The Forester's Daughter: A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range
by Hamlin Garland · English · Gutenberg #26239 · 366,268 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Forester's Daughter: A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range
Author: Hamlin Garland
Release date: August 9, 2008 [eBook #26239]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORESTER'S DAUGHTER: A ROMANCE OF THE BEAR-TOOTH RANGE ***
Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: HER FACE SHONE AS SHE CALLED OUT: "WELL, HOW DO YOU
STACK UP THIS MORNING?" (See page 31)]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FORESTER'S DAUGHTER
A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range
By
HAMLIN GARLAND
Author of
"The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop"
"Main-Travelled Roads" Etc.
Illustrated
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
New York and London
MCMXIV
----------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT. 1914. BY HAMLIN GARLAND
Printed in the United States of America
Published February, 1914
A-O
----------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Happy Girl 1
II A Ride In The Rain 19
III Wayland Receives a Warning 46
IV The Supervisor of the Forest 68
V The Golden Pathway 82
VI Storm-Bound 110
VII The Walk in the Rain 123
VIII The Other Girl 142
IX Further Perplexities 159
X The Camp on the Pass 173
XI The Death-Grapple 195
XII Berrie's Vigil 204
XIII The Gossips Awake 223
XIV The Summons 247
XV A Matter of Millinery 260
XVI The Private Car 274
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
HER FACE SHONE AS SHE CALLED OUT: "WELL, HOW DO YOU
STACK UP THIS MORNING?" Frontispiece
THE GIRL BEHIND HIM WAS A WONDROUS PART OF THIS WILD
AND UNACCOUNTABLE COUNTRY 6
SHE FOUND HERSELF CONFRONTED BY AN ENDLESS MAZE
OF BLACKENED TREE-TRUNKS 140
THE SLENDER YOUTH WENT DOWN BEFORE THE BIG RANCHER
AS THOUGH STRUCK BY A CATAPULT 195
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AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
This little story is the outcome of two trips (neither of which was in
the Bear Tooth Forest) during the years 1909 and 1910. Its main claim on
the reader's interest will lie, no doubt, in the character of Berea
McFarlane; but I find myself re-living with keen pleasure the splendid
drama of wind and cloud and swaying forest which made the expeditions
memorable.
The golden trail is an actuality for me. The camp on the lake was mine.
The rain, the snow I met. The prying camp-robbers, the grouse, the
muskrats, the beaver were my companions. But Berrie was with me only in
imagination. She is a fiction, born of a momentary, powerful hand-clasp
of a Western rancher's daughter. The story of Wayland Norcross is fiction
also. But the McFarlane ranch, the mill, and the lonely ranger-stations
are closely drawn pictures of realities. Although the stage of my comedy
is Colorado, I have not held to any one locality. The scene is
composite.
It was my intention, originally, to write a much longer and more
important book concerning Supervisor McFarlane, but Berrie took the story
into her own strong hands and made of it something so intimate and so
idyllic that I could not bring the more prosaic element into it. It
remained personal and youthful in spite of my plans, a divergence for
which, perhaps, most of my readers will be grateful.
As for its title, I had little to do with its selection. My daughter,
Mary Isabel, aged ten, selected it from among a half-dozen others, and
for luck I let it stand, although it sounds somewhat like that of a
paper-bound German romance. For the sub-title my publishers are
responsible.
Finally, I warn the reader that this is merely the very slender story of
a young Western girl who, being desired of three strong men, bestows her
love on a "tourist" whose weakness is at once her allurement and her
care. The administration problem, the sociologic theme, which was to have
made the novel worth while, got lost in some way on the low trail and
never caught up with the lovers. I'm sorry--but so it was!
Chicago, January, 1914.
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THE FORESTER'S DAUGHTER
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FORESTER'S DAUGHTER
I
THE HAPPY GIRL
The stage line which ran from Williams to Bear Tooth (one of the most
authentic then to be found in all the West) possessed at least one
genuine Concord coach, so faded, so saddened, so cracked, and so
splintered that its passengers entered it under protest, and alighted
from it with thanksgiving, and yet it must have been built by honorable
men, for in 190- it still made the run of one hundred and twenty miles
twice each week without loss of wheel or even so much as moulting a scrap
of paint.
And yet, whatever it may have been in its youth, it was in its age no
longer a gay dash of color in the landscape. On the contrary, it fitted
into the dust-brown and sage-green plain as defensively as a beetle in a
dusty path. Nevertheless, it was an indispensable part of a very moving
picture as it crept, creaking and groaning (or it may be it was the
suffering passenger creaking and groaning), along the hillside.
After leaving the Grande River the road winds up a pretty high divide
before plunging down into Ute Park, as they call all that region lying
between the Continental Range on the east and the Bear Tooth plateau on
the west. It was a big spread of land, and very far from an Eastern man's
conception of a park. From Dome Peak it seems a plain; but, in fact, when
clouds shut off the high summits to the west, this "valley" becomes a
veritable mountain land, a tumbled, lonely country, over which an
occasional horseman crawls, a minute but persistent insect. It is, to be
exact, a succession of ridges and ravines, sculptured (in some far-off,
post-glacial time) by floods of water, covered now, rather sparsely, with
pinons, cedars, and aspens, a dry, forbidding, but majestic landscape.
In late August the hills become iridescent, opaline with the translucent
yellow of the aspen, the coral and crimson of the fire-weed, the
blood-red of huckleberry beds, and the royal purple of the asters, while
flowing round all, as solvent and neutral setting, lies the gray-green of
the ever-present and ever-enduring sage-brush. On the loftier heights
these colors are arranged in most intricate and cunning patterns, with
nothing hard, nothing flaring in the prospect. All is harmonious and
restful. It is, moreover, silent, silent as a dream world, and so flooded
with light that the senses ache with the stress of it.
Through this gorgeous land of mist, of stillness, and of death, a few
years ago a pale young man (seated beside the driver) rode one summer day
in a voiceless rapture which made Bill McCoy weary.
"If you'd had as much of this as I have you'd talk of something else," he
growled, after a half dozen attempts at conversation. Bill wasn't much to
look at, but he was a good driver and the stranger respected him for it.
Eventually this simple-minded horseman became curious about the slim
young fellow sitting beside him.
"What you doing out here, anyhow--fishing or just rebuilding a lung?"
"Rebuilding two lungs," answered the tourist.
"Well, this climate will just about put lungs into a coffee-can,"
retorted Bill, with official loyalty to his country.
To his discerning eye "the tourist" now became "a lunger." "Where do you
live when you're to home?"
"Connecticut."
"I knew it."
"How did you know it?" The youth seemed really interested to know.
"I drove another fellow up here last fall that dealt out the same kind of
brogue you do."
This amused the tourist. "You think I have a 'brogue,' do you?"
"I don't think it--I know it!" Bill replied, shortly.
He was prevented at the moment from pursuing this line of inquiry by the
discovery of a couple of horsemen racing from a distant ranch toward the
road. It was plain, even to the stranger, that they intended to intercept
the stage, and Bill plied the lash with sudden vigor.
"I'll give 'em a chase," said he, grimly.
The other appeared a little alarmed, "What are they--bandits?"
"Bandits!" sneered Bill. "Your eyesight is piercing. Them's _girls_."
The traveler apologized. "My eyes aren't very good," he said, hurriedly.
He was, however, quite justified in his mistake, for both riders wore
wide-rimmed sombreros and rode astride at a furious pace, bandanas
fluttering, skirts streaming, and one was calling in shrill command, "OH,
BILL!"
As they neared the gate the driver drew up with a word of surprise. "Why,
howdy, girls, howdy!" he said, with an assumption of innocence. "Were you
wishin' fer to speak to me?"
"Oh, shut up!" commanded one of the girls, a round-faced, freckled romp.
"You know perfectly well that Berrie is going home to-day--we told you
all about it yesterday."
"Sure thing!" exclaimed Bill. "I'd forgot all about it."
"Like nothin'!" exclaimed the maid. "You've been countin' the hours till
you got here--I know you."
Meanwhile her companion had slipped from her horse. "Well, good-by,
Molly, wish I could stay longer."
"Good-by. Run down again."
"I will. You come up."
The young passenger sprang to the ground and politely said: "May I help
you in?"
Bill stared, the girl smiled, and her companion called: "Be careful,
Berrie, don't hurt yourself, the wagon might pitch."
The youth, perceiving that he had made another mistake, stammered an
apology.
The girl perceived his embarrassment and sweetly accepted his hand. "I am
much obliged, all the same."
Bill shook with malicious laughter. "Out in this country girls are
warranted to jump clean over a measly little hack like this," he
explained.
The girl took a seat in the back corner of the dusty vehicle, and Bill
opened conversation with her by asking what kind of a time she had been
having "in the East."
"Fine," said she.
"Did ye get as far back as my old town?"
"What town is that, Bill?"
"Oh, come off! You know I'm from Omaha."
"No, I only got as far as South Bend."
The picture which the girl had made as she dashed up to the pasture gate
(her hat-rim blown away from her brown face and sparkling eyes), united
with the kindliness in her voice as she accepted his gallant aid, entered
a deep impression on the tourist's mind; but he did not turn his head to
look at her--perhaps he feared Bill's elbow quite as much as his
guffaw--but he listened closely, and by listening learned that she had
been "East" for several weeks, and also that she was known, and favorably
known, all along the line, for whenever they met a team or passed a ranch
some one called out, "Hello, Berrie!" in cordial salute, and the men, old
and young, were especially pleased to see her.
[Illustration: THE GIRL BEHIND HIM WAS A WONDROUS PART OF THIS WILD
AND UNACCOUNTABLE COUNTRY]
Meanwhile the stage rose and fell over the gigantic swells like a tiny
boat on a monster sea, while the sun blazed ever more fervently from the
splendid sky, and the hills glowed with ever-increasing tumult of color.
Through this land of color, of repose, of romance, the young traveler
rode, drinking deep of the germless air, feeling that the girl behind him
was a wondrous part of this wild and unaccountable country.
He had no chance to study her face again till the coach rolled down the
hill to "Yancy's," where they were to take dinner and change horses.
Yancy's ranch-house stood on the bank of a fine stream which purled--in
keen defiance of the hot sun--over a gravel bed, so near to the mountain
snows that their coolness still lingered in the ripples. The house, a
long, low, log hut, was fenced with antlers of the elk, adorned with
morning-glory vines, and shaded by lofty cottonwood-trees, and its green
grass-plat--after the sun-smit hills of the long morning's ride--was very
grateful to the Eastern man's eyes.
With intent to show Bill that he did not greatly fear his smiles, the
youth sprang down and offered a hand to assist his charming
fellow-passenger to alight; and she, with kindly understanding, again
accepted his aid--to Bill's chagrin--and they walked up the path side by
side.
"This is all very new and wonderful to me," the young man said in
explanation; "but I suppose it's quite commonplace to you--and Bill."
"Oh no--it's home!"
"You were born here?"
"No, I was born in the East; but I've lived here ever since I was three
years old."
"By East you mean Kansas?"
"No, Missouri," she laughed back at him.
She was taller than most women, and gave out an air of fine unconscious
health which made her good to see, although her face was too broad to be
pretty. She smiled easily, and her teeth were white and even. Her hand he
noticed was as strong as steel and brown as leather. Her neck rose from
her shoulders like that of an acrobat, and she walked with the sense of
security which comes from self-reliant strength.
She was met at the door by old lady Yancy, who pumped her hand up and
down, exclaiming: "My stars, I'm glad to see ye back! 'Pears like the
country is just naturally goin' to the dogs without you. The dance last
Saturday was a frost, so I hear, no snap to the fiddlin', no gimp to the
jiggin'. It shorely was pitiful."
Yancy himself, tall, grizzled, succinct, shook her hand in his turn.
"Ma's right, girl, the country needs ye. I'm scared every time ye go away
fer fear some feller will snap ye up."
She laughed. "No danger. Well, how are ye all, anyway?" she asked.
"All well, 'ceptin' me," said the little old woman. "I'm just about able
to pick at my vittles."
"She does her share o' the work, and half the cook's besides,"
volunteered Yancy.
"I know her," retorted Berrie, as she laid off her hat. "It's me for a
dip. Gee, but it's dusty on the road!"
The young tourist--he signed W. W. Norcross in Yancy's register--watched
her closely and listened to every word she spoke with an intensity of
interest which led Mrs. Yancy to say, privately:
"'Pears like that young 'lunger' ain't goin' to forgit you if he can help
it."
"What makes you think he's a 'lunger'?"
"Don't haf to think. One look at him is enough."
Thereafter a softer light--the light of pity--shone in the eyes of the
girl. "Poor fellow, he does look kind o' peaked; but this climate will
bring him up to the scratch," she added, with optimistic faith in her
beloved hills.
A moment later the down-coming stage pulled in, loaded to the side-lines,
and everybody on it seemed to know Berea McFarlane. It was hello here and
hello there, and how are ye between, with smacks from the women and open
cries of "pass it around" on the part of the men, till Norcross marveled
at the display.
"She seems a great favorite," he observed to Yancy.
"Who--Berrie? She's the whole works up at Bear Tooth. Good thing she
don't want to go to Congress--she'd lay Jim Worthy on the shelf."
Berea's popularity was not so remarkable as her manner of receiving it.
She took it all as a sort of joke--a good, kindly joke. She shook hands
with her male admirers, and smacked the cheeks of her female friends with
an air of modest deprecation. "Oh, you don't mean it," was one of her
phrases. She enjoyed this display of affection, but it seemed not to
touch her deeply, and her impartial, humorous acceptance of the courtship
of the men was equally charming, though this was due, according to
remark, to the claims of some rancher up the line.
She continued to be the theme of conversation at the dinner-table and yet
remained unembarrassed, and gave back quite as good as she received.
"If I was Cliff," declared one lanky admirer, "I'd be shot if I let you
out of my sight. It ain't safe."
She smiled broadly. "I don't feel scared."
"Oh, _you're_ all right! It's the other feller--like me--that gets
hurt."
"Don't worry, you're old enough and tough enough to turn a steel-jacketed
bullet."
This raised a laugh, and Mrs. Yancy, who was waiting on the table, put in
a word: "I'll board ye free, Berrie, if you'll jest naturally turn up
here regular at meal-time. You do take the fellers' appetites. It's the
only time I make a cent."
To the Eastern man this was all very unrestrained and deeply diverting.
The people seemed to know all about one another notwithstanding the fact
that they came from ranches scattered up and down the stage line twenty,
thirty miles apart--to be neighbors in this country means to be anywhere
within a sixty-mile ride--and they gossiped of the countryside as
minutely as the residents of a village in Wisconsin discuss their kind.
News was scarce.
The north-bound coach got away first, and as the girl came out to take
her place, Norcross said: "Won't you have my seat with the driver?"
She dropped her voice humorously. "No, thank you, I can't stand for
Bill's clack."
Norcross understood. She didn't relish the notion of being so close to
the frankly amorous driver, who neglected no opportunity to be personal;
therefore, he helped her to her seat inside and resumed his place in
front.
Bill, now broadly communicative, minutely detailed his tastes in food,
horses, liquors, and saddles in a long monologue which would have been
tiresome to any one but an imaginative young Eastern student. Bill had a
vast knowledge of the West, but a distressing habit of repetition. He was
self-conscious, too, for the reason that he was really talking for the
benefit of the girl sitting in critical silence behind him, who, though
he frequently turned to her for confirmation of some of the more
startling of his statements, refused to be drawn into controversy.
In this informing way some ten miles were traversed, the road climbing
ever higher, and the mountains to right and left increasing in grandeur
each hour, till of a sudden and in a deep valley on the bank of another
swift stream, they came upon a squalid saloon and a minute post-office.
This was the town of Moskow.
Bill, lumbering down over the wheel, took a bag of mail from the boot and
dragged it into the cabin. The girl rose, stretched herself, and said:
"This stagin' is slow business. I'm cramped. I'm going to walk on
ahead."
"May I go with you?" asked Norcross.
"Sure thing! Come along."
As they crossed the little pole bridge which spanned the flood, the
tourist exclaimed: "What exquisite water! It's like melted opals."
"Comes right down from the snow," she answered, impressed by the poetry
of his simile.
He would gladly have lingered, listening to the song of the water, but as
she passed on, he followed. The opposite hill was sharp and the road
stony, but as they reached the top the young Easterner called out, "See
the savins!"
Before them stood a grove of cedars, old, gray, and drear, as weirdly
impressive as the cacti in a Mexican desert. Torn by winds, scarred by
lightnings, deeply rooted, tenacious as tradition, unlovely as Egyptian
mummies, fantastic, dwarfed and blackened, these unaccountable creatures
clung to the ledges. The dead mingled horribly with the living, and when
the wind arose--the wind that was robustly cheerful on the high
hills--these hags cried out with low moans of infinite despair. It was as
if they pleaded for water or for deliverance from a life that was a kind
of death.
The pale young man shuddered. "What a ghostly place!" he exclaimed, in a
low voice. "It seems the burial-place of a vanished race."
Something in his face, some note in his voice profoundly moved the girl.
For the first time her face showed something other than childish good
nature and a sense of humor. "I don't like these trees myself," she
answered. "They look too much like poor old squaws."
For a few moments the man and the maid studied the forest of immemorial,
gaunt, and withered trees--bright, impermanent youth confronting
time-defaced and wind-torn age. Then the girl spoke: "Let's get out of
here. I shall cry if we don't."
In a few moments the dolorous voices were left behind, and the cheerful
light of the plain reasserted itself. Norcross, looking back down upon
the cedars, which at a distance resembled a tufted, bronze-green carpet,
musingly asked: "What do you suppose planted those trees there?"
The girl was deeply impressed by the novelty of this query. "I never
thought to ask. I reckon they just grew."
"No, there's a reason for all these plantings," he insisted.
"We don't worry ourselves much about such things out here," she replied,
with charming humor. "We don't even worry about the weather. We just take
things as they come."
They walked on talking with new intimacy. "Where is your home?" he
asked.
"A few miles out of Bear Tooth. You're from the East, Bill says--'the far
East,' we call it."
"From New Haven. I've just finished at Yale. Have you ever been to New
York?"
"Oh, good Lord, no!" she answered, as though he had named the ends of the
earth. "My mother came from the South--she was born in Kentucky--that
accounts for my name, and my father is a Missourian. Let's see, Yale is
in the state of Connecticut, isn't it?"
"Connecticut is no longer a state; it is only a suburb of New York
City."
"Is that so? My geography calls it 'The Nutmeg State.'"
"Your geography is behind the times. New York has absorbed all of
Connecticut and part of Jersey."
"Well, it's all the same to us out here. Your whole country looks like
the small end of a slice of pie to us."
"Have you ever been in a city?"
"Oh yes, I go to Denver once in a while, and I saw St. Louis once; but I
was only a yearling, and don't remember much about it. What are you doing
out here, if it's a fair question?"
He looked away at the mountains. "I got rather used up last spring, and
my doctor said I'd better come out here for a while and build up. I'm
going up to Meeker's Mill. Do you know where that is?"
"I know every stove-pipe in this park," she answered. "Joe Meeker is kind
o' related to me--uncle by marriage. He lives about fifteen miles over
the hill from Bear Tooth."
This fact seemed to bring them still closer together. "I'm glad of that,"
he said, pointedly. "Perhaps I shall be permitted to see you now and
again? I'm going to be lonesome for a while, I'm afraid."
"Don't you believe it! Joe Meeker's boys will keep you interested," she
assured him.
The stage overtook them at this point, and Bill surlily remarked: "If
you'd been alone, young feller, I'd 'a' give you a chase." His resentment
of the outsider's growing favor with the girl was ludicrously evident.
As they rose into the higher levels the aspen shook its yellowish leaves
in the breeze, and the purple foot-hills gained in majesty. Great new
peaks came into view on the right, and the lofty cliffs of the Bear Tooth
range loomed in naked grandeur high above the blue-green of the pines
which clothed their sloping eastern sides.
At intervals the road passed small log ranches crouching low on the banks
of creeks; but aside from these--and the sparse animal life around
them--no sign of settlement could be seen. The valley lay as it had lain
for thousands of years, repeating its forests as the meadows of the lower
levels send forth their annual grasses. Norcross said to himself: "I have
circled the track of progress and have re-entered the border America,
where the stage-coach is still the one stirring thing beneath the sun."
At last the driver, with a note of exultation, called out: "Grab a root,
everybody, it's all the way down-hill and time to feed."
And so, as the dusk came over the mighty spread of the hills to the east,
and the peaks to the west darkened from violet to purple-black, the stage
rumbled and rattled and rushed down the winding road through thickening
signs of civilization, and just at nightfall rolled into the little town
of Bear Tooth, which is the eastern gateway of the Ute Plateau.
Norcross had given a great deal of thought to the young girl behind him,
and thought had deepened her charm. Her frankness, her humor, her superb
physical strength and her calm self-reliance appealed to him, and the
more dangerously, because he was so well aware of his own weakness and
loneliness, and as the stage drew up before the hotel, he fervently said:
"I hope I shall see you again?"
Before she could reply a man's voice called: "Hello, there!" and a tall
fellow stepped up to her with confident mien.
