Wild Life (16 page)

“Are there many such as you?” Helena inquired. “I'm made to wonder why none other than Indians have recorded the existence of a race of such uncommon size and appearance as yourself.”

The creature beheld her with a sorrowful smile. “We are not so many as in past times. As your people have advanced upon the forests, we have been driven to smaller and smaller precincts, and though we keep within our own borders as much as possible, there are certain pharmaceuticals which can be supplied only by venturing out.” He lifted and showed her a black box-shaped container formed of an unnaturally smooth, indeterminate material, into which he had been gathering leaves of thimbleberry and hairy manzanita. “Inevitably there have been encounters between your people and mine, but our powers of hypnotism have, for the most part, kept us safe from human memory.” Again he smiled, with all the poignancy of someone who accepts a bitter destiny. “If one day our hiding place is revealed, we will doubtless be driven to extinction as so many among the species of Indians and of animals have been, and perhaps then we shall live only in your legends.”

As a scientist unswayed by sentimentalism, she recognized the bitter truth in what he said. Helena then made what many would think a rash proposition. “Might I return with you to your See-Ah-Tik home in the forest?” she asked the giant earnestly. “May I undertake to examine and record your customs, ceremonies, and usages? If your extraordinary powers of hypnotism are as you describe them, then you shall be as safe from human discovery as you wish to be, for I cannot share the knowledge and memory I will gain, unless with your approval. Indeed, you are wise to be fearful of the White Race of humans, and on that ground I must accept any such restrictions. But it may be that a written record of your society could benefit the future of your race, or of mine, and surely it would be desirable to prepare this record while there is yet a living society to record.”

Her gravely ardent face studied Tatoosh for some sign of his sympathies, but the giant's face was a secret mask. At long last he solemnly replied, “It is not in my power alone to make such a decision. But you may return with me to the Gate of See-Ah-Tik, where the Council of Five will discuss the matter and come to a determination.”

Our adventurer thus was satisfied. She had every confidence that the rational power of her argument would persuade the so-called Council of Five to allow her to enter the occult society of See-Ah-Tik.

As she hurriedly gathered the contents of her knapsack, her active young mind leapt upon a multitude of questions: Was telepathy their only means of communication, or did they also, among themselves, make use of oral language? On the matter of sexual community, did they recognize marriage and arrange themselves into families? What were their food resources and what the state of their industrial and scientific development?

Tatoosh beckoned her to follow him as he strode purposefully through the trees. The stalwart girl's years of physical conditioning served her well; inured to long tramps across deserts and jungles, she was in good wind, with but little flesh on her bones and her muscles well strung, and had no fear of getting tired. Though the See-Ah-Tik's long, effortless stride equaled three of Helena's, and though he made no apparent effort to slacken his pace for the sake of his young companion, she did not flag but maintained a steady, tireless jog across the rough terrain of hills and valleys, ever keeping the giant ape close before her. Acting against the opinion of some members of civilized society, she had adopted the custom when in the forest of dressing in a man's jumper and boots, and thus was saved the added effort of struggling through the shrubbery with full skirts a-billow. More than once she uttered a self-satisfied cry of vindication as her strong young legs, clad sensibly in double-twist blue denim, conducted her with ease through a tangle of brambles or bore her trimly down a steep and rocky slope.

Nevertheless, the distance they covered was considerable, and our noble girl had nearly reached the limit of her endurance when at last the See-Ah-Tik moderated his pace and indicated with a gesture of his long, shaggy arm that they had reached their destination. They had come by a gradual and roundabout route onto the shoulder of a basalt mountain, and Helena was startled to realize that here, amid the impenetrable forest, the mountain had been scored as if with an invisible knife. The resultant ravine just at their feet was so abrupt and steep that the branches of the trees on either side almost touched and concealed it, in such a way that it was impossible to gauge its depth from above.

Though not a word had entered upon the air, she understood beyond question that this was the Gate of See-Ah-Tik, and her brave heart trembled with a sudden, awful misgiving.

