Chapter 22. Cloudy Mountain

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_ CHAPTER XXII. CLOUDY MOUNTAIN

Five days running, Geraldine, Duane, and old Miller watched for the big gray boar among the rocky oak ridges under Cloudy Mountain; and though once they saw his huge tracks, they did not see him.

Every night, on their return, Scott jeered them and taunted them until a personal encounter with Duane was absolutely necessary, and they always adjourned to the snowy field of honour to wipe off the score and each other's faces with the unblemished snow.

Rosalie and a Chow-dog arrived by the middle of the week; Delancy toward the end of it, unencumbered. Duane made a mental note of his own assininity, and let it go at that. He was as glad to see Rosalie as anybody, and just as glad to see Delancy, but he'd have preferred to enjoy the pleasures separately, though it really didn't matter, after all.

"Sooner or later," he admitted to himself, "that Delancy man is going to marry her; and it seems to me she's entitled to another chance in the world. Even our earthly courts are lenient toward first offenders. As for the ethics--puzzle it out, you!" He made a gesture including the world in general, lighted a cigarette, and went out to the gun-room to join Geraldine.

"Rosalie and Delancy want to go shooting with us," he explained with a shrug.

"Oh, Duane!--and our solitary and very heavenly trips alone together!"

"I know it. I have just telephoned Miller to get Kemp from Westgate for them. Is that all right?"

"Yes"--she hesitated--"I think so."

"Let Kemp guide them," he insisted. "They'll never hold out as far as Cloudy Mountain. All they want is to shoot a boar, no matter how big it is. Miller says the boar are feeding again near the Green Pass. It's easy enough to send them there."

"Do you think that is perfectly hospitable? Rosalie and Delancy may find it rather stupid going off alone together with only Kemp to amuse them. I am fond of him," she added, "but you know what a woman like Rosalie is prone to think of Delancy."

He glanced at her keenly; she had, evidently, not the slightest notion of the _status quo_.

"Oh, they'll get along together, all right," he said carelessly. "If they choose to remain with us, of course we all can keep on to Cloudy Mountain; but you'll see them accept Kemp and the Green Pass with grateful alacrity after two miles of snow-shoeing through the brush; and we'll have the mountain all to ourselves."

"You're a shameless deviser of schemes, aren't you, dear?" she asked, considering him with that faint, intimate smile, which, however, had always in it something of curiosity. "You know perfectly well we could drive those poor people the whole way to Cloudy Mountain."

"Why, that _is_ so!" he exclaimed, pretending surprise; "but, after all, dear, it's better sport to beat up the alders below Green Pass and try to jump a pig for them. That's true hospitality----"

She laughed, shaking her head. "Oh, Duane, Duane!" she murmured, suffering him to capture both her hands and lay them against his face to cover the glee that twitched it at his own unholy perfidy.

And so it came about that, after an early luncheon, a big double sleigh jingled up, received its jolly cargo, and sped away again into the white woodlands, Kathleen waving adieu and Scott deriding them with scoffing and snowballs.

The drive was very beautiful, particularly through the pine and hemlock belt where the great trees, clothed heavily with snow, bent branch and crest under the pale winter sunshine. Tall fir-balsams pricked the sky, perfect cones of white; spruces were snowy mounds; far into the forest twilight glimmered the unsullied snow.

As they sped along, Geraldine pointed out imprints of fox and rabbit, faint trails where a field-mouse had passed, the string of henlike footprints recording the deliberate progress of some ruffed grouse picking its leisurely way across the snow; the sharp, indented marks of squirrels.

Rosalie was enchanted, Delancy mildly so, but when a deeper trail ploughed the snow, running parallel to their progress, he regarded it with more animation.

"Pig," said Geraldine briefly.

"Wild?" he inquired.

"Of course," she smiled; "and probably a good big boar."

Rosalie thrilled and unconsciously rested her fur-gloved hand on Delancy's sleeve.

"You know," she said, "you must shoot a little straighter than you did at target practice this morning. Because I can't run very fast," she added with another delightful shudder.

Delancy, at her anxious request, modestly assured her that he would "plug" the first boar that showed his tusks; and Geraldine laughed and made Rosalie promise to do the same.