Norcross awkwardly shrank away. This was her cowboy lover, of course. It
was impossible that so attractive a girl should be unattached, and the
knowledge produced in him a faint but very definite pang of envy and
regret.
The happy girl, even in the excitement of meeting her lover, did not
forget the stranger. She gave him her hand in parting, and again he
thrilled to its amazing power. It was small, but it was like a steel
clamp. "Stop in on your way to Meeker's," she said, as a kindly man would
have done. "You pass our gate. My father is Joseph McFarlane, the Forest
Supervisor. Good night."
"Good night," he returned, with sincere liking.
"Who is that?" Norcross heard her companion ask.
She replied in a low voice, but he overheard her answer, "A poor
'lunger,' bound for Meeker's--and Kingdom Come, I'm afraid. He seems a
nice young feller, too."
"They always wait till the last minute," remarked the rancher, with
indifferent tone.
II
A RIDE IN THE RAIN
There are two Colorados within the boundaries of the state of that name,
distinct, almost irreconcilable. One is a plain (smooth, dry,
monotonous), gently declining to the east, a land of sage-brush,
wheat-fields, and alfalfa meadows--a rather commonplace region now, given
over to humdrum folk intent on digging a living from the soil; but the
other is an army of peaks, a region of storms, a spread of dark and
tangled forests. In the one, shallow rivers trickle on their sandy way to
the Gulf of Mexico; from the other, the waters rush, uniting to make the
mighty stream whose silt-laden floods are slowly filling the Gulf of
California.
If you stand on one of the great naked crests which form the dividing
wall, the rampart of the plains, you can see the Colorado of tradition to
the west, still rolling in wave after wave of stupendous altitudes, each
range cutting into the sky with a purple saw-tooth edge. The landscape
seems to contain nothing but rocks and towering crags, a treasure-house
for those who mine. But this is illusive. Between these purple heights
charming valleys wind and meadows lie in which rich grasses grow and
cattle feed.
On certain slopes--where the devastating miners have not yet played their
relentless game--dark forests rise to the high, bold summits of the
chiefest mountains, and it is to guard these timbered tracts, growing
each year more valuable, that the government has established its Forest
Service to protect and develop the wealth-producing power of the
watersheds.
Chief among the wooded areas of this mighty inland empire of crag and
stream is the Bear Tooth Forest, containing nearly eight hundred thousand
acres of rock and trees, whose seat of administration is Bear Tooth
Springs, the small town in which our young traveler found himself.
He carefully explained to the landlord of the Cottage Hotel that he had
never been in this valley before, and that he was filled with
astonishment and delight of the scenery.
"Scenery! Yes, too much scenery. What we want is settlers," retorted the
landlord, who was shabby and sour and rather contemptuous, for the reason
that he considered Norcross a poor consumptive, and a fool to boot--"one
of those chaps who wait till they are nearly dead, then come out here
expecting to live on climate."
The hotel was hardly larger than the log shanty of a railway-grading
camp; but the meat was edible, and just outside the door roared Bear
Creek, which came down directly from Dome Mountain, and the young
Easterner went to sleep beneath its singing that night. He should have
dreamed of the happy mountain girl, but he did not; on the contrary, he
imagined himself back at college in the midst of innumerable freshmen,
yelling, "Bill McCoy, Bill McCoy!"
He woke a little bewildered by his strange surroundings, and when he
became aware of the cheap bed, the flimsy wash-stand, the ugly wallpaper,
and thought how far he was from home and friends, he not only sighed, he
shivered. The room was chill, the pitcher of water cold almost to the
freezing-point, and his joints were stiff and painful from his ride. What
folly to come so far into the wilderness at this time.
As he crawled from his bed and looked from the window he was still
further disheartened. In the foreground stood a half dozen frame
buildings, graceless and cheap, without tree or shrub to give shadow or
charm of line--all was bare, bleak, sere; but under his window the stream
was singing its glorious mountain song, and away to the west rose the
aspiring peaks from which it came. Romance brooded in that shadow, and on
the lower foot-hills the frost-touched foliage glowed like a mosaic of
jewels.
Dressing hurriedly he went down to the small bar-room, whose litter of
duffle-bags, guns, saddles, and camp utensils gave evidence of the
presence of many hunters and fishermen. The slovenly landlord was poring
over a newspaper, while a discouraged half-grown youth was sludging the
floor with a mop; but a cheerful clamor from an open door at the back of
the hall told that breakfast was on.
Venturing over the threshold, Norcross found himself seated at table with
some five or six men in corduroy jackets and laced boots, who were, in
fact, merchants and professional men from Denver and Pueblo out for fish
and such game as the law allowed, and all in holiday mood. They joked the
waiter-girls, and joshed one another in noisy good-fellowship, ignoring
the slim youth in English riding-suit, who came in with an air of mingled
melancholy and timidity and took a seat at the lower corner of the long
table.
The landlady, tall, thin, worried, and inquisitive, was New
England--Norcross recognized her type even before she came to him with a
question on her lips. "So you're from the East, are you?"
"I've been at school there."
"Well, I'm glad to see you. My folks came from York State. I don't often
get any one from the _real_ East. Come out to fish, I s'pose?"
"Yes," he replied, thinking this the easiest way out.
"Well, they's plenty of fishing--and they's plenty of air, not much of
anything else."
As he looked about the room, the tourist's eye was attracted by four
young fellows seated at a small table to his right. They wore rough
shirts of an olive-green shade, and their faces were wind-scorched; but
their voices held a pleasant tone, and something in the manner of the
landlady toward them made them noticeable. Norcross asked her who they
were.
"They're forestry boys."
"Forestry boys?"
"Yes; the Supervisor's office is here, and these are his help."
This information added to Norcross's interest and cheered him a little.
He knew something of the Forest Service, and had been told that many of
the rangers were college men. He resolved to make their acquaintance. "If
I'm to stay here they will help me endure the exile," he said.
After breakfast he went forth to find the post-office, expecting a letter
of instructions from Meeker. He found nothing of the sort, and this quite
disconcerted him.
"The stage is gone," the postmistress told him, "and you can't get up
till day after to-morrow. You might reach Meeker by using the government
'phone, however."
"Where will I find the government 'phone?"
"Down in the Supervisor's office. They're very accommodating; they'll let
you use it, if you tell them who you want to reach."
It was impossible to miss the forestry building for the reason that a
handsome flag fluttered above it. The door being open, Norcross perceived
from the threshold a young clerk at work on a typewriter, while in a
corner close by the window another and older man was working intently on
a map.
"Is this the office of the Forest Supervisor?" asked the youth.
The man at the machine looked up, and pleasantly answered: "It is, but
the Supervisor is not in yet. Is there anything I can do for you?"
"It may be you can. I am on my way to Meeker's Mill for a little outing.
Perhaps you could tell me where Meeker's Mill is, and how I can best get
there."
The man at the map meditated. "It's not far, some eighteen or twenty
miles; but it's over a pretty rough trail."
"What kind of a place is it?"
"Very charming. You'll like it. Real mountain country."
This officer was a plain-featured man of about thirty-five, with keen and
clear eyes. His voice, though strongly nasal, possessed a note of manly
sincerity. As he studied his visitor, he smiled.
"You look brand-new--haven't had time to season-check, have you?"
"No; I'm a stranger in a strange land."
"Out for your health?"
"Yes. My name is Norcross. I'm just getting over a severe illness, and
I'm up here to lay around and fish and recuperate--if I can."
"You can--you will. You can't help it," the other assured him. "Join one
of our surveying crews for a week and I'll mellow that suit of yours and
make a real mountaineer of you. I see you wear a _Sigma Chi_ pin. What
was your school?"
"I am a 'Son of Eli.' Last year's class."
The other man displayed his fob. "I'm ten classes ahead of you. My name
is Nash. I'm what they call an 'expert.' I'm up here doing some
estimating and surveying for a big ditch they're putting in. I was rather
in hopes you had come to join our ranks. We sons of Eli are holding the
conservation fort these days, and we need help."
"My knowledge of your work is rather vague," admitted Norcross. "My
father is in the lumber business; but his point of view isn't exactly
yours."
"He slays 'em, does he?"
"He did. He helped devastate Michigan."
"After me the deluge! I know the kind. Why not make yourself a sort of
vicarious atonement?"
Norcross smiled. "I had not thought of that. It would help some, wouldn't
it?"
"It certainly would. There's no great money in the work; but it's about
the most enlightened of all the governmental bureaus."
Norcross was strongly drawn to this forester, whose tone was that of a
highly trained specialist. "I rode up on the stage yesterday with Miss
Berrie McFarlane."
"The Supervisor's daughter?"
"She seemed a fine Western type."
"She's not a type; she's an individual. She hasn't her like anywhere I've
gone. She cuts a wide swath up here. Being an only child she's both son
and daughter to McFarlane. She knows more about forestry than her father.
In fact, half the time he depends on her judgment."
Norcross was interested, but did not want to take up valuable time. He
said: "Will you let me use your telephone to Meeker's?"
"Very sorry, but our line is out of order. You'll have to wait a day or
so--or use the mails. You're too late for to-day's stage, but it's only a
short ride across. Come outside and I'll show you."
Norcross followed him to the walk, and stood in silence while his guide
indicated the pass over the range. It all looked very formidable to the
Eastern youth. Thunderous clouds hung low upon the peaks, and the great
crags to left and right of the notch were stern and barren. "I think I'll
wait for the stage," he said, with candid weakness. "I couldn't make that
trip alone."
"You'll have to take many such a ride over that range in the _night_--if
you join the service," Nash warningly replied.
As they were standing there a girl came galloping up to the hitching-post
and slid from her horse. It was Berea McFarlane. "Good morning, Emery,"
she called to the surveyor. "Good morning," she nodded at Norcross. "How
do you find yourself this morning?"
"Homesick," he replied, smilingly.
"Why so?"
"I'm disappointed in the town."
"What's the matter with the town?"
"It's so commonplace. I expected it to be--well, different. It's just
like any other plains town."
Berrie looked round at the forlorn shops, the irregular sidewalks, the
grassless yards. "It isn't very pretty, that's a fact; but you can always
forget it by just looking up at the high country. When you going up to
the mill?"
"I don't know. I haven't had any word from Meeker, and I can't reach him
by telephone."
"I know, the line is short-circuited somewhere; but they've sent a man
out. He may close it any minute."
"Where's the Supervisor?" asked Nash.
"He's gone over to Moore's cutting. How are you getting on with those
plats?"
"Very well. I'll have 'em all in shape by Saturday."
"Come in and make yourself at home," said the girl to Norcross. "You'll
find the papers two or three days old," she smiled. "We never know about
anything here till other people have forgotten it."
Norcross followed her into the office, curious to know more about her.
She was so changed from his previous conception of her that he was
puzzled. She had the directness and the brevity of phrase of a business
man, as she opened letters and discussed their contents with the men.
"Truly she _is_ different," thought Norcross, and yet she lost something
by reason of the display of her proficiency as a clerk. "I wish she would
leave business to some one else," he inwardly grumbled as he rose to go.
She looked up from her desk. "Come in again later. We may be able to
reach the mill."
He thanked her and went back to his hotel, where he overhauled his outfit
and wrote some letters. His disgust of the town was lessened by the
presence of that handsome girl, and the hope that he might see her at
luncheon made him impatient of the clock.
She did not appear in the dining-room, and when Norcross inquired of Nash
whether she took her meals at the hotel or not, the expert replied: "No,
she goes home. The ranch is only a few miles down the valley.
Occasionally we invite her, but she don't think much of the cooking."
One of the young surveyors put in a word: "I shouldn't think she would.
I'd ride ten miles any time to eat one of Mrs. McFarlane's dinners."
"Yes," agreed Nash with a reflective look in his eyes. "She's a mighty
fine girl, and I join the boys in wishing her better luck than marrying
Cliff Belden."
"Is it settled that way?" asked Norcross.
"Yes; the Supervisor warned us all, but even he never has any good words
for Belden. He's a surly cuss, and violently opposed to the service. His
brother is one of the proprietors of the Meeker mill, and they have all
tried to bulldoze Landon, our ranger over there. By the way, you'll like
Landon. He's a Harvard man, and a good ranger. His shack is only a
half-mile from Meeker's house. It's a pretty well-known fact that Alec
Belden is part proprietor of a saloon over there that worries the
Supervisor worse than anything. Cliff swears he's not connected with it;
but he's more or less sympathetic with the crowd."
Norcross, already deeply interested in the present and future of a girl
whom he had met for the first time only the day before, was quite ready
to give up his trip to Meeker. After the men went back to work he
wandered about the town for an hour or two, and then dropped in at the
office to inquire if the telephone line had been repaired.
"No, it's still dead."
"Did Miss McFarlane return?"
"No. She said she had work to do at home. This is ironing-day, I
believe."
"She plays all the parts, don't she?"
"She sure does; and she plays one part as well as another. She can rope
and tie a steer or bake a cake as well as play the piano."
"Don't tell me she plays the piano!"
Nash laughed. "She does; but it's one of those you operate with your
feet."
"I'm relieved to hear that. She seems almost weirdly gifted as it is."
After a moment he broke in with: "What can a man do in this town?"
"Work, nothing else."
"What do you do for amusement?"
"Once in a while there is a dance in the hall over the drug-store, and on
Sunday you can listen to a wretched sermon in the log church. The rest of
the time you work or loaf in the saloons--or read. Old Nature has done
her part here. But man--! Ever been in the Tyrol?"
"Yes."
"Well, some day the people of the plains will have sense enough to use
these mountains, these streams, the way they do over there."
It required only a few hours for Norcross to size up the valley and its
people. Aside from Nash and his associates, and one or two families
connected with the mill to the north, the villagers were poor,
thriftless, and uninteresting. They were lacking in the picturesque
quality of ranchers and miners, and had not yet the grace of
town-dwellers. They were, indeed, depressingly nondescript.
Early on the second morning he went to the post-office--which was also
the telephone station--to get a letter or message from Meeker. He found
neither; but as he was standing in the door undecided about taking the
stage, Berea came into town riding a fine bay pony, and leading a
blaze-face buckskin behind her.
Her face shone cordially, as she called out: "Well, how do you stack up
this morning?"
"Tip-top," he answered, in an attempt to match her cheery greeting.
"Do you like our town better?"
"Not a bit! But the hills are magnificent."
"Anybody turned up from the mill?"
"No, I haven't heard a word from there. The telephone is still out of
commission."
"They can't locate the break. Uncle Joe sent word by the stage-driver
asking us to keep an eye out for you and send you over. I've come to take
you over myself."
"That's mighty good of you; but it's a good deal to ask."
"I want to see Uncle Joe on business, anyhow, and you'll like the ride
better than the journey by stage."
Leaving the horses standing with their bridle-reins hanging on the
ground, she led the way to the office.
"When father comes in, tell him where I've gone, and send Mr. Norcross's
packs by the first wagon. Is your outfit ready?" she asked.
"Not quite. I can get it ready soon."
He hurried away in pleasant excitement, and in twenty minutes was at the
door ready to ride.
"You'd better take my bay," said Berea. "Old Paint-face there is a little
notional."
Norcross approached his mount with a caution which indicated that he had
at least been instructed in range-horse psychology, and as he gathered
his reins together to mount, Berrie remarked:
"I hope you're saddle-wise."
"I had a few lessons in a riding-school," he replied, modestly.
Young Downing approached the girl with a low-voiced protest: "You
oughtn't to ride old Paint. He nearly pitched the Supervisor the other
day."
"I'm not worried," she said, and swung to her saddle.
The ugly beast made off in a tearing sidewise rush, but she smilingly
called back: "All set." And Norcross followed her in high admiration.
Eventually she brought her bronco to subjection, and they trotted off
together along the wagon-road quite comfortably. By this time the youth
had forgotten his depression, his homesickness of the morning. The valley
was again enchanted ground. Its vistas led to lofty heights. The air was
regenerative, and though a part of this elation was due, no doubt, to the
power of his singularly attractive guide, he laid it discreetly to the
climate.
After shacking along between some rather sorry fields of grain for a mile
or two, Berea swung into a side-trail. "I want you to meet my mother,"
she said.
The grassy road led to a long, one-story, half-log, half-slab house,
which stood on the bank of a small, swift, willow-bordered stream.
"This is our ranch," she explained. "All the meadow in sight belongs to
us."
The young Easterner looked about in astonishment. Not a tree bigger than
his thumb gave shade. The gate of the cattle corral stood but a few feet
from the kitchen door, and rusty beef-bones, bleaching skulls, and scraps
of sun-dried hides littered the ground or hung upon the fence. Exteriorly
the low cabin made a drab, depressing picture; but as he alighted--upon
Berea's invitation--and entered the house, he was met by a sweet-faced,
brown-haired little woman in a neat gown, whose bearing was not in the
least awkward or embarrassed.
"This is Mr. Norcross, the tourist I told you about," explained Berrie.
Mrs. McFarlane extended her small hand with friendly impulse. "I'm very
glad to meet you, sir. Are you going to spend some time at the Mill?"
"I don't know. I have a letter to Mr. Meeker from a friend of mine who
hunted with him last year--a Mr. Sutler."
"Mr. Sutler! Oh, we know him very well. Won't you sit down?"
The interior of the house was not only well kept, but presented many
evidences of refinement. A mechanical piano stood against the log wall,
and books and magazines, dog-eared with use, littered the table; and
Norcross, feeling the force of Nash's half-expressed criticism of his
"superior," listened intently to Mrs. McFarlane's apologies for the
condition of the farmyard.
"Well," said Berea, sharply, "if we're to reach Uncle Joe's for dinner
we'd better be scratching the hills." And to her mother she added: "I'll
pull in about dark."
The mother offered no objection to her daughter's plan, and the young
people rode off together directly toward the high peaks to the east.
"I'm going by way of the cut-off," Berrie explained; and Norcross,
content and unafraid, nodded in acquiescence. "Here is the line," she
called a few minutes later, pointing at a sign nailed to a tree at the
foot of the first wooded hill.
The notice, printed in black ink on a white square of cloth, proclaimed
this to be the boundary of the Bear Tooth National Forest, and pleaded
with all men to be watchful of fires. Its tone was not at all that of a
strong government; it was deprecatory.
The trail, hardly more than a wood road, grew wilder and lonelier as they
climbed. Cattle fed on the hillsides in scattered bands like elk. Here
and there a small cabin stood on the bank of a stream; but, for the most
part, the trail mounted the high slopes in perfect solitude.
The girl talked easily and leisurely, reading the brands of the ranchers,
revealing the number of cattle they owned, quite as a young farmer would
have done. She seemed not to be embarrassed in the slightest degree by
the fact that she was guiding a strange man over a lonely road, and gave
no outward sign of special interest in him till she suddenly turned to
ask: "What kind of a slicker--I mean a raincoat--did you bring?"
He looked blank. "I don't believe I brought any. I've a leather
shooting-jacket, however."
She shrugged her shoulders and looked up at the sky. "We're in for a
storm. You'd ought 'o have a slicker, no fancy 'raincoat,' but a real
old-fashioned cow-puncher's oilskin. They make a business of shedding
rain. Leather's no good, neither is canvas; I've tried 'em all."
She rode on for a few minutes in silence, as if disgusted with his folly,
but she was really worrying about him. "Poor chap," she said to herself.
"He can't stand a chill. I ought to have thought of his slicker myself.
He's helpless as a baby."
They were climbing fast now, winding upward along the bank of a stream,
and the sky had grown suddenly gray, and the woodland path was dark and
chill. The mountains were not less beautiful; but they were decidedly
less amiable, and the youth shivered, casting an apprehensive eye at the
thickening clouds.
Berea perceived something of his dismay, and, drawing rein, dismounted.
Behind her saddle was a tightly rolled bundle which, being untied and
shaken out, proved to be a horseman's rainproof oilskin coat. "Put this
on!" she commanded.
"Oh no," he protested, "I can't take your coat."
"Yes you can! You must! Don't you worry about me, I'm used to weather.
Put this on over your jacket and all. You'll need it. Rain won't hurt
_me_; but it will just about finish you."
The worst of this lay in its truth, and Norcross lost all his pride of
sex for the moment. A wetting would not dim this girl's splendid color,
nor reduce her vitality one degree, while to him it might be a
death-warrant. "You could throw me over my own horse," he admitted, in a
kind of bitter admiration, and slipped the coat on, shivering with cold
as he did so.
"You think me a poor excuse of a trailer, don't you?" he said, ruefully,
as the thunder began to roll.
"You've got to be all made over new," she replied, tolerantly. "Stay here
a year and you'll be able to stand anything."
Remounting, she again led the way with cheery cry. The rain came dashing
down in fitful, misty streams; but she merely pulled the rim of her
sombrero closer over her eyes, and rode steadily on, while he followed,
plunged in gloom as cold and gray as the storm. The splitting crashes of
thunder echoed from the high peaks like the voices of siege-guns, and the
lightning stabbed here and there as though blindly seeking some hidden
foe. Long veils of falling water twisted and trailed through the valleys
with swishing roar.
"These mountain showers don't last long," the girl called back, her face
shining like a rose. "We'll get the sun in a few minutes."
And so it turned out. In less than an hour they rode into the warm light
again, and in spite of himself Norcross returned her smile, though he
said: "I feel like a selfish fool. You are soaked."
