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                           THE SILENT BATTLE




[Illustration: “The table rang from end to end with joke and laughter.”]




                                  THE
                             SILENT BATTLE


                                  BY
                             GEORGE GIBBS


                               AUTHOR OF
                           THE BOLTED DOOR,
                        THE FORBIDDEN WAY, ETC.


                              ILLUSTRATED


                            [Illustration]


                               NEW YORK
                           GROSSET & DUNLAP
                              PUBLISHERS




                          Copyright, 1913, by
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

        Copyright, 1912, 1913, by the Pictorial Review Company


                Printed in the United States of America




CONTENTS


 CHAPTER                                PAGE
      I. LOST                              1
     II. BABES IN THE WOODS               11
    III. VOICES                           22
     IV. EDEN                             33
      V. WOMAN AND MAN                    46
     VI. THE SHADOW                       60
    VII. ALLEGRO                          73
   VIII. CHICOT, THE JESTER               84
     IX. THE LORINGS                      95
      X. MR. VAN DUYN RIDES FORTH        109
     XI. THE CEDARCROFT SET              122
    XII. NELLIE PENNINGTON CUTS IN       136
   XIII. MRS. PENNINGTON’S BROUGHAM      151
    XIV. THE JUNIOR MEMBER               166
     XV. DISCOVERED                      177
    XVI. BEHIND THE ENEMY’S BACK         190
   XVII. “THE POT AND KETTLE”            200
  XVIII. THE ENEMY AND A FRIEND          212
    XIX. LOVE ON CRUTCHES                225
     XX. THE INTRUDER                    236
    XXI. TEMPTATION                      247
   XXII. SMOKE AND FIRE                  261
  XXIII. THE MOUSE AND THE LION          273
   XXIV. DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND             285
    XXV. DEEP WATER                      297
   XXVI. BIG BUSINESS                    310
  XXVII. MR. LORING REFLECTS             323
 XXVIII. THE LODESTAR                    338
   XXIX. ARCADIA AGAIN                   350




THE SILENT BATTLE




I

LOST


Gallatin wearily lowered the creel from his shoulders and dropped it by
his rod at the foot of a tree. He knew that he was lost--had known it,
in fact, for an hour or more, but with the certainty that there was no
way out until morning, perhaps not even then, came a feeling of relief,
and with the creel, he dropped the mental burden which for the last
hour had been plaguing him, first with fear and then more recently with
a kind of ironical amusement.

What did it matter, after all? He realized that for twenty-eight years
he had made a mess of most of the things he had attempted, and that
if he ever got back to civilization, he would probably go diligently
on in the way he had begun. There was time enough to think about that
to-morrow. At present he was so tired that all he wanted was a place to
throw his weary limbs. He had penetrated miles into the wilderness, he
knew, but in what direction the nearest settlement lay he hadn’t the
vaguest notion--to the southward probably, since his guide had borne
him steadily northward for more than two weeks.

That blessed guide! With the omniscience of the inexperienced, Gallatin
had left Joe Keegón alone at camp after breakfast, with a general and
hazy notion of whipping unfished trout pools. He had disregarded his
mentor’s warning to keep his eye on the sun and bear to his left hand,
and in the joy of the game, had lost all sense of time and direction.
He realized now from his aching legs that he had walked many miles
farther than he had wanted to walk, and that, at the last, the fish in
his creel had grown perceptibly heavier. The six weeks at Mulready’s
had hardened him for the work, but never, even at White Meadows, had
his muscles ached as they did now. He was hungry, too, ravenously
hungry, and a breeze which roamed beneath the pines advised him that it
was time to make a fire.

It was a wonderful hunger that he had, a healthful, beastlike
hunger--not the gnawing fever, for that seemed to have left him, but a
craving for Joe’s biscuits and bacon (at which he had at first turned
up his pampered aristocratic nose), which now almost amounted to an
obsession. Good old Joe! Gallatin remembered how, during the first week
of their pilgrimage, he had lain like the sluggard that he was, against
the bole of a tree, weary of the ache within and rebellious against
the conditions which had sent him forth, cursing in his heart at the
old Indian for his taciturnity, while he watched the skillful brown
fingers moving unceasingly at the evening task. Later he had begun to
learn with delight of his own growing capabilities, and as the habit of
analysis fell upon him, to understand the dignity of the vast silences
of which the man was a part.

Not that Gallatin himself was undignified in the worldly way, for he
had lived as his father and his father’s fathers before him had lived,
deeply imbued with the traditions of his class, which meant large
virtues, civic pride, high business integrity, social punctilio, and
the only gentlemanly vice the Gallatin blood had ever been heir to.
But a new idea of nobility had come to him in the woods, a new idea of
life itself, which his conquest of his own energy had made possible.
The deep aisles of the woods had spoken the message, the spell of the
silent places, the mystery of the eternal which hung on every lichened
rock, which sang in every wind that swayed the boughs above.

