When, that evening, Joe reported that all but Michigan Red had obeyed the order, he sensed hot anger under the boss's calm. Expecting an explosion, he was the more surprised when, after a thoughtful pause, Carter dismissed him with an order to take a couple of hand-rakes out on the job the following morning. To the Cougar he gave orders that the red teamster was to load last. Obedient, the Cougar sent Michigan Red to break track into a new skidway; thus all of his fellows had passed on down the glide while Michigan was still loading.

"Load him light – dry logs, an' not too many," Carter had ordered. But, incensed at the delay, the teamster indulged in such sarcastic allusions to the frailty of the loaders' female ancestors that the ribald crew piled the logs on till his load bulked like a hay-stack. None other than the blacks could have started the sled out from the skids; and while, with jerks and sudden snatches, the fierce brutes worked it out of deep snow to the iced tracks, the loaders looked admiringly on. It was a triumph in driving. Man and team worked like a clock, and, returning blasphemous answers to the loaders' compliments, Michigan slid off down the trail.

To make up for his lost time, he urged the blacks to a trot, and so came swinging down the incline at twice his usual speed. Not till he reached the very edge did he see that the hay had been raked off the face of the hill. A mask of ice, it glittered in the sun.

Half-way down Carter stood with Joe. Looking up, they saw Michigan poised on the top log, a red, sinister figure against the sky. He seemed to pause, throw back on his lines – a quick, involuntary movement. Then, craning forward, he glanced down that glittering stretch – a comprehensive look that took in Carter, Joe, and their plan.

"Give him a forkful under the runners as he goes by," Carter whispered. "Otherwise we'll kill his team."

A second, as aforesaid, the red teamster paused; then, loosing his lines, he leaned over and lashed the stallion under the soft of the belly.

"My God!" Joe cried.

He saw the black brute rear, snorting – saw the blacksnake bite the mare's flank – saw the pair plunge over the grade; then water bathed his eyes. He heard, however – heard the rush and roar, a thunder of hoofs as the long, steel calkings cut through the ice and struck fire from the face of the hill. He felt the wind as the sled passed, and waited for the crash – which did not come.

A voice, cold, deliberate, restored his vision. "I didn't think it was in horse-flesh." Carter was gazing after team and sled, now a black patch on the snow of the lake. "Beat us this time, Joe," he continued; "but we'll fix him to-morrow."

That evening, however, the red teamster enjoyed the fruits of his exploit. It seasoned the beans at supper, sweetened the stable choring. Opinion agreed that it was now "up" to the boss, but split on his probable action, one-half the stable agreeing with Hines that Michigan surely earned his discharge, the other half holding that settlement by battle would be the certain ending. Neither event, however, had come to pass by bedtime, and the mystery was intensified by the chucklings of the road gang, which came in from work long after the teamsters retired. Next morning, too, the loaders – evidently in the secret – added to the suspense by asking the teamsters if they intended to toboggan down the glide that trip.

"Bet you don't!" they yelled after Michigan Red.

Though not exactly nervous, the mystery yet affected the red teamster. As his load slid through the forest uneasiness manifested itself in thoughtful whistlings, broken song snatches, unnecessary talk to his horses. Not that he was a whit afraid. The half-dozen or so men whom he expected would try to enforce the new order could not have prevented him from at least sending his team at the grade. The fierce soul of him thrilled at the thought of opposition, and, coming out of the forest, he set a pace that would have ridden down opposition.

But he reined in at the hill. Instead of the force of his imaginings, only Joe Legault stood at the foot of the glide. The hay had been respread on its face, but – the road gang had built a rough bridge over a deep gully, and now the glide led, straight as an arrow, out to the lake. The racking curve was utterly abolished.

Grinning, Joe said: "The boss allows that it's your privilege to kill your own horses. So go it if you wanter. Hain't going to hurt his sleds none."

Michigan walked his horses.

Carter had won out. Moreover, he had done it without the loss of prestige that would have ensued by the usual brutal methods in vogue in lumber-camps. Law, of a man or people, cannot endure, of course, without force behind it. Yet behind his imperturbability, quiet taciturnity, the men felt the power to enforce his commands. So his authority was no more called in question. Not that envious spite ceased to dog him. Hines, Shinn, and their coterie stood always ready to stir up discontent, foment trouble.