"Hardly wet through," she reassured him. "My jacket and skirt turn water
pretty well. I'll be dry in a jiffy. It does a body good to be wet once
in a while."
The shame of his action remained; but a closer friendship was
established, and as he took off the coat and handed it back to her, he
again apologized. "I feel like a pig. I don't see how I came to do it.
The thunder and the chill scared me, that's the truth of it. You
hypnotized me into taking it. How wet you _are_!" he exclaimed,
remorsefully. "You'll surely take cold."
"I never take cold," she returned. "I'm used to all kinds of weather.
Don't you bother about me."
Topping a low divide the youth caught a glimpse of the range to the
southeast, which took his breath. "Isn't that superb!" he exclaimed.
"It's like the shining roof of the world!"
"Yes, that's the Continental Divide," she confirmed, casually; but the
lyrical note which he struck again reached her heart. The men she knew
had so few words for the beautiful in life. She wondered whether this
man's illness had given him this refinement or whether it was native to
his kind. "I'm glad he took my coat," was her thought.
She pushed on down the slope, riding hard, but it was nearly two o'clock
when they drew up at Meeker's house, which was a long, low, stone
structure built along the north side of the road. The place was
distinguished not merely by its masonry, but also by its picket fence,
which had once been whitewashed. Farm-wagons of various degrees of decay
stood by the gate, and in the barn-yard plows and harrows--deeply buried
by the weeds--were rusting forlornly away. A little farther up the stream
the tall pipe of a sawmill rose above the firs.
A pack of dogs of all sizes and signs came clamoring to the fence,
followed by a big, slovenly dressed, red-bearded man of sixty or
thereabouts.
"Hello, Uncle Joe," called the girl, in offhand boyish fashion. "How are
you _to-day_?"
"Howdy, girl," answered Meeker, gravely. "What brings you up here this
time?"
She laughed. "Here's a boarder who wants to learn how to raise cattle."
Meeker's face lightened. "I reckon you're Mr. Norcross? I'm glad to see
ye. Light off and make yourself to home. Turn your horses into the
corral, the boys will feed 'em."
"Am I in America?" Norcross asked himself, as he followed the slouchy old
rancher into the unkempt yard. "This certainly is a long way from New
Haven."
Without ceremony Meeker led his guests directly into the dining-room, a
long and rather narrow room, wherein a woman and six or seven roughly
dressed young men were sitting at a rudely appointed table.
"Earth and seas!" exclaimed Mrs. Meeker. "Here's Berrie, and I'll bet
that's Sutler's friend, our boarder."
"That's what, mother," admitted her husband. "Berrie brought him up."
"You'd ought 'o gone for him yourself, you big lump," she retorted.
Mrs. Meeker, who was as big as her husband, greeted Norcross warmly, and
made a place for him beside her own chair.
"Highst along there, boys, and give the company a chance," she commanded,
sharply. "Our dinner's turrible late to-day."
The boys--they were in reality full-grown cubs of eighteen or twenty--did
as they were bid with much noise, chaffing Berrie with blunt humor. The
table was covered with a red oil-cloth, and set with heavy blue-and-white
china. The forks were two-tined, steel-pronged, and not very polished,
and the food was of the simplest sort; but the girl seemed at home
there--as she did everywhere--and was soon deep in a discussion of the
price of beef, and whether it was advisable to ship now or wait a month.
Meeker read Sutler's letter, which Norcross had handed him, and, after
deliberation, remarked: "All right, we'll do the best we can for you, Mr.
Norcross; but we haven't any fancy accommodations."
"He don't expect any," replied Berrie. "What he needs is a little
roughing it."
"There's plinty of that to be had," said one of the herders, who sat
below the salt. "'is the soft life I'm nadin'."
"Pat's strong on soft jobs," said another; and Berea joined the laugh
which followed this pointless joke. She appeared to be one of them, and
it troubled Norcross a little. She had so little the sex feeling and
demanded so few of the rights and privileges of a girl. The men all
admired her, that was evident, almost too evident, and one or two of the
older men felt the charm of her young womanhood too deeply even to meet
her eyes; but of this Norcross was happily ignorant. Already in these two
days he had acquired a distinct sense of proprietorship in her, a feeling
which made him jealous of her good name.
Meeker, it turned out, was an Englishman by way of Canada, and this was
his second American wife. His first had been a sister to Mrs. McFarlane.
He was a man of much reading--of the periodical sort--and the big
sitting-room was littered with magazines both English and American, and
his talk abounded in radical and rather foolish utterances. Norcross
considered it the most disorderly home he had ever seen, and yet it was
not without a certain dignity. The rooms were large and amply provided
with furniture of a very mixed and gaudy sort, and the table was spread
with abundance.
One of the lads, Frank Meeker, a dark, intense youth of about twenty, was
Berea's full cousin. The others were merely hired hands, but they all
eyed the new-comer with disfavor. The fact that Berrie had brought him
and that she seemed interested in him added to the effect of the smart
riding-suit which he wore. "I'd like to roll him in the creek," muttered
one of them to his neighbor.
This dislike Berrie perceived--in some degree--and to Frank she privately
said: "Now you fellows have got to treat Mr. Norcross right. He's been
very sick."
Frank maliciously grinned. "Oh, we'll treat him _right_. We won't do a
thing to him!"
"Now, Frank," she warned, "if you try any of your tricks on him you'll
hear from me."
"Why all this worry on your part?" he asked, keenly. "How long since you
found him?"
"We rode up on the stage day before yesterday, and he seemed so kind o'
blue and lonesome I couldn't help trying to chirk him up."
"How will Cliff take all this chirking business?"
"Cliff ain't my guardian--yet," she laughingly responded. "Mr. Norcross
is a college man, and not used to our ways--"
"_Mister_ Norcross--what's his front name?"
"Wayland."
He snorted. "Wayland! If he gets past us without being called 'pasty'
he's in luck. He's a 'lunger' if there ever was one."
The girl was shrewd enough to see that the more she sought to soften the
wind to her Eastern tenderfoot the more surely he was to be shorn, so she
gave over her effort in that direction, and turned to the old folks. To
Mrs. Meeker she privately said: "Mr. Norcross ain't used to rough ways,
and he's not very rugged, you ought 'o kind o' favor him for a while."
The girl herself did not understand the vital and almost painful interest
which this young man had roused in her. He was both child and poet to
her, and as she watched him trying to make friends with the men, her
indignation rose against their clownish offishness. She understood fully
that his neat speech, his Eastern accent, together with his tailor-cut
clothing and the delicacy of his table manners, would surely mark him for
slaughter among the cow-hands, and the wish to shield him made her face
graver than anybody had ever seen it.
"I don't feel right in leaving you here," she said, at last; "but I must
be ridin'." And while Meeker ordered her horse brought out, she walked to
the gate with Norcross at her side.
"I'm tremendously obliged to you," he said, and his voice was vibrant.
"You have been most kind. How can I repay you?"
"Oh, that's all right," she replied, in true Western fashion. "I wanted
to see the folks up here, anyhow. This is no jaunt at all for me." And,
looking at her powerful figure, and feeling the trap-like grip of her
cinch hand, he knew she spoke the truth.
Frank had saddled his own horse, and was planning to ride over the hill
with her; but to this she objected. "I'm going to leave Pete here for Mr.
Norcross to ride," she said, "and there's no need of your going."
Frank's face soured, and with instant perception of the effect her
refusal might have on the fortunes of the stranger, she reconsidered.
"Oh, come along! I reckon you want to get shut of some mean job."
And so she rode away, leaving her ward to adjust himself to his new and
strange surroundings as best he could, and with her going the whole
valley darkened for the convalescent.
III
WAYLAND RECEIVES A WARNING
Distance is no barrier to gossip. It amazed young Norcross to observe how
minutely the ranchers of the valley followed one another's most intimate
domestic affairs. Not merely was each man in full possession of the color
and number of every calf in his neighbor's herd, it seemed that nothing
could happen in the most remote cabin and remain concealed. Any event
which broke the monotony of their life loomed large, and in all matters
of courtship curiosity was something more than keen, it was remorseless.
Living miles apart, and riding the roads but seldom, these lonely gossips
tore to tatters every scrap of rumor. No citizen came or went without
being studied, characterized, accounted for, and every woman was
scrutinized as closely as a stray horse, and if there was within her, the
slightest wayward impulse some lawless centaur came to know it, to exult
over it, to make test of it. Her every word, her minutest expression of a
natural coquetry was enlarged upon as a sign of weakness, of yielding.
Every personable female was the focus of a natural desire, intensified by
lonely brooding on the part of the men.
It was soon apparent to the Eastern observer that the entire male
population for thirty miles around not only knew McFarlane's girl; but
that every unmarried man--and some who were both husbands and
fathers--kept a deeply interested eye upon her daily motion, and certain
shameless ones openly boasted among their fellows of their intention to
win her favor, while the shy ones reveled in secret exultation over every
chance meeting with her. She was the topic of every lumber-camp, and the
shining lure of every dance to which the ranch hands often rode over long
and lonely trails.
Part of this intense interest was due, naturally, to the scarcity of
desirable women, but a larger part was called out by Berea's frank
freedom of manner. Her ready camaraderie was taken for carelessness, and
the candid grip of her hand was often misunderstood; and yet most of the
men respected her, and some feared her. After her avowed choice of
Clifford Belden they all kept aloof, for he was hot-tempered and
formidably swift to avenge an insult.
At the end of a week Norcross found himself restless and discontented
with the Meekers. He was tired of fishing, tired of the old man's endless
arguments, and tired of the obscene cow-hands. The men around the mill
did not interest him, and their Saturday night spree at the saloon
disgusted him. The one person who piqued his curiosity was Landon, the
ranger who was stationed not far away, and who could be seen occasionally
riding by on a handsome black horse. There was something in his bearing,
in his neat and serviceable drab uniform, which attracted the
convalescent, and on Sunday morning he decided to venture a call,
although Frank Meeker had said the ranger was a "grouch."
His cabin, a neat log structure, stood just above the road on a huge
natural terrace of grassy boulders, and the flag which fluttered from a
tall staff before it could be seen for several miles--the bright sign of
federal control, the symbol of law and order, just as the saloon and the
mill were signs of lawless vice and destructive greed. Around the door
flowers bloomed and kittens played; while at the door of the dive broken
bottles, swarms of flies, and heaps of refuse menaced every corner, and
the mill immured itself in its own debris like a foul beast.
It was strangely moving to come upon this flower-like place and this
garden in the wilderness. A spring, which crept from the high wall back
of "the station" (as these ranger headquarters are called), gave its
delicious water into several winding ditches, trickled musically down the
other side of the terrace in little life-giving cascades, and so finally,
reunited in a single current, fell away into the creek. It was plain that
loving care, and much of it, had been given to this tiny system of
irrigation.
The cabin's interior pleased Wayland almost as much as the garden. It was
built of pine logs neatly matched and hewed on one side. There were but
two rooms--one which served as sleeping-chamber and office, and one which
was at once kitchen and dining-room. In the larger room a quaint
fireplace with a flat arch, a bunk, a table supporting a typewriter, and
several shelves full of books made up the furnishing. On the walls hung a
rifle, a revolver in its belt, a couple of uniforms, and a yellow oilskin
raincoat.
The ranger, spurred and belted, with his cuffs turned back, was pounding
the typewriter when Wayland appeared at the open door; but he rose with
grave courtesy. "Come in," he said, and his voice had a pleasant
inflection.
"I'm interrupting."
"Nothing serious, just a letter. There's no hurry. I'm always glad of an
excuse to rest from this job." He was at once keenly interested in his
visitor, for he perceived in him the gentleman and, of course, the
alien.
Wayland, with something of the feeling of a civilian reporting to an
officer, explained his presence in the neighborhood.
"I've heard of you," responded the ranger, "and I've been hoping you'd
look in on me. The Supervisor's daughter has just written me to look
after you. She said you were not very well."
Again Wayland protested that he was not a consumptive, only a student who
needed mountain air; but he added: "It is very kind of Miss McFarlane to
think of me."
"Oh, she thinks of everybody," the young fellow declared. "She's one of
the most unselfish creatures in the world."
Something in the music of this speech, and something in the look of the
ranger's eyes, caused Wayland to wonder if here were not still another of
Berrie's subjects. He became certain of it as the young officer went on,
with pleasing frankness, and it was not long before he had conveyed to
Wayland his cause for sadness. "She's engaged to a man that is not her
equal. In a certain sense no man is her equal; but Belden is a pretty
hard type, and I believe, although I can't prove it, that he is part
owner of the saloon over there."
"How does that saloon happen to be here?"
"It's on patented land--a so-called 'placer claim'--experts have reported
against it. McFarlane has protested against it, but nothing is done. The
mill is also on deeded land, and together they are a plague spot. I'm
their enemy, and they know it; and they've threatened to burn me out. Of
course they won't do that, but they're ready to play any kind of trick on
me."
"I can well believe that, for I am getting my share of practical jokes at
Meeker's."
"They're not a bad lot over there--only just rowdy. I suppose they're
initiating you," said Landon.
"I didn't come out here to be a cowboy," responded Norcross. "But Frank
Meeker seems to be anxious to show me all the good old cowboy courtesies.
On Monday he slipped a burr under my horse's saddle, and I came near to
having my neck broken. Then he or some one else concealed a frog in my
bed, and fouled my hair-brushes. In fact, I go to sleep each night in
expectation of some new attack; but the air and the riding are doing me a
great deal of good, and so I stay."
"Come and bunk with me," urged Landon. "I'll be glad to have you. I get
terribly lonesome here sometimes, although I'm supposed to have the best
station in the forest. Bring your outfit and stay as long as you like."
This offer touched Norcross deeply. "That's very kind of you; but I guess
I'll stick it out. I hate to let those hoodlums drive me out."
"All right, but come and see me often. I get so blue some days I wonder
what's the use of it all. There's one fatal condition about this ranger
business--it's a solitary job, it cuts out marriage for most of us. Many
of the stations are fifteen or twenty miles from a post-office; then,
too, the lines of promotion are few. I guess I'll have to get out,
although I like the work. Come in any time and take a snack with me."
Thereafter Wayland spent nearly every day with the ranger, either in his
cabin or riding the trail, and during these hours confidence grew until
at last Landon confessed that his unrest arose from his rejection by
Berrie.
"She was not to blame. She's so kind and free with every one, I thought I
had a chance. I was conceited enough to feel sorry for the other fellows,
and now I can't even feel sorry for myself. I'm just dazed and hanging to
the ropes. She was mighty gentle about it--you know how sunny her face
is--well, she just got grave and kind o' faint-voiced, and said--Oh, you
know what she said! She let me know there was another man. I didn't ask
her who, and when I found out, I lost my grip entirely. At first I
thought I'd resign and get out of the country; but I couldn't do it--I
can't yet. The chance of seeing her--of hearing from her once in a
while--she never writes except on business for her father; but--you'll
laugh--I can't see her signature without a tremor." He smiled, but his
eyes were desperately sad. "I ought to resign, because I can't do my work
as well as I ought to. As I ride the trail I'm thinking of her. I sit
here half the night writing imaginary letters to her. And when I see her,
and she takes my hand in hers--you know what a hand she has--my mind goes
blank. Oh, I'm crazy! I admit it. I didn't know such a thing could happen
to me; but it has."
"I suppose it's being alone so much," Wayland started to argue, but the
other would not have it so.
"No, it's the girl herself. She's not only beautiful in body, she's all
sweetness and sincerity in mind. There isn't a petty thing about her. And
her happy smile--do you know, I have times when I resent that smile? How
can she be so happy without me? That's crazy, too, but I think it,
sometimes. Then I think of the time when she will not smile--when that
brute Belden will begin to treat her as he does his sisters--then I get
murderous."
As Wayland listened to this outpouring he wondered at the intensity of
the forester's passion. He marveled, too, at Berrie's choice, for there
was something fine and high in Landon's worship. A college man with a
mining engineer's training, he should go high in the service. "He made
the mistake of being too precipitate as a lover," concluded Wayland. "His
forthright courtship repelled her."
Meanwhile his own troubles increased. Frank's dislike had grown to an
impish vindictiveness, and if the old man Meeker had any knowledge of his
son's deviltries, he gave no sign. Mrs. Meeker, however, openly reproved
the scamp.
"You ought to be ashamed of worrying a sick man," she protested,
indignantly.
"He ain't so sick as all that; and, besides, he needs the starch taken
out of him," was the boy's pitiless answer.
"I don't know why I stay," Wayland wrote to Berea. "I'm disgusted with
the men up here--they're all tiresome except Landon--but I hate to slink
away, and besides, the country is glorious. I'd like to come down and see
you this week. May I do so? Please send word that I may."
She did not reply, and wondering whether she had received his letter or
not, he mounted his horse one beautiful morning and rode away up the
trail with a sense of elation, of eager joy, with intent to call upon her
at the ranch as he went by.
Hardly had he vanished among the pines when Clifford Belden rode in from
his ranch on Hat Creek, and called at Meeker's for his mail.
Frank Meeker was in the office, and as he both feared and disliked this
big contemptuous young cattleman, he set to work to make him jealous.
"You want to watch this one-lung boarder of ours," he warned, with a
grin. "He's been writing to Berrie, and he's just gone down to see her.
His highfalutin ways, and his fine white hands, have put her on the
slant."
Belden fixed a pair of cold, gray-blue eyes on his tormentor, and said:
"You be careful of your tongue or I'll put _you_ on the slant."
"I'm her own cousin," retorted Frank. "I reckon I can say what I please
about her. I don't want that dude Easterner to cut you out. She guided
him over here, and gave him her slicker to keep him dry, and I can see
she's terribly taken with him. She's headstrong as a mule, once she gets
started, and if she takes a notion to Norcross it's all up with you."
"I'm not worrying," retorted Belden.
"You'd better be. I was down there the other day, and it 'peared like she
couldn't talk of anything else but Mister Norcross, Mister Norcross, till
I was sick of his name."
An hour later Belden left the mill and set off up the trail behind
Norcross, his face fallen into stern lines. Frank writhed in delight.
"There goes Cliff, hot under the collar, chasing Norcross. If he finds
out that Berrie is interested in him, he'll just about wring that dude's
neck."
Meanwhile Wayland was riding through the pass with lightening heart, his
thought dwelling on the girl at the end of his journey. Aside from Landon
and Nash, she was the one soul in all this mountain world in whom he took
the slightest interest. Her pity still hurt him, but he hoped to show her
such change of color, such gain in horsemanship, that she could no longer
consider him an invalid. His mind kept so closely to these interior
matters that he hardly saw the path, but his horse led him safely back
with precise knowledge and eager haste.
As he reached the McFarlane ranch it seemed deserted of men, but a faint
column of smoke rising from the roof of the kitchen gave evidence of a
cook, and at his knock Berrie came to the door with a boyish word of
frank surprise and pleasure. She was dressed in a blue-and-white calico
gown with the collar turned in and the sleeves rolled up; but she seemed
quite unembarrassed, and her pleasure in his coming quite repaid him for
his long and tiresome ride.
"I've been wondering about you," she said. "I'm mighty glad to see you.
How do you stand it?"
"You got my letter?"
"I did--and I was going to write and tell you to come down, but I've had
some special work to do at the office."
She took the horse's rein from him, and together they started toward
the stables. As she stepped over and around the old hoofs and
meat-bones--which littered the way--without comment, Wayland again
wondered at her apparent failure to realize the disgusting disorder of
the yard. "Why don't she urge the men to clean it up?" he thought.
This action of stabling the horses--a perfectly innocent and natural one
for her--led one of the hands, a coarse-minded sneak, to watch them from
a corral. "I wonder how Cliff would like that?" he evilly remarked.
Berea was frankly pleased to see Wayland, and spoke of the improvement
which had taken place in him. "You're looking fine," she said, as they
were returning to the house. "But how do you get on with the boys?"
"Not very well," he admitted. "They seem to have it in for me. It's a
constant fight."
"How about Frank?"
"He's the worst of them all. He never speaks to me that he doesn't insult
me. I don't know why. I've tried my best to get into his good graces, but
I can't. Your uncle I like, and Mrs. Meeker is very kind; but all the
others seem to be sworn enemies. I don't think I could stand it if it
weren't for Landon. I spend a good deal of time with him."
Her face grew grave. "I reckon you got started wrong," she said at last.
"They'll like you better when you get browned up, and your clothes get
dirty--you're a little too fancy for them just now."
"But you see," he said, "I'm not trying for their admiration. I haven't
the slightest ambition to shine as a cow-puncher, and if those fellows
are fair samples I don't want anybody to mistake me for one."
"Don't let that get around," she smilingly replied. "They'd run you out
if they knew you despised them."
"I've come down here to confer with you," he declared, as they reached
the door. "I don't believe I want any more of their company. What's the
use? As you say, I've started wrong with them, and I don't see any
prospect of getting right; and, besides, I like the rangers better.
Landon thinks I might work into the service. I wonder if I could? It
would give me something to do."
She considered a moment. "We'll think about that. Come into the kitchen.
I'm cook to-day, mother's gone to town."
