Snow-Blind | Page 5

they had lived. It was a few months later that Bella--Cousin Bella, who worked at "the farm"--came for him, a furtive, desperate Bella with a bruised face--a Bella tight-strung for flight, for a breaking of the galling accustomed ties of her life, for a terrible plunge into unknown adventure. She had muttered to him, as she dressed him and bundled together a few of his belongings, that they "were going to Hugh"--only it was another name she used, a name since blotted from their lives.
Hugh had sent for them. She was the only person in the world that Hugh could trust. But no one must know where they were going. They must be away by the time the man who took charge of the shop came back in the morning.
Pete remembered the journey. He remembered the small frontier station where they left the train at last. He remembered that strange, far-flung horizon, streaked with dawn, and his first taste of the tangy, heady air. There had been a long, long drive and a parting with the friendly driver where Bella turned on to the trail through the woods. It had been dim and dark and terrible among the endless regiments of trees--mazy and green and altogether bewildering. And after vague hop-o'-my-thumb wanderings, he had a disconnected memory of Hugh--a wild, rugged, ragged, bearded Hugh who caught him up fiercely as though he had an ogrish hunger for the feel of little boys. It was night when they came to Hugh's hiding-place. For miles Pete had been carried in his brother's arms. Bella had limped behind them. There had been a ford, he remembered; the splashing water had roused Pete, and he stayed awake afterward until he found himself before a dancing fire of logs in a queer, dark, resinous-smelling house, very low, with unglazed windows. He remembered, too, that Bella had burst out crying. That was the queerest memory of them all--that crying of Bella's.--Even now he could not understand exactly why she had cried so then.
The frightened, furtive life they had all led since--the life of scared wild things--had left its mark on Pete. His fear for Hugh now threw him back into the half-forgotten state of apprehension which had been the atmosphere of all his little boyhood. He had not known then why strange men were creatures to be feared and shunned. In fact, he had never been told the reason for Hugh's flight. Only, bit by bit, he had pieced together hints and vague allusions until he knew that this strange, embittered, boasting poet of a brother had killed or had been accused of killing. In his loyal boy mind Hugh Garth was promptly acquitted. It was the world that was wrong--not Hugh. Yet to-day, after all the long years of carefulness, he had gone back to the cruelty of the world.
Like a beast the boy's anxiety for his brother began to prowl about the walls of his mind. He imagined Hugh appearing at the trading-station. He pictured the curious glances of the Indians and the white natives. This limping, extravagant, energetic Hugh with his whitening hair and eyebrows and flaring hazel eyes--with his crooked nose and mouth, his magnificently desperate manner and his magnificently desperate voice--attention would inevitably fasten upon him anywhere; how much more in an empty land such as this! Pete fancied the inquiring looks turned from the man to the man's posted picture. It was no longer a faithful likeness, of course; still, it was a likeness. There was no other man in all the world like Hugh! He was made of odd, fantastic fragments, of ill-fitting parts--physically, mentally, spiritually. It was as if a soul had seen itself in a crooked mirror and had fashioned a form to match the distorted image. Hugh wouldn't, couldn't force himself to be inconspicuous. He would swagger; he would talk loud; his big, beautiful voice would challenge attention, create an audience. He would have some impossible, splendid tale to tell.
Pete sat up straighter in his chair, gingerly rearranging the ankle, and lifted his blue and haunted eyes--the eyes of the North--to the window.
The dazzle of noon had faded to a glow. The short winter day was nearly done. There would be a long violet twilight, and then, the blaze of stars.
But for his aching ankle Pete would be sliding out on soundless skis, now poised for breathless flight down some long slope, now leaping fallen trees or buried ditches. He spent half of his wild young restlessness in such long night runs when, in a sort of ecstasy, he outraced the stifled longings of his exiled youth. But there would be no ski-running for several nights now. He was a prisoner, and at a time when imprisonment was hard to bear.
If only there were some way