"You're both likely to have a shot," she said as the sleigh drew up on a stone bridge and Miller and Kemp came over and saluted--big, raw-boned men on snow-shoes, wearing no outer coats over their thin woollen shirts, although every thermometer at Roya-Neh recorded zero.

Gun-cases were handed out, rifles withdrawn, and the cases stowed away in the sleigh again. Fur coats were rolled in pairs, strapped, and slung behind the broad shoulders of the guides. Then snow-shoes were adjusted--skis for Geraldine; Miller walked westward and took post; Kemp's huge bulk closed the eastern extremity of the line, and between them, two and two at thirty paces apart, stood the hunters, Duane with Rosalie, Geraldine with Delancy, loading their magazines.

Ahead was an open wood of second growth, birch, beech, and maple; sunlight lay in white splashes here and there; nothing except these blinding pools of light and the soft impression of a fallen twig varied the immaculate snow surface as far as the eye could see.

"Forward and silence," called out Geraldine; the mellow swish of snow-shoes answered her, and she glided forward on her skis, instructing Delancy under her breath.

"The wind is right," she said. "They can't scent us here, though deeper in the mountains the wind cuts up and you never can be sure what it may do. There's just a chance of jumping a pig here, but there's a better chance when we strike the alder country. Try not to shoot a sow."

"How am I to tell?"

"Sows have no tusks that show. Be careful not to mistake the white patches of snow on a sow's jowl for tusks. They get them by rooting and it's not always easy to tell."

Delancy said very honestly: "You'll have to control me; I'm likely to let drive at anything."

"You're more likely to forget to shoot until the pig is out of sight," she whispered, laughing. "Look! Three trails! They were made last night."

"Boar?"

"Yes," she nodded, glancing at the deep cloven imprints. She leaned forward and glanced across the line at Miller, who caught her eye and signalled significantly with one hand.

"Be ready, Delancy," she whispered. "There's a boar somewhere ahead."

"How can you tell?"

"I can scent him. It's strong enough in the wind," she added, wrinkling her delicate nose with a smile.

Grandcourt sniffed and sniffed, and finally detected a slight acrid odour in the light, clear breeze. He looked wisely around him; Geraldine was skirting a fallen tree on her skis; he started on and was just rounding a clump of brush when there came a light, crashing noise directly ahead of him; a big, dark, shaggy creature went bounding and bucking across his line of vision--a most extraordinary animal, all head and shoulders and big, furry ears.

The snapping crack of a rifle echoed by the sharp racket of another shot aroused him to action too late, for Miller, knife drawn, was hastening across the snow to a distant dark, motionless heap; and Geraldine stood jerking back the ejector of her weapon and throwing a fresh cartridge into the breach.

"My goodness!" he faltered, "somebody got him! Who fired, Geraldine?"

She said: "I waited as long as I dared, Delancy. They go like lightning, you know. I'm terribly sorry you didn't fire."

"Good girl!" said Duane in a low voice as she sped by him on her skis, rifle ready for emergencies as old Miller cautiously approached the shaggy brown heap, knife glittering.

But there was no emergency; Miller's knife sank to the hilt; Geraldine uncocked her rifle and bent curiously over the dead boar.

"Nice tusks. Miss Seagrave," commented the old man. "He's fat as butter, too. I cal'late he'll tip the beam at a hundred and forty paound!"

The hunters clustered around with exclamations of admiration; Rosalie, distractingly pretty in her white wool kilts and cap, knelt down and touched the fierce, long-nosed head and stroked the furry jowl.

"Oh, Delancy!" she wailed, "why _didn't_ you 'plug' him as you promised? _I_ simply _couldn't_ shoot; Duane tried to make me, but I was so excited and so surprised to see the creature run so fast that all my ideas went out of my head and I never thought of pulling that wretched trigger!"

"That," said Delancy, very red, "is precisely what happened to me." And, turning to Geraldine, who looked dreadfully repentant: "I heard you tell me to shoot, and I merely gawked at the beast like a rubbering jay at a ten-cent show."

"Everybody does that at first," said Duane cheerfully; "I'll bet anything that you and Rosalie empty your magazines at the next one."

"We really must, Delancy," insisted Rosalie as she and Geraldine turned away when Miller and Kemp tucked up their sleeves and unsheathed their knives in preparation for unpleasant but necessary details.