The kitchen was clean and ample, and the delicious odor of new-made bread
filled it with cheer. As the girl resumed her apron, Wayland settled into
a chair with a sigh of content. "I like this," he said aloud. "There's
nothing cowgirl about you now, you're the Anglo-Saxon housewife. You
might be a Michigan or Connecticut girl at this moment."
Her cheeks were ruddy with the heat, and her eyes intent on her work; but
she caught enough of his meaning to be pleased with it. "Oh, I have to
take a hand at the pots and pans now and then. I can't give all my time
to the service; but I'd like to."
He boldly announced his errand. "I wish you'd take me to board? I'm sure
your cooking would build up my shattered system a good deal quicker than
your aunt's."
She laughed, but shook her head. "You ought to be on the hills riding
hard every day. What you need is the high country and the air of the
pines."
"I'm not feeling any lack of scenery or pine-tree air," he retorted. "I'm
perfectly satisfied right here. Civilized bread and the sight of you will
do me more good than boiled beans and camp bread. I hate to say it, but
the Meeker menu runs largely to beef. Moreover, just seeing you would
help my recovery."
She became self-conscious at this, and he hastened to add:
"Not that I'm really sick. Mrs. Meeker, like yourself, persists in
treating me as if I were. I'm feeling fine--perfectly well, only I'm not
as rugged as I want to be."
She had read that victims of the white plague always talk in this
cheerful way about themselves, and she worked on without replying, and
this gave him an excellent opportunity to study her closely. She was
taller than most women and lithely powerful. There was nothing delicate
about her--nothing spirituelle--on the contrary, she was markedly
full-veined, cheerful and humorous, and yet she had responded several
times to an allusive phrase with surprising quickness. She did so now as
he remarked: "Somebody, I think it was Lowell, has said 'Nature is all
very well for a vacation, but a poor substitute for the society of good
men and women.' It's beautiful up at the mill, but I want some one to
enjoy it with, and there is no one to turn to, except Landon, and he's
rather sad and self-absorbed--you know why. If I were here--in the
valley--you and I could ride together now and then, and you could show me
all the trails. Why not let me come here and board? I'm going to ask your
mother, if I may not do so?"
Quite naturally he grew more and more personal. He told her of his
father, the busy director of a lumber company, and of his mother, sickly
and inert.
"She ought never to have married," he said, with darkened brow. "Not one
of her children has even a decent constitution. I'm the most robust of
them all, and I must seem a pretty poor lot to you. However, I wasn't
always like this, and if that young devil, Frank Meeker, hadn't tormented
me out of my sleep, I would have shown you still greater improvement.
Don't you see that it is your duty to let me stay here where I can build
up on your cooking?"
She turned this aside. "Mother don't think much of my cooking. She says I
can handle a brandin'-iron a heap better than I can a rollin'-pin."
"You certainly can ride," he replied, with admiring accent. "I shall
never forget the picture you made that first time I saw you racing to
intercept the stage. Do you _know_ how fine you are physically? You're a
wonder." She uttered some protest, but he went on: "When I think of my
mother and sisters in comparison with you, they seem like caricatures of
women. I know I oughtn't to say such things of my mother--she really is
an exceptional person--but a woman should be something more than mind. My
sisters could no more do what you do than a lame duck can lead a ballet.
I suppose it is because I have had to live with a lot of ailing women all
my life that I feel as I do toward you. I worship your health and
strength. I really do. Your care of me on that trip was very sweet--and
yet it stung."
"I didn't mean to hurt you."
"I know you didn't, and I'm not complaining. I'm only wishing I could
come here and be 'bossed' by you until I could hold my own against any
weather. You make me feel just as I used to do when I went to a circus
and watched the athletes, men and women, file past me in the sawdust.
They seemed like demigods. As I sit here now I have a fierce desire to be
as well, as strong, as full of life as you are. I hate being thin and
timid. You have the physical perfection that queens ought to have."
Her face was flushed with inward heat as she listened to his strange
words, which sprang, she feared, from the heart of a man hopelessly ill;
but she again protested. "It's all right to be able to throw a rope and
ride a mean horse, but you have got something else--something I can never
get. Learning is a thousand times finer than muscle."
"Learning does not compensate for nine-inch shoulders and spindle legs,"
he answered. "But I'm going to get well. Knowing you has given me renewed
desire to be a man. I'm going to ride and rough it, and sleep out of
doors till I can follow you anywhere. You'll be proud of me before the
month is out. But I'm going to cut the Meeker outfit. I won't subject
myself to their vulgarities another day. Why should I? It's false pride
in me to hang on up there any longer."
"Of course you can come here," she said. "Mother will be glad to have
you, although our ranch isn't a bit pretty. Perhaps father will send you
out with one of the rangers as a fire-guard. I'll ask him to-night."
"I wish you would. I like these foresters. What I've seen of them. I
wouldn't mind serving under a man like Landon. He's fine."
Upon this pleasant conference Cliff Belden unexpectedly burst. Pushing
the door open with a slam, he confronted Berrie with dark and angry
face.
"Why, Cliff, where did you come from?" she asked, rising in some
confusion. "I didn't hear you ride up."
"Apparently not," he sneeringly answered. "I reckon you were too much
occupied."
She tried to laugh away his black mood. "That's right, I was. I'm chief
cook to-day. Come in and sit down. Mother's gone to town, and I'm playing
her part," she explained, ignoring his sullen displeasure. "Cliff, this
is Mr. Norcross, who is visiting Uncle Joe. Mr. Norcross, shake hands
with Mr. Belden." She made this introduction with some awkwardness, for
her lover's failure to even say, "Howdy," informed her that his jealous
heart was aflame, and she went on, quickly: "Mr. Norcross dropped in on
his way to the post-office, and I'm collecting a snack for him."
Recognizing Belden's claims upon the girl, Wayland rose. "I must be
going. It's a long ride over the hill."
"Come again soon," urged Berrie; "father wants to see you."
"Thank you. I will look in very shortly," he replied, and went out with
such dignity as he could command, feeling, however, very much like a dog
that has been kicked over the threshold.
Closing the door behind him, Belden turned upon the girl. "What's that
consumptive 'dogie' doing here? He 'peared to be very much at home with
you--too dern much at home!"
She was prepared for his displeasure, but not for words like these. She
answered, quietly: "He just dropped in on his way to town, and he's not a
dogie!" She resented his tone as well as his words.
"I've heard about you taking him over to Meeker's and lending him your
only slicker," he went on; "but I didn't expect to find him sittin' here
like he owned you and the place. You're taking altogether too much pains
with him. Can't he put his own horse out? Do you have to go to the stable
with him? You never did have any sense about your actions with men.
You've all along been too free of your reputation, and now I'm going to
take care of it for you. I won't have you nursin' this runt any longer!"
She perceived now the full measure of his base rage, and her face grew
pale and set. "You're making a perfect fool of yourself, Cliff," she
said, with portentous calmness.
"Am I?" he asked.
"You sure are, and you'll see it yourself by and by. You've no call to
get wire-edged about Mr. Norcross. He's not very strong. He's just
getting well of a long sickness. I knew a chill would finish him, that's
why I gave him my slicker. It didn't hurt me, and maybe it saved his
life. I'd do it again if necessary."
"Since when did you start a hospital for Eastern tenderfeet?" he sneered;
then his tone changed to one of downright command. "You want to cut this
all out, I tell you! I won't have any more of it! The boys up at the mill
are all talkin' about your interest in this little whelp, and I'm getting
the branding-iron from every one I meet. Sam saw you go into the barn
with that dude, and _that_ would have been all over the country
to-morrow, if I hadn't told him I'd sew his mouth up if he said a word
about it. Of course, I don't think you mean anything by this coddlin'."
"Oh, thank you," she interrupted, with flaming, quick, indignant fury.
"That's mighty nice of you. I went to the barn to show Mr. Norcross where
to stall his horse. I didn't know Sam was here."
He sneered: "No, I bet you didn't."
She fired at this. "Come now! Spit it out! Something nasty is in your
mind. Go on! What have I done? What makes you so hot?"
He began to weaken. "I don't accuse you of anything. I--but I--"
"Yes you do--in your heart you distrust me--you just as much as said
so!"
He was losing his high air of command. "Never mind what I said, Berrie,
I--"
She was blazing now. "But I _do_ mind--I mind a whole lot--I didn't think
it of you," she added, as she realized his cheapness, his coarseness. "I
didn't suppose you could even _think_ such things of me. I don't like
it," she repeated, and her tone hardened, "and I guess you'd better pull
out of here--for good. If you've no more faith in me than that, I want
you to go and never come back."
"You don't mean that!"
"Yes, I do! You've shown this yellow streak before, and I'm tired of it.
This is the limit. I'm done with you."
She stood between tears and benumbing anger now, and he was scared.
"Don't say that, Berrie!" he pleaded, trying to put his arm about her.
"Keep away from me!" She dashed his hands aside. "I hate you. I never
want to see you again!" She ran into her own room and slammed the door
behind her.
Belden stood for a long time with his back against the wall, the heat of
his resentment utterly gone, an empty, aching place in his heart. He
called her twice, but she made no answer, and so, at last, he mounted his
horse and rode away.
IV
THE SUPERVISOR OF THE FOREST
Young Norcross, much as he admired Berrie, was not seeking to exchange
her favor for her lover's enmity, and he rode away with an uneasy feeling
of having innocently made trouble for himself, as well as for a fine,
true-hearted girl. "What a good friendly talk we were having," he said,
regretfully, "and to think she is to marry that big, scowling brute. How
could she turn Landon down for a savage like that?"
He was just leaving the outer gate when Belden came clattering up and
reined his horse across the path and called out: "See here, you young
skunk, you're a poor, white-livered tenderfoot, and I can't bust you as I
would a full-grown man, but I reckon you better not ride this trail any
more."
"Why not?" inquired Wayland.
Belden glared. "Because I tell you so. Your sympathy-hunting game has
just about run into the ground. You've worked this baby dodge about long
enough. You're not so almighty sick as you put up to be, and you'd better
hunt some other cure for lonesomeness, or I'll just about cave your chest
in."
All this was shockingly plain talk for a slender young scholar to listen
to, but Norcross remained calm. "I think you're unnecessarily excited,"
he remarked. "I have no desire to make trouble. I'm considering Miss
Berea, who is too fine to be worried by us."
His tone was conciliating, and the cowman, in spite of himself, responded
to it. "That's why I advise you to go. She was all right till you came.
Colorado's a big place, and there are plenty other fine ranges for men of
your complaint--why not try Routt County? This is certain, you can't stay
in the same valley with my girl. I serve notice of that."
"You're making a prodigious ass of yourself," observed Wayland, with calm
contempt.
"You think so--do you? Well, I'll make a jack-rabbit out of you if I find
you on this ranch again. You've worked on my girl in some way till she's
jest about quit me. I don't see how you did it, you measly little pup,
but you surely have turned her against me!" His rage burst into flame as
he thought of her last words. "If you were so much as half a man I'd
break you in two pieces right now; but you're not, you're nothing but a
dead-on-the-hoof lunger, and there's nothing to do but run you out. So
take this as your final notice. You straddle a horse and head east and
keep a-ridin', and if I catch you with my girl again, I'll deal you a
whole hatful of misery--now that's right!"
Thereupon, with a final glance of hate in his face, he whirled his horse
and galloped away, leaving Norcross dumb with resentment, intermingled
with wonder.
"Truly the West is a dramatic country! Here I am, involved in a lover's
wrath, and under sentence of banishment, all within a month! Well, I
suppose there's nothing to do but carry out Belden's orders. He's the
boss," he said as he rode on. "I wonder just what happened after I left?
Something stormy, evidently. She must have given him a sharp rebuff, or
he wouldn't have been so furious with me. Perhaps she even broke her
engagement with him. I sincerely hope she did. She's too good for him.
That's the truth."
And so, from point to point, he progressed till with fine indignation he
reached a resolution to stay and meet whatever came. "I certainly would
be a timorous animal if I let myself be scared into flight by that big
bonehead," he said at last. "I have as much right here as he has, and the
law must protect me. It can't be that this country is entirely
barbaric."
Nevertheless, he felt very weak and very much depressed as he rode up the
street of the little town and dismounted at the hotel. The sidewalks were
littered with loafing cowboys and lumber-jacks, and some of them quite
openly ridiculed his riding-breeches and his thin legs. Others merely
grinned, but in their grins lay something more insulting than words. "To
them I am a poor thing," he admitted; but as he lifted his eyes to the
mighty semicircular wall of the Bear Tooth Range, over which the daily
storm was playing, he forgot his small worries. What gorgeous pageantry!
What life-giving air! "If only civilized men and women possessed this
glorious valley, what a place it would be!" he exclaimed, and in the heat
of his indignant contempt he would have swept the valley clean.
As his eyes caught the flutter of the flag on its staff above the Forest
Service building, his heart went out to the men who unselfishly wrought
beneath that symbol of federal unity for the good of the future. "That is
civilized," he said; "that is prophetic," and alighted at the door in a
glow of confidence.
Nash, who was alone in the office, looked up from his work. "Come in," he
called, heartily. "Come in and report."
"Thank you. I'd like to do so; and may I use your desk? I have a letter
to write."
"Make yourself at home. Take any desk you like. The men are all out on
duty."
"You're very kind," replied Wayland, gratefully. There was something
reassuring in this greeting, and in the many signs of skill and
scientific reading which the place displayed. It was like a bit of
Washington in the midst of a careless, slovenly, lawless mountain town,
and Norcross took his seat and wrote his letter with a sense of
proprietorship.
"I'm getting up an enthusiasm for the Service just from hearing Alec
Belden rave against it," he said a few minutes later, as he looked up
from his letter.
Nash grinned. "How did you like Meeker?"
"He's a good man, but he has his peculiarities. Belden is your real
enemy. He is blue with malignity--so are most of the cowmen I met up
there. I wish I could do something for the Service. I'm a thoroughly
up-to-date analytical chemist and a passable mining engineer, and my
doctor says that for a year at least I must work in the open air. _Is_
there anything in this Forest Service for a weakling like me?"
Nash considered. "The Supervisor might put you on as a temporary guard.
I'll speak to him if you like?"
"I wish you would. Tell him to forget the pay. I'm not in need of money,
but I do require some incentive--something to do--something to give me
direction. It bores me stiff to fish, and I'm sick of loafing. If
McFarlane can employ me I shall be happy. The country is glorious, but I
can't live on scenery."
"I think we can employ you, but you'll have to go on as fire-guard or
something like that for the first year. You see, the work is getting to
be more and more technical each year. As a matter of fact"--here he
lowered his voice a little--"McFarlane is one of the old guard, and will
have to give way. He don't know a thing about forestry, and is too old to
learn. His girl knows more about it than he does. She helps him out on
office work, too."
Wayland wondered a little at the freedom of expression on the part of
Nash; but said: "If he runs his office as he runs his ranch he surely is
condemned to go."
"There's where the girl comes in. She keeps the boys in the office lined
up and maintains things in pretty fair shape. She knows the old man is in
danger of losing his job, and she's doing her best to hold him to it.
She's like a son to him and he relies on her judgment when a close
decision comes up. But it's only a matter of time when he and all he
represents must drift by. This is a big movement we're mixed with."
"I begin to feel that that's why I'd like to take it up. It's the only
thing out here that interests me--and I've got to do something. I can't
loaf."
"Well, you get Berrie to take up your case and you're all right. She has
the say about who goes on the force in this forest."
It was late in the afternoon before Wayland started back to Meeker's with
intent to repack his belongings and leave the ranch for good. He had
decided not to call at McFarlane's, a decision which came not so much
from fear of Clifford Belden as from a desire to shield Berea from
further trouble, but as he was passing the gate, the girl rose from
behind a clump of willows and called to him: "Oh, Mr. Norcross! Wait a
moment."
He drew rein, and, slipping from his horse, approached her. "What is it,
Miss Berrie?" he asked, with wondering politeness.
She confronted him with gravity. "It's too late for you to cross the
ridge. It'll be dark long before you reach the cut-off. You'd better not
try to make it."
"I think I can find my way," he answered, touched by her consideration.
"I'm not so helpless as I was when I came."
"Just the same you mustn't go on," she insisted. "Father told me to ask
you to come in and stay all night. He wants to meet you. I was afraid you
might ride by after what happened to-day, and so I came up here to head
you off." She took his horse by the rein, and flashed a smiling glance up
at him. "Come now, do as the Supervisor tells you."
"Wait a moment," he pleaded. "On second thought, I don't believe it's a
good thing for me to go home with you. It will only make further trouble
for--for us both."
She was almost as direct as Belden had been. "I know what you mean. I saw
Cliff follow you. He jumped you, didn't he?"
"He overtook me--yes."
"What did he say?"
He hesitated. "He was pretty hot, and said things he'll be sorry for when
he cools off."
"He told you not to come here any more--advised you to hit the out-going
trail--didn't he?"
He flushed with returning shame of it all, but quietly answered: "Yes, he
said something about riding east."
"Are you going to do it?"
"Not to-day; but I guess I'd better keep away from here."
She looked at him steadily. "Why?"
"Because you've been very kind to me, and I wouldn't for the world do
anything to hurt or embarrass you."
"Don't you mind about me," she responded, bluntly. "What happened this
morning wasn't your fault nor mine. Cliff made a mighty coarse play,
something he'll have to pay for. He knows that right now. He'll be back
in a day or two begging my pardon, and he won't get it. Don't you worry
about me, not for a minute--I can take care of myself--I grew up that
way, and don't you be chased out of the country by anybody. Come, father
will be looking for you."
With a feeling that he was involving both the girl and himself in still
darker storms, the young fellow yielded to her command, and together they
walked along the weed-bordered path, while she continued:
"This isn't the first time Cliff has started in to discipline me; but
it's obliged to be the last. He's the kind that think they own a girl
just as soon as they get her to wear an engagement ring; but Cliff don't
own me. I told him I wouldn't stand for his coarse ways, and I won't!"
Wayland tried to bring her back to humor. "You're a kind of 'new
woman.'"
She turned a stern look on him. "You bet I am! I was raised a free
citizen. No man can make a slave of me. I thought he understood that; but
it seems he didn't. He's all right in many ways--one of the best riders
in the country--but he's pretty tolerable domineering--I've always known
that--still, I never expected him to talk to me like he did to-day. It
certainly was raw." She broke off abruptly. "You mustn't let Frank Meeker
get the best of you, either," she advised. "He's a mean little weasel if
he gets started. I'll bet he put Cliff up to this business."
"Do you think so?"
"Yes, he just as good as told me he'd do it. I know Frank, he's my own
cousin, and someways I like him; but he's the limit when he gets going.
You see, he wanted to get even with Cliff and took that way of doing it.
I'll ride up there and give him a little good advice some Saturday."
He was no longer amused by her blunt speech, and her dark look saddened
him. She seemed so unlike the happy girl he met that first day, and the
change in her subtended a big, rough, and pitiless world of men against
which she was forced to contend all her life.
Mrs. McFarlane greeted Norcross with cordial word and earnest hand-clasp.
"I'm glad to see you looking so well," she said, with charming
sincerity.
"I'm browner, anyway," he answered, and turned to meet McFarlane, a
short, black-bearded man, with fine dark eyes and shapely hands--hands
that had never done anything more toilsome than to lift a bridle rein or
to clutch the handle of a gun. He was the horseman in all his training,
and though he owned hundreds of acres of land, he had never so much as
held a plow or plied a spade. His manner was that of the cow-boss, the
lord of great herds, the claimant of empires of government grass-land.
Poor as his house looked, he was in reality rich. Narrow-minded in
respect to his own interests, he was well in advance of his neighbors on
matters relating to the general welfare, a curious mixture of greed and
generosity, as most men are, and though he had been made Supervisor at a
time when political pull still crippled the Service, he was loyal to the
flag. "I'm mighty glad to see you," he heartily began. "We don't often
get a man from the sea-level, and when we do we squeeze him dry."
His voice, low, languid, and soft, was most insinuating, and for hours he
kept his guest talking of the East and its industries and prejudices; and
Berrie and her mother listened with deep admiration, for the youngster
had seen a good deal of the old world, and was unusually well read on
historical lines of inquiry. He talked well, too, inspired by his
attentive audience.
Berrie's eyes, wide and eager, were fixed upon him unwaveringly. He felt
her wonder, her admiration, and was inspired to do his best. Something in
her absorbed attention led him to speak of things so personal that he
wondered at himself for uttering them.
"I've been dilettante all my life," was one of his confessions. "I've
traveled; I've studied in a tepid sort of fashion; I went through college
without any idea of doing anything with what I got; I had a sort of pride
in keeping up with my fellows; and I had no idea of preparing for any
work in the world. Then came my breakdown, and my doctor ordered me out
here. I came intending to fish and loaf around, but I can't do that. I've
got to do something or go back home. I expected to have a chum of mine
with me, but his father was injured in an automobile accident, so he went
into the office to help out."
As he talked the girl discovered new graces, new allurements in him. His
smile, so subtly self-derisive, and his voice so flexible and so quietly
eloquent, completed her subjugation. She had no further care concerning
Clifford--indeed, she had forgotten him--for the time at least. The other
part of her--the highly civilized latent power drawn from her mother--was
in action. She lost her air of command, her sense of chieftainship, and
sat humbly at the feet of this shining visitor from the East.
