The Freebooters of the Wilderness | Page 6

the law of the snowflake!

Calamity, the little withered half-breed woman, slipped in and out of
the Forester's cabin tidying up bachelor confusion. The wind suffed
through the evergreens in dream voices, pansy-soft to the touch. The
slow-swaying evergreens rocked to a rhythm old as Eternity, Druid
priests standing guard over the sacrament of love and night. From the
purpling Valley came the sibilant hush of the River. Somewhere, from
the branches below the Ridge, a water thrush gurgled a last joyous note
that rippled liquid gold through the twilight.
Life might have become the tent of a night in an Eternity--a tent of sky
hung with stars; the after-glow a topaz gate ajar into some infinite life.
Then Love and Silence and Eternity had wrapped them round as in a
robe of prayer. He was standing above the dead camp-fire. She was
leaning forward from the slab seat, her face between her hands. With a
catch of breath, she withdrew her eyes from his and watched the long
shadows creep like ghosts across the Valley.
What he said aloud in the nonchalant voice of twentieth century youth
keeping hold of himself was--
"Not bad, is it?" nodding at the opal flame-winged peak. "Pretty good
show turned on free every night?"
A meadow lark went lifting above the Ridge dropping silver arrows of
song; and a little flutter of phantom wind came rustling through the
pine needles.
"I don't suppose," she was saying--he had never heard those notes in
her voice before: they were gold, gold flute notes to melt rock-hard
self-control and touch the timbre of unknown chords within--"I don't
suppose anything ever was accomplished without somebody being
willing to fight a losing battle. Do you?" Wayland stretched out on the
ground at her feet.
"Eleanor, do you know, do you realize--?"
"Yes I know," she whispered.

And somehow, unpremeditated and half way, their hands met.
"Something wonderful has happened to us both to-night."
The sheen of the stars had come to her eyes. She could not trust her
glance to meet his. A compulsion was sweeping over her in waves,
drawing her to him--her free hand lay on his hair; her averted face
flushed to the warmth of his nearness.
"I don't suppose, Dick, that right ever did triumph till somebody was
willing to be crucified. Men die of vices every day; women snuff out
like candles. What's so heroic about a man more or less going down in
a good game fight--?"
He felt the tremor in her voice and her hands, in her deep breathing;
and his manhood came to rescue their balance in words that sounded
foolish enough:
"So my old mountain talks to you, too? I'll think of that when I'm up
here in my hammock alone. Oh, you bet, I'll think of that hard! What
does the old mountain lady say to you, anyway? Look--when the light's
on that long precipice, you can sometimes see a snow slide come over
the edge in a puff of spray. They are worst at mid-day when the heat
sends 'em down; and they're bigger on the back of the mountain where
she shelves straight up and down--"
And her thought met his poise half way.
"What does the old mountain say? Don't you know what science
says--how the snow flakes fall to the same music of law as the snow
slide, and it's the snow flake makes the snow slide that sets the
mountain free, the gentle, quiet, beautiful snow flake that sculptures the
granite--"
"The gentle, quiet--beautiful thing," slowly repeated the Ranger in a
dream. "That sounds pretty good to me."
He said no more; for he knew that the veil had lifted, and the voiceless

voices of the night were shouting riotously. The wind came suffing
through the swaying arms of the bearded waving hemlocks--Druid
priests officiating at some age-old sacrament. Then a night-hawk
swerved past with a hum of wings like the twang of a harp string.
"Look," she said, poking at the sod with her foot. "All the little clover
leaves have folded their wings to sleep."
Old Calamity passed in and out of the Range cabin. Wayland couldn't
remember how from the first they had slipped into the habit of calling
each other by Christian names. It was the old half-breed woman, who
had first told him that the Canadian, Donald MacDonald, the rich sheep
man, had a daughter travelling in Europe. One day when he had been
signing grazing permits in the MacDonald ranch house, he had caught a
glimpse of a piano, that had been packed up the mountains on mules,
standing in an inner sitting room; and the walls were decorated with
long-necked swan-necked Gibson girls and Watts' photogravures and
Turner color prints and naked Sorolla boys bathing in Spanish seas.