It was their sympathy that caused the cook to maintain one can of poor baking-powder to be valid excuse for leaving. But Carter disposed of minor troubles with the same easy good-humor that he had given to big ones.

"I reckon you've been scandalously mistreated," he told the cook. "I'm right sorry to lose you. Must you go?"

Mollified, the cook stayed.

Then Baldy, chief of the "tote" – trail teamsters, rose to the point that "thirty hun'red was load enough for drifted trails."

"Thirty it is, Baldy," Carter cheerfully answered, and Baldy yanked forty and forty-five hundred all winter over the worst of trails.

He had proved himself in the mastership of men just at the time that opportunity was holding out her hand, and proof and fruit of his winning came the very day that saw the last load delivered at the dumps. "It is a go!" The wire which announced, with this bit of slang, the successful financing of his railroad projects was brought in by Baldy from Lone Tree, and with it buttoned against his heart Carter made his way to the stables where the teamsters were, as they thought, bedding up for the last time.

"We have feed for three months left," he said, "and I can promise work through the summer. At what?" He turned, smiling, on Brady. "Never mind; all those that want it kin have it till freeze-up. In the mean time I'll feed an' care for your teams till the log-drive is down."

Grumblers from the cradle, kickers born, teamsters and choppers had looked forward to this last day in camp, swearing all that ten dollars a day would not hire them for an hour longer. No, sirree – not an hour! Now they looked their doubt.

"What's the pay?" Brady asked.

"Half a dollar a day more'n you're getting."

"That beats farming in these parts. You kin sign me, boss."

And me – me – me! The answers floated in from all over the stable. Only a few of the older men elected to return to their farms, and after all had spoken Carter turned to Michigan Red, who occupied his old perch on the stallion's stall.

"Well, Red?"

"Didn't s'pose you'd need me."

Carter went on writing. He could afford to be generous. He had beaten the man at every point; to retain him where another would have discharged him was, indeed, the crowning of his victory, and Michigan knew it. Had he doubted, he had but to read it in the countenances of his fellows. A good gambler, however, he hid resentment, and where a poor loser would have taken his discharge he accepted re-employment.

His red beard split in a sneering grin. "Oh, guess I'll trouble you for a little longer."

The day was eventful for another reason. Coming up from a short visit to the settlements, Bender handed Carter a letter that evening, the superscription of which sent the dark blood flooding over his neck, for it was the first he had seen of Helen's writing these months. Was this the answer of his longing? Had she sent – at last? His fingers trembled as he tore the wrapping, then he paused, staring. It was his last check, returned without an explanatory scrap.

"She's hired to teach her old school again." Bender answered his blank look.

XV
TRAVAIL

If the white months seemed to lag with Carter up at the camp, they dragged wearily with Helen down in the settlements. Christmas had been particularly dreary, for it did not require a woman's marvellous memory for anniversaries for her to live over again every incident and experience of last Yuletide. In their living-room Carter had built a chimney and fireplace of mud, Cree style, and on Christmas Eve she had cuddled in against his broad breast and talked of a sweet possibility. They had the usual pretty quarrel over sex and names – has the tongue one good enough for the first-born? Then he had hung her stocking, and none other would suit him, forsooth, but the one she was wearing. He had laughed away her blushing protestations, and had kissed the white foot and toes that squirmed in his big hand. Sitting alone this Christmas, she had blushed at the memory; then a gush of tears had cooled her hot cheeks, tears of mingled sorrow and thankfulness that their pretty dream had not taken form in flesh.

One January morning she sat, chin in hands, and stared across the humming stove at the white drift outside. Nels, the Swedish hired man, had killed three pigs for winter meat the day before, and with a touch of humor that was foreign to his bleached complacency had set them on all-fours in the snow. Stiff, frozen – so hard, indeed, that the house-dog retired disconsolately after a fruitless tug at an iron ear – they poked marble shoulders out of a drift. The eye of one was closed in a cunning wink. His neighbor achieved a grin. The mouth of the third was open and thrown back, as though defying death with derisive laughter.