At last Mrs. McFarlane rose, and Berea, reluctantly, like a child loath
to miss a fairy story, held out her hand to say good night, and the young
man saw on her face that look of adoration which marks the birth of
sudden love; but his voice was frank and his glance kindly as he said:
"Here I've done all the talking when I wanted you to tell _me_ all sorts
of things."
"I can't tell you anything."
"Oh yes, you can; and, besides, I want you to intercede for me with your
father and get me into the Service. But we'll talk about that to-morrow.
Good night."
After the women left the room Norcross said:
"I really am in earnest about entering the Forest Service. Landon filled
me with enthusiasm about it. Never mind the pay. I'm not in immediate
need of money; but I do need an interest in life."
McFarlane stared at him with kindly perplexity. "I don't know exactly
what you can do, but I'll work you in somehow. You ought to work under a
man like Settle, one that could put you through a training in the
rudiments of the game. I'll see what can be done."
"Thank you for that half promise," said Wayland, and he went to his bed
happier than at any moment since leaving home.
Berrie, on her part, did not analyze her feeling for Wayland, she only
knew that he was as different from the men she knew as a hawk from a
sage-hen, and that he appealed to her in a higher way than any other had
done. His talk filled her with visions of great cities, and with thoughts
of books, for though she was profoundly loyal to her mountain valley, she
held other, more secret admirations. She was, in fact, compounded of two
opposing tendencies. Her quiet little mother longing--in secret--for the
placid, refined life of her native Kentucky town, had dowered her
daughter with some part of her desire. She had always hated the slovenly,
wasteful, and purposeless life of the cattle-rancher, and though she
still patiently bore with her husband's shortcomings, she covertly hoped
that Berea might find some other and more civilized lover than Clifford
Belden. She understood her daughter too well to attempt to dictate her
action; she merely said to her, as they were alone for a few moments: "I
don't wonder your father is interested in Mr. Norcross, he's very
intelligent--and very considerate."
"Too considerate," said Berrie, shortly; "he makes other men seem like
bears or pigs."
Mrs. McFarlane said no more, but she knew that Cliff was, for the time,
among the bears.
V
THE GOLDEN PATHWAY
Young Norcross soon became vitally engaged with the problems which
confronted McFarlane, and his possible enrolment as a guard filled him
with a sense of proprietorship in the forest, which made him quite
content with Bear Tooth. He set to work at once to acquire a better
knowledge of the extent and boundaries of the reservation. It was,
indeed, a noble possession. Containing nearly eight hundred thousand
acres of woodland, and reaching to the summits of the snow-lined peaks to
the east, south, and west, it appealed to him with silent majesty. It
drew upon his patriotism. Remembering how the timber of his own state had
been slashed and burned, he began to feel a sense of personal
responsibility. He had but to ride into it a few miles in order to
appreciate in some degree its grandeur, considered merely as the source
of a hundred swift streams, whose waters enriched the valleys lying
below.
He bought a horse of his own--although Berrie insisted upon his retaining
Pete--and sent for a saddle of the army type, and from sheer desire to
keep entirely clear of the cowboy equipment procured puttees like those
worn by cavalry officers, and when he presented himself completely
uniformed, he looked not unlike a slender, young lieutenant of the
cavalry on field duty, and in Berrie's eyes was wondrous alluring.
He took quarters at the hotel, but spent a larger part of each day in
Berrie's company--a fact which was duly reported to Clifford Belden.
Hardly a day passed without his taking at least one meal at the
Supervisor's home.
As he met the rangers one by one, he perceived by their outfits, as well
as by their speech, that they were sharply divided upon old lines and
new. The experts, the men of college training, were quite ready to be
known as Uncle Sam's men. They held a pride in their duties, a respect
for their superiors, and an understanding of the governmental policy
which gave them dignity and a quiet authority. They were less policemen
than trusted agents of a federal department. Nevertheless, there was much
to admire in the older men, who possessed a self-reliance, a knowledge of
nature, and a certain rough grace which made them interesting companions,
and rendered them effective teachers of camping and trailing, and while
they were secretly a little contemptuous of the "schoolboys"; they were
all quite ready to ask for expert aid when knotty problems arose. It was
no longer a question of grazing, it was a question of lumbering and
reforestration.
Nash, who took an almost brotherly interest in his apprentice,
warningly said: "You want to go well clothed and well shod. You'll have
to meet all kinds of weather. Every man in the service, I don't care
what his technical job is, should be schooled in taking care of himself
in the forest and on the trail. I often meet surveyors and civil
engineers--experts--who are helpless as children in camp, and when I
want them to go into the hills and do field work, they are almost
useless. The old-style ranger has his virtues. Settle is just the kind
of instructor you young fellows need."
Berrie also had keen eyes for his outfit and his training, and under her
direction he learned to pack a horse, set a tent, build a fire in the
rain, and other duties.
"You want to remember that you carry your bed and board with you," she
said, "and you must be prepared to camp anywhere and at any time."
The girl's skill in these particulars was marvelous to him, and added to
the admiration he already felt for her. Her hand was as deft, as sure, as
the best of them, and her knowledge of cayuse psychology more profound
than any of the men excepting her father.
One day, toward the end of his second week in the village, the Supervisor
said: "Well, now, if you're ready to experiment I'll send you over to
Settle, the ranger, on the Horseshoe. He's a little lame on his pen-hand
side, and you may be able to help him out. Maybe I'll ride over there
with you. I want to line out some timber sales on the west side of
Ptarmigan."
This commission delighted Norcross greatly. "I'm ready, sir, this
moment," he answered, saluting soldier-wise.
That night, as he sat in the saddle-littered, boot-haunted front room of
Nash's little shack, his host said, quaintly: "Don't think you are
inheriting a soft snap, son. The ranger's job was a man's job in the old
days when it was a mere matter of patrolling; but it's worse and more of
it to-day. A ranger must be ready and willing to build bridges, fight
fire, scale logs, chop a hole through a windfall, use a pick in a ditch,
build his own house, cook, launder, and do any other old trick that comes
along. But you'll know more about all this at the end of ten days than I
can tell you in a year."
"I'm eager for duty," replied Wayland.
The next morning, as he rode down to the office to meet the Supervisor,
he was surprised and delighted to find Berea there. "I'm riding, too,"
she announced, delightedly. "I've never been over that new trail, and
father has agreed to let me go along." Then she added, earnestly: "I
think it's fine you're going in for the Service; but it's hard work, and
you must be careful till you're hardened to it. It's a long way to a
doctor from Settle's station."
He was annoyed as well as touched by her warning, for it proclaimed that
he was still far from looking the brave forester he felt himself to be.
He replied: "I'm not going to try anything wild, but I do intend to
master the trailer's craft."
"I'll teach you how to camp, if you'll let me," she continued. "I've been
on lots of surveys with father, and I always take my share of the work. I
threw that hitch alone." She nodded toward the pack-horse, whose neat
load gave evidence of her skill. "I told father this was to be a real
camping expedition, and as the grouse season is on we'll live on the
country. Can you fish?"
"Just about that," he laughed. "Good thing you didn't ask me if I could
_catch_ fish?" He was recovering his spirits. "It will be great fun to
have you as instructor in camp science. I seem to be in for all kinds of
good luck."
They both grew uneasy as time passed, for fear something or some one
would intervene to prevent this trip, which grew in interest each moment;
but at last the Supervisor came out and mounted his horse, the
pack-ponies fell in behind, Berrie followed, and the student of woodcraft
brought up to rear.
"I hope it won't rain," the girl called back at him, "at least not till
we get over the divide. It's a fine ride up the hill, and the foliage is
at its best."
It seemed to him the most glorious morning of his life. A few large white
clouds were drifting like snow-laden war-vessels from west to east,
silent and solemn, and on the highest peaks a gray vapor was lightly
clinging. The near-by hills, still transcendently beautiful with the
flaming gold of the aspen, burned against the dark green of the farther
forest, and far beyond the deep purple of the shadowed slopes rose to
smoky blue and tawny yellow. It was a season, an hour, to create raptures
in a poet, so radiant, so wide-reaching, so tumultuous was the landscape.
Nothing sad, nothing discouraging, showed itself. The wind was brisk, the
air cool and clear, and jewel-like small, frost-painted vines and ripened
shrubberies blazed upward from the ground. As he rode the youth silently
repeated: "Beautiful! Beautiful!"
For several miles they rode upward through golden forests of aspens. On
either hand rose thick walls of snow-white boles, and in the mystic glow
of their gilded leaves the face of the girl shone with unearthly beauty.
It was as if the very air had become auriferous. Magic coins dangled from
the branches. Filmy shadows fell over her hair and down her strong young
arms like priceless lace. Gold, gold! Everywhere gold, gold and fire!
Twice she stopped to gaze into Wayland's face to say, with hushed
intensity: "Isn't it wonderful! Don't you wish it would last forever?"
Her words were poor, ineffectual; but her look, her breathless voice made
up for their lack of originality. Once she said: "I never saw it so
lovely before; it is an enchanted land!" with no suspicion that the
larger part of her ecstasy arose from the presence of her young and
sympathetic companion. He, too, responded to the beauty of the day, of
the golden forest as one who had taken new hold on life after long
illness.
Meanwhile the Supervisor was calmly leading the way upward, vaguely
conscious of the magical air and mystic landscape in which his young folk
floated as if on wings, thinking busily of the improvements which were
still necessary in the trail, and weighing with care the clouds which
still lingered upon the tallest summits, as if debating whether to go or
to stay. He had never been an imaginative soul, and now that age had
somewhat dimmed his eyes and blunted his senses he was placidly content
with his path. The rapture of the lover, the song of the poet, had long
since abandoned his heart. And yet he was not completely oblivious. To
him it was a nice day, but a "weather breeder."
"I wonder if I shall ever ride through this mountain world as unmoved as
he seems to be?" Norcross asked himself, after some jarring prosaic
remark from his chief. "I am glad Berrie responds to it."
At last they left these lower, wondrous forest aisles and entered the
unbroken cloak of firs whose dark and silent deeps had a stern beauty all
their own; but the young people looked back upon the glowing world below
with wistful hearts. Back and forth across a long, down-sweeping ridge
they wove their toilsome way toward the clouds, which grew each hour more
formidable, awesome with their weight, ponderous as continents in their
majesty of movement. The horses began to labor with roaring breath, and
Wayland, dismounting to lighten his pony's burden, was dismayed to
discover how thin the air had become. Even to walk unburdened gave him a
smothering pain in his breast.
"Better stay on," called the girl. "My rule is to ride the hill going up
and walk it going down. Down hill is harder on a horse than going up."
Nevertheless he persisted in clambering up some of the steepest parts of
the trail, and was increasingly dismayed by the endless upward reaches of
the foot-hills. A dozen times he thought, "We must be nearly at the top,"
and then other and far higher ridges suddenly developed. Occasionally the
Supervisor was forced to unsling an ax and chop his way through a fallen
tree, and each time the student hurried to the spot, ready to aid, but
was quite useless. He admired the ease and skill with which the older man
put his shining blade through the largest bole, and wondered if he could
ever learn to do as well.
"One of the first essentials of a ranger's training is to learn to swing
an ax," remarked McFarlane, "and you never want to be without a real
tool. _I_ won't stand for a hatchet ranger."
Berrie called attention to the marks on the trees. "This is the
government sign--a long blaze with two notches above it. You can trust
these trails; they lead somewhere."
"As you ride a trail study how to improve it," added the Supervisor,
sheathing his ax. "They can all be improved."
Wayland was sure of this a few steps farther on, when the Supervisor's
horse went down in a small bog-hole, and Berrie's pony escaped only by
the most desperate plunging. The girl laughed, but Wayland was appalled
and stood transfixed watching McFarlane as he calmly extricated himself
from the saddle of the fallen horse and chirped for him to rise.
"You act as if this were a regular part of the journey," Wayland said to
Berrie.
"It's all in the day's work," she replied; "but I despise a bog worse
than anything else on the trail. I'll show you how to go round this one."
Thereupon she slid from her horse and came tiptoeing back along the edge
of the mud-hole.
McFarlane cut a stake and plunged it vertically in the mud. "That means
'no bottom,'" he explained. "We must cut a new trail."
Wayland was dismounting when Berrie said: "Stay on. Now put your horse
right through where those rocks are. It's hard bottom there."
He felt like a child; but he did as she bid, and so came safely through,
while McFarlane set to work to blaze a new route which should avoid the
slough which was already a bottomless horror to the city man.
This mishap delayed them nearly half an hour, and the air grew dark and
chill as they stood there, and the amateur ranger began to understand how
serious a lone night journey might sometimes be. "What would I do if when
riding in the dark my horse should go down like that and pin me in the
mud?" he asked himself. "Eternal watchfulness is certainly one of the
forester's first principles."
The sky was overshadowed now, and a thin drizzle of rain filled the air.
The novice hastened to throw his raincoat over his shoulders; but
McFarlane rode steadily on, clad only in his shirtsleeves, unmindful of
the wet. Berrie, however, approved Wayland's caution. "That's right; keep
dry," she called back. "Don't pay attention to father, he'd rather get
soaked any day than unroll his slicker. You mustn't take him for model
yet awhile."
He no longer resented her sweet solicitude, although he considered
himself unentitled to it, and he rejoiced under the shelter of his fine
new coat. He began to perceive that one could be defended against a
storm.
After passing two depressing marshes, they came to a hillside so steep,
so slippery, so dark, so forbidding, that one of the pack-horses balked,
shook his head, and reared furiously, as if to say "I can't do it, and I
won't try." And Wayland sympathized with him. The forest was gloomy and
cold, and apparently endless.
After coaxing him for a time with admirable gentleness, the Supervisor,
at Berrie's suggestion, shifted part of the load to her own saddle-horse,
and they went on.
Wayland, though incapable of comment--so great was the demand upon his
lungs--was not too tired to admire the power and resolution of the girl,
who seemed not to suffer any special inconvenience from the rarefied air.
The dryness of his open mouth, the throbbing of his troubled pulse, the
roaring of his breath, brought to him with increasing dismay the fact
that he had overlooked another phase of the ranger's job. "I couldn't
chop a hole through one of these windfalls in a week," he admitted, as
McFarlane's blade again liberated them from a fallen tree. "To do office
work at six thousand feet is quite different from swinging an ax up here
at timber-line," he said to the girl. "I guess my chest is too narrow for
high altitudes."
"Oh, you'll get used to it," she replied, cheerily. "I always feel it a
little at first; but I really think it's good for a body, kind o'
stretches the lungs." Nevertheless, she eyed him with furtive anxiety.
He was beginning to be hungry also--he had eaten a very early
breakfast--and he fell to wondering just where and when they were to
camp; but he endured in silence. "So long as Berrie makes no complaint my
mouth is shut," he told himself. "Surely I can stand it if she can." And
so struggled on.
Up and up the pathway looped, crossing minute little boggy meadows, on
whose bottomless ooze the grass shook like a blanket, descending steep
ravines and climbing back to dark and muddy slopes. The forest was
dripping, green, and silent now, a mysterious menacing jungle. All the
warmth and magic of the golden forest below was lost as though it
belonged to another and sunnier world. Nothing could be seen of the high,
snow-flecked peaks which had allured them from the valley. All about them
drifted the clouds, and yet through the mist the flushed face of the girl
glowed like a dew-wet rose, and the imperturbable Supervisor jogged his
remorseless, unhesitating way toward the dense, ascending night.
"I'm glad I'm not riding this pass alone," Wayland said, as they paused
again for breath.
"So am I," she answered; but her thought was not his. She was happy at
the prospect of teaching him how to camp.
At last they reached the ragged edge of timber-line, and there, rolling
away under the mist, lay the bare, grassy, upward-climbing, naked neck of
the great peak. The wind had grown keener moment by moment, and when they
left the storm-twisted pines below, its breath had a wintry nip. The rain
had ceased to fall, but the clouds still hung densely to the loftiest
summits. It was a sinister yet beautiful world--a world as silent as a
dream, and through the short, thick grass the slender trail ran like a
timid serpent. The hour seemed to have neither daytime nor season. All
was obscure, mysterious, engulfing, and hostile. Had he been alone the
youth would have been appalled by the prospect.
"Now we're on the divide," called Berea; and as she spoke they seemed to
enter upon a boundless Alpine plain of velvet-russet grass. "This is the
Bear Tooth plateau." Low monuments of loose rock stood on small ledges,
as though to mark the course, and in the hollows dark ponds of icy water
lay, half surrounded by masses of compact snow.
"This is a stormy place in winter," McFarlane explained. "These piles of
stone are mighty valuable in a blizzard. I've crossed this divide in
August in snow so thick I could not see a rod."
Half an hour later they began to descend. Wind-twisted, storm-bleached
dwarf pines were first to show, then the firs, then the blue-green
spruces, and then the sheltering deeps of the undespoiled forest opened,
and the roar of a splendid stream was heard; but still the Supervisor
kept his resolute way, making no promises as to dinner, though his
daughter called: "We'd better go into camp at Beaver Lake. I hope you're
not starved," she called to Wayland.
"But I am," he replied, so frankly that she never knew how faint he
really was. His knees were trembling with weakness, and he stumbled
dangerously as he trod the loose rocks in the path.
They were all afoot now descending swiftly, and the horses ramped down
the trail with expectant haste, so that in less than an hour from
timber-line they were back into the sunshine of the lower valley, and at
three o'clock or thereabouts they came out upon the bank of an exquisite
lake, and with a cheery shout McFarlane called out: "Here we are, out of
the wilderness!" Then to Wayland: "Well, boy, how did you stand it?"
"Just middling," replied Wayland, reticent from weariness and with joy of
their camping-place. The lake, dark as topaz and smooth as steel, lay in
a frame of golden willows--as a jewel is filigreed with gold--and above
it the cliffs rose three thousand feet in sheer majesty, their upper
slopes glowing with autumnal grasses. A swift stream roared down a low
ledge and fell into the pond near their feet. Grassy, pine-shadowed
knolls afforded pasture for the horses, and two giant firs, at the edge
of a little glade, made a natural shelter for their tent.
With businesslike certitude Berrie unsaddled her horse, turned him loose,
and lent a skilful hand at removing the panniers from the pack-animals,
while Wayland, willing but a little uncertain, stood awkwardly about.
Under her instruction he collected dead branches of a standing fir, and
from these and a few cones kindled a blaze, while the Supervisor hobbled
the horses and set the tent.
"If the work of a forester were all like this it wouldn't be so bad," he
remarked, wanly. "I think I know several fellows who would be glad to do
it without a cent of pay."
"Wait till you get to heaving a pick," she retorted, "or scaling lumber
in a rain, or building a corduroy bridge."
"I don't want to think of anything so dreadful. I want to enjoy this
moment. I never was hungrier or happier in my life."
"Do ye good," interjected McFarlane, who had paused to straighten up the
coffee-pot. "Most people don't know what hunger means. There's nothing
finer in the world than good old-fashioned hunger, provided you've got
something to throw into yourself when you come into camp. This is a great
place for fish. I think I'll see if I can't jerk a few out."
"Better wait till night," said his daughter. "Mr. Norcross is starving,
and so am I. Plain bacon will do me."
The coffee came to a boil, the skillet gave off a wondrous savor, and
when the corn and beans began to sizzle, the trailers sat down to their
feast in hearty content, with one of the panniers for a table, and the
fir-tree for roof. "This is one of the most perfectly appointed
dining-rooms in the world," exclaimed the alien.
The girl met his look with a tender smile. "I'm glad you like it, for
perhaps we'll stay a week."
"It looks stormy," the Supervisor announced, after a glance at the
crests. "I'd like to see a soaking rain--it would end all our worry about
fires. The country's very dry on this side the range, and your duty for
the present will be to help Tony patrol."
While he talked on, telling the youth how to beat out a small blaze and
how to head off a large one, Wayland listened, but heard his instructions
only as he sensed the brook, as an accompaniment to Berea's voice, for as
she busied herself clearing away the dishes and putting the camp to
rights, she sang.
"You're to have the tent," said her father, "and we two huskies will
sleep under the shade of this big fir. If you're ever caught out," he
remarked to Wayland, "hunt for one of these balsam firs; there's always a
dry spot under them. See here!" And he showed him the sheltered circle
beneath the tree. "You can always get twigs for kindling from their inner
branches," he added, "or you can hew into one of these dead trees and get
some pitchy splinters. There's material for everything you want if you
know where to find it. Shelter, food, fire are all here for us as they
were for the Indians. A ranger who needs a roof all the time is not worth
his bacon."
So, one by one, the principles of camping were taught by the kindly old
rancher; but the hints which the girl gave were quite as valuable, for
Wayland was eager to show her that he could be, and intended to be, a
forester of the first class or perish in the attempt.
McFarlane went farther and talked freely of the forest and what it meant
to the government. "We're all green at the work," he said, "and we old
chaps are only holding the fort against the thieves till you youngsters
learn how to make the best use of the domain."
"I can see that it takes more than technical training to enable a man to
be Supervisor of a forest," conceded Wayland.
