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The Man of the Forest

by Zane Grey · English · Gutenberg #3457 · 678,588 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Man of the Forest

Author: Zane Grey


        
Release date: October 1, 2002 [eBook #3457]
                Most recently updated: February 8, 2019

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3457

Credits: Produced by Richard Fane, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN OF THE FOREST ***




Produced by Richard Fane





THE MAN OF THE FOREST

by Zane Grey


Harper and Brothers

New York

1920

Published: 1919




CHAPTER I

At sunset hour the forest was still, lonely, sweet with tang of fir and
spruce, blazing in gold and red and green; and the man who glided on
under the great trees seemed to blend with the colors and, disappearing,
to have become a part of the wild woodland.

Old Baldy, highest of the White Mountains, stood up round and bare,
rimmed bright gold in the last glow of the setting sun. Then, as the
fire dropped behind the domed peak, a change, a cold and darkening
blight, passed down the black spear-pointed slopes over all that
mountain world.

It was a wild, richly timbered, and abundantly watered region of dark
forests and grassy parks, ten thousand feet above sea-level, isolated
on all sides by the southern Arizona desert--the virgin home of elk and
deer, of bear and lion, of wolf and fox, and the birthplace as well as
the hiding-place of the fierce Apache.

September in that latitude was marked by the sudden cool night breeze
following shortly after sundown. Twilight appeared to come on its wings,
as did faint sounds, not distinguishable before in the stillness.

Milt Dale, man of the forest, halted at the edge of a timbered ridge, to
listen and to watch. Beneath him lay a narrow valley, open and grassy,
from which rose a faint murmur of running water. Its music was pierced
by the wild staccato yelp of a hunting coyote. From overhead in the
giant fir came a twittering and rustling of grouse settling for the
night; and from across the valley drifted the last low calls of wild
turkeys going to roost.

To Dale's keen ear these sounds were all they should have been,
betokening an unchanged serenity of forestland. He was glad, for he had
expected to hear the clipclop of white men's horses--which to hear up
in those fastnesses was hateful to him. He and the Indian were friends.
That fierce foe had no enmity toward the lone hunter. But there hid
somewhere in the forest a gang of bad men, sheep-thieves, whom Dale did
not want to meet.

As he started out upon the slope, a sudden flaring of the afterglow of
sunset flooded down from Old Baldy, filling the valley with lights and
shadows, yellow and blue, like the radiance of the sky. The pools in the
curves of the brook shone darkly bright. Dale's gaze swept up and down
the valley, and then tried to pierce the black shadows across the brook
where the wall of spruce stood up, its speared and spiked crest against
the pale clouds. The wind began to moan in the trees and there was a
feeling of rain in the air. Dale, striking a trail, turned his back to
the fading afterglow and strode down the valley.

With night at hand and a rain-storm brewing, he did not head for his
own camp, some miles distant, but directed his steps toward an old log
cabin. When he reached it darkness had almost set in. He approached with
caution. This cabin, like the few others scattered in the valleys, might
harbor Indians or a bear or a panther. Nothing, however, appeared to be
there. Then Dale studied the clouds driving across the sky, and he felt
the cool dampness of a fine, misty rain on his face. It would rain off
and on during the night. Whereupon he entered the cabin.

And the next moment he heard quick hoof-beats of trotting horses.
Peering out, he saw dim, moving forms in the darkness, quite close
at hand. They had approached against the wind so that sound had been
deadened. Five horses with riders, Dale made out--saw them loom close.
Then he heard rough voices. Quickly he turned to feel in the dark for a
ladder he knew led to a loft; and finding it, he quickly mounted, taking
care not to make a noise with his rifle, and lay down upon the floor
of brush and poles. Scarcely had he done so when heavy steps, with
accompaniment of clinking spurs, passed through the door below into the
cabin.

“Wal, Beasley, are you here?” queried a loud voice.

There was no reply. The man below growled under his breath, and again
the spurs jingled.

“Fellars, Beasley ain't here yet,” he called. “Put the hosses under the
shed. We'll wait.”

“Wait, huh!” came a harsh reply. “Mebbe all night--an' we got nuthin' to
eat.”

“Shut up, Moze. Reckon you're no good for anythin' but eatin'. Put them
hosses away an' some of you rustle fire-wood in here.”