Steeped in thought, Helen did not see the grim grotesques. These months she had undergone three distinct changes of feeling. First she was becomingly repentant. Viewed under the softening perspectives of time and distance, Carter's crudities waned, while his strength and virtues waxed. The insignificant sloughed away from his personality, leaving only the strong, the virile. During this stage she formed small plans towards reconciliation, and bided patiently at home, ceasing her visits to Mrs. Leslie. Not that she felt them wrong, but, besides the shame natural to her position, she liked to feel that she was gratifying what she deemed her husband's prejudice; she experienced the satisfaction which accrues from a penance self-imposed.

When, however, he did not return, she relapsed into hurt silence – would not speak of him to Jenny, nor listen when Bender dropped in on one of his periodical visits with news from the camp. Lastly came cold resentment, anger at the grass-widowhood that was being thrust upon her, a feeling that was the more unbearable because she secretly admired his boldness in cutting the knot of their difficulties. She recognized the wisdom of the act. Had he not taken the initiative, the process of disenchantment would have continued till she herself might have taken the first step to end their misery. But the knowledge did not mitigate the sting. He had forced the separation! The thought rankled and grew more bitter day by day.

This morning she was in a particularly dangerous mood. Conscious of her original good intention, knowing that her fault had been the product of conditions as much as her own weakness, she was ripe for revolt against the entire scheme of things that had forced the lot of crabbed age upon her flushed youth, compelling her to sit by a lonely fire. And as she sat and brooded a clash of bells broke up her meditations; the door opened, letting in a bitter blast that froze the warm interior air into chilly fog, from the centre of which Mrs. Leslie emerged, heavily furred and voluble as ever.

"Anchorite!" she screamed. "Or is it anchoress? Three, four – no, six visits you owe me. Explain! Bad weather? Hum!" She tilted her pretty nose. "If I couldn't fib more artistically, Helen, I'd adhere to the painful truth. You were afraid – of hubby."

"I – I wasn't!"

Mrs. Leslie surveyed the girl's flushed anger with sarcastic pity. "Tut! tut! More fibs. Huddled over that stove, you make the loveliest study of despair. You have been crying, too."

"I – I haven't!" The lines of Huddled Despair flowed into Radiant Anger.

"Your eyes are red?"

"Well, if they are – if I did – it was through anger."

Mrs. Leslie accepted the modified admission. "That's right, my dear. He – no man is worth the compliment of regretful tears. They are all foolish, selfish, fickle as children. They cry for love like a child for the moon, throw it away when the toy wearies, howl if another tries to pick it up. They only value the unattainable. Bah!"

The ejaculation was comical in its feigned disgust, but just then Helen had ears only for the serious or sympathetic – preferably the latter. "Tell me, Elinor," she asked, "do you really think I have deserved this at his hands?"

"No." For once in her life Mrs. Leslie dealt in undiluted truth – because, perhaps, lying would not serve her purpose. "One could understand his pique – " With incredible hardihood, considering the part she herself had played, she commented: "Really, my dear, you ought not to have done it. But he has been altogether too severe – unforgiving. I don't see how you stand it. I should freeze these cold nights without some one to warm my feet on."

"To think" – speech was such a relief after months of bitter silence, and Helen never even noticed the other's funny climax – "to think that this should be dealt to me by a man of whose very existence I was unconscious a short two years ago! Is he a god to exercise such power – to command me to eat the bread-and-water of affliction during his pleasure? Why, I was twenty-two before I ever saw him! Doesn't it seem ridiculous – silly as though one pebble on a beach were to establish limits for another? They roll and rub where and with whom they list, and why shouldn't I?" Ignoring the fact that monogamy was her sex's greatest achievement, and that the first woman who bartered love for protection, cookery for maintenance, had not driven such a bad bargain, she finished: "Wouldn't it be funny if pebbles were condemned to rub and roll in definite pairs till winds and waves had buried one or other affinity deep in the sands. Why – "

"In other words," Mrs. Leslie interrupted, "why should vertical distances count for more than horizontal – death for more than distance – seven feet under the sod carry advantages and opportunities that do not go with seventy miles above? There isn't any reason. It is just so."

