Chan cursed.  “I’d gone a week ago if it’d been me.  We knew the way home, at least.”

The old man looked a long time into the river depths.  Only too well he realized that their decision was final.  But there was no answer, in the swirling depths, to the question that wracked his heart:  whether or not in these spruce-clad hills his daughter still lived.  It could only murmur and roar, without shaping words that human ears could grasp, never relieving the dreadful uncertainty that would be his life’s curse from henceforth.  He sighed, and the lines across his brow were dark and deep.

“Then turn the horses around, you cowards,” he answered.  “I can’t go on alone.”

For once neither Ray nor Chan had outward resentment for the epithet.  Secretly they realized that old Neilson was to the wall at last, and like a grizzly at bay, it was safer not to molest him.  Chan went down to the edge of the creek to water his saddle horse.

But presently they heard him curse, in inordinate and startled amazement, as he gazed at some imprint in the mud of the shore.  They saw the color sweep from his face.  In an instant his two companions were beside him.

Clear and unmistakable in the mud they saw the stale imprint of Ben’s canoe as they had landed, and the tracks of both the man and the girl as they had turned into the forest.

XXXVII

The dawn that crept so gray and mysterious over the frosty green of spruce brought no hope to Beatrice, sitting beside the unconscious form of Ben in the cave fronting the glade.  Rather it only brought the tragic truth home more clearly.  Her love for him had manifested itself too late to give happiness to either of them:  even now his life seemed to be stealing from her, into the valley of the shadow.

She had watched beside him the whole night; and now she beheld a sinister change in his condition.  He was still unconscious, but he no longer drew his breath at long intervals, softly and quietly.  He was breathing in short, troubled gasps, and an ominous red glow was in his cheeks.  She touched his brow, only to find it burning with fever.

The fact was not hard to understand.  The downpour of cold rain in which he had lain, wounded, for so many hours had drawn the life heat out of him, and some organic malady had combined with his bodily injuries to strike out his life.  Her predicament was one of absolute helplessness.  She was hundreds of miles—­weary weeks of march—­from medical attention, and she could neither leave him nor carry him.  The wilderness forces, resenting the intrusion into their secret depths, had seemingly taken full vengeance at last.  They had seemingly closed all gates to life and safety.  They had set the trap with care; and the cruel jaws had sprung.

She sat dry-eyed, incoherent prayers at her trembling lips.  Mostly she did not touch the man, only sat at his bedside in the crude chair Ben had fashioned for her while the minutes rolled into hours and the hours sped the night away,—­in tireless vigil, watching with lightless eyes.  Once she bent and touched her lips to his.