McFarlane was pleased with this remark. "That's true, too. It's a big
responsibility. When I first came on, it was mainly patrolling; but now,
with a half dozen sawmills, and these 'June Eleventh Homesteads,' and the
new ways of marking timber, and the grazing and free-use permits, the
office work has doubled. And this is only the beginning. Wait till
Colorado has two millions of people, and all these lower valleys are
clamoring for water. Then you'll see a new party spring up--right here in
our state."
Berrie was glowing with happiness. "Let's stay here till the end of the
week," she suggested. "I've always wanted to camp on this lake, and now
I'm here I want time to enjoy it."
"We'll stay a day or two," said her father; "but I must get over to that
ditch survey which is being made at the head of Poplar, and then Moore is
coming over to look at some timber on Porcupine."
The young people cut willow rods and went angling at the outlet of the
lake with prodigious success. The water rippled with trout, and in half
an hour they had all they could use for supper and breakfast, and,
behold, even as they were returning with their spoil they met a covey of
grouse strolling leisurely down to the lake's edge. "Isn't it a wonderful
place!" exclaimed the happy girl. "I wish we could stay a month."
"It's like being on the Swiss Family Robinson's Island. I never was more
content," he said, fervently. "I wouldn't mind staying here all winter."
"I would!" she laughed. "The snow falls four feet deep up here. It's
likely there's snow on the divide this minute, and camping in the snow
isn't so funny. Some people got snowed in over at Deep Lake last year and
nearly all their horses starved before they could get them out. This is a
fierce old place in winter-time."
"I can't imagine it," he said, indicating the glowing amphitheater which
inclosed the lake. "See how warmly the sun falls into that high basin!
It's all as beautiful as the Tyrol."
The air at the moment was golden October, and the dark clouds which lay
to the east seemed the wings of a departing rather than an approaching
storm; and even as they looked, a rainbow sprang into being, arching the
lake as if in assurance of peace and plenty, and the young people, as
they turned to face it, stood so close together that each felt the glow
of the other's shoulder. The beauty of the scene seemed to bring them
together in body as in spirit, and they fell silent.
McFarlane seemed quite unconscious of any necromancy at work upon his
daughter. He smoked his pipe, made notes in his field-book, directing an
occasional remark toward his apprentice, enjoying in his tranquil,
middle-age way the beauty and serenity of the hour.
"This is the kind of thing that makes up for a hard day's ride," he said,
jocosely.
As the sunset came on, the young people again loitered down to the
water's edge, and there, seated side by side, on a rocky knoll, watched
the phantom gold lift from the willows and climb slowly to the cliffs
above, while the water deepened in shadow, and busy muskrats marked its
glossy surface with long silvery lines. Mischievous camp-birds peered at
the couple from the branches of the pines uttering satirical comment,
while squirrels, frankly insolent, dropped cones upon their heads and
barked in saucy glee.
Wayland forgot all the outside world, forgot that he was studying to be a
forest ranger, and was alive only to the fact that in this most
bewitching place, in this most entrancing hour, he had the companionship
of a girl whose eyes sought his with every new phase of the silent and
wonderful scene which shifted swiftly before their eyes like a noiseless
yet prodigious drama. The blood in his thin body warmed. He forgot his
fatigue, his weakness. He was the poet and the forest lover, and this the
heart of the range.
Lightly the golden glory rose till only the highest peaks retained its
flame; then it leapt to the clouds behind the peaks, and gorgeously lit
their somber sulphurous masses. The edges of the pool grew black as
night; the voice of the stream grew stern; and a cold wind began to fall
from the heights, sliding like an invisible but palpable icy cataract.
At last the girl rose. "It is getting dark. I must go back and get
supper."
"We don't need any supper," he protested.
"Father does, and you'll be hungry before morning," she retorted, with
sure knowledge of men.
He turned from the scene reluctantly; but once at the camp-fire
cheerfully gave his best efforts to the work in hand, seconding Berrie's
skill as best he could.
The trout, deliciously crisp, and some potatoes and batter-cakes made a
meal that tempted even his faint appetite, and when the dishes were
washed and the towels hung out to dry, deep night possessed even the high
summit of stately Ptarmigan.
McFarlane then said: "I'll just take a little turn to see that the horses
are all right, and then I think we'd better close in for the night."
When they were alone in the light of the fire, Wayland turned to Berrie:
"I'm glad you're here. It must be awesome to camp alone in a wilderness;
and yet, I suppose, I must learn to do it."
"Yes, the ranger often has to camp alone, ride alone, and work alone for
weeks at a time," she assured him. "A good trailer don't mind a night
trip any more than he does a day trip, or if he does he never admits it.
Rain, snow, darkness, is all the same to him. Most of the boys are
fifteen to forty miles from the post-office."
He smiled ruefully. "I begin to have new doubts about this ranger
business. It's a little more vigorous than I thought it was. Suppose a
fellow breaks a leg on one of those high trails?"
"He mustn't!" she hastened to say. "He can't afford really to take
reckless chances; but then father won't expect as much of you as he does
of the old-stagers. You'll have plenty of time to get used to it."
"I may be like the old man's cow and the green shavings, just as I'm
getting used to it I'll die."
She didn't laugh at this. "You mustn't be rash; don't jump into any hard
jobs for the present; let the other fellow do it."
"But that's not very manly. If I go into the work I ought to be able to
take my share of any task that turns up."
"You'd better go slow," she argued. "Wait till you get hardened to it.
You need something over your shoulders now," she added; and rose and laid
a blanket over him. "You're tired; you'll take a chill if you're not
careful."
"You're very considerate," he said, looking up at her gratefully. "But it
makes me feel like a child to think I need such care. If honestly trying,
if going up against these hills and winds with Spartan courage will do me
good, I'm for it. I'm resolved to show to you and your good father that I
can learn to ride and pack and cut trail, and do all the rest of
it--there's some honor in qualifying as a forester, and I'm going to do
it."
"Of course there isn't much in it for you. The pay, even of a full
ranger, isn't much, after you count out his outlay for horses and saddles
and their feed, and his own feed. It don't leave so very much of his
ninety dollars a month."
"I'm not thinking of that," he retorted. "If you had once seen a doctor
shake his head over you, as I have, you'd think just being here in this
glorious spot, as I am to-night, would be compensation enough. It's a joy
to be in the world, and a delight to have you for my teacher."
She was silent under the pleasure of his praise, and he went on: "I
_know_ I'm better, and, I'm perfectly certain I can regain my strength.
The very odor of these pines and the power of these winds will bring it
back to me. See me now, and think how I looked when I came here six weeks
ago."
She looked at him with fond agreement. "You _are_ better. When I saw you
first I surely thought you were--"
"I know what you thought--and forget it, _please_! Think of me as one who
has touched mother earth again and is on the way to being made a giant.
You can't imagine how marvelous, how life-giving all this is to me. It is
poetry, it is prophecy, it is fulfilment. I am fully alive again."
McFarlane, upon his return, gave some advice relating to the care of
horses. "All this stock which is accustomed to a barn or a pasture will
quit you," he warned. "Watch your broncos. Put them on the outward side
of your camp when you bed down, and pitch your tent near the trail, then
you will hear the brutes if they start back. Some men tie their stock all
up; but I usually picket my saddle-horse and hobble the rest."
It was a delightful hour for schooling, and Wayland would have been
content to sit there till morning listening; but the air bit, and at last
the Supervisor asked: "Have you made your bed? If you have, turn in. I
shall get you out early to-morrow." As he saw the bed, he added: "I see
you've laid out a bed of boughs. That shows how Eastern you are. We don't
do that out here. It's too cold in this climate, and it's too much work.
You want to hug the ground--if it's dry."
The weary youth went to his couch with a sense of timorous elation, for
he had never before slept beneath the open sky. Over him the giant
fir--tall as a steeple--dropped protecting shadow, and looking up he
could see the firelight flickering on the wide-spread branches. His bed
seemed to promise all the dreams and restful drowse which the books on
outdoor life had described, and close by in her tiny little canvas house
he could hear the girl in low-voiced conversation with her sire. All
conditions seemed right for slumber, and yet slumber refused to come!
After the Supervisor had rolled himself in the blanket, long after all
sounds had ceased in the tent, there still remained for the youth a score
of manifold excitations to wakefulness. Down on the lake the muskrats and
beavers were at their work. Nocturnal birds uttered uncanny, disturbing
cries. Some animal with stealthy crackling tread was ranging the
hillside, and the roar of the little fall, so far from lulling him to
sleep--as he had imagined it would--stimulated his imagination till he
could discern in it the beat of scurrying wings and the patter of
pernicious padded feet. "If I am appalled by the wilderness now, what
would it seem to me were I alone!" he whispered.
Then, too, his bed of boughs discovered unforeseen humps and knobs, and
by the time he had adjusted himself to their discomfort, it became
evident that his blankets were both too thin and too short. And the gelid
air sweeping down from the high places submerged him as if with a flood
of icy water. In vain he turned and twisted within his robes. No sooner
were his shoulders covered and comfortable than his hip-bones began to
ache. Later on the blood of his feet congealed, and in the effort to wrap
them more closely, he uncovered his neck and shoulders. The frost became
a wolf, the night an oppressor. "I must have a different outfit," he
decided. And then thinking that this was but early autumn, he added:
"What will it be a month later?" He began to doubt his ability to measure
up to the heroic standard of a forest patrol.
The firelight flickered low, and a prowling animal daringly sniffed about
the camp, pawing at the castaway fragments of the evening meal. The youth
was rigid with fear. "Is it a bear? Shall I call the Supervisor?" he
asked himself.
He felt sadly unprotected, and wished McFarlane nearer at hand. "It may
be a lion, but probably it is only a coyote, or a porcupine," he
concluded, and lay still for what seemed like hours waiting for the beast
to gorge himself and go away.
He longed for morning with intense desire, and watched an amazingly
luminous star which hung above the eastern cliff, hoping to see it pale
and die in dawn light, but it did not; and the wind bit even sharper. His
legs ached almost to the cramping-point, and his hip-bones protruded like
knots on a log. "I didn't know I had door-knobs on my hips," he remarked,
with painful humor, and, looking down at his feet, he saw that a thick
rime was gathering on his blanket. "This sleeping out at night isn't what
the books crack it up to be," he groaned again, drawing his feet up to
the middle of his bed to warm them. "Shall I resign to-morrow? No, I'll
stay with it; but I'll have more clothing. I'll have blankets six inches
thick. Heaps of blankets--the fleecy kind--I'll have an air-mattress."
His mind luxuriated in these details till he fell into an uneasy drowse.
VI
STORM-BOUND
Wayland was awakened by the mellow voice of his chief calling: "_All out!
All out! Daylight down the creek!_" Breathing a prayer of thankfulness,
the boy sat up and looked about him. "The long night is over at last, and
I am alive!" he said, and congratulated himself.
He drew on his shoes and, stiff and shivering, stood about in helpless
misery, while McFarlane kicked the scattered, charred logs together, and
fanned the embers into a blaze with his hat. It was heartening to see the
flames leap up, flinging wide their gorgeous banners of heat and light,
and in their glow the tenderfoot ranger rapidly recovered his courage,
though his teeth still chattered and the forest was dark.
"How did you sleep?" asked the Supervisor.
"First rate--at least during the latter part of the night," Wayland
briskly lied.
"That's good. I was afraid that Adirondack bed of yours might let the
white wolf in."
"My blankets did seem a trifle thin," confessed Norcross.
"It don't pay to sleep cold," the Supervisor went on. "A man wants to
wake up refreshed, not tired out with fighting the night wind and frost.
I always carry a good bed."
It was instructive to see how quietly and methodically the old
mountaineer went about his task of getting the breakfast. First he cut
and laid a couple of eight-inch logs on either side of the fire, so that
the wind drew through them properly, then placing his dutch-oven cover on
the fire, he laid the bottom part where the flames touched it. Next he
filled his coffee-pot with water, and set it on the coals. From his
pannier he took his dishes and the flour and salt and pepper, arranging
them all within reach, and at last laid some slices of bacon in the
skillet.
At this stage of the work a smothered cry, half yawn, half complaint,
came from the tent. "Oh, hum! Is it morning?" inquired Berrie.
"Morning!" replied her father. "It's going toward noon. You get up or
you'll have no breakfast."
Thereupon Wayland called: "Can I get you anything, Miss Berrie? Would you
like some warm water?"
"What for?" interposed McFarlane, before the girl could reply.
"To bathe in," replied the youth.
"To bathe in! If a daughter of mine should ask for warm water to wash
with I'd throw her in the creek."
Berrie chuckled. "Sometimes I think daddy has no feeling for me. I reckon
he thinks I'm a boy."
"Hot water is debilitating, and very bad for the complexion," retorted
her father. "Ice-cold water is what you need. And if you don't get out o'
there in five minutes I'll dowse you with a dipperful."
This reminded Wayland that he had not yet made his own toilet, and,
seizing soap, towel, and brushes, he hurried away down to the beach where
he came face to face with the dawn. The splendor of it smote him full in
the eyes. From the waveless surface of the water a spectral mist was
rising, a light veil, through which the stupendous cliffs loomed three
thousand feet in height, darkly shadowed, dim and far. The willows along
the western marge burned as if dipped in liquid gold, and on the lofty
crags the sun's coming created keen-edged shadows, violet as ink. Truly
this forestry business was not so bad after all. It had its
compensations.
Back at the camp-fire he found Berrie at work, glowing, vigorous,
laughing. Her comradeship with her father was very charming, and at the
moment she was rallying him on his method of bread-mixing. "You should
rub the lard into the flour," she said. "Don't be afraid to get your
hands into it--after they are clean. You can't mix bread with a spoon."
"Sis, I made camp bread for twenty years afore you were born."
"It's a wonder you lived to tell of it," she retorted, and took the pan
away from him. "That's another thing _you_ must learn," she said to
Wayland. "You must know how to make bread. You can't expect to find
bake-shops or ranchers along the way."
In the heat of the fire, in the charm of the girl's presence, the young
man forgot the discomforts of the night, and as they sat at breakfast,
and the sun rising over the high summits flooded them with warmth and
good cheer, and the frost melted like magic from the tent, the experience
had all the satisfying elements of a picnic. It seemed that nothing
remained to do; but McFarlane said: "Well, now, you youngsters wash up
and pack whilst I reconnoiter the stock." And with his saddle and bridle
on his shoulder he went away down the trail.
Under Berrie's direction Wayland worked busily putting the camp equipment
in proper parcels, taking no special thought of time till the tent was
down and folded, the panniers filled and closed, and the fire carefully
covered. Then the girl said: "I hope the horses haven't been stampeded.
There are bears in this valley, and horses are afraid of bears. Father
ought to have been back before this. I hope they haven't quit us."
"Shall I go and see?"
"No, he'll bring 'em--if they're in the land of the living. He picketed
his saddle-horse, so he's not afoot. Nobody can teach him anything about
trailing horses, and, besides, you might get lost. You'd better keep
close to camp."
Thereupon Wayland put aside all responsibility. "Let's see if we can
catch some more fish," he urged.
To this she agreed, and together they went again to the outlet of the
lake--where the trout could be seen darting to and fro on the clear, dark
flood--and there cast their flies till they had secured ten good-sized
fish.
"We'll stop now," declared the girl. "I don't believe in being
wasteful."
Once more at the camp they prepared the fish for the pan. The sun
suddenly burned hot and the lake was still as brass, but great, splendid,
leisurely, gleaming clouds were sailing in from the west, all centering
about Chief Audobon, and the experienced girl looked often at the sky. "I
don't like the feel of the air. See that gray cloud spreading out over
the summits of the range, that means something more than a shower. I do
hope daddy will overtake the horses before they cross the divide. It's
going to pour up there."
"What can I do?"
"Nothing. We'll stay right here and get dinner for him. He'll be hungry
when he gets back."
As they were unpacking the panniers and getting out the dishes, thunder
broke from the high crags above the lake, and the girl called out:
"Quick! It's going to rain! We must reset the tent and get things under
cover."
Once more he was put to shame by the decision, the skill, and the
strength with which she went about re-establishing the camp. She led, he
followed in every action. In ten minutes the canvas was up, the beds
rolled, the panniers protected, the food stored safely; but they were
none too soon, for the thick gray veil of rain, which had clothed the
loftiest crags for half an hour, swung out over the water--leaden-gray
under its folds--and with a roar which began in the tall pines--a roar
which deepened, hushed only when the thunder crashed resoundingly from
crag to crest--the tempest fell upon the camp and the world of sun and
odorous pine vanished almost instantly, and a dark, threatening, and
forbidding world took its place.
But the young people--huddled close together beneath the tent--would have
enjoyed the change had it not been for the thought of the Supervisor. "I
hope he took his slicker," the girl said, between the tearing, ripping
flashes of the lightning. "It's raining hard up there."
"How quickly it came. Who would have thought it could rain like this
after so beautiful a morning?"
"It storms when it storms--in the mountains," she responded, with the
sententious air of her father. "You never can tell what the sky is going
to do up here. It is probably snowing on the high divide. Looks now as
though those cayuses pulled out sometime in the night and have hit the
trail for home. That's the trouble with stall-fed stock. They'll quit you
any time they feel cold and hungry. Here comes the hail!" she shouted, as
a sharper, more spiteful roar sounded far away and approaching. "Now keep
from under!"
"What will your father do?" he called.
"Don't worry about him. He's at home any place there's a tree. He's
probably under a balsam somewhere, waiting for this ice to spill out. The
only point is, they may get over the divide, and if they do it will be
slippery coming back."
For the first time the thought that the Supervisor might not be able to
return entered Wayland's mind; but he said nothing of his fear.
The hail soon changed to snow, great, clinging, drowsy, soft, slow-moving
flakes, and with their coming the roar died away and the forest became as
silent as a grave of bronze. Nothing moved, save the thick-falling,
feathery, frozen vapor, and the world was again very beautiful and very
mysterious.
"We must keep the fire going," warned the girl. "It will be hard to start
after this soaking."
He threw upon the fire all of the wood which lay near, and Berrie, taking
the ax, went to the big fir and began to chop off the dry branches which
hung beneath, working almost as effectively as a man. Wayland insisted on
taking a turn with the tool; but his efforts were so awkward that she
laughed and took it away again. "You'll have to take lessons in swinging
an ax," she said. "That's part of the job."
Gradually the storm lightened, the snow changed back into rain, and
finally to mist; but up on the heights the clouds still rolled wildly,
and through their openings the white drifts bleakly shone.
"It's all in the trip," said Berrie. "You have to take the weather as it
comes on the trail." As the storm lessened she resumed the business of
cooking the midday meal, and at two o'clock they were able to eat in
comparative comfort, though the unmelted snow still covered the trees,
and water dripped from the branches.
"Isn't it beautiful!" exclaimed Wayland, with glowing boyish face. "The
landscape is like a Christmas card. In its way it's quite as beautiful as
that golden forest we rode through."
"It wouldn't be so beautiful if you had to wallow through ten miles of
it," she sagely responded. "Daddy will be wet to the skin, for I found he
didn't take his slicker. However, the sun may be out before night. That's
the way the thing goes in the hills."
To the youth, though the peaks were storm-hid, the afternoon was joyous.
Berrie was a sweet companion. Under her supervision he practised at
chopping wood and took a hand at cooking. At her suggestion he stripped
the tarpaulin from her father's bed and stretched it over a rope before
the tent, thus providing a commodious kitchen and dining-room. Under this
roof they sat and talked of everything except what they should do if the
father did not return, and as they talked they grew to even closer
understanding.
Though quite unlearned of books, she had something which was much more
piquant than anything which theaters and novels could give--she possessed
a marvelous understanding of the natural world in which she lived. As the
companion of her father on many of his trips, she had absorbed from him,
as well as from the forest, a thousand observations of plant and animal
life. Seemingly she had nothing of the woman's fear of the wilderness,
she scarcely acknowledged any awe of it. Of the bears, and other
predatory beasts, she spoke carelessly.
"Bears are harmless if you let 'em alone," she said, "and the
mountain-lion is a great big bluff. He won't fight, you can't make him
fight; but the mother lion will. She's dangerous when she has cubs--most
animals are. I was out hunting grouse one day with a little twenty-two
rifle, when all at once, as I looked up along a rocky point I was
crossing, I saw a mountain-lion looking at me. First I thought I'd let
drive at him; but the chances were against my getting him from there, so
I climbed up above him--or where I thought he was--and while I was
looking for him I happened to glance to my right, and there he was about
fifty feet away looking at me pleasant as you please. Didn't seem to be
mad at all--'peared like he was just wondering what I'd do next. I jerked
my gun into place, but he faded away. I crawled around to get behind him,
and just when I reached the ledge on which he had been standing a few
minutes before, I saw him just where I'd been. He had traded places with
me. I began to have that creepy feeling. He was so silent and so kind of
pleasant-looking I got leery of him. It just seemed like as though I'd
dreamed him. He didn't seem real."
Wayland shuddered. "You foolish girl! Why didn't you run?"
"I did. I began to figure then that this was a mother lion, and that her
cubs were close by, and that she could just as well sneak up and drop on
me from above as not. So I got down and left her alone. It was her
popping up now here and now there like a ghost that locoed me. I was sure
scared."
Wayland did not enjoy this tale. "I never heard of such folly. Did your
father learn of that adventure?"
"Yes, I told him."
"Didn't he forbid your hunting any more?"
