CHAPTER 19
Anxious Waiting
THE storm which overcame Sergeant North, and wound its mystic winding-sheet over the land, enshrouded the little brush lean-to which Constable Rolfe had erected for Marion Brisbane. It was merely a rough makeshift affair, and yet it served its purpose. It was sheltered from the fierce wind by the big trees, and through their great outstretched branches the snow sifted gently down. A generous fire radiated its warmth and cheer, and the leaping flames melted and dissolved the falling flakes. Rolfe was kept busy much of the time searching for dry wood, and piling it near to serve not only for the rest of the day but during the long night. Having no axe, this was a difficult task, and he was forced to break off dead branches to add to his supply. Marion longed to be of some use, but the constable jokingly told her that a woman’s place was at home looking after the affairs of the household.
“Suppose we have a turkey for dinner to-morrow,” he said, as he was about to start forth again on one of his wood-hunting trips. “Just phone your order to Vancouver, and have a big fat bird sent up. Our cook can prepare it to-night, and have it ready for the oven early in the morning.”
“I am afraid that our phone is out of order,” Marion laughingly replied. “Suppose you call in on your way home and order the turkey.”
In this manner the two marooned travellers passed the weary hours. As night shut down upon them, they sang hymns and old familiar songs. Rolfe recited poetry and read inspiring selections from his worn and stained pocket manual.
“What a pity it is,” he said, after he had finished several short poems, “that the ones who wrote such verses cannot know of the great help they are to us.”
“Perhaps they do know,” Marion replied, “especially the ones we call ‘dead.’ I like to think that the departed have full knowledge of what is taking place on earth. Perhaps even now the writers of those verses are rejoicing because of the help they are to us. Anyway, isn’t it great to feel that we never really die, but that our deeds live after us.”
“It certainly is,” Rolfe acknowledged. “Tennyson has well expressed it in two lines when he says,
“‘Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.’
“Now, that is the idea. Tennyson was thinking of someone blowing a bugle, and how the notes sounded far and wide. In a similar way his words echo on and on, even to this desolate place.”
“Why don’t you write poetry, Mr. Rolfe?” Marion asked. “I am sure you could do it well. Why not try?”
The constable’s face flushed, and he became much embarrassed. He rose and placed several small sticks upon the fire. When this had been accomplished, he turned to Marion.
“I have tried my hand at it,” he confessed, “although so far I have accomplished very little. But when I am through with the Force, I hope to give expression to the thoughts which arise within me. There is so much to write about that it will take years to tell all I want to. The sergeant thinks that it is all nonsense and waste of time. But he doesn’t seem to understand. He is so very practical and matter-of-fact.”
The mention of the sergeant brought an anxious expression to Marion’s face. He had seldom been out of her mind since she had bidden him good-by, and watched him as he strode away. She knew what a difficult journey lay ahead of him, and she feared that he could not accomplish it on his miserable snow-shoes. Then when the storm swept down, her fear increased. Rolfe, too, was alarmed, although he spoke hopefully.
“The sergeant is a wonderful trailsman,” he said. “Even if his snow-shoes should give out, he can plow his way through. His endurance is remarkable. Why, I have known him to cross a mountain range in a howling blizzard, and come through almost as fresh as when he started.”
“But perhaps he will lose his way,” Marion suggested.
“Not a bit of it. You can’t lose him. He can follow a trail by instinct. Say, he is a great man. I have been with him on terrible journeys, and I wouldn’t be living to-day but for him. He carried me several miles once when I played out. Don’t worry about him, Miss Brisbane. He’ll get through, all right.”
Although these words cheered Marion to a certain degree, yet she could not help feeling uneasy. As the storm increased, and the wind roared overhead, and the trees swayed like great masts at sea, she thought of the man she loved battling his way through the blinding snow and the raging tempest. She also noted that as the evening wore on the constable became unusually silent, at times, and his eyes expressed his anxiety. She understood the meaning of this, and he could not deceive her when occasionally he aroused himself and assumed an attitude of cheerfulness and unconcern.