But they worked like lightning; and in exactly seven minutes the heavy beast was drawn, washed out with snow, roped, and hung to a tree well out of reach of any four-footed forest marauders that might prowl that way before night.

Geraldine, smiling her deprecation of their praise, waited with the others until the two guides were ready. Then, in the same order as before, they moved forward, descended the slope, and came into a strange wilderness of stark gray alders that stretched away in every direction. And threading, circling, crossing each other everywhere among the alders ran the trails of deer and wild boar, deep and fresh in the powdery snow.

At intervals, as they advanced, hard-wood ridges crossed the bewildering alder labyrinths. Twice, while ascending these ridges, Rosalie's heart jumped as a grouse thundered up. Once three steel-gray deer started out of the scrub and went bounding off, displaying enormous white flags; once a young buck, hunting for trouble, winded it, whistled, and came leaping past Rosalie so close that she shrank aside with a half-stifled cry of apprehension and delight.

Half a mile farther on Delancy, labouring along on his snow-shoes, suddenly halted, detaining Geraldine with a quick touch on the shoulder.

"There's something in that clearing," he whispered.

Miller had seen it, too; Duane motioned Rosalie forward to join Delancy, and, side by side, they crept ahead, keeping a clump of scrub hemlock between them and the edge of the clearing. It was the Green Pass feed-ground, a rocky strip of pasture climbing upward toward Lynx Peak; and there, clean cut against the snowy background, three dark objects were moving, trotting nervously here and there, nosing, nuzzling, tunnelling the snow with long, sharp muzzles.

Duane and Geraldine silently unslung their field-glasses.

"They're boar," he said.

"Two-year-olds," she nodded. "I do hope they will get one each. Duane, ought I to have shot that other one?"

"Of course, you generous child! Otherwise he'd have gone clear away. That was a cracking shot, too--clean through the backbone at the base of the skull.... Look at Rosalie! She's unstrapped her snow-shoes and she and Delancy are crawling on all-fours!"

Kemp had now joined the stalkers; he was a wise old hunter, and Duane and Geraldine, keeping very still, watched the operations side by side.

For half an hour Rosalie lay motionless in the snow on the forest's edge, and Geraldine was beginning to fret at the prospect of her being too benumbed by the cold to use her rifle, when Duane touched her on the arm and drew her attention to a fourth boar.

The animal came on from behind Rosalie and to Delancy's right--a good-sized, very black fellow, evidently suspicious yet tempted to reconnoitre the feeding-ground.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear!" she whispered; "what a shot Delancy has! Why _doesn't_ he see him! What on earth is Kemp about? Why, the boar is within ten feet of Delancy's legs and doesn't see or wind him!"

"Look!"

Kemp had caught sight of the fourth boar. Geraldine and Duane saw his dilemma, saw him silently give Rosalie the signal to fire at the nearest boar in the open, then saw him turn like a flash and almost drag Delancy to his feet.

"Kill that pig, _now_!" he thundered--"unless you want him hackin' your shins!"

The boar stood in his tracks, bristling, furious, probably astounded to find himself so close to the only thing in all the forest that he feared and would have preferred to flee from.

Under such conditions boars lose their heads; there was a sudden clatter of tusks, a muffled, indescribable sound, half squeal, half roar; a fountain of feathery snow, and two shots close together. Then a third shot.

Rosalie, rather pale, threw another cartridge in as Delancy picked himself out of a snow-bank and looked around him in astonishment.

"Well done, young lady!" cried Kemp, running a fistful of snow over the blade of his hunting-knife and nodding his admiration. "I guess it's just as well you disobeyed orders and let this funny pig have what was coming to him. Y' ain't hurt, are ye, Mr. Grandcourt?"

"No; he didn't hit me; I tripped on that root. Did I miss him?"

"Not at all," said Duane, kneeling down while Miller lifted the great fierce head. "You hit him all right, but it didn't stop him; it only turned him. Here's your second bullet, too; and Rosalie, yours did the business for him. Good for you! It's fine, isn't it, Geraldine?"

Grandcourt, flushing heavily, turned to Rosalie and held out his hand. "Thank you," he said; "the brute was right on top of me."