"No, indeed! Why should he? He just said it probably was a lioness, and
that it was just as well to let her alone. He knows I'm no chicken."
"How about your mother--does she approve of such expeditions?"
"No, mother worries more or less when I'm away; but then she knows it
don't do any good. I'm taking all kinds of chances every day, anyhow."
He had to admit that she was better able to care for herself in the
wilderness than most men--even Western men--and though he had not yet
witnessed a display of her skill with a rifle, he was ready to believe
that she could shoot as well as her sire. Nevertheless, he liked her
better when engaged in purely feminine duties, and he led the talk back
to subjects concerning which her speech was less blunt and manlike.
He liked her when she was joking, for delicious little curves of laughter
played about her lips. She became very amusing, as she told of her
"visits East," and of her embarrassments in the homes of city friends. "I
just have to own up that about all the schooling I've got is from the
magazines. Sometimes I wish I had pulled out for town when I was about
fourteen; but, you see, I didn't feel like leaving mother, and she didn't
feel like letting me go--and so I just got what I could at Bear Tooth."
She sprang up. "There's a patch of blue sky. Let's go see if we can't get
a grouse."
The snow had nearly all sunk into the ground on their level; but it still
lay deep on the heights above, and the torn masses of vapor still clouded
the range. "Father has surely had to go over the divide," she said, as
they walked down the path along the lake shore. "He'll be late getting
back, and a plate of hot chicken will seem good to him."
Together they strolled along the edge of the willows. "The grouse come
down to feed about this time," she said. "We'll put up a covey soon."
It seemed to him as though he were re-living the experiences of his
ancestors--the pioneers of Michigan--as he walked this wilderness with
this intrepid huntress whose alert eyes took note of every moving thing.
She was delightfully unconscious of self, of sex, of any doubt or fear. A
lovely Diana--strong and true and sweet.
Within a quarter of a mile they found their birds, and she killed four
with five shots. "This is all we need," she said, "and I don't believe in
killing for the sake of killing. Rangers should set good examples in way
of game preservation. They are deputy game-wardens in most states, and
good ones, too."
They stopped for a time on a high bank above the lake, while the sunset
turned the storm-clouds into mountains of brass and iron, with sulphurous
caves and molten glowing ledges. This grandiose picture lasted but a few
minutes, and then the Western gates closed and all was again gray and
forbidding. "Open and shut is a sign of wet," quoted Berrie, cheerily.
The night rose formidably from the valley while they ate their supper;
but Berrie remained tranquil. "Those horses probably went clean back to
the ranch. If they did, daddy can't possibly get back before eight
o'clock, and he may not get back till to-morrow."
VII
THE WALK IN THE RAIN
Norcross, with his city training, was acutely conscious of the delicacy
of the situation. In his sister's circle a girl left alone in this way
with a man would have been very seriously embarrassed; but it was evident
that Berrie took it all joyously, innocently. Their being together was
something which had happened in the natural course of weather, a
condition for which they were in no way responsible. Therefore she
permitted herself to be frankly happy in the charm of their enforced
intimacy.
She had never known a youth of his quality. He was so considerate, so
refined, so quick of understanding, and so swift to serve. He filled her
mind to the exclusion of unimportant matters like the snow, which was
beginning again; indeed, her only anxiety concerned his health, and as he
toiled amid the falling flakes, intent upon heaping up wood enough to
last out the night, she became solicitous.
"You will be soaked," she warningly cried. "Don't stay out any more. Come
to the fire. I'll bring in the wood."
Something primeval, some strength he did not know he possessed sustained
him, and he toiled on. "Suppose this snow keeps falling?" he retorted.
"The Supervisor will not be able to get back to-night--perhaps not for a
couple of nights. We will need a lot of fuel."
He did not voice the fear of the storm which filled his thought; but the
girl understood it. "It won't be very cold," she calmly replied. "It
never is during these early blizzards; and, besides, all we need to do is
to drop down the trail ten miles and we'll be entirely out of it."
"I'll feel safer with plenty of wood," he argued; but soon found it
necessary to rest from his labors. Coming in to camp, he seated himself
beside her on a roll of blankets, and so together they tended the fire
and watched the darkness roll over the lake till the shining crystals
seemed to drop from a measureless black arch, soundless and oppressive.
The wind died away, and the trees stood as if turned into bronze,
moveless, save when a small branch gave way and dropped its rimy burden,
or a squirrel leaped from one top to another. Even the voice of the
waterfall seemed muffled and remote.
"I'm a long way from home and mother," Wayland said, with a smile;
"but--I like it."
"Isn't it fun?" she responded. "In a way it's nicer on account of the
storm. But you are not dressed right; you should have waterproof boots.
You never can tell when you may be set afoot. You should always go
prepared for rain and snow, and, above all, have an extra pair of thick
stockings. Your feet are soaked now, aren't they?"
"They are; but your father told me to always dry my boots on my feet,
otherwise they'd shrink out of shape."
"That's right, too; but you'd better take 'em off and wring out your
socks or else put on dry ones."
"You insist on my playing the invalid," he complained, "and that makes me
angry. When I've been over here a month you'll find me a glutton for
hardship. I shall be a bear, a grizzly, fearful to contemplate. My roar
will affright you."
She laughed like a child at his ferocity. "You'll have to change a whole
lot," she said, and drew the blanket closer about his shoulders. "Just
now your job is to keep warm and dry. I hope you won't get lonesome over
here."
"I'm not going to open a book or read a newspaper. I'm not going to write
to a single soul except you. I'll be obliged to report to you, won't I?"
"I'm not the Supervisor."
"You're the next thing to it," he quickly retorted. "You've been my board
of health from the very first. I should have fled for home long ago had
it not been for you."
Her eyes fell under his glance. "You'll get pretty tired of things over
here. It's one of the lonesomest stations in the forest."
"I'll get lonesome for you; but not for the East." This remark, or rather
the tone in which it was uttered, brought another flush of consciousness
to the girl's face.
"What time is it now?" she asked, abruptly.
He looked at his watch. "Half after eight."
"If father isn't on this side of the divide now he won't try to cross. If
he's coming down the slope he'll be here in an hour, although that trail
is a tolerably tough proposition this minute. A patch of dead timber on a
dark night is sure a nuisance, even to a good man. He may not make it."
"Shall I fire my gun?"
"What for?"
"As a signal to him."
This amused her. "Daddy don't need any hint about direction--what he
needs is a light to see the twist of the trail through those fallen
logs."
"Couldn't I rig up a torch and go to meet him?"
She put her hand on his arm. "You stay right here!" she commanded. "You
couldn't follow that trail five minutes."
"You have a very poor opinion of my skill."
"No, I haven't; but I know how hard it is to keep direction on a night
like this and I don't want you wandering around in the timber. Father can
take care of himself. He's probably sitting under a big tree smoking his
pipe before his fire--or else he's at home. He knows we're all right, and
we are. We have wood and grub, and plenty of blankets, and a roof over
us. You can make your bed under this fly," she said, looking up at the
canvas. "It beats the old balsam as a roof. You mustn't sleep cold
again."
"I think I'd better sit up and keep the fire going," he replied,
heroically. "There's a big log out there that I'm going to bring in to
roll up on the windward side."
"It'll be cold and wet early in the morning, and I don't like to hunt
kindling in the snow," she said. "I always get everything ready the night
before. I wish you had a better bed. It seems selfish of me to have the
tent while you are cold."
One by one--under her supervision--he made preparations for morning. He
cut some shavings from a dead, dry branch of fir and put them under the
fly, and brought a bucket of water from the creek, and then together they
dragged up the dead tree.
Had the young man been other than he was, the girl's purity, candor, and
self-reliance would have conquered him, and when she withdrew to the
little tent and let fall the frail barrier between them, she was as safe
from intrusion as if she had taken refuge behind gates of triple brass.
Nothing in all his life had moved him so deeply as her solicitude, her
sweet trust in his honor, and he sat long in profound meditation. Any man
would be rich in the ownership of her love, he admitted. That he
possessed her pity and her friendship he knew, and he began to wonder if
he had made a deeper appeal to her than this.
"Can it be that I am really a man to her," he thought, "I who am only a
poor weakling whom the rain and snow can appall?"
Then he thought of the effect of this night upon her life. What would
Clifford Belden do now? To what deeps would his rage descend if he should
come to know of it?
Berrie was serene. Twice she spoke from her couch to say: "You'd better
go to bed. Daddy can't get here till to-morrow now."
"I'll stay up awhile yet. My boots aren't entirely dried out."
As the flame sank low the cold bit, and he built up the half-burned logs
so that they blazed again. He worked as silently as he could; but the
girl again spoke, with sweet authority: "Haven't you gone to bed yet?"
"Oh yes, I've been asleep. I only got up to rebuild the fire."
"I'm afraid you're cold."
"I'm as comfortable as I deserve; it's all schooling, you know. Please go
to sleep again." His teeth were chattering as he spoke, but he added:
"I'm all right."
After a silence she said: "You must not get chilled. Bring your bed into
the tent. There is room for you."
"Oh no, that isn't necessary. I'm standing it very well."
"You'll be sick!" she urged, in a voice of alarm. "Please drag your bed
inside the door. What would I do if you should have pneumonia to-morrow?
You must not take any risk of a fever."
The thought of a sheltered spot, of something to break the remorseless
wind, overcame his scruples, and he drew his bed inside the tent and
rearranged it there.
"You're half frozen," she said. "Your teeth are chattering."
"It isn't so much the cold," he stammered. "I'm tired."
"You poor boy!" she exclaimed, and rose in her bed. "I'll get up and heat
some water for you."
"I'll be all right, in a few moments," he said. "Please go to sleep. I
shall be snug as a bug in a moment."
She watched his shadowy motions from her bed, and when at last he had
nestled into his blankets, she said: "If you don't lose your chill I'll
heat a rock and put at your feet."
He was ready to cry out in shame of his weakness; but he lay silent till
he could command his voice, then he said: "That would drive me from the
country in disgrace. Think of what the fellows down below will say when
they know of my cold feet."
"They won't hear of it; and, besides, it is better to carry a hot-water
bag than to be laid up with a fever."
Her anxiety lessened as his voice resumed its pleasant tenor flow. "Dear
girl," he said, "no one could have been sweeter--more like a guardian
angel to me. Don't place me under any greater obligation. Go to sleep. I
am better--much better now."
She did not speak for a few moments, then in a voice that conveyed to him
a knowledge that his words of endearment had deeply moved her, she softly
said: "Good night."
He heard her sigh drowsily thereafter once or twice, and then she slept,
and her slumber redoubled in him his sense of guardianship, of
responsibility. Lying there in the shelter of her tent, the whole
situation seemed simple, innocent, and poetic; but looked at from the
standpoint of Clifford Belden it held an accusation.
"It cannot be helped," he said. "The only thing we can do is to conceal
the fact that we spent the night beneath this tent alone."
In the belief that the way would clear with the dawn, he, too, fell
asleep, while the fire sputtered and smudged in the fitful mountain
wind.
The second dawn came slowly, as though crippled by the storm and walled
back by the clouds. Gradually, austerely, the bleak, white peaks began to
define themselves above the firs. The camp-birds called cheerily from the
wet branches which overhung the smoldering embers of the fire, and so at
last day was abroad in the sky.
With a dull ache in his bones, Wayland crept out to the fire and set to
work fanning the coals with his hat, as he had seen the Supervisor do. He
worked desperately till one of the embers began to angrily sparkle and to
smoke. Then slipping away out of earshot he broke an armful of dry fir
branches to heap above the wet, charred logs. Soon these twigs broke into
flame, and Berrie, awakened by the crackle of the pine branches, called
out: "Is it daylight?"
"Yes, but it's a very _dark_ daylight. Don't leave your warm bed for the
dampness and cold out here; stay where you are; I'll get breakfast."
"How are you this morning? Did you sleep?"
"Fine!"
"I'm afraid you had a bad night," she insisted, in a tone which indicated
her knowledge of his suffering.
"Camp life has its disadvantages," he admitted, as he put the coffee-pot
on the fire. "But I'm feeling better now. I never fried a bird in my
life, but I'm going to try it this morning. I have some water heating for
your bath." He put the soap, towel, and basin of hot water just inside
the tent flap. "Here it is. I'm going to bathe in the lake. I must show
my hardihood."
He heard her protesting as he went off down the bank, but his heart was
resolute. "I'm not dead yet," he said, grimly. "An invalid who can spend
two such nights as these, and still face a cold wind, has some vitality
in his bones after all."
When he returned he found the girl full dressed, alert, and glowing; but
she greeted him with a touch of shyness and self-consciousness new to
her, and her eyes veiled themselves before his glance.
"_Now_, where do you suppose the Supervisor is?" he asked.
"I hope he's at home," she replied, quite seriously. "I'd hate to think
of him camped in the high country without bedding or tent."
"Oughtn't I to take a turn up the trail and see? I feel guilty somehow--I
must do something!"
"You can't help matters any by hoofing about in the mud. No, we'll just
hold the fort till he comes, that's what he'll expect us to do."
He submitted once more to the force of her argument, and they ate
breakfast in such intimacy and good cheer that the night's discomforts
and anxieties counted for little. As the sun broke through the clouds
Berrie hung out the bedding in order that its dampness might be warmed
away.
"We may have to camp here again to-night," she explained, demurely.
"Worse things could happen than that," he gallantly answered. "I wouldn't
mind a month of it, only I shouldn't want it to rain or snow all the
time."
"Poor boy! You did suffer, didn't you? I was afraid you would. Did you
sleep at all?" she asked, tenderly.
"Oh yes, after I came inside; but, of course, I was more or less restless
expecting your father to ride up, and then it's all rather exciting
business to a novice. I could hear all sorts of birds and beasts stepping
and fluttering about. I was scared in spite of my best resolution."
"That's funny; I never feel that way. I slept like a log after I knew you
were comfortable. You must have a better bed and more blankets. It's
always cold up here."
The sunlight was short-lived. The clouds settled over the peaks, and
ragged wisps of gray vapor dropped down the timbered slopes of the
prodigious amphitheater in which the lake lay. Again Berrie made
everything snug while her young woodsman toiled at bringing logs for the
fire.
In truth, he was more elated than he had been since leaving school, for
he was not only doing a man's work in the world, he was serving a woman
in the immemorial way of the hewer of wood and the carrier of water. His
fatigue and the chill of the morning wore away, and he took vast pride in
dragging long poles down the hillside, forcing Berrie to acknowledge that
he was astonishingly strong. "But don't overdo it," she warned.
At last fully provided for, they sat contentedly side by side under the
awning and watched the falling rain as it splashed and sizzled on the
sturdy fire. "It's a little like being shipwrecked on a desert island,
isn't it?" he said. "As if our boats had drifted away."
At noon she again prepared an elaborate meal. She served potatoes and
grouse, hot biscuit with sugar syrup, and canned peaches, and coffee done
to just the right color and aroma. He declared it wonderful, and they ate
with repeated wishes that the Supervisor might turn up in time to share
their feast; but he did not. Then Berrie said, firmly: "Now you must take
a snooze, you look tired."
He was, in truth, not only drowsy but lame and tired. Therefore, he
yielded to her suggestion.
She covered him with blankets and put him away like a child. "Now you
have a good sleep," she said, tenderly. "I'll call you when daddy
comes."
With a delicious sense of her protecting care he lay for a few moments
listening to the drip of the water on the tent, then drifted away into
peace and silence.
When he woke the ground was again covered with snow, and the girl was
feeding the fire with wood which her own hands had supplied.
Hearing him stir, she turned and fixed her eyes upon him with clear, soft
gaze. "How do you feel by now?" she asked.
"Quite made over," he replied, rising alertly.
His cheer, however, was only pretense. He was greatly worried. "Something
has happened to your father," he said. "His horse has thrown him, or he
has slipped and fallen." His peace and exultation were gone. "How far is
it down to the ranger station?"
"About twelve miles."
"Don't you think we'd better close camp and go down there? It is now
three o'clock; we can walk it in five hours."
She shook her head. "No, I think we'd better stay right here. It's a
long, hard walk, and the trail is muddy."
"But, dear girl," he began, desperately, "it won't do for us to camp
here--alone--in this way another night. What will Cliff say?"
She flamed red, then whitened. "I don't care what Cliff thinks--I'm done
with him--and no one that I really care about would blame us." She was
fully aware of his anxiety now. "It isn't our fault."
"It will be _my_ fault if I keep you here longer!" he answered. "We must
reach a telephone and send word out. Something may have happened to your
father."
"I'm not worried a bit about him. It may be that there's been a big
snowfall up above us--or else a windstorm. The trail may be blocked; but
don't worry. He may have to go round by Lost Lake pass." She pondered a
moment. "I reckon you're right. We'd better pack up and rack down the
trail to the ranger's cabin. Not on my account, but on yours. I'm afraid
you've taken cold."
"I'm all right, except I'm very lame; but I am anxious to go on. By the
way, is this ranger Settle married?"
"No, his station is one of the lonesomest cabins on the forest. No woman
will stay there."
This made Wayland ponder. "Nevertheless," he decided, "we'll go. After
all, the man is a forest officer, and you are the Supervisor's
daughter."
She made no further protest, but busied herself closing the panniers and
putting away the camp utensils. She seemed to recognize that his judgment
was sound.
It was after three when they left the tent and started down the trail,
carrying nothing but a few toilet articles.
He stopped at the edge of the clearing. "Should we have left a note for
the Supervisor?"
She pointed to their footprints. "There's all the writing he needs," she
assured him, leading the way at a pace which made him ache. She plashed
plumply into the first puddle in the path. "No use dodging 'em," she
called over her shoulder, and he soon saw that she was right.
The trees were dripping, the willows heavy with water, and the mud
ankle-deep--in places--but she pushed on steadily, and he, following in
her tracks, could only marvel at her strength and sturdy self-reliance.
The swing of her shoulders, the poise of her head, and the lithe movement
of her waist, made his own body seem a poor thing.
For two hours they zigzagged down a narrow cañon heavily timbered with
fir and spruce--a dark, stern avenue, crossed by roaring streams, and
filled with frequent boggy meadows whereon the water lay mid-leg deep.
"We'll get out of this very soon," she called, cheerily.
By degrees the gorge widened, grew more open, more genial. Aspen thickets
of pale-gold flashed upon their eyes like sunlight, and grassy bunches
afforded firmer footing, but on the slopes their feet slipped and slid
painfully. Still Berea kept her stride. "We must get to the middle fork
before dark," she stopped to explain, "for I don't know the trail down
there, and there's a lot of down timber just above the station. Now that
we're cut loose from our camp I feel nervous. As long as I have a tent I
am all right; but now we are in the open I worry. How are you standing
it?" She studied him with keen and anxious glance, her hand upon his
arm.
"Fine as a fiddle," he replied, assuming a spirit he did not possess,
"but you are marvelous. I thought cowgirls couldn't walk?"
"I can do anything when I have to," she replied. "We've got three hours
more of it." And she warningly exclaimed: "Look back there!"
They had reached a point from which the range could be seen, and behold
it was covered deep with a seamless robe of new snow.
"That's why dad didn't get back last night. He's probably wallowing along
up there this minute." And she set off again with resolute stride.
Wayland's pale face and labored breath alarmed her. She was filled with
love and pity, but she pressed forward desperately.
As he grew tired, Wayland's boots, loaded with mud, became fetters, and
every slope greasy with mire seemed an almost insurmountable barricade.
He fell several times, but made no outcry. "I will not add to her
anxiety," he said to himself.
At last they came to the valley floor, over which a devastating fire had
run some years before, and which was still covered with fallen trees in
desolate confusion. Here the girl made her first mistake. She kept on
toward the river, although Wayland called attention to a trail leading to
the right up over the low grassy hills. For a mile the path was clear,
but she soon found herself confronted by an endless maze of blackened
tree-trunks, and at last the path ended abruptly.
Dismayed and halting, she said: "We've got to go back to that trail which
branched off to the right. I reckon that was the highland trail which
Settle made to keep out of the swamp. I thought it was a trail from
Cameron Peak, but it wasn't. Back we go."
She was suffering keenly now, not on her own account, but on his, for she
could see that he was very tired, and to climb up that hill again was
like punishing him a second time.
When she picked up the blazed trail it was so dark that she could
scarcely follow it; but she felt her way onward, turning often to be sure
that he was following. Once she saw him fall, and cried out: "It's a
shame to make you climb this hill again. It's all my fault. I ought to
have known that that lower road led down into the timber."
Standing close beside him in the darkness, knowing that he was weary,
wet, and ill, she permitted herself the expression of her love and pity.
Putting her arm about him, she drew his cheek against her own, saying:
"Poor boy, your hands are cold as ice." She took them in her own warm
clasp. "Oh, I wish we had never left the camp! What does it matter what
people say?" Then she broke down and wailed. "I shall never forgive
myself if you--" Her voice failed her.
[Illustration: SHE FOUND HERSELF CONFRONTED BY AN ENDLESS MAZE
OF BLACKENED TREE-TRUNKS]
He bravely reassured her: "I'm not defeated, I'm just tired. That's all.
I can go on."
"But you are shaking."
"That is merely a nervous chill. I'm good for another hour. It's better
to keep moving, anyhow."