"Well, I won't stand it!" Rebellion inhered in Helen's stamp. "I won't! I won't! I won't!"

Mrs. Leslie shrugged her hopelessness. "Thousands of women have to. What can you do, my dear?"

"Do?" the girl answered, hotly. "I have already done it – applied for and secured my old school. Unfortunately, I must remain here till the spring term opens."

Now to accuse Mrs. Leslie of trailing a definite purpose were to reveal lamentable ignorance of her ruling traits. She was no fell adventuress of romance, stealthy of plot, remorseless in pursuit. Persistence was foreign to her light character. Unstable as water, she veered like a shuttlecock under the breath of emotion, yet, withal, grasped speedily at such straws as the winds of opportunity brought within reach. If she lacked force to plot Carter's capture, or to revenge herself for his slight through Helen, she was willing enough now that the wind served.

"In the mean time," she said, "you will stay with me?"

"Oh, I couldn't do that!" Oh, complex feminine nature! Helen balked at the freedom of her agonizings. The quick earnestness of her answer told of the hope that still glowed in the ashes of despair.

But Mrs. Leslie turned hope against her. "Oh yes," she mocked. "You were not afraid of him; certainly not. But that is not the way to get him back, my dear. If you would regain your recreant, give him a rival."

Now, though this piece of worldly wisdom was strictly in line with Helen's crooked parable of the pebbles, the idea sounded grossly common in plain words. Hastily she said, "You don't suppose that I would – "

"No! no!" Mrs. Leslie skilfully retrieved her error. "I only meant that it would be as well to keep him on the anxious seat. Never let a man feel too sure of you – it isn't healthy, for him or you. I wouldn't wait here till it pleased him to extend magnificent forgiveness for so small a fault. Go out – visit – let him see that you can be happy without him – that you have still attractions for others."

"But I don't care. Why do you persist, Elinor, in hinting that I still love him? I don't."

"Then you'll come with me?"

"I'd like to, but I can't leave Jenny alone with Nels."

Mrs. Leslie might have replied that this was exactly what she would have to do when school opened; instead, she contemplated the love which masqueraded behind this unparalleled obstinacy from sphinxlike eyes. "Jenny must be dying to see her friends in Lone Tree," she suggested. "Let her take a vacation. As for Nels – he can bach it."

Helen looked troubled. It was really astonishing to see how she ran from liberty. But she had, perforce, to make some show of living up to her professions, so she called Jenny and anxiously inquired if she didn'twant to visit her friends. Unfortunately, Jennie had been oppressed these many days with a longing to see the good doctor, and the expression of her wish carried the day for Mrs. Leslie.

"Oh, well," she sighed; and Mrs. Leslie prudently confined her laugh within her own hollow sepultures.

Accepting the invitation with misgivings, she was astonished, on her return home, to find how thoroughly she had enjoyed her two weeks' visit. Yet it was only natural. Besides the change, Mrs. Leslie had been at pains to amuse and entertain her. There were cosey chats over the teacups on matters dear to the feminine heart, and daily sleigh-rides – mad dashes over hard-packed trails to music of jingling bells. Once the drive was extended as far as Regis barracks, twenty miles to the west, and Helen was introduced to captains of the mounted police in scarlet splashed with gold, their ladies, the agents and clerks of the government land office – pleasant people at first sight, of whom she was to learn more. Of nights, Molyneux and other remittance-bachelors would drop in, and, with drawn curtains excluding the vast arctic night, there would be music, songs, games. Small wonder that she enjoyed herself, or that, the ice thus broken, she gravitated between home and the Leslies' during the remainder of that winter.

Speaking of Molyneux, a greater surprise inhered in the fact that she had been able to meet him without embarrassment, a condition that was due to the tact and real consideration which he displayed. At their first meeting he paused only for a pleasant greeting; next, he ventured a chat; and these lengthened until he felt safe in staying out an evening.

He marked his greatest gain the day that – Leslie being under the weather with a cold – she allowed him to drive her home. By those gentlemen, the romanticists, this fact would not have been accorded a tender implication. They paint love in colors fast as patent dyes: good girls love once; or, if a second passion be grudgingly allowed, it is only after the first is safely bestowed in cold storage underground. In face of the fact that the little god occasionally shoots a double arrow, that the sigh of many a wife would be unwelcome if intelligible to her husband, that many a maid has slipped into spinsterhood between two passions, they lay down as the basic principle of ethical romance the canon that neither wife nor maid can entertain two loves other than in sequence.