Heigho! This was no time for moralizing. There was a fire to light,
a shelter of some sort to build and a bed to make. Gallatin got up
wearily, stretching his tired muscles and cast about in search of a
spot for his camp. He found two young trees on a high piece of ground
within a stone’s throw of the stream, which would serve as supports
for a roof of boughs, and was in the act of gathering the wood for
his fire, when he caught the crackling of a dry twig in the bushes
at some distance away. Three weeks ago, perhaps, he would not have
heard or noticed, but his ear, now trained to the accustomed sounds,
gave warning that a living thing, a deer or a black bear, perhaps,
was moving in the undergrowth. He put his armful of wood down and hid
himself behind a tree, drawing meanwhile an automatic, the only weapon
he possessed, from his hip pocket. He had enough of woodcraft to know
that no beast of the woods, unless in full flight, would come down
against the wind toward a human being, making such a racket as this.
The crackling grew louder and the rapid swish of feet in the dry leaves
was plainly audible. His eye now caught the movement of branches and in
a moment he made out the dim bulk of a figure moving directly toward
him. He had even raised the hand which held his Colt and was in the act
of aiming it when from the shelter of the moose-wood there emerged--a
girl.

She wore a blue flannel blouse, a short skirt and long leather gaiters
and over one hip hung a creel like his own. Her dress was smart and
sportsmanlike, but her hat was gone; her hair had burst its confines
and hung in a pitiful confusion about her shoulders. She suggested to
him the thought of Syrinx pursued by the satyrs; for her cheeks were
flushed with the speed of her flight and her eyes were wide with fear.

Comely and frightened Dryads who order their clothes from Fifth Avenue,
are not found every day in the heart of the Canadian wilderness;
and Gallatin half expected that if he stepped forward like Pan to
test her tangibility, she would vanish into empty air. Indeed such a
metamorphosis was about to take place; for as he emerged from behind
his tree, the girl turned one terrified look in his direction and
disappeared in the bushes.

For a brief moment Gallatin paused. He had had visions before, and the
thought came into his mind that this was one like the others, born of
his overtaxed strength and the rigors of the day. But as he gazed at
the spot where the Dryad had stood, branches of young trees swayed,
showing the direction in which she was passing and the sounds in the
crackling underbrush, ever diminishing, assured him that the sudden
apparition was no vision at all, but very delectable flesh and blood,
fleeing from him in terror. He remembered, then, a tale that Joe Keegón
had told him of a tenderfoot, who when lost in the woods was stricken
suddenly mad with fear and, ended like a frightened animal running
away from the guides that had been sent for him. Fear had not come to
Gallatin yet. He had acknowledged bewilderment and a vague sense of the
monstrous vastness of the thing he had chosen for his summer plaything.
He had been surprised when the streams began running up hill instead
of down, and when the sun appeared suddenly in a new quarter of the
heavens, but he had not been frightened. He was too indifferent for
that. But he knew from the one brief look he had had of the eyes of the
girl, that the forest had mastered her, and that, like the fellow in
Joe’s tale, she had stampeded in fright.

Hurriedly locking his Colt, Gallatin plunged headlong into the bushes
where the girl had disappeared. For a moment he thought he had lost
her, for the tangle of underbrush was thick and the going rough, but
in a rift in the bushes he saw the dark blouse again and went forward
eagerly. He lost it, found it again and then suddenly saw it no more.
He stopped and leaned against a tree listening. There were no sounds
but the murmur of the rising wind and the note of a bird. He climbed
over a fallen log and went on toward the <DW72> where he had last seen
her, stopping, listening, his eyes peering from one side to the other.
He knew that she could not be far away, for ahead of him the brush was
thinner, and the young trees offered little cover. A tiny gorge, rock
strewn, but half filled with leaves, lay before him, and it was not
until he had stumbled halfway across it that he saw her, lying face
downward, her head in her hands, trembling and dumb with fear.

From the position in which she lay he saw that she had caught her foot
in a hidden root and, in her mad haste to escape she knew not what, had
fallen headlong. She did not move as he approached; but as he bent over
her about to speak, she shuddered and bent her head more deeply in her
arms, as though in expectation of a blow.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly.

At the sound of his voice she trembled again, but he leaned over and
touched her on the shoulder.

“I’m very sorry I frightened you,” he said again. And then after a
moment, “Have you lost your way?”

She painfully freed one arm, and looked up; then quickly buried her
head again in her hands, her shoulders heaving convulsively, her
slender body racked by childish sobs.