She thrust her hand under his coat and laid it over his heart. "You are
tired out," she said, and there was anguish in her voice. "Your heart is
pounding terribly. You mustn't do any more climbing. And, hark, there's a
wolf!"
He listened. "I hear him; but we are both armed. There's no danger from
wild animals."
"Come!" she said, instantly recovering her natural resolution. "We can't
stand here. The station can't be far away. We must go on."
VIII
THE OTHER GIRL
The girl's voice stirred the benumbed youth into action again, and he
followed her mechanically. His slender stock of physical strength was
almost gone, but his will remained unbroken. At every rough place she
came back to him to support him, to hearten him, and so he crept on
through the darkness, falling often, stumbling against the trees,
slipping and sliding, till at last his guide, pitching down a sharp
slope, came directly upon a wire fence.
"Glory be!" she called. "Here is a fence, and the cabin should be near,
although I see no light. Hello! Tony!"
No voice replied, and, keeping Wayland's hand, she felt her way along the
fence till it revealed a gate; then she turned toward the roaring of the
stream, which grew louder as they advanced. "The cabin is near the falls,
that much I know," she assured him. Then a moment later she joyfully
cried out: "Here it is!"
Out of the darkness a blacker, sharper shadow rose. Again she called, but
no one answered. "The ranger is away," she exclaimed, in a voice of
indignant alarm. "I do hope he left the door unlocked."
Too numb with fatigue, and too dazed by the darkness to offer any aid,
Wayland waited--swaying unsteadily on his feet--while she tried the door.
It was bolted, and with but a moment's hesitation, she said: "It looks
like a case of breaking and entering. I'll try a window." The windows,
too, were securely fastened. After trying them all, she came back to
where Wayland stood. "Tony didn't intend to have anybody pushing in," she
decided. "But if the windows will not raise they will smash."
A crash of glass followed, and with a feeling that it was all part of a
dream, Wayland waited while the girl made way through the broken sash
into the dark interior. Her next utterance was a cry of joy: "Oh, but
it's nice and warm in here! I can't open the door. You'll have to come in
the same way I did."
He was too weak and too irresolute to respond immediately, and, reaching
out, she took him by the arms and dragged him across the sill. Her
strength seemed prodigious. A delicious warmth, a grateful dryness, a
sense of shelter enfolded him like a garment. The place smelled
deliciously of food, of fire, of tobacco.
Leading him toward the middle of the room, Berrie said: "Stand here till
I strike a light."
As her match flamed up Norcross found himself in a rough-walled cabin, in
which stood a square cook-stove, a rude table littered with dishes, and
three stools made of slabs. It was all very rude; but it had all the
value of a palace at the moment.
The girl's quick eye saw much else. She located an oil-lamp, some
pine-wood, and a corner cupboard. In a few moments the lamp was lit, the
stove refilled with fuel, and she was stripping Wayland's wet coat from
his back, cheerily discoursing as she did so. "Here's one of Tony's old
jackets, put that on while I see if I can't find some dry stockings for
you. Sit right down here by the stove; put your feet in the oven. I'll
have a fire in a jiffy. There, that's right. Now I'll start the
coffee-pot." She soon found the coffee, but it was unground. "Wonder,
where he keeps his coffee-mill." She rummaged about for a few minutes,
then gave up the search. "Well, no matter, here's the coffee, and here's
a hammer. One of the laws of the trail is this: If you can't do a thing
one way, do it another."
She poured the coffee beans into an empty tomato-can and began to pound
them with the end of the hammer handle, laughing at Wayland's look of
wonder and admiration. "Necessity sure is the mother of invention out
here. How do you feel by now? Isn't it nice to own a roof and four walls?
I'm going to close up that window as soon as I get the coffee started.
Are you warming up?"
"Oh yes, I'm all right now," he replied; but he didn't look it, and her
own cheer was rather forced. He was in the grasp of a nervous chill, and
she was deeply apprehensive of what the result of his exposure might be.
It seemed as if the coffee would never come to a boil.
"I depend on that to brace you up," she said.
After hanging a blanket over the broken window, she set out some cold
meat and a half dozen baking-powder biscuits, which she found in the
cupboard, and as soon as the coffee was ready she poured it for him; but
she would not let him leave the fire. She brought his supper to him and
sat beside him while he ate and drank.
"You must go right to bed," she urged, as she studied his weary eyes.
"You ought to sleep for twenty-four hours."
The hot, strong coffee revived him physically and brought back a little
of his courage, and he said: "I'm ashamed to be such a weakling."
"Now hush," she commanded. "It's not your fault that you are weak. Now,
while I am eating my supper you slip off your wet clothes and creep into
Tony's bunk, and I'll fill one of these syrup-cans with hot water to put
at your feet."
It was of no use for him to protest against her further care. She
insisted, and while she ate he meekly carried out her instructions, and
from the delicious warmth and security of his bed watched her moving
about the stove till the shadows of the room became one with the dusky
figures of his sleep.
A moment later something falling on the floor woke him with a start, and,
looking up, he found the sun shining, and Berrie confronting him with
anxious face. "Did I waken you?" she asked. "I'm awfully sorry. I'm
trying to be extra quiet. I dropped a pan. How do you feel this
_morning_?"
He pondered this question a moment. "Is it to-morrow or the next week?"
She laughed happily. "It's only the next day. Just keep where you are
till the sun gets a little higher." She drew near and put a hand on his
brow. "You don't feel feverish. Oh, I hope this trip hasn't set you
back."
He laid his hands together, and then felt of his pulse. "I don't seem to
have a temperature. I just feel lazy, limp and lazy; but I'm going to get
up, if you'll just leave the room for a moment--"
"Don't try it now. Wait till you have had your breakfast. You'll feel
stronger then."
He yielded again to the force of her will, and fell back into a luxurious
drowse hearing the stove roar and the bacon sizzle in the pan. There was
something primitive and broadly poetic in the girl's actions. Through the
haze of the kitchen smoke she enlarged till she became the typical
frontier wife, the goddess of the skillet and the coffee-pot, the consort
of the pioneer, equally skilled with the rifle and the rolling-pin. How
many millions of times had this scene been enacted on the long march of
the borderman from the Susquehanna to the Bear Tooth Range?
Into his epic vision the pitiful absurdity of his own part in the play
broke like a sad discord. "Of course, it is not my fault that I am a
weakling," he argued. "Only it was foolish for me to thrust myself into
this stern world. If I come safely out of this adventure I will go back
to the sheltered places where I belong."
At this point came again the disturbing realization that this night of
struggle, and the ministrations of his brave companion had involved him
deeper in a mesh from which honorable escape was almost impossible. The
ranger's cabin, so far from being an end of their compromising intimacy,
had added and was still adding to the weight of evidence against them
both. The presence of the ranger or the Supervisor himself could not now
save Berea from the gossips.
She brought his breakfast to him, and sat beside him while he ate,
chatting the while of their good fortune. "It is glorious outside, and I
am sure daddy will get across to-day, and Tony is certain to turn up
before noon. He probably went down to Coal City to get his mail."
"I must get up at once," he said, in a panic of fear and shame. "The
Supervisor must not find me laid out on my back. Please leave me alone
for a moment."
She went out, closing the door behind her, and as he crawled from his bed
every muscle in his body seemed to cry out against being moved.
Nevertheless, he persisted, and at last succeeded in putting on his
clothes, even his shoes--though he found tying the laces the hardest task
of all--and he was at the wash-basin bathing his face and hands when
Berrie hurriedly re-entered. "Some tourists are coming," she announced,
in an excited tone. "A party of five or six people, a woman among them,
is just coming down the slope. Now, who do you suppose it can be? It
would be just our luck if it should turn out to be some one from the
Mill."
He divined at once the reason for her dismay. The visit of a woman at
this moment would not merely embarrass them both, it would torture
Berrie. "What is to be done?" he asked, roused to alertness.
"Nothing; all we can do is to stand pat and act as if we belonged here."
"Very well," he replied, moving stiffly toward the door. "Here's where I
can be of some service. I am an excellent white liar."
As our hero crawled out into the brilliant sunshine some part of his
courage came back to him. Though lame in every muscle, he was not ill.
That was the surprising thing. His head was clear, and his breath full
and deep. "My lungs are all right," he said to himself. "I'm not going to
collapse." And he looked round him with a new-born admiration of the
wooded hills which rose in somber majesty on either side the roaring
stream. "How different it all looks this morning," he said, remembering
the deep blackness of the night.
The beat of hoofs upon the bridge drew his attention to the cavalcade,
which the keen eyes of the girl had detected as it came over the ridge to
the east. The party consisted of two men and two women and three
pack-horses completely outfitted for the trail.
One of the women, spurring her horse to the front, rode serenely up to
where Wayland stood, and called out: "Good morning. Are you the ranger?"
"No, I'm only the guard. The ranger has gone down the trail."
He perceived at once that the speaker was an alien like himself, for she
wore tan-colored riding-boots, a divided skirt of expensive cloth, and a
jaunty, wide-rimmed sombrero. She looked, indeed, precisely like the
heroine of the prevalent Western drama. Her sleeves, rolled to the elbow,
disclosed shapely brown arms, and her neck, bare to her bosom, was
equally sun-smit; but she was so round-cheeked, so childishly charming,
that the most critical observer could find no fault with her make-up.
One of the men rode up. "Hello, Norcross. What are you doing over here?"
The youth smiled blandly. "Good morning, Mr. Belden. I'm serving my
apprenticeship. I'm in the service now."
"The mischief you are!" exclaimed the other. "Where's Tony?"
"Gone for his mail. He'll return soon. What are _you_ doing over here,
may I ask?"
"I'm here as guide to Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore, this is Norcross, one of
McFarlane's men. Mr. Moore is connected with the tie-camp operations of
the railway."
Moore was a tall, thin man with a gray beard and keen blue eyes. "Where's
McFarlane? We were to meet him here. Didn't he come over with you?"
"We started together, but the horses got away, and he was obliged to go
back after them. He also is likely to turn up soon."
"I am frightfully hungry," interrupted the girl. "Can't you hand me out a
hunk of bread and meat? We've been riding since daylight."
Berrie suddenly appeared at the door. "Sure thing," she called out.
"Slide down and come in."
Moore removed his hat and bowed. "Good morning, Miss McFarlane, I didn't
know you were here. You know my daughter Siona?"
Berrie nodded coldly. "I've met her."
He indicated the other woman. "And Mrs. Belden, of course, you know."
Mrs. Belden, the fourth member of the party, a middle-aged, rather flabby
person, just being eased down from her horse, turned on Berrie with a
battery of questions. "Good Lord! Berrie McFarlane, what are you doing
over in this forsaken hole? Where's your dad? And where is Tony? If Cliff
had known you was over here he'd have come, too."
Berrie retained her self-possession. "Come in and get some coffee, and
we'll straighten things out."
Apparently Mrs. Belden did not know that Cliff and Berrie had quarreled,
for she treated the girl with maternal familiarity. She was a
good-natured, well-intentioned old sloven, but a most renowned tattler,
and the girl feared her more than she feared any other woman in the
valley. She had always avoided her, but she showed nothing of this
dislike at the moment.
Wayland drew the younger woman's attention by saying: "It's plain that
you, like myself, do not belong to these parts, Miss Moore."
"What makes you think so?" she brightly queried.
"Your costume is too appropriate. Haven't you noticed that the women who
live out here carefully avoid convenient and artistic dress? Now your
outfit is precisely what they should wear and don't."
This amused her. "I know, but they all say they have to wear out their
Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, whereas I can 'rag out proper.' I'm glad
you like my 'rig.'"
"When I look at you," he said, "I'm back on old Broadway at the Herald
Square Theater. The play is 'Little Blossom, or the Cowgirl's Revenge.'
The heroine has just come into the miner's cabin--"
"Oh, go 'long," she replied, seizing her cue and speaking in character,
"you're stringin' me."
"Not on your life! Your outfit is a peacherino," he declared. "I am glad
you rode by."
At the moment he was bent on drawing the girl's attention from Berrie,
but as she went on he came to like her. She said: "No, I don't belong
here; but I come out every year during vacation with my father. I love
this country. It's so big and wide and wild. Father has built a little
bungalow down at the lower mill, and we enjoy every day of our stay."
"You're a Smith girl," he abruptly asserted.
"What makes you think so?"
"Oh, there's something about you Smith girls that gives you dead away."
"Gives us away! I like that!"
"My phrase was unfortunate. I like Smith girls," he hastened to say; and
in five minutes they were on the friendliest terms--talking of mutual
acquaintances--a fact which both puzzled and hurt Berea. Their laughter
angered her, and whenever she glanced at them and detected Siona looking
into Wayland's face with coquettish simper, she was embittered. She was
glad when Moore came in and interrupted the dialogue.
Norcross did not relax, though he considered the dangers of
cross-examination almost entirely passed. In this he was mistaken, for no
sooner was the keen edge of Mrs. Belden's hunger dulled than her
curiosity sharpened.
"Where did you say the Supervisor was?" she repeated.
"The horses got away, and he had to go back after them," again responded
Berrie, who found the scrutiny of the other girl deeply disconcerting.
"When do you expect him back?"
"Any minute now," she replied, and in this she was not deceiving them,
although she did not intend to volunteer any information which might
embarrass either Wayland or herself.
Norcross tried to create a diversion. "Isn't this a charming valley?"
Siona took up the cue. "Isn't it! It's romantic enough to be the
back-drop in a Bret Harte play. I love it!"
Moore turned to Wayland. "I know a Norcross, a Michigan lumberman,
Vice-President of the Association. Is he, by any chance, a relative?"
"Only a father," retorted Wayland, with a smile. "But don't hold me
responsible for anything he has done. We seldom agree."
Moore's manner changed abruptly. "Indeed! And what is the son of W. W.
Norcross doing out here in the Forest Service?"
The change in her father's tone was not lost upon Siona, who ceased her
banter and studied the young man with deeper interest, while Mrs. Belden,
detecting some restraint in Berrie's tone, renewed her questioning:
"Where did you camp last night?"
"Right here."
"I don't see how the horses got away. There's a pasture here, for we rode
right through it."
Berrie was aware that each moment of delay in explaining the situation
looked like evasion, and deepened the significance of her predicament,
and yet she could not bring herself to the task of minutely accounting
for her time during the last two days.
Belden came to her relief. "Well, well! We'll have to be moving on. We're
going into camp at the mouth of the West Fork," he said, as he rose.
"Tell Tony and the Supervisor that we want to line out that timber at the
earliest possible moment."
Siona, who was now distinctly coquetting with Wayland, held out her hand.
"I hope you'll find time to come up and see us. I know we have other
mutual friends, if we had time to get at them."
His answer was humorous. "I am a soldier. I am on duty. I'm not at all
sure that I shall have a moment's leave; but I will call if I can
possibly do so."
They started off at last without having learned in detail anything of the
intimate relationship into which the Supervisor's daughter and young
Norcross had been thrown, and Mrs. Belden was still so much in the dark
that she called to Berrie: "I'm going to send word to Cliff that you are
over here. He'll be crazy to come the minute he finds it out."
"Don't do that!" protested Berrie.
Wayland turned to Berrie. "That would be pleasant," he said, smilingly.
But she did not return his smile. On the contrary, she remained very
grave. "I wish that old tale-bearer had kept away. She's going to make
trouble for us all. And that girl, isn't she a spectacle? I never could
bear her."
"Why, what's wrong with her? She seems a very nice, sprightly person."
"She's a regular play actor. I don't like made-up people. Why does she go
around with her sleeves rolled up that way, and--and her dress open at
the throat?"
"Oh, those are the affectations of the moment. She wants to look tough
and boisterous. That's the fad with all the girls, just now. It's only a
harmless piece of foolishness."
She could not tell him how deeply she resented his ready tone of
camaraderie with the other girl; but she was secretly suffering. It hurt
her to think that he could forget his aches and be so free and easy with
a stranger at a moment's notice. Under the influence of that girl's smile
he seemed to have quite forgotten his exhaustion and his pain. It was
wonderful how cheerful he had been while she was in sight.
In all this Berrie did him an injustice. He had been keenly conscious,
during every moment of the time, not only of his bodily ills, but of
Berrie, and he had kept a brave face in order that he might prevent
further questioning on the part of a malicious girl. It was his only way
of being heroic. Now that the crisis was passed he was quite as much of a
wreck as ever.
A new anxiety beset her. "I hope they won't happen to meet father on the
trail."
"Perhaps I should go with them and warn him."
"Oh, it doesn't matter," she wearily answered. "Old Mrs. Belden will
never rest till she finds out just where we've been, and just what we've
done. She's that kind. She knows everything that goes on."
He understood her fear, and yet he was unable to comfort her in the only
way she could be comforted. That brief encounter with Siona Moore--a girl
of his own world--had made all thought of marriage with Berea suddenly
absurd. Without losing in any degree the sense of gratitude he felt for
her protecting care, and with full acknowledgment of her heroic support
of his faltering feet, he revolted from putting into words a proposal of
marriage. "I love her," he confessed to himself, "and she is a dear,
brave girl; but I do not love her as a man should love the woman he is to
marry."
A gray shadow had plainly fallen between them. Berea sensed the change in
his attitude, and traced it to the influence of the coquette whose
smiling eyes and bared arms had openly challenged admiration. It saddened
her to think that one so fine as he had seemed could yield even momentary
tribute to an open and silly coquette.
IX
FURTHER PERPLEXITIES
Wayland, for his part, was not deceived by Siona Moore. He knew her kind,
and understood her method of attack. He liked her pert ways, for they
brought back his days at college, when dozens of just such misses lent
grace and humor and romance to the tennis court and to the football
field. She carried with her the aroma of care-free, athletic girlhood.
Flirtation was in her as charming and almost as meaningless as the
preening of birds on the bank of a pool in the meadow.
Speaking aloud, he said: "Miss Moore travels the trail with all known
accessories, and I've no doubt she thinks she is a grand campaigner; but
I am wondering how she would stand such a trip as that you took last
night. I don't believe she could have done as well as I. She's the
imitation--you're the real thing."
The praise involved in this speech brought back a little of Berrie's
humor. "I reckon those brown boots of hers would have melted," she said,
with quaint smile.
He became very grave. "If it had not been for you, dear girl, I would be
lying up there in the forest this minute. Nothing but your indomitable
spirit kept me moving. I shall be deeply hurt if any harm comes to you on
account of me."
"If it hadn't been for me you wouldn't have started on that trip last
night. It was perfectly useless. It would have been better for us both if
we had stayed in camp, for we wouldn't have met these people."
"That's true," he replied; "but we didn't know that at the time. We acted
for the best, and we must not blame ourselves, no matter what comes of
it."
They fell silent at this point, for each was again conscious of their new
relationship. She, vaguely suffering, waited for him to resume the
lover's tone, while he, oppressed by the sense of his own shortcomings
and weakness, was planning an escape. "It's all nonsense, my remaining in
the forest. I'm not fitted for it. It's too severe. I'll tell McFarlane
so and get out."
Perceiving his returning weakness and depression, Berea insisted on his
lying down again while she set to work preparing dinner. "There is no
telling when father will get here," she said. "And Tony will be hungry
when he comes. Lie down and rest."
He obeyed her silently, and, going to the bunk, at once fell asleep. How
long he slept he could not tell, but he was awakened by the voice of the
ranger, who was standing in the doorway and regarding Berrie with a
round-eyed stare.
He was a tall, awkward fellow of about thirty-five, plainly of the
frontier type; but a man of intelligence. At the end of a brief
explanation Berrie said, with an air of authority: "Now you'd better ride
up the trail and bring our camp outfit down. We can't go back that way,
anyhow."
The ranger glanced toward Wayland. "All right, Miss Berrie, but perhaps
your tenderfoot needs a doctor."
Wayland rose painfully but resolutely. "Oh no, I am not sick. I'm a
little lame, that's all. I'll go along with you."
"No," said Berrie, decisively. "You're not well enough for that. Get up
your horses, Tony, and by that time I'll have some dinner ready."
"All right, Miss Berrie," replied the man, and turned away.
Hardly had he crossed the bridge on his way to the pasture, when Berrie
cried out: "There comes daddy."
Wayland joined her at the door, and stood beside her watching the
Supervisor, as he came zigzagging down the steep hill to the east, with
all his horses trailing behind him roped together head-to-tail.
"He's had to come round by Lost Lake," she exclaimed. "He'll be tired
out, and absolutely starved. Wahoo!" she shouted in greeting, and the
Supervisor waved his hand.
There was something superb in the calm seat of the veteran as he slid
down the slope. He kept his place in the saddle with the air of the rider
to whom hunger, fatigue, windfalls, and snowslides were all a part of the
day's work; and when he reined in before the door and dropped from his
horse, he put his arm about his daughter's neck with quiet word: "I
thought I'd find you here. How is everything?"
"All right, daddy; but what about you? Where have you been?"
"Clean back to Mill Park. The blamed cayuses kept just ahead of me all
the way."
"Poor old dad! And on top of that came the snow."
"Yes, and a whole hatful. I couldn't get back over the high pass. Had to
go round by Lost Lake, and to cap all, Old Baldy took a notion not to
lead. Oh, I've had a peach of a time; but
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