Low, muttered curses, then mingled with dull thuds of hoofs and strain
of leather and heaves of tired horses.

Another shuffling, clinking footstep entered the cabin.

“Snake, it'd been sense to fetch a pack along,” drawled this newcomer.

“Reckon so, Jim. But we didn't, an' what's the use hollerin'? Beasley
won't keep us waitin' long.”

Dale, lying still and prone, felt a slow start in all his blood--a
thrilling wave. That deep-voiced man below was Snake Anson, the worst
and most dangerous character of the region; and the others, undoubtedly,
composed his gang, long notorious in that sparsely settled country.
And the Beasley mentioned--he was one of the two biggest ranchers and
sheep-raisers of the White Mountain ranges. What was the meaning of
a rendezvous between Snake Anson and Beasley? Milt Dale answered that
question to Beasley's discredit; and many strange matters pertaining to
sheep and herders, always a mystery to the little village of Pine, now
became as clear as daylight.

Other men entered the cabin.

“It ain't a-goin' to rain much,” said one. Then came a crash of wood
thrown to the ground.

“Jim, hyar's a chunk of pine log, dry as punk,” said another.

Rustlings and slow footsteps, and then heavy thuds attested to the
probability that Jim was knocking the end of a log upon the ground to
split off a corner whereby a handful of dry splinters could be procured.

“Snake, lemme your pipe, an' I'll hev a fire in a jiffy.”

“Wal, I want my terbacco an' I ain't carin' about no fire,” replied
Snake.

“Reckon you're the meanest cuss in these woods,” drawled Jim.

Sharp click of steel on flint--many times--and then a sound of hard
blowing and sputtering told of Jim's efforts to start a fire. Presently
the pitchy blackness of the cabin changed; there came a little crackling
of wood and the rustle of flame, and then a steady growing roar.

As it chanced, Dale lay face down upon the floor of the loft, and right
near his eyes there were cracks between the boughs. When the fire blazed
up he was fairly well able to see the men below. The only one he had
ever seen was Jim Wilson, who had been well known at Pine before Snake
Anson had ever been heard of. Jim was the best of a bad lot, and he had
friends among the honest people. It was rumored that he and Snake did
not pull well together.

“Fire feels good,” said the burly Moze, who appeared as broad as he was
black-visaged. “Fall's sure a-comin'... Now if only we had some grub!”

“Moze, there's a hunk of deer meat in my saddle-bag, an' if you git it
you can have half,” spoke up another voice.

Moze shuffled out with alacrity.

In the firelight Snake Anson's face looked lean and serpent-like, his
eyes glittered, and his long neck and all of his long length carried out
the analogy of his name.

“Snake, what's this here deal with Beasley?” inquired Jim.

“Reckon you'll l'arn when I do,” replied the leader. He appeared tired
and thoughtful.

“Ain't we done away with enough of them poor greaser herders--for
nothin'?” queried the youngest of the gang, a boy in years, whose hard,
bitter lips and hungry eyes somehow set him apart from his comrades.

“You're dead right, Burt--an' that's my stand,” replied the man who
had sent Moze out. “Snake, snow 'll be flyin' round these woods before
long,” said Jim Wilson. “Are we goin' to winter down in the Tonto Basin
or over on the Gila?”

“Reckon we'll do some tall ridin' before we strike south,” replied
Snake, gruffly.

At the juncture Moze returned.

“Boss, I heerd a hoss comin' up the trail,” he said.

Snake rose and stood at the door, listening. Outside the wind moaned
fitfully and scattering raindrops pattered upon the cabin.

“A-huh!” exclaimed Snake, in relief.

Silence ensued then for a moment, at the end of which interval Dale
heard a rapid clip-clop on the rocky trail outside. The men below
shuffled uneasily, but none of them spoke. The fire cracked cheerily.
Snake Anson stepped back from before the door with an action that
expressed both doubt and caution.

The trotting horse had halted out there somewhere.

“Ho there, inside!” called a voice from the darkness.

“Ho yourself!” replied Anson.

“That you, Snake?” quickly followed the query.

“Reckon so,” returned Anson, showing himself.

The newcomer entered. He was a large man, wearing a slicker that shone
wet in the firelight. His sombrero, pulled well down, shadowed his face,
so that the upper half of his features might as well have been masked.
He had a black, drooping mustache, and a chin like a rock. A potential
force, matured and powerful, seemed to be wrapped in his movements.