"Oh, no," she said honestly, "he'd missed you and was going straight on. I don't know how on earth I ever hit him, but I was so frightened to see you go over backward and I thought that he'd knocked you down, and I was perfectly furious----"

She gave a little sob of excitement, laughed unsteadily, and sat down on a fallen log, burying her face in her hands.

They knew enough to let her alone and pretend not to notice her. Geraldine chattered away cheerfully to the two men while the keepers drew the game. Delancy tried to listen to her, but his anxious eyes kept turning toward Rosalie, and at length, unable to endure it, he went over and sat down beside her, careless of what others might infer.

"How funny," whispered Geraldine to Duane. "I had no idea that Delancy was so fond of her. Had you?"

He started slightly. "I? Oh, no," he said hastily--too hastily. He was a very poor actor.

Gravely, head bent, she walked forward beside him after Grandcourt had announced that he and Rosalie had had enough and that they wished Kemp to take them and their game to the sleigh.

Once, looking back, she saw the procession moving in the opposite direction through the woods, Kemp leading, rope over his shoulder, dragging the dead boar across the snow; Grandcourt, both rifles slung across his back, big arm supporting Rosalie, who walked as though very tired, her bright head drooping, her arm resting on his shoulder.

Geraldine looked up at Duane thoughtfully, and he supposed that she was about to speak, but her gaze became remote; she shifted her rifle, and walked on.

Before they came to the wild, shaggy country below Cloudy Mountain she said:

"I've been thinking it over, Duane. I can see in it nothing that can concern anybody except themselves. Can you?"

"Not a thing, dear.... I'm sorry I suggested his coming. I knew about this, but I clean forgot it when I asked you to invite him."

"I remember, now, your consternation when you realised it," she said, smiling. "After all, Duane, if it is bound to happen, I don't mind it happening here.... Poor, lonely little Rosalie!... I'm depraved enough to be glad for her--if it is really to be so."

"I'm glad, too.... Only she ought to begin her action, I think. It's more prudent and better taste."

"You said once that you had a contempt for divorce."

"I never entertain the same opinion of anything two days in succession," he said, smiling. "When there is any one moral law that can justly cover every case which it is framed to govern, I'll be glad to remain more constant in my beliefs."

"Then you _do_ believe in divorce?"

"To-day I happen to."

"Duane, is that your attitude toward everything?"

"Everything except you," he said cheerfully. "That is literally true. Even in my painting and in my liking for the work of others, I veer about like a weather-vane, never holding very long to one point of view."

"You're very frank about it."

"Why not?"

"Isn't it a--a weakness?"

"I don't think so," he said so simply that she tucked her arm under his with a soft, confidential laugh.

"You goose; do you suppose I think there is a weak fibre in you? I've always adored the strength in you--even when it was rough enough to bruise me. Listen, dear; there's only one thing you might possibly weaken on. Promise you won't."

"I promise."

"Then," she said triumphantly, "you'll take first shot at the big boar! Are you angry because I made you promise? If you only knew, dear, how happy I have been, saving the best I had to offer, in this forest, for you! You will make me happy, won't you?"

"Of course I will, you little trump!" he said, encircling her waist, forgetful of old Miller, plodding along behind them.

But it was no secret to old Miller, nor to any native in the country-side for a radius of forty miles. No modern invention can equal the wireless celerity that distributes information concerning other people's business throughout the rural wastes of this great and gossipping nation.

She made him release her, blushing hotly as she remembered that Miller was behind them, and she scolded her lover roundly, until later, in a moment of thoughtlessness, she leaned close to his shoulder and told him she adored him with every breath she drew, which was no sillier than his reply.

The long blue shadows on the snow and the pink bars of late sunlight had died out together. It had grown warmer and grayer in the forest; and after a little one or two snow-flakes came sifting down through the trees.

They had not jumped the big silver boar, nor had they found a trace of him among the trails that crossed and recrossed the silent reaches of the forest. Light was fading to the colourless, opaque gray which heralded a snow-storm as they reached the feeding-ground, spread out their fur coats, and dropped, belly down, to reconnoitre.

Nothing moved among the oaks. They lay listening minute after minute; no significant sound broke the silence, no dead branch cracked in the hemlocks.

