THE two started bravely in the fine morning sunshine. There were long and laborious miles ahead, and only a short day in which to overcome them and their difficulties. In his heart the young man believed that it would be impossible for them to complete the task that day, and he dreaded the shelterless night that would overtake them. But should he break down, the day’s work would have hardened his companion for the rest of the journey alone. There was a chance that they would find help on the way, for surely efforts would be making to clear the roads. The snow had disappeared from all exposed places.

They descended the shaly, slippery trail to the road, and here he was gratified to see that the avalanche had cleared away the fallen tree and the wreck of the wagon. He led the way up the canon, for in that direction were the nearest houses.

He found the road even worse than he had expected. Being a narrow way, cut into the steep slope of the canon, to leave it in rounding fallen trees and breaches left by the storm was a slow and laborious task, and time was precious for a number of reasons. Each had a load to bear,—he some covering against the night, and she some articles of her own. These soon became very burdensome to both.

On they plodded. While a heaviness appeared in his manner, her bearing was cheerful and spirited. A sadness that he made no effort to conceal and that she bravely hid oppressed them both. To find him sad was sufficient to tinge her sadness with happiness. They rested at short intervals, for the exertion soon began to tell upon them, but upon him the more. They slaked their thirst from the river. To the woman it seemed a spring-time stroll through flowering fields, softened by the sweet sadness of May. To him it was a task that brought them step by step nearer to the end, where he must deal her the crudest blow of her life. For at the end she expected news of her father. She would hear it, and from the one who would have been the most glad to spare her. But she must not know yet. All her strength was needed for the task before her. It is time to break hearts when their breaking can be no longer deferred.

He had been trudging ahead. He must have suspected that she observed the labor with which he walked, the uncontrollable tendency of his knees to give way, the reeling that now would send him against the bank, and then upon the outer edge of the grade; for presently he asked her to walk ahead. She complied.

Their slow and laborious work presently made it impossible for them to talk. They went on in silence. After they had proceeded thus for some hours, a thing occurred that struck dismay to her soul. Her companion suddenly became voluble. At first he was coherent, although he talked about matters to which she was a total stranger. This showed an alarming unconsciousness of her presence. As he talked, he became more and more incoherent, and at times laughed inanely. Presently, with awe in his voice, he said,—

“She was the woman I loved. She’s dead, boys, she’s dead; and by God! they killed her.”

Her spirit sank. After all that she had hoped and yearned for, there now had come back the most terrible of the ghosts of the bitter past. After all the seeming bridging of the chasm that had separated them, it opened now all the wider and deeper and darker.

“Do you know what a murderer is?” he exclaimed in a loud voice, as he swung his arm threateningly aloft. “A she-wolf, the slyest and most dangerous of beasts. She comes whining and fawning; she licks your hand; she wins your trust. And then, when you have warmed her, and patched her torn skin, and mended her broken bones, she turns upon you and tears out your heart with her fangs.”

Stifling, faint, barely able to stand, the young woman stood aside, and he passed her without seeing her.

“Yes,” he resumed in great excitement, “I must be a man,—always a man. What! kill a woman? No, no, no! Not that. That would be terrible, brutal, cowardly. Yes, I must be a man. She needs me; I will help her. Is that door locked? She must never know—never know so long as she lives. Ah, that is beautiful, wonderful, savory,—a feast for gods and angels! Yes, I will do my duty. She needs me. She despises me. Very good; I will do my duty. She scorns my poor food—secretly, but I know! She is getting well. Thank God for that! She shall eat all she can. Me? No, no. I don’t want anything. No; I don’t want a thing. I have no appetite!”

He burst into laughter, and the echo of it came back from the opposite wall of the canon.

“Oh, my love, my love!” he cried, suddenly becoming sad, “how could you cast me off, when all had been so true and trusting between us? But I know it was better so. It was not right for me to stand in the way.” He paused, and his voice sank into an awed whisper as he said, “She’s dead, boys, she’s dead; and by God! they killed her.”

He pushed rapidly on, muttering things that she could not hear, that she did not want to hear. Not a word of kindness for her had come from him in his delirium, and her heart was breaking.