“Hullo, Snake! Hullo, Wilson!” he said. “I've backed out on the other
deal. Sent for you on--on another little matter... particular private.”

Here he indicated with a significant gesture that Snake's men were to
leave the cabin.

“A-huh! ejaculated Anson, dubiously. Then he turned abruptly. Moze,
you an' Shady an' Burt go wait outside. Reckon this ain't the deal I
expected.... An' you can saddle the hosses.”

The three members of the gang filed out, all glancing keenly at the
stranger, who had moved back into the shadow.

“All right now, Beasley,” said Anson, low-voiced. “What's your game?
Jim, here, is in on my deals.”

Then Beasley came forward to the fire, stretching his hands to the
blaze.

“Nothin' to do with sheep,” replied he.

“Wal, I reckoned not,” assented the other. “An' say--whatever your game
is, I ain't likin' the way you kept me waitin' an' ridin' around. We
waited near all day at Big Spring. Then thet greaser rode up an' sent us
here. We're a long way from camp with no grub an' no blankets.”

“I won't keep you long,” said Beasley. “But even if I did you'd not
mind--when I tell you this deal concerns Al Auchincloss--the man who
made an outlaw of you!”

Anson's sudden action then seemed a leap of his whole frame. Wilson,
likewise, bent forward eagerly. Beasley glanced at the door--then began
to whisper.

“Old Auchincloss is on his last legs. He's goin' to croak. He's sent
back to Missouri for a niece--a young girl--an' he means to leave his
ranches an' sheep--all his stock to her. Seems he has no one else....
Them ranches--an' all them sheep an' hosses! You know me an' Al were
pardners in sheep-raisin' for years. He swore I cheated him an' he threw
me out. An' all these years I've been swearin' he did me dirt--owed me
sheep an' money. I've got as many friends in Pine--an' all the way down
the trail--as Auchincloss has.... An' Snake, see here--”

He paused to draw a deep breath and his big hands trembled over the
blaze. Anson leaned forward, like a serpent ready to strike, and Jim
Wilson was as tense with his divination of the plot at hand.

“See here,” panted Beasley. “The girl's due to arrive at Magdalena on
the sixteenth. That's a week from to-morrow. She'll take the stage to
Snowdrop, where some of Auchincloss's men will meet her with a team.”

“A-huh!” grunted Anson as Beasley halted again. “An' what of all thet?”

“She mustn't never get as far as Snowdrop!”

“You want me to hold up the stage--an' get the girl?”

“Exactly.”

“Wal--an' what then?”

“Make off with her.... She disappears. That's your affair. ... I'll
press my claims on Auchincloss--hound him--an' be ready when he croaks
to take over his property. Then the girl can come back, for all I
care.... You an' Wilson fix up the deal between you. If you have to let
the gang in on it don't give them any hunch as to who an' what. This 'll
make you a rich stake. An' providin', when it's paid, you strike for new
territory.”

“Thet might be wise,” muttered Snake Anson. “Beasley, the weak point in
your game is the uncertainty of life. Old Al is tough. He may fool you.”

“Auchincloss is a dyin' man,” declared Beasley, with such positiveness
that it could not be doubted.

“Wal, he sure wasn't plumb hearty when I last seen him.... Beasley, in
case I play your game--how'm I to know that girl?”

“Her name's Helen Rayner,” replied Beasley, eagerly. “She's twenty
years old. All of them Auchinclosses was handsome an' they say she's the
handsomest.”

“A-huh!... Beasley, this 's sure a bigger deal--an' one I ain't
fancyin'.... But I never doubted your word.... Come on--an' talk out.
What's in it for me?”

“Don't let any one in on this. You two can hold up the stage. Why, it
was never held up.... But you want to mask.... How about ten thousand
sheep--or what they bring at Phenix in gold?”

Jim Wilson whistled low.

“An' leave for new territory?” repeated Snake Anson, under his breath.

“You've said it.”

“Wal, I ain't fancyin' the girl end of this deal, but you can count on
me.... September sixteenth at Magdalena--an' her name's Helen--an' she's
handsome?”