Rolfe, in fact, was playing a difficult part. He knew better than Marion the serious situation in which they were placed. If anything happened to the sergeant, it would go hard with them. They might fight their way through when the storm abated. But the chance was only one in a thousand, for now there would not be the least vestige of the trail left, so what could they do on their wretched snow-shoes?
All through the long night Rolfe watched and kept the fire going. Marion slept a little. She tried to keep awake, but weariness overcame her. She would awake shivering with a fearful apprehension of impending evil. She could not shake off this feeling, although she did not mention it to her companion. The tired woe-begone expression upon the constable’s face when he thought she was not noticing him smote her heart. Then to see him smile so bravely when she spoke to him thrilled her. She admired his courage, and the brave spirit he was maintaining for her sake. It strengthened her, and made her determine that she would show how a woman can suffer and be strong.
All unconsciously Marion was exerting a strong influence upon the constable’s impressionable and poetic nature. Her beauty appealed to him. The noble part he was performing in their present critical situation he considered as nothing out of the ordinary. It was merely what was expected of him as a member of the Force. In Marion Brisbane he had at last found the type of womanhood which had been for years but an ideal. Her brightness, courage, and sweet charm of face and manner inspired him. It was good to be near her in time of need. His life had been a rough one, but a great inner longing, and the energizing power of a lofty ideal, had kept him clean and straight. He knew very little of the society of women, so it was but natural that he should be deeply affected by this beautiful comrade of the trail.
This feeling, however, Rolfe kept to himself. To him loyalty was as vital as life. It flowed through every part of his being, and never for an instant did he dream of betraying his sergeant’s trust in him. So all the time he and Marion were together, neither by word or look did he show that she was anything more to him than a friend for whose welfare he was concerned.
Marion, too, did considerable thinking. Since leaving Kynox she had been mentally comparing her two companions. She liked Rolfe for his jovial manner, and poetic notions. He helped to pass the weary hours, and to enliven the trail. But to her he seemed more like a boy on whom the responsibilities of life pressed but lightly. She would at times glance from him to the sergeant and note the difference between the two—one gay, talkative, and dependent; the other reserved, quiet, and self-reliant. She never associated Tom Rolfe with great deeds of daring, but with John North it was different. To her he was the very embodiment of a true hero. His lithe, powerful body, his strong, clean-cut features, and steady gray eyes appealed to her. It almost frightened her at times to think that she had won the love of such a man, and that she loved him.
She thought of all this as she huddled there before the fire with the tempest raging overhead. She pictured her lover out in the storm, where, she did not know. And he was doing it for her sake, that she might be saved. Upon himself he had taken the hardships and dangers of the journey. That was always the way of a strong man. He had not asked the constable to go, while he remained behind. Her heart thrilled at the idea, and she longed to tell him how proud she was of him.
Slowly the weary hours dragged by, and when at length the dawn of a new day dispelled the blackness of night, the storm slackened. The wind gradually died down, and the snow ceased to fall. The constable replenished the pile of wood while Marion prepared their meagre breakfast. How tired they both were of moose meat, and yet there was nothing else to keep life within their bodies.
“Meat! meat! meat!” Rolfe exclaimed, as he staggered in and threw down an armful of dry sticks. “I shall write a poem about that some day, and make the word rhyme with ‘beat’ and ‘feet.’ “Why, I am inspired now, listen to this:
“Meat! meat! meat!
It keeps me on my feet
When I would go dead beat,
And so I eat, eat, eat.”
Marion smiled as she handed the constable a piece of broiled steak.
“Perhaps this will inspire you to take another masterpiece,” she bantered. “I am very thankful to be able to contribute something to the work of a genius. Poets must eat, I suppose.”
“Right you are,” Rolfe replied. They often wrote about eating. I remember what Bobbie Burns said:
“Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat;
Sae let the Lord be thankit.”
“Yes, we hae meat,” he commented, looking somewhat ruefully upon his piece of burned steak, “but I wonder if Bobbie would say ‘Let the Lord be thankit,’ if he had nothing but this?”
“But you have an appetite,” Marion reminded. “Didn’t the poet say that ‘Some hae meat and canna eat’? You should be thankful for that. I am, anyway, and I find this meat very good.”