“When it is all over,” he said aloud, “I will go to my old friend, and he will nurse me back to health and strength, and I will begin the fight again. I will be a man—always a man. I will do my duty. And the she-wolf—no, no, no! She will not tear out my heart with her claws and fangs. No! There is no she-wolf! I say, there is no she-wolf. No! She is kind to me. I know it, I know it! She is gentle and thoughtful and unselfish. She is very, very beautiful. She won’t leave me, will she? She won’t leave me alone! But she is unmanning me! I must not let her do that! I must be a man and do my duty. No, you must not take off my shoes. I can do that. I have no pain—none whatever. Yes, I will be calm. Your voice is sweet; it is music; it fills me with peace and comfort; and your hand on my face—how soft and pleasant it is! I wish I could tell you; but no, I must do my duty; I must be a man! I will not listen to your voice. I will not let you touch me. That would keep me from my duty.”

These words raised her from despair to bliss. And so he had fought his inclinations,—he needed her, he wanted her!

Still he kept on. She strained every hearing faculty for his slightest word. For what he had already said, she could bear his forgetting her presence. Still they pushed on, he muttering and laughing; but for all his madness, he was wise and cautious amid the dangers and hardships of the road. No longer did he advise her, guide her, assist her, and show her the innumerable unobtrusive attentions to which she had become accustomed.

At last he suddenly stopped in a stretch of good road and looked about, bewildered.

“Where is this?” he whispered; then aloud, “Oh, it is the trail of the wolves! After them will come the she-wolf, and her fangs——” He dropped his parcel and clutched his breast. “Her fangs!” he gasped. He looked about and picked up a stick, which he swung as a club about him. “The she-wolf is here!” he cried.

His glance fell upon his companion, standing in awe and pity and love before him. Instantly a fearful malignity hardened his face, and his eyes blazed with the murder that had filled them once before. He clutched the stick more fiercely, and glared at her with a mixture of terror and ferocity. But she stood firm, and gently said,—

“My friend!”

His face instantly softened. She stood smiling, her glance caressing, her whole bearing bespeaking sympathy and affection.

“My dear friend,” she said, in a voice whose sweetness sank deep within him, “you know me!”

A look of joyous recognition swept over his face.

“I am so glad!” he breathlessly said. “I thought you had left me alone!”

Saying this, he sank to the ground, smiling upon her as he fell.

She knelt beside him, placed a soothing hand upon his cheek, and spoke comforting words. His face showed the profound gratification that filled him, and her soul spread its wings in the sunshine that filled the day with its glories.

He lay limp and helpless, but she knew that he must be going forward if he could. She caressed him, she coaxed him, she raised him to a sitting posture, she put her arms under his and lifted him to his feet; but his breathing was short and distressed, his head rolled listlessly, and his legs refused their offices. Then she realized that the last remnant of his strength, both of body and spirit, was gone; and her heart sank to the uttermost depths.

“Lay me down,” he said, very gently, but clearly, and with perfect resignation. “Lay me down, my friend, and go on alone. I am very tired, and must sleep. Keep to the road. I don’t think it is far to the nearest house. You are sure to find some one. Be brave and keep on.”

She laid him down and turned away. A cruel choking had throttled her power of speech. With tears so streaming from her eyes that she went about her purpose half blind, she found a drier place in the road, gathered pine-needles less soaked than the rest, made a bed for him there, and spread upon it the blankets that he had been carrying. When she looked again into his face he was sleeping lightly, and his breathing betrayed great physical distress. As gently as a mother lifting her sleeping babe, she took him up in her arms, bore him to the bed, and with infinite care and tenderness laid him upon it. Then with some twigs and handkerchiefs she fashioned a canopy that shielded his head from the sun. She covered him with a free part of the blanket; but fearing that it would prove insufficient, she removed her outer skirt and covered him with that; these covers she tucked about him, that he might not easily throw them off.

He had not been roused by these attentions. She knelt beside him and gently kissed his hands, his cheeks, his forehead, his lips, and wiped away her streaming tears as they fell upon his face. He moved slightly, opened his eyes, looked into her face, and smiled. Very feebly he took her hand, brought it to his lips, kissed it, smiled again, closed his eyes, and with a sigh of weariness fell asleep. She knelt thus and watched him for a little while, seeing him sink deeper and deeper into slumber. Then she rose. And now may the great God give heart and strength for the mighty task ahead!

