So she tended the bacon slices with care until they
grew brown and crisped and curled at the edges.
After that she removed the pan from the fire, and
it was not until then that she began to wonder why
Wilbur was so long in returning with the water.
The bacon grew cold; she heated it again and was mightily
tempted to taste one piece of it, but restrained herself
to wait for Dick.
Still he did not come. She stood up and called,
her high voice rising sharp and small through the
trees. It seemed that some sound answered, so
she smiled and sat down. Ten minutes passed and
he was still gone. A cold alarm swept over her
at that. She dropped the pan and ran out from
the trees.
Everywhere was the bright moonlight—over
the wet rocks, and sand, and glimmering on the slow
tide of the river, but nowhere could she see Wilbur,
or a form that looked like a man. Then the moonlight
glinted on something at the edge of the river.
She ran to it and found the coffee-can half in the
water and partially filled with sand.
A wild temptation to scream came over her, but the
tight muscles of her throat let out no sound.
But if Wilbur were not here, where had he gone?
He could not have vanished into thin air. The
ripple of the water washing on the sand replied.
Yes, that current might have rolled his body away.
To shut out the grim sight of the river she turned.
Stretched across the ground at her feet she saw clearly
the impression of a body in the moist sand.
The heels had left two deeply defined gouges in the
ground; there was a sharp hollow where the head had
lain, and a broad depression for the shoulders.
It was the impression of the body of a man—a
large man like Wilbur. Any hope, any doubt she
might have had, slipped from her mind, and despair
rolled into it with an even, sullen current, like
the motion of the river.
It is strange what we do with our big moments of fear
and sorrow and even of joy. Now Mary stooped
and carefully washed out the coffee-pot, and filled
it again with water higher up the bank; and turned
back toward the edge of the trees.
It was all subconscious, this completing of the task
which Wilbur had begun, and subconscious still was
her careful rebuilding of the fire till it flamed
high, as though she were setting a signal to recall
the wanderer. But the flame, throwing warmth
and red light across her eyes, recalled her sharply
to reality, and she looked up and saw the dull dawn
brightening beyond the dark evergreens.
Guilt, too, swept over her, for she remembered what
big, handsome Dick Wilbur had said: He would
meet his end through a woman. Now it had come
to him, and through her.
She cringed at the thought, for what was she that
a man should die in her service? She raised her
hands with a moan to the nodding tops of the trees,
to the vast, black sky above them, and the full knowledge
of Wilbur’s strength came to her, for had he
not ridden calmly, defiantly, into the heart of this
wilderness, confident in his power to care both for
himself and for her? But she! What could
she do wandering by herself? The image of Pierre
le Rouge grew dim indeed and sad and distant.