I cannot sleep; and since I wrote in these pages twice today, yet failed to bring the day to its close, I will write a third installment. I should first report that the camp boss at the head of the flume (Camp 7) was a short Englishman with an impressive scar upon his cheek and a plug-tobacco habit that had stained his lower lip and chin. He had suffered three or four of his crew flying off to the search, he said, and the news that had come back was all of shootings and shouting; as for word of that lost child, he had none. He made me the offer of a trail guide, which I refused, having heard from the flume tender that the way up the canyon to Camp 8 was pretty well beaten in. He walked me as far as the trailhead, though, across a wilderness of windfalls, tall butts, sawed-off tops and branches, roots turned toes-up and looming fifteen feet in the air.

Before we shook hands and parted, we stood at the edge of the logging ground together and watched the donkey engine yard in a log, which is something I've seen before but never will get accustomed to. The donkey engine is a pathetic little thing to look at, a boiler, a furnace, pistons underneath, and the two drums worked by the pistons, drums for winding up the wire cables, which is little enough for a machine to do; but the whole thing is bolted on a great heavy wood sleigh and often moored, besides, by guy ropes into the trees; and when the whistle blows and the donkey puncher winds the lead line taut on the drum and then lets in the steam, and the engine bucks and rises up on its skids like a beast, well, then you begin to see the need for chaining it down.

“'Ere 'e comes now,” the Englishman said to me happily, and spat beside his boot. There was a startling uproar in the woods—the sound of a cataclysm—and a log came charging out of the brush from a thousand feet off, hurling stones and earth before it, smashing and gouging its own pathway, bumping and battering over stumps and windfalls. It
is quite something to see a log of that size, six feet through, seventy long, hurtling over the ground, lunging for the little donkey as the slavering Grendel after his Beowulf; and then the donkey rocks back and the poor log fetches up at its feet and you see who has the iron hand.

I should have covered the two miles of twisty trail before dusk but was slowed by the corruptible spring weather. It rotted away to the west before I had fairly gotten clear of the log operation, and the clabbering front which overtook me brought a dismal rain and a spate of hail. My lovely ramble through the bright woods, as I had been fooling myself, gave itself over to the sober truth: became a slippery footslog through the gloom, on a mission of dread and torment. I dug out my corduroy jacket and my hat from the meager outfit on my back, and put my head down.

That trail following Canyon Creek is involuted as the streets of Constantinople, and a steep climb followed by a steep downhill followed by the next climb and the next fall, and so on, with the latter in my opinion always much the worse. The path both going up and coming down was mud and runnels, for which reason, being alone, I made my way with caution and deliberation. I crossed over the two miles in something around an hour and a half, which, considering the circumstances was a decent clip. Nevertheless, the daylight went before me, and I blundered the last mile through gathering darkness, searching out the trail every little while with an Ever Ready Flash Light of the very latest design: no wires, no chemicals, no oil, smoke, or odor, but a battery in a cylinder made of heavy cardboard and covered with imitation morocco, which lights an electric lamp when the ring on the side is pressed against the ferrule.

My search light and I made out the buildings at Camp 8 precisely as the men came out from their dinner, and they streamed by me in a swearing, bawdy horde without notice at all of one more trousered man standing there in the darkness. I have resolved to give up the little courtesies men tender to women, in exchange for my independence and self-respect; but I was wet and cold by then and yearning for hot supper and a bed, which shamefully weakened my firmness of mind. I plucked at the sleeve of a man pausing to light his pipe and said, “I have just walked up from Chelatchie Prairie,” as if this genuinely pathetic lament in the soprano of a well-bred Gentlewoman should be all the information he needed. As indeed it was. In astonished silence he led me round to the boss logger, who led me round to the dining-hall, where the boys cleaning up from dinner beheld in wonder the woman drinking her coffee and tucking away a chop and a plate of eggs.

