horses; Ray was pulling tight the last hitch.
Chan stood beside him, speaking in an undertone. When he had finished
Ray cursed explosively in the silence.

Neilson turned. He seemed to sense impending developments. "What now?"
he asked.

"I'm not going on, that's what it is," Ray replied. "Neilson, it's two
against one--if you want to go on you can--but Ray and I are going back.
That devil's dead. Beatrice is, too--sure as hell. If they ain't dead,
he'll get us. I was a fool ever to start out. And that's final."

"You're going back, eh--scared out!" Neilson commented coldly.

"I'm going back--and don't say too much about being scared out, either."

"And you too, Chan? You're against me, too?"

Chan cursed. "I'd gone a week ago if it'd been me. We knew the way
home, at least."

The old man looked a long time into the river depths. Only too well he
realized that their decision was final. But there was no answer, in the
swirling depths, to the question that wracked his heart: whether or not
in these spruce-clad hills his daughter still lived. It could only
murmur and roar, without shaping words that human ears could grasp,
never relieving the dreadful uncertainty that would be his life's curse
from henceforth. He sighed, and the lines across his brow were dark and
deep.

"Then turn the horses around, you cowards," he answered. "I can't go on
alone."

For once neither Ray nor Chan had outward resentment for the epithet.
Secretly they realized that old Neilson was to the wall at last, and
like a grizzly at bay, it was safer not to molest him. Chan went down
to the edge of the creek to water his saddle horse.

But presently they heard him curse, in inordinate and startled
amazement, as he gazed at some imprint in the mud of the shore. They saw
the color sweep from his face. In an instant his two companions were
beside him.

Clear and unmistakable in the mud they saw the stale imprint of Ben's
canoe as they had landed, and the tracks of both the man and the girl as
they had turned into the forest.

XXXVII

The dawn that crept so gray and mysterious over the frosty green of
spruce brought no hope to Beatrice, sitting beside the unconscious form
of Ben in the cave fronting the glade. Rather it only brought the tragic
truth home more clearly. Her love for him had manifested itself too late
to give happiness to either of them: even now his life seemed to be
stealing from her, into the valley of the shadow.