“Yes. My herders will begin drivin' south in about two weeks. Later, if
the weather holds good, send me word by one of them an' I'll meet you.”

Beasley spread his hands once more over the blaze, pulled on his gloves
and pulled down his sombrero, and with an abrupt word of parting strode
out into the night.

“Jim, what do you make of him?” queried Snake Anson.

“Pard, he's got us beat two ways for Sunday,” replied Wilson.

“A-huh!... Wal, let's get back to camp.” And he led the way out.

Low voices drifted into the cabin, then came snorts of horses and
striking hoofs, and after that a steady trot, gradually ceasing.
Once more the moan of wind and soft patter of rain filled the forest
stillness.



CHAPTER II

Milt Dale quietly sat up to gaze, with thoughtful eyes, into the gloom.

He was thirty years old. As a boy of fourteen he had run off from his
school and home in Iowa and, joining a wagon-train of pioneers, he was
one of the first to see log cabins built on the slopes of the White
Mountains. But he had not taken kindly to farming or sheep-raising or
monotonous home toil, and for twelve years he had lived in the forest,
with only infrequent visits to Pine and Show Down and Snowdrop. This
wandering forest life of his did not indicate that he did not care for
the villagers, for he did care, and he was welcome everywhere, but
that he loved wild life and solitude and beauty with the primitive
instinctive force of a savage.

And on this night he had stumbled upon a dark plot against the only one
of all the honest white people in that region whom he could not call a
friend.

“That man Beasley!” he soliloquized. “Beasley--in cahoots with Snake
Anson!... Well, he was right. Al Auchincloss is on his last legs. Poor
old man! When I tell him he'll never believe ME, that's sure!”

Discovery of the plot meant to Dale that he must hurry down to Pine.

“A girl--Helen Rayner--twenty years old,” he mused. “Beasley wants her
made off with.... That means--worse than killed!”

Dale accepted facts of life with that equanimity and fatality acquired
by one long versed in the cruel annals of forest lore. Bad men worked
their evil just as savage wolves relayed a deer. He had shot wolves for
that trick. With men, good or bad, he had not clashed. Old women and
children appealed to him, but he had never had any interest in girls.
The image, then, of this Helen Rayner came strangely to Dale; and he
suddenly realized that he had meant somehow to circumvent Beasley, not
to befriend old Al Auchincloss, but for the sake of the girl. Probably
she was already on her way West, alone, eager, hopeful of a future home.
How little people guessed what awaited them at a journey's end! Many
trails ended abruptly in the forest--and only trained woodsmen could
read the tragedy.

“Strange how I cut across country to-day from Spruce Swamp,” reflected
Dale. Circumstances, movements, usually were not strange to him. His
methods and habits were seldom changed by chance. The matter, then, of
his turning off a course out of his way for no apparent reason, and
of his having overheard a plot singularly involving a young girl, was
indeed an adventure to provoke thought. It provoked more, for Dale grew
conscious of an unfamiliar smoldering heat along his veins. He who had
little to do with the strife of men, and nothing to do with anger, felt
his blood grow hot at the cowardly trap laid for an innocent girl.

“Old Al won't listen to me,” pondered Dale. “An' even if he did, he
wouldn't believe me. Maybe nobody will.... All the same, Snake Anson
won't get that girl.”

With these last words Dale satisfied himself of his own position, and
his pondering ceased. Taking his rifle, he descended from the loft and
peered out of the door. The night had grown darker, windier, cooler;
broken clouds were scudding across the sky; only a few stars showed;
fine rain was blowing from the northwest; and the forest seemed full of
a low, dull roar.

“Reckon I'd better hang up here,” he said, and turned to the fire. The
coals were red now. From the depths of his hunting-coat he procured a
little bag of salt and some strips of dried meat. These strips he laid
for a moment on the hot embers, until they began to sizzle and curl;
then with a sharpened stick he removed them and ate like a hungry hunter
grateful for little.

He sat on a block of wood with his palms spread to the dying warmth of
the fire and his eyes fixed upon the changing, glowing, golden embers.
Outside, the wind continued to rise and the moan of the forest increased
to a roar. Dale felt the comfortable warmth stealing over him, drowsily
lulling; and he heard the storm-wind in the trees, now like a waterfall,
and anon like a retreating army, and again low and sad; and he saw
pictures in the glowing embers, strange as dreams.