She lay close to him for warmth, chin resting on his shoulder, her cheek against his. Their snow-shoes were stuck upright in a drift behind them; beside these squatted old Miller, listening, peering, nostrils working in the wind like an old dog's.

They waited and watched through a fine veil of snow descending; in the white silence there was not a sound save the silken flutter of a lonely chickadee, friendly, inquiring, dropping from twig to twig until its tiny bright eyes peered level with Geraldine's.

Evidently the great boar was not feeding before night. Duane turned his head restlessly; old Miller, too, had become impatient and they saw him prowling noiselessly down among the rocks, scrutinising snow and thickets, casting wise glances among the trees, shaking his white head as though communing with himself.

"Well, little girl," breathed Duane, "it looks doubtful, doesn't it?"

She turned on her side toward him, looking him in the eyes:

"Does it matter?"

"No," he said, smiling.

She reached out her arms; they settled close around his neck, clung for a second's passionate silence, released him and covered her flushed face, all but the mouth. Under them his lips met hers.

The next instant she was on her knees, pink-cheeked, alert, ears straining in the wind.

"Miller is coming back very fast!" she whispered to her lover. "I believe he has good news!"

Miller was coming fast, holding out in one hand something red and gray--something that dangled and flapped as he strode--something that looked horrible and raw.

"Damn him!" said the old man fiercely, "no wonder he ain't a-feedin'! Look at this, Miss Seagrave. There's more of it below--a hull mess of it in the snow."

"It's a big strip of deer-hide--all raw and bleeding!" faltered the girl. "What in the world has happened?"

"_His_ work," said Miller grimly.

"The--the big boar?"

"Yes'm. The deer yard over there. He sneaked in on 'em last night and this doe must have got stuck in a drift. And that devil caught her and pulled her down and tore her into bits. Why, the woods is all scattered with shreds o' hide like this! I wish to God you or Mr. Mallett could get one crack at him! I do, by thunder! Yes'm!"

But it was already too dusky among the trees to sight a rifle. In silence they strapped up the coats, fastened on snow-shoes, and moved out along the bare spur of the mountain, where there was still daylight in the open, although the thickening snow made everything gray and vague.

Here and there a spectral tree loomed up among the rocks; a white hare's track, paralleled by the big round imprints of a lynx, ran along the unseen path they followed as Miller guided them toward Westgate.

Later, outlined in the white waste, ancient apple-trees appeared, gnarled relics of some long-abandoned clearing; and, as they passed, Duane chanced to glance across the rocks to the left.

At first he thought he saw something move, but began to make up his mind that he was deceived.

Noticing that he had halted, Geraldine came back, and then Miller returned to where he stood, squinting through the falling flakes in the vague landscape beyond.

"It moved; I seen it," whispered Miller hoarsely.

"It's a deer," motioned Geraldine; "it's too big for anything else."

For five minutes in perfect silence they watched the gray, flat forms of scrub and rock; and Duane was beginning to lose faith in everybody's eyes when, without warning, a huge, colourless shape detached itself from the flat silhouettes and moved leisurely out into the open.

There was no need to speak; trembling slightly, he cleared his rifle sight of snow, steadied his nerves, raised the weapon, and fired.

A horrid sort of scream answered the shot; the boar lurched off among the rocks, and after him at top speed ran Duane and Miller, while Geraldine, on swift skis, sped eastward like the wind to block retreat to the mountain. She heard Duane's rifle crack again, then again; heard a heavy rush in the thicket in front of her, lifted her rifle, fired, was hurled sideways on the rocks, and knew no more until she unclosed her bewildered eyes in her lover's arms.

A sharp pain shot through her; she gasped, turned very white, and lay with wide eyes and parted lips staring at Duane.

Suddenly a penetrating aroma filled her lungs; with all her strength she pushed away the flask at her lips.

"No! No! Not that! I _will_ not, Duane!"

"Dear," he said unsteadily, "you are very badly hurt. We are trying to carry you back. You must let me give you this----"

"No," she sobbed, "I will not! Duane--I--" Pain made her faint; her grasp on his arm tightened convulsively; with a supreme effort she struck the flask out of his hand and dropped back unconscious. _

Read next: Chapter 23. Sine Die

Read previous: Chapter 21. The Golden Hours

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