Both Marion and Rolfe were feeling more cheerful now. This little round of levity did much to dispel the clouds of despair which overshadowed them during the night. The passing of the storm also had its effect, so they looked hopefully forward to a speedy relief from their trying situation. But as the morning wore away and the afternoon was partly sped, and the sergeant had not come, the feeling of deep concern again oppressed them. They tried to be cheerful, and not to betray their anxiety to each other. But their hearts were troubled, for they both strongly felt that something had happened to the one who alone could bring them the needed help. Rolfe had just replenished the fire for the hundredth time during the day, and was on the point of going after more wood for the night, when a cry of joy from Marion caused him to look quickly around. At first he could hardly believe his eyes, for there was Hugo, the trapper, coming toward them among the trees with great strides. A toboggan trailed behind, containing a bundle, and a pair of snow-shoes. His beard was thickly coated with frost, and he had the appearance of Santa Claus on his mission of goodwill.
After her cry of joy Marion was too much overcome to utter another word until Hugo had thrown the rope from off his shoulders, and stepped from his snow-shoes. She then sprang to his side, and impulsively threw her arms around his huge body, much to Rolfe’s surprise. Tears of thankfulness were streaming down her cheeks as she looked into her father’s face.
“Thank God, you have come!” she at length murmured. “But have you met Sergeant North? Is he safe?”
It was well for Marion’s peace of mind that she did not notice the expression which leaped into Hugo’s eyes as she asked that question. She wondered, though, why her father somewhat roughly unclasped her arms and moved closer to the fire. She mistook his meaning, thinking that he was the bearer of bad news which he was loath to impart. Her face turned very white.
“Has anything happened to him?” she asked in a voice that was almost a whisper. “Surely he is not dead.”
“No, he is not dead,” Hugo replied, without looking at her. “At least, he wasn’t the last time I saw him. But he was in a bad way when I stumbled across him in that storm. But never mind about him now. How are you two making out? Plenty of grub, eh?”
“Just what you see there,” Rolfe replied, pointing to the last of the moose meat hanging from the limb of a tree. “We’ve had nothing but meat diet for days.”
“Well, you might be worse off, young man,” Hugo reminded, looking keenly at the constable. “But I’ve something here which will be a change. It’s all I could scrape together, but I guess it will last until we get out of this. We must not stay long, for the sergeant, in whom you are so much interested, is waiting our coming several miles away.”
This was good news to Marion and Rolfe. They asked several more questions, but receiving no satisfactory reply, they desisted. Hugo had brought some tea, and when this had been prepared in a small tin can which he always carried with him, they were greatly refreshed. He had also a supply of “sourdough” bread, and a tin of jam. To the ones who had been living for days upon meat these proved great delicacies.
“Why, this is regular hotel fare,” Rolfe remarked, as he helped himself to a second large slice of bread. “We only need the napkins and a few other accessories to make it the real thing.”
Marion smiled, but Hugo seemed to take no notice of the young man’s remarks. In fact, he had not heard him. His mind was upon more important matters. He was tired, as well, for he had been on the march through most of the storm, and long before dawn that day. He did not tell of the terrible struggle he had made to reach his cabin far beyond the valley, of his brief rest there while he packed up his meagre supply of food, and his starting forth again before the storm had spent its fury. It was not his way to tell of such things. He had accomplished his purpose, and that gave him all the satisfaction he needed.
But he was greatly disappointed. He had done it all for Marion’s sake, and upon his arrival at the camp in the forest her first question was about the sergeant. She had come to him from that world which he never expected to see again. She had brought a new inspiration into his life. She had changed him until he hardly knew himself. And yet for all that she was not his. She belonged to another, a member of the Force from which he had been fleeing for years. And yet he knew it was his own fault. He had left her and her mother to face the reproach of the world, and like a coward had fled to the wilderness. But Marion had followed him! She had found him! Surely there must be love in her heart for her wayward father.
All this swept through his mind during the short time he rested at the camping-place. There were other things as well which caused him considerable uneasiness, all of which, however, he wisely kept to himself.