Jack Trainor, in fact, had not stopped trembling during the first three weeks of his stay. But, after that, as he grew hardened exteriorly to the biting weather, and, as his body accumulated the natural protection of a thin layer of fat over its entire surface, he began to fare better. And now, thoroughly accustomed to the heavy weight of the thick clothes and the furs with which the generous Bigot had equipped him, inured to the drafts and the bitter sweep of the winds, Jack had commenced to enjoy his strange surroundings and his new life.
He had been of little use to Bigot at first, but by constant study he made himself a sufficient master of the work to tend a line of traps after Bigot had set them out, and in this fashion he was able to double the amount of ground that the big man covered with his lines. To be sure, he could never be more than a very clumsy amateur, for to become a really fine trapper one must begin in childhood to study animals and the ways of taking them. More than that, one must be born with a certain gift.
Merely by his ability to cover ground was he useful when it came to tending the traps. There were other ways in which he was of greater service, and chief among these was his skill as a hunter. To be sure, the hunting in the snow-covered mountains was quite a different thing from the hunting in the southern deserts. But, once a hunter, always a hunter, no matter in what climate or country or for what game. A man who can shoot deer will, up to a certain point, be an excellent hunter of anything else from coyotes to tigers. And Jack Trainor guarded the trap lines from those terrible enemies of the trapper that prowl through the night and devour before the dawn the prizes that the steel jaws have taken. Many a bobcat and lynx he dropped with his quick rifle, and Bigot, a most second-rate marksman in spite of a life spent in practice, wondered at these successes of his new ally.
As for the work he was doing, Bigot promised a share in the profits when the spring came and they returned to the lowlands, but the profits meant nothing to Jack Trainor. He was glad to have a haven during this winter. Moreover, he was beginning to see that the resolution he had so lightly taken, to sacrifice himself in the interests of his brother-in-law, was apt to lead to most lasting and disastrous results. During this winter, he was more or less free, for the stern weather and the inaccessible mountains would shut him off from discovery. They had almost no communication with the outer world. Once a fortnight, Bigot tramped down to the nearest little town and post office. There he sent out his mail and collected what had come for him, purchased needed supplies—as much as he could carry upon his back—and turned again into the stern trail that led over the peaks to his little cabin. Other than this fortnightly touch with the world, they were utterly isolated. But what would happen when the spring came and the trails were opened? The arm of the law was long, and the servants of the law were fleet.
So it was that many a solemn thought drifted slowly through the mind of Jack Trainor as he sat on this evening in the cabin and listened to the booming of the frozen trees and felt the cold numbing his feet. Also, he was much amused by the actions of the trapper. Joe had brought out writing materials and placed them upon the little homemade table. He was sitting, with his pencil poised above the paper, the expression upon his face that of one determined to do or die, and feeling that death was nearer than accomplishment.
He felt that this time Bigot would welcome an opportunity to talk, and therefore he asked again: “And what about that story you started to tell me, Joe, about the twelve-year engagement? What’s the yarn behind that?”
As he had half expected, Joe Bigot laid down his pencil with a sigh of relief and turned upon his companion.
Chapter 4
“You see,” said Bigot, “up to the time that I was twenty, I didn’t bother the girls none. I had other work, my friend, and I let them go their way while I went mine. But one day Nora Cary came walking by, and I turned around and looked after her. Ever since then I’ve never felt the same.”
He paused, tamped his pipe, then frowned at the floor.
“Next week,” he said, “I asked Nora to marry me. She laughed at me.”
“And you forgot her, I hope?” said Jack fiercely. “If a girl laughed at me, I’d cut out my heart rather’n foller her.”
“I guess that maybe you would,” responded the trapper mildly. There was much about Jack that he did not understand, and that he made no pretense of understanding. “But I didn’t. Next summer I asked her again, and she said no. Next winter I asked her again, and she stopped to think.”
Jack Trainor swore softly. He was beginning to see in the steady patience of the big man a force that would easily wear down the patience, and impose upon the mind of a woman.
“I asked her the next spring again, and she said yes,” went on the trapper, refilling his pipe. “After that I was happy for a couple of years, working all the time and saving up money until I had a lot of it put by. I had enough made to build a house and furnish it, and everything was all ready for the wedding next summer. But, when the time for the wedding came, Nora Cary wasn’t there.”
He began smoking so furiously that his face was almost totally obscured behind the fog.
“She’d run off with Bergen, that went to school with the both of us. They come back that fall and settled down, and next summer Nora had a baby.”
He seemed entirely serene after that brief outburst of smoking. Jack Trainor leaned and listened to him with the most profound attention. He felt an actual awe of the big man, a mental awe as well as a physical one for the giant.
“Things kept on like that,” said Bigot.
“You mean you never stopped loving Nora?”
Bigot looked at him in mild amazement.
“I said she was married,” he said in quiet rebuke.
“I know…I know,” said Jack impatiently, “but I mean…you were pretty fond of her just the same. You didn’t pay much attention to any of the other girls in the town, eh?”
“I ain’t got much time for girls,” said Bigot without emotion. “That is, for girls outside of Nora. Three years ago she died.”
Jack started. It was like the shock that comes when we hear of the death of a person we know. He had visualized Nora. He had been thinking of her, on this bitter night, in a well-warmed room in some village in the lowlands. And now, suddenly, he knew that she was long since dead. It took his mind with a wrench back to the stolid face of Bigot.
There was something so heart-wringing to him about that placid face that he rose and crossed the room with his quick, nervous step and dropped his hand upon the thick and heavily muscled shoulder of the trapper.
“Good old Joe,” he said heartily and softly. “Good old Joe.”
But Joe looked up to him in immense surprise.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Trainor, and turned and walked slowly back to his former place. When he faced the trapper again, all the signs of emotion were gone from his face.
“After Nora died,” said Bigot, “I had my sister take the little ones.”
“You did? Would her husband let you do that?”
“Him? He went away,” said the trapper tersely.
The character of the dead woman’s husband was blazoned in sudden light to the mind of Trainor.
“Children cost a good deal,” explained Bigot.
“But what’s this marriage in the spring?” asked, Jack, bewildered.