Now Helen may not have been in this case, and if she had it goes without saying that she would never have admitted the preference even to herself. For she had been raised in the very shadow of the aforesaid canon. Yet he had certainly won on her – for good reason. In person he was above the average of good looks; his manners touched standard. In that he, alone of the English set, had been able to wring a living from the stern northland without the aid of a fat allowance, he commanded her respect. Also she thought that he was trying to sink his past – he entertained the same illusion – and as every good girl loves to imagine herself as an "influence," the thought gave her satisfaction. Molyneux had no cause of complaint.

To do him justice, he tried, in a slovenly fashion, yet still tried, to live up to this, the one pure love of his life – purity must be interpreted as applying to his intention rather than motive. Of all the remittance-men who frequented Mrs. Leslie's house, he, at this time, showed the least moral taint. Often he thrust in between Helen and things offensive. Though, during Helen's visits, Mrs. Leslie made some attempt to put her house in order, she could not always bridle her male guests, who smoked Leslie's imported tobacco and offered herself veiled love. But Molyneux sterilized most of their blackguardism, nipping entendre with a chilly stare, destroying double meanings by instant and literal interpretation – did it so effectually that she never noticed the pervading sensualism. Indeed, he did it so much as to draw Mrs. Leslie's fire. "Virtuous boy," she said, teasing him one day. "You almost convert me to the true-love theory."

His grimace gauged the depth of his reformation. To him as to Mrs. Leslie the text could be fitted: "Can the leopard change his spots or the Ethiop his skin?" Really he had not changed in quality or purpose; it was the same Molyneux in pursuit of the same end. His tactics were merely altered to suit his game. He would, of course, have denied this – probably with the warmth of honest conviction. At times his reflections on the subject attained highly moral altitudes. He had known from the first that Helen could never live with Carter! Duty certainly called him to end her bondage! Yes, he believed himself honest, and would continue to so believe until some unexpected check loosed the Old Adam again. This was proved by the flashes of passion at the very thought of failure. It would have been much more natural for him to have attempted a raid on Carter's Eden. But, warned by previous experience, he waited, waited, waited, and watched as the snake may have watched the maiden Eve over the threshold of Adam's garden. Now that time seemed to have verified his prediction, that, albeit with hesitant steps, Helen was approaching the gate of her own accord, he held back the hot hand that fain would have plucked her forth lest he should startle her into flight.

There were many watchers of the girl's progression during the winter months: Mrs. Leslie, who might be said to await the moment when a shove might throw the girl off her balance headlong into Molyneux's arms; the settlers, who anticipated such a denouement with scandalous tongues; the remittance-men, who betted on the result, basing odds on her lonely condition. To these there could be but one end. Always the human soul reaches for happiness, and the fact that she had once mistaken Dead Sea fruit for love's golden apples would not prevent her from tiptoeing to pluck again. Would she pluck?

Molyneux, for one, was sure that she would, and, having the courage of his conviction, put his hope into speech, choosing an opportune time. Nels always drove her over to Leslie's, and at first brought her home. But by the middle of February the latter part of the task fell by consent of all to Molyneux, and he spoke while driving her home one afternoon.

"Read this," he said, handing her a telegram that called him to his father's death-bed.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, impulsively.

"For what," he questioned, "his sickness or my absence?"

"Both," she frankly answered. "You have been – very nice to me. I shall miss you."

Now this was all very proper, but when he stated that he should be gone at least seven weeks she ought to have veiled her concern. But she did not, and the regret that swam in the hazel eyes strengthened his purpose. "Before I go I must say something. How long is our present relation to last?"

The raise of her eyebrows might have meant anything. He took it as encouragement, and ran on, "You know that I love – have always loved you."

Here, according to the canons, she ought to have withered him. Instead she gave him the truth. "I am not blind."

"Thanks for your candor. Now, a step further – do you intend to remain his bondwoman?"