Presently he rose and, climbing to the loft, he stretched himself out,
and soon fell asleep.


When the gray dawn broke he was on his way, 'cross-country, to the
village of Pine.

During the night the wind had shifted and the rain had ceased. A
suspicion of frost shone on the grass in open places. All was gray--the
parks, the glades--and deeper, darker gray marked the aisles of the
forest. Shadows lurked under the trees and the silence seemed consistent
with spectral forms. Then the east kindled, the gray lightened, the
dreaming woodland awoke to the far-reaching rays of a bursting red sun.

This was always the happiest moment of Dale's lonely days, as sunset
was his saddest. He responded, and there was something in his blood that
answered the whistle of a stag from a near-by ridge. His strides were
long, noiseless, and they left dark trace where his feet brushed the
dew-laden grass.

Dale pursued a zigzag course over the ridges to escape the hardest
climbing, but the “senacas”--those parklike meadows so named by Mexican
sheep-herders--were as round and level as if they had been made by man
in beautiful contrast to the dark-green, rough, and rugged ridges. Both
open senaca and dense wooded ridge showed to his quick eye an abundance
of game. The cracking of twigs and disappearing flash of gray among the
spruces, a round black lumbering object, a twittering in the brush,
and stealthy steps, were all easy signs for Dale to read. Once, as he
noiselessly emerged into a little glade, he espied a red fox stalking
some quarry, which, as he advanced, proved to be a flock of partridges.
They whirred up, brushing the branches, and the fox trotted away. In
every senaca Dale encountered wild turkeys feeding on the seeds of the
high grass.

It had always been his custom, on his visits to Pine, to kill and
pack fresh meat down to several old friends, who were glad to give him
lodging. And, hurried though he was now, he did not intend to make an
exception of this trip.

At length he got down into the pine belt, where the great, gnarled,
yellow trees soared aloft, stately, and aloof from one another, and the
ground was a brown, odorous, springy mat of pine-needles, level as a
floor. Squirrels watched him from all around, scurrying away at his
near approach--tiny, brown, light-striped squirrels, and larger ones,
russet-colored, and the splendid dark-grays with their white bushy tails
and plumed ears.

This belt of pine ended abruptly upon wide, gray, rolling, open land,
almost like a prairie, with foot-hills lifting near and far, and the
red-gold blaze of aspen thickets catching the morning sun. Here Dale
flushed a flock of wild turkeys, upward of forty in number, and their
subdued color of gray flecked with white, and graceful, sleek build,
showed them to be hens. There was not a gobbler in the flock. They began
to run pell-mell out into the grass, until only their heads appeared
bobbing along, and finally disappeared. Dale caught a glimpse of
skulking coyotes that evidently had been stalking the turkeys, and as
they saw him and darted into the timber he took a quick shot at the
hindmost. His bullet struck low, as he had meant it to, but too low, and
the coyote got only a dusting of earth and pine-needles thrown up into
his face. This frightened him so that he leaped aside blindly to butt
into a tree, rolled over, gained his feet, and then the cover of the
forest. Dale was amused at this. His hand was against all the predatory
beasts of the forest, though he had learned that lion and bear and wolf
and fox were all as necessary to the great scheme of nature as were the
gentle, beautiful wild creatures upon which they preyed. But some he
loved better than others, and so he deplored the inexplicable cruelty.

He crossed the wide, grassy plain and struck another gradual descent
where aspens and pines crowded a shallow ravine and warm, sun-lighted
glades bordered along a sparkling brook. Here he heard a turkey gobble,
and that was a signal for him to change his course and make a crouching,
silent detour around a clump of aspens. In a sunny patch of grass
a dozen or more big gobblers stood, all suspiciously facing in his
direction, heads erect, with that wild aspect peculiar to their species.
Old wild turkey gobblers were the most difficult game to stalk. Dale
shot two of them. The others began to run like ostriches, thudding over
the ground, spreading their wings, and with that running start launched
their heavy bodies into whirring flight. They flew low, at about the
height of a man from the grass, and vanished in the woods.

Dale threw the two turkeys over his shoulder and went on his way. Soon
he came to a break in the forest level, from which he gazed down a
league-long slope of pine and cedar, out upon the bare, glistening
desert, stretching away, endlessly rolling out to the dim, dark horizon
line.