Not trusting herself to look back upon him, she gathered up her courage and started. On she went, her head high, her eyes aflame, her cheeks aglow. A suffocating, heart-aching loneliness haunted her, dogged her, gnawed at her spirit. More than once she wavered, weak and trembling, under the backward strain upon her heart-strings. More than once she cried aloud, “I can’t leave him! I can’t leave him! I must go back!” And then she would summon all her strength again, and cry, “It is for his sake that I go! It is to save him that I leave him!”

Thus, rended by contending agonies, she went on and on. With incredible self-torturings she pictured the dangers to which she had left him exposed. What had he meant by the wolves? Was there really danger from that source? Often in his sleep in the hut, and again when his mind would wander, he had spoken of the wolves, and always in terror; but most dreadful of all things to him was the she-wolf. Yet during all the time that she had been imprisoned with him in the hut there had not been the least sign of a wolf, not the most distant howl of one. Why had this hallucination been so persistent with him, so terrifying to him?

The miles seemed interminable. She kept her eyes and ears strained for signs and sounds of human life. At intervals she would call aloud with all her might, and after hearing the echo of her voice die away in the canon, wait breathlessly for a response that never came. With eager haste she pushed on. Clambering over fallen trees, heading gullies that she could not leap, wading swift rivulets with which the rapidly melting snow was still ploughing the road, she came at length within view of some men who were clearing the road with axes and mending it with shovels,—the rough, strong, silent, capable men of the mountains. She frantically waved her handkerchief and called as she went. They stopped their work and stood gazing at her in wondering silence. They saw that she was not of their kind; but their trained sensibilities informed them that the great mountains had been working their terrible will upon human helplessness, and they stood ready to put the strength of their arms and hearts into the human struggle.

Imperfectly clad as she was, her form and bearing suggesting a princess, her beauty, enhanced by her joy at finding help, radiant and dazzling, their wonder and shyness held them stolid and outwardly unresponsive, and they silently waited for her to speak. She went straight to them, and, looking at them one after another as she spoke, she said,—

“Will you help me, men? I left a man exhausted in the road some miles down the canon. I fear he is dying. Will you go with me and help me bring him up? Is there a doctor anywhere near? Is there a house to which we may take him?”

There was a moment of silence,—these men are slow, but all the surer for that.

One of them, a bearded, commanding man of middle age, said,—

“Yes, we will go and bring him up. A doctor lives up the canon. Maybe he’s at home. The man can’t walk?”

“No; he is lying helpless in the road.” The strong man, whom she afterward heard the others call Samson,—one of those singular coincidences of name and character,—turned and picked out two men.

“You two,” he said, as quietly as though he were directing the road-work, “cut two poles and make a litter with them and a blanket. Go and bring the man up. You,” he said to a third, “help them make the litter, and give a hand on the trip.” Two others he directed to prepare the wagon, which stood a short distance up the road. Another he sent up the road to summon the doctor. Then he turned his attention to the young woman. Without consulting her, he made a comfortable nest of greatcoats and blankets, and when he had so deftly and quickly finished it, he said to her,—

“Come and rest here.”

“No!” she vehemently protested; “I am going back with the men.”

“You are not going back with the men. If you did, there would be two for them to bring up instead of one. One is enough. Make yourself comfortable here; you are safe.”

The slight rebuke in this, and the quiet determination with which the man spoke, informed her that she must lay a reasoning hand upon her agonizing fear and impatience. She obeyed him with as good a grace as she could find.

Again without consulting her, he brought some hot coffee, poured it into a tin-cup, and held it out to her.

“Drink that,” he said.

She drank it. He then produced some bread, which he sliced and buttered.

“Eat that,” he said.

She obeyed. While doing so she watched the men make the litter, and marvelled at the skill with which they worked, and the quickness with which the task was done, seemingly without the slightest effort or hurry. Then in silence the three men swung down the road.

The man named Samson, although he had not appeared to be giving any attention to his fair guest, was in front of her the moment she had finished the bread and butter. He carried some things in his arms, and threw them down at her feet.

“Take off your shoes and stockings,” he said, “and put on these socks; they are thick and warm. Take off all your other things that are wet, and wrap yourself up in these blankets. By the time the litter comes your things will be dry in the sun.”