bill Bronson found that he had the usual number of difficulties to contend with, when arranging for the journey. He had to procure more horses for the larger outfit, and he was obliged to comb the town of them before he had enough. This was not an agricultural land, this wild realm of the Selkirks, and all of the animals were originally Indian stock—the usual type of mountain cayuses with which most big-game hunters are acquainted. Some of them were faithful and trustworthy animals, but many were half-broken, many cowardly and vicious. On those he rented he took the risk; he would be charged on the books for all those that were not returned to their owners at Bradleyburg by October twentieth.

      Bill knew perfectly that he would play in good fortune if the loss in horseflesh did not cost him most of the gains of the undertaking. Even the sturdy mustangs were not bred for traversing the trails of Clearwater. There were steep hills where a single misstep meant death, there were narrow trails and dangerous fords, and here and there were inoffensive-looking pools where the body of a horse may sink out of sight in less time than it takes to tell it. These were not the immense-chested moose or the strong-limbed caribou, natives of the place and monarchs of its trails. Besides, if the winter caught them on the higher levels, they would never eat oats in Johnson's barn again. The six feet of snow covers all horse feed, and the alternatives that remain are simply a merciful bullet from the wrangler's pistol or death of slow starvation.

      Bill had certain stores in his cabins—the long line of log huts from which he operated in the trapping season—yet further supplies were needed for the trip. He bought sugar, flour, great sacks of rice—that nutritious and delightful grain that all outdoor men learn to love—coffee and canned goods past all description. Savory bacon, a great cured ham of a caribou, dehydrated vegetables and cans of marmalade and jam: all these went into the big saddle-bags for the journey. He was fully aware that the punishing days' ride could never be endured on half-rations. Camp equipment, rifles, shells and a linen tent made up the outfit.

      He encountered real difficulty when he tried to hire a man to act as cook. Evidently the Bradleyburg citizens had no love for the mountain realms in the last days of fall. For the double wage that he promised he was only able to secure a half-rate man—Vosper by name, a shifty-eyed youth from one of the placer mines, farther down toward the settlements.

      Up to the time that he heard the far-off sound of their automobile struggling up the long hill, he had made no mental picture of his employers. He rather hoped that Mr. Kenly Lounsbury—uncle of the missing man—would represent the usual type of middle-aged American with whom he had previously dealt—cold-nerved, likeable business men that came for recreation on the caribou trails. Virginia Tremont would of course be a new type, but he felt no especial interest in her. But as he waited at the door of the hotel he began to be aware of a curious excitement, a sense of grave and portentous developments. He did not feel the least self-conscious. But he did know a suddenly awakened interest in this girl who would come clear to these northern realms to find her lover.

      The car was in evident difficulties. It was the end of the road: in fact, the old highway for the last three miles of its length was simply two ruts on the hillside. As soon as it came in sight Bill recognized the driver—a man who operated a line of auto-stages, during the summer months, on the long river-road below. The next instant the car drew up beside the hotel.

      To a man of cities there would have been nothing particularly unusual in this sight of a well-groomed man and girl in the tonneau of an automobile. The man was a familiar type, of medium size, precise, his outing clothes just a trifle garish; the girl trim and sweet-faced, and stylish from the top of her head to the soles of her expensive little boots. But no moment of Bill's life had ever been fraught with a greater wonder. None had ever such a quality of the miraculous. None had ever gone so deep.

      He had not known many women, this dark man of the forests. He had seen Indian squaws in plenty, stolid and fat, he had known a few of the wives of the Bradleyburg men—women pretty enough, good housekeepers, neatly clad and perhaps a little saddened and crushed by the very remorselessness of this land in which they lived. But there had been no girls in Bradleyburg to grow up with, no schoolday sweethearts. He had known the dark and desolate forests, never a sweetheart's kiss. His mother was now but a memory: tenderness, loveliness, personal beauty to hold the eyes had been wholly without his bourne. And he gazed at Virginia Tremont as a man might look at a celestial light.

      If the girl could have seen the swift flood of worship that flowed into his face, she would have felt no scorn. She was of the cities, caste had hardened her as far as it could harden one of her nature, she was a thoroughbred to the last inch, used to flattery and the attentions of men of her own class; yet she would have held no contempt for this tall, bronzed man that looked at her with such awe and wonder. The surge of feeling was real in him; and reality is one thing, over the broad earth, that no human being dares to scorn. If she could have read deeper she would have found in herself an unlooked-for answer, in a small measure at least, to a lifelong dream, an ideal come true, and even she—in her high place—would have known a little whisper of awe.

      All his life, it seemed to him, Bill had dreamed dreams—dreams that he would not admit into his conscious thought and which he constantly tried to disavow because he considered their substance did not exist in reality and thus they were out of accord with the realism with which he regarded life. On the long winter nights, when the snow lay endless and deep over the wilderness, and the terrible cold locked the land tight, he would sit in his trapping cabins, gazing into the smoke clouds from his pipe, and a tender enchantment would steal over him. He would have admitted to no human being those wistful and beautiful hours that he spent alone. He was known as a man among men, one who could battle the snows and meet the grizzly in his lair, and he would have been ashamed to reveal this dreamy, romantic side of his nature, these longings that swept him to the depths. He would go to his bed and lie for long, tingling, wakeful hours stirred by dreams that through no earthly chance could he conceive as coming true. Arms about him, lips near, beauty and tenderness and hallowed wakenings—he had imagined them all in his secret hours.

      In the deep realms of his spirit, it seemed to him, he had always known this girl—this straight, graceful, lovely being with eyes of an angel and smile of a happy child. He had denied her existence, and here she was before him. Dark hair, waving and just a little untidy in the brisk wind, oval face and determined little chin, shadowing lashes and the exquisite contrasts of brunette beauty, a glimpse of soft, white flesh at the throat through her dark furs, smart tailored suit and dainty hands—they were all known to him of old. For all the indifference and distance with which she looked at him and at the other townspeople, there was a world of girlish sweetness in her face. For all her caste, there was spiritual beauty and gracious charm in every facial line.

      Curiously, Bill had no tinge of the resentment he might have expected that his dream should come half-true only to be shattered like the bubble it was. Because he had no delusions. He knew that he was only an employee, that a girl of her caste would ever regard him as the great regard those that serve them—kindly but impersonally—but for now he asked for nothing more. To him she was a creature past belief, a being from another world, and he was content to serve her