The little hamlet of Pine lay on the last level of sparsely timbered
forest. A road, running parallel with a dark-watered, swift-flowing
stream, divided the cluster of log cabins from which columns of blue
smoke drifted lazily aloft. Fields of corn and fields of oats, yellow
in the sunlight, surrounded the village; and green pastures, dotted
with horses and cattle, reached away to the denser woodland. This site
appeared to be a natural clearing, for there was no evidence of cut
timber. The scene was rather too wild to be pastoral, but it was serene,
tranquil, giving the impression of a remote community, prosperous and
happy, drifting along the peaceful tenor of sequestered lives.

Dale halted before a neat little log cabin and a little patch of garden
bordered with sunflowers. His call was answered by an old woman, gray
and bent, but remarkably spry, who appeared at the door.

“Why, land's sakes, if it ain't Milt Dale!” she exclaimed, in welcome.

“Reckon it's me, Mrs. Cass,” he replied. “An' I've brought you a
turkey.”

“Milt, you're that good boy who never forgits old Widow Cass.... What
a gobbler! First one I've seen this fall. My man Tom used to fetch home
gobblers like that.... An' mebbe he'll come home again sometime.”

Her husband, Tom Cass, had gone into the forest years before and had
never returned. But the old woman always looked for him and never gave
up hope.

“Men have been lost in the forest an' yet come back,” replied Dale, as
he had said to her many a time.

“Come right in. You air hungry, I know. Now, son, when last did you eat
a fresh egg or a flapjack?”

“You should remember,” he answered, laughing, as he followed her into a
small, clean kitchen.

“Laws-a'-me! An' thet's months ago,” she replied, shaking her gray head.
“Milt, you should give up that wild life--an' marry--an' have a home.”

“You always tell me that.”

“Yes, an' I'll see you do it yet.... Now you set there, an' pretty soon
I'll give you thet to eat which 'll make your mouth water.”

“What's the news, Auntie?” he asked.

“Nary news in this dead place. Why, nobody's been to Snowdrop in two
weeks!... Sary Jones died, poor old soul--she's better off--an' one of
my cows run away. Milt, she's wild when she gits loose in the woods.
An' you'll have to track her, 'cause nobody else can. An' John Dakker's
heifer was killed by a lion, an' Lem Harden's fast hoss--you know his
favorite--was stole by hoss-thieves. Lem is jest crazy. An' that reminds
me, Milt, where's your big ranger, thet you'd never sell or lend?”

“My horses are up in the woods, Auntie; safe, I reckon, from
horse-thieves.”

“Well, that's a blessin'. We've had some stock stole this summer, Milt,
an' no mistake.”

Thus, while preparing a meal for Dale, the old woman went on recounting
all that had happened in the little village since his last visit. Dale
enjoyed her gossip and quaint philosophy, and it was exceedingly good
to sit at her table. In his opinion, nowhere else could there have been
such butter and cream, such ham and eggs. Besides, she always had apple
pie, it seemed, at any time he happened in; and apple pie was one of
Dale's few regrets while up in the lonely forest.

“How's old Al Auchincloss?” presently inquired Dale.

“Poorly--poorly,” sighed Mrs. Cass. “But he tramps an' rides around
same as ever. Al's not long for this world.... An', Milt, that reminds
me--there's the biggest news you ever heard.”

“You don't say so!” exclaimed Dale, to encourage the excited old woman.

“Al has sent back to Saint Joe for his niece, Helen Rayner. She's to
inherit all his property. We've heard much of her--a purty lass, they
say.... Now, Milt Dale, here's your chance. Stay out of the woods an' go
to work.... You can marry that girl!”

“No chance for me, Auntie,” replied Dale, smiling.

The old woman snorted. “Much you know! Any girl would have you, Milt
Dale, if you'd only throw a kerchief.”

“Me!... An' why, Auntie?” he queried, half amused, half thoughtful. When
he got back to civilization he always had to adjust his thoughts to the
ideas of people.

“Why? I declare, Milt, you live so in the woods you're like a boy of
ten--an' then sometimes as old as the hills.... There's no young man to
compare with you, hereabouts. An' this girl--she'll have all the spunk
of the Auchinclosses.”

“Then maybe she'd not be such a catch, after all,” replied Dale.