The boss at Camp 8 is a tall, lank, and athletic-looking fellow by the name of Bill Boyce. He took me through the dark rain to his office at the back of the storeroom and roused up the little stove and unfolded a cot from under the bench and gave me directions to the privy and the pump, and a key so as to lock myself into the office. “They're good men, though,” he said. “They won't give you a bit of trouble,” which was said in a quiet and sure way that I approved of.

“I should be glad to speak to Homer Coffee,” I said.

“Well, I'll see if I can turn him up, but it may be he spent the night out in the woods. There's parties all around, you see, searching for her, and by now they've got far enough out so they don't come in at night. A search party will get tired or short on provision, and then they straggle to camp and other ones go out. Things are in some confusion, with so many hunting, and I don't keep perfect track of who's in and who's out.”

I made a trip to the privy and carried back water, made my toilet, and laid out my bed. Then I sat down in my damp clothes and thoroughly cleaned the mud from under my nails and combed loose my hair, which occupied me until Bill Boyce returned without Homer. “He's evidently up around the lava beds,” he said to me, while averting his eyes from the improper sight of a woman's hair hanging upon her shoulders. “They're fixing to search the caves up there.”

He described this country for me, which is not the Big Lava Bed of general renown, lying some dozen or more miles farther east, but several narrow ridges of hardened magma and hollow tubes of old lava scattered amongst the forestland, extruded in the same manner as the Big Lava Bed, through pipes in the volcanic system, mayhap from St. Helens Mountain, twenty miles to the north. Then, as he turned from the doorway of the little office, I asked him, “What is the prospect of finding her, do you think?” He had impressed me as a steady-minded man, thoughtful and careful and thorough.

He turned to me again and considered it. Then he said, “She could be lying up someplace, she could have found her a good spot in
a rotted-out tree or something like that, and stayed pretty dry and kept herself from freezing. There's some edibles she might know about, cow parsnip and so on. We could still get her out. But it's not as likely as it was that first day. It's been five nights, you see, and though we had a lucky spell of dry weather, there was frost that first night, and now we've got rain. And as it continues on to rain, I'm afraid the prospects will get worse.” He briefly shifted his look into the darker corners of the room, so that I felt I had glimpsed his true feeling. Then, when he had considered his audience again, he said in a darker voice, “After this much time, there is not a good deal of hope of finding her—not alive, at any rate, though I guess it would be some small comfort to her mother, just to recover the child's body.” I had felt myself prepared for this honest assessment—indeed quite expected it—but the words themselves brought a strange flutter to my heart.

He had up to then said nothing of orangutans or mountain beasts, but finally he did. “We got men swears they have seen her in the arms of what snatched her, but their testimony is suspect as far as I'm concerned. There is something called a skookum, you know, that Indians and maybe some loggers have seen, and I don't know what it is, but I guess I've heard a screech sometimes that is straight from the devil, so I can't entirely discount the idea. If a skookum took her, well then I'm afraid she must be dead, or would wish to be.” He petted the doorjamb. “So my hope is that she just went off and got lost, which is easy to do around here.” He pointed. “That's probably a pretty handy little device,” meaning the fold-up rubber camp basin in which I'd washed my face and brushed my teeth.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

As soon as I was left alone, I hung up my damp clothes over the stove and soaked my feet and rubbed my heels and toes with coconut oil and went to bed in my cotton vest and drawers. The rain had quit but there was a wind that had come up, and it searched along the floor and under the eaves, as well as through the tops of the trees circling the edge of the cutting ground, which is a sound very like a moaning, a lamentation of regret. I began to turn over in my mind what Melba had said to me about Homer, his meanness, and this led to an unfortunate train of thought. So now I sit upon Bill Boyce's cot with my flash light illuminating this page, writing, writing, which is a better occupation for my mind.

 

No, that demon, that dark death-shadow,

leapt out upon young and old alike,

a hideous ambush! In darkness he held