This was harder, yet her answer correctly interpreted her feeling. "I – I – really don't know."

The doubt spurred him. "You do not love him. You could not – after the way he has treated you. You must have love. A glance at your face would tell a dullard that it is as necessary to your existence as air or water. You cannot be happy without it. It is life to you; more than sustenance. You must be wrapped in it, touch it at every point, feel it everywhere around you. Your being cries out for a passion all-absorbing; you will take nothing less. I would – "

"Give me such love?" She had thrilled under his truthful analysis of her nature, and now she cried out the passion of her sex, the eternal desire for a love everlasting as that of a mother. "Is such possible? – a love that never stales, that endures after the hot blood cools and beauty fades? Could you love me through old age? No, no! A woman can, but never a man!"

"I can! By God! I can!" he cried, blazing in response to her passion. "I'll prove it, for sooner or later you are going to love me."

She laughed a little wearily. "There spake the bold man. Well – you have my good wishes."

"Your – good – wishes?"

"Don't flatter yourself." Her staying hand checked his enthusiasm. "You said just now that I didn't love – my husband. Perhaps you are right. I don't know. I have no standard by which to judge, and only love could supply one. So far – you have failed to do so. I like you – very much; but – if I ever love again, the man must lift me out of myself, make me forget – him, myself, the whole world."

"I'll do it!" he confidently exclaimed; then, sobering, added: "I want you to promise one thing. It isn't much – simply to give serious thought to your position while I am away – to remember what I have just told you and to forget that first foolish mistake that cost me so much. Now will you?"

"Surely," she honestly answered.

"And – if possible – give me an answer?"

She nodded, and he was content to leave it there. They were now on the last mile, and they made it in silence, he plunged in delicious reverie, she very thoughtful. Looking up as the cutter rolled and bumped over the frozen stable-yard, he caught her looking at him with soft compassion.

"Well?"

She smiled. "Did you really – suffer?"

"Hell!"

Grasping her hand, he had almost kissed it when she jerked it suddenly away. "There's Karl – and Jenny – standing in the door." Noting his sudden discomposure, she added: "Never mind, she didn't see you. Won't you come in?"

"Can't – put me late for the choring."

This was only one of a dozen times that he had refused the invitation. A little surprised, she watched him turn and drive away, then she saw Nels coming up from the stable, and the thought was lost in wonder as to whether or no he had seen Molyneux take her hand.

Now, as a matter of fact, Nels had; moreover, he mentioned it to Jenny as he helped her wipe the supper dishes, and thereby earned much trouble. "I tank," he observed, "something is doings. Cappan he taken the mistress hand. Pratty soon the boss no have womans."

His chuckle died under her wrathful stare. "Mention that to any one, Nels, an' Mr. Bender 'll break every bone in your body."

It was not so easy to dispose of her own misgivings. As, that evening, she arranged the dishes in the homemade plate-rack, she turned sombre eyes on Helen, musing by the stove. Often her lips opened, but sound trembled on its thresholds. She kept her own counsel till Bender dropped in on his next visit.

It was perfectly natural for her to turn to him for counsel. Coming to her as he did, in the moment of her sore trouble, her girl's heart had opened and vented on him the love that had been prisoned since the death of her mother; and ever since a perfect understanding of kindred natures had obtained between them.

"They're talking about her in the settlements something scan'lous," she told him. "Tongues is clacking from here to Lone Tree. Why don't Mr. Carter come home? Kain't you persuade him?"

But Bender shook his head. "No, he's stiffer'n all he – Beg your pardon! I mean he's dreadful sot in his mind. I wouldn't envy the one that went to advise him."

Before going away Bender touched on a matter that was now old history in their intercourse. "Changed your mind yet, little girl?"

It was now Jenny's turn to sorrowfully shake her head. "It would be my an' pleasure to be wife to a big, good man like you. But I just kain't bring myself to put you where any man could cast my shame in your face."

"Oh, shore!" he protested. "You was that little – a teeny bit of a thing, jes' seventeen – on'y a baby. Who'd be holding it agin you? Besides – he's in England."

"Yes – he's in England," Jenny slowly repeated. "But – "

He did not see the queer look she sent after him as he rode away.