Gallatin straightened in some confusion. He had never, to his knowledge,
been considered a bugaboo among the women of his acquaintance. But, as
he rubbed his chin pensively, he remembered that it was a week or more
since he had had a shave, and that a stiff dark stubble discolored his
chin. His brown slouch hat was broken and dirty, his blue flannel shirt
from contact with the briers was tattered and worn, and he realized
that he was hardly an object to inspire confidence in the heart of a
frightened girl. So, with a discretion which did credit to his knowledge
of her sex, he sat down on a near-by rock and waited for the storm to
pass.

His patience was rewarded, for in a little while her sobs were spent,
and she raised her head and glanced at him. This time his appearance
reassured her, for Gallatin had taken off his hat, and his eyes, no
longer darkly mysterious in shadow, were looking at her very kindly.

“I want to try and help you, if I can,” he was saying gently. “I’m
about to make a camp over here, and if you’ll join me----”

Something in the tones of his voice and in his manner of expressing
himself, caused her to sit suddenly up and examine him more minutely.
When she had done so, her hands made two graceful gestures--one toward
her disarranged hair and the other toward her disarranged skirt.
Gallatin would have laughed at this instinctive manifestation of the
eternal feminine, which even in direst woe could not altogether be
forgotten, but instead he only smiled, for after all she looked so
childishly forlorn and unhappy.

“I’m not really going to eat you, you know,” he said again, smiling.

“I--I’m glad,” she stammered with a queer little smile. “I didn’t know
_what_ you were. I’m afraid I--I’ve been very much frightened.”

“You were lost, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” She struggled to her knees and then sank back again.

“Well, there’s really nothing to be frightened about. It’s almost too
late to try to find your friends to-night, but if you’ll come with me
I’ll do my best to make you comfortable.”

He had risen and offered her his hand, but when she tried to rise she
winced with pain.

“I--I’m afraid I can’t,” she said. “I think I--I’ve twisted my ankle.”

“Oh, that’s awkward,” in concern. “Does it hurt you very much?”

“I--I think it does. I can’t seem to use it at all.” She moved her foot
and her face grew white with the pain of it.

Gallatin looked around him vaguely, as though in expectation that Joe
Keegón or somebody else might miraculously appear to help him, and then
for the first time since he had seen her, was alive again to the rigors
of his own predicament.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he stammered helplessly. “Don’t you think you can
stand on it?”

He offered her his hand and shoulder and she bravely tried to rise, but
the effort cost her pain and with a little cry she sank back in the
leaves, her face buried in her arms. She seemed so small, so helpless
that his heart was filled with a very genuine pity. She was not crying
now, but the hand which held her moist handkerchief was so tightly
clenched that her knuckles were outlined in white against the tan. He
watched her a moment in silence, his mind working rapidly.

“Come,” he said at last in quick cheerful notes of decision. “This
won’t do at all. We’ve got to get out of here. You must take that shoe
off. Then we’ll get you over yonder and you can bathe it in the stream.
Try and get your gaiter off, too, won’t you?”

His peremptory accents startled her a little, but she sat up obediently
while he supported her shoulders, and wincing again as she moved, at
last undid her legging. Gallatin then drew his hasp-knife and carefully
slit the laces of her shoe from top to bottom, succeeding in getting it
safely off.

“Your ankle is swelling,” he said. “You must bathe it at once.”

She looked around helplessly.

“Where?”

“At the stream. I’m going to carry you there.”

“You couldn’t. Is it far?”

“No. Only a hundred yards or so. Come along.”

He bent over to silence her protests and lifted her by the armpits.
Then while she supported herself for a moment upright, lifted her in
his arms and made his way up the <DW72>.

Marvelous is the recuperative power of the muscular system! Ten minutes
ago Gallatin had been, to all intents and purposes of practical
utility, at the point of exhaustion. Now, without heart-breaking
effort, he found it possible to carry a burden of one hundred and
thirty pounds a considerable distance through rough timber without
mishap! His muscles ached no more than they had done before, and the
only thing he could think of just then was that she was absurdly
slender to weigh so much. One of her arms encircled his shoulders and
the fingers of one small brown hand clutched tightly at the collar of
his shirt. Her eyes peered before her into the brush, and her face was
almost hidden by the tangled mass of her hair. But into the pale cheek
which was just visible, a gentle color was rising which matched the
rosy glow that was spreading over the heavens.

“I’m afraid I--I’m awfully heavy,” she said, as he made his way around
the fallen giant over which a short while ago they had both clambered.
“Don’t you think I had better get down for a moment?”

“Oh, no,” he panted. “Not at all. It--it isn’t far now. I’m afraid
you’d hurt your foot. Does it--does it pain you so much now?”

“N-o, I think not,” she murmured bravely. “But I’m afraid you’re
dreadfully tired.”

“N-not at all,” he stammered. “We’ll be there soon now.”

When he came to the spot he had marked for his camp, he bore to
the right and in a moment they had reached the stream which gushed
musically among the boulders, half hidden in the underbrush. It was
not until he