“Wal, you've no cause to love them, that's sure. But, Milt, the
Auchincloss women are always good wives.”

“Dear Auntie, you're dreamin',” said Dale, soberly. “I want no wife. I'm
happy in the woods.”

“Air you goin' to live like an Injun all your days, Milt Dale?” she
queried, sharply.

“I hope so.”

“You ought to be ashamed. But some lass will change you, boy, an' mebbe
it'll be this Helen Rayner. I hope an' pray so to thet.”

“Auntie, supposin' she did change me. She'd never change old Al. He
hates me, you know.”

“Wal, I ain't so sure, Milt. I met Al the other day. He inquired for
you, an' said you was wild, but he reckoned men like you was good for
pioneer settlements. Lord knows the good turns you've done this village!
Milt, old Al doesn't approve of your wild life, but he never had no hard
feelin's till thet tame lion of yours killed so many of his sheep.”

“Auntie, I don't believe Tom ever killed Al's sheep,” declared Dale,
positively.

“Wal, Al thinks so, an' many other people,” replied Mrs. Cass, shaking
her gray head doubtfully. “You never swore he didn't. An' there was them
two sheep-herders who did swear they seen him.”

“They only saw a cougar. An' they were so scared they ran.”

“Who wouldn't? Thet big beast is enough to scare any one. For land's
sakes, don't ever fetch him down here again! I'll never forgit the time
you did. All the folks an' children an' hosses in Pine broke an' run
thet day.”

“Yes; but Tom wasn't to blame. Auntie, he's the tamest of my pets.
Didn't he try to put his head on your lap an' lick your hand?”

“Wal, Milt, I ain't gainsayin' your cougar pet didn't act better 'n a
lot of people I know. Fer he did. But the looks of him an' what's been
said was enough for me.”

“An' what's all that, Auntie?”

“They say he's wild when out of your sight. An' thet he'd trail an' kill
anythin' you put him after.”

“I trained him to be just that way.”

“Wal, leave Tom to home up in the woods--when you visit us.”

Dale finished his hearty meal, and listened awhile longer to the old
woman's talk; then, taking his rifle and the other turkey, he bade her
good-by. She followed him out.

“Now, Milt, you'll come soon again, won't you--jest to see Al's
niece--who'll be here in a week?”

“I reckon I'll drop in some day.... Auntie, have you seen my friends,
the Mormon boys?”

“No, I 'ain't seen them an' don't want to,” she retorted. “Milt Dale, if
any one ever corrals you it'll be Mormons.”

“Don't worry, Auntie. I like those boys. They often see me up in the
woods an' ask me to help them track a hoss or help kill some fresh
meat.”

“They're workin' for Beasley now.”

“Is that so?” rejoined Dale, with a sudden start. “An' what doin'?”

“Beasley is gettin' so rich he's buildin' a fence, an' didn't have
enough help, so I hear.”

“Beasley gettin' rich!” repeated Dale, thoughtfully. “More sheep an'
horses an' cattle than ever, I reckon?”

“Laws-a'-me! Why, Milt, Beasley 'ain't any idea what he owns. Yes, he's
the biggest man in these parts, since poor old Al's took to failin'. I
reckon Al's health ain't none improved by Beasley's success. They've bad
some bitter quarrels lately--so I hear. Al ain't what he was.”

Dale bade good-by again to his old friend and strode away, thoughtful
and serious. Beasley would not only be difficult to circumvent, but he
would be dangerous to oppose. There did not appear much doubt of his
driving his way rough-shod to the dominance of affairs there in Pine.
Dale, passing down the road, began to meet acquaintances who had
hearty welcome for his presence and interest in his doings, so that his
pondering was interrupted for the time being. He carried the turkey to
another old friend, and when he left her house he went on to the village
store. This was a large log cabin, roughly covered with clapboards, with
a wide plank platform in front and a hitching-rail in the road. Several
horses were standing there, and a group of lazy, shirt-sleeved loungers.

“I'll be doggoned if it ain't Milt Dale!” exclaimed one.

“Howdy, Milt, old buckskin! Right down glad to see you,” greeted
another.

“Hello, Dale! You air shore good for sore eyes,” drawled still another.

After a long period of absence Dale always experienced a singular warmth
of feeling when he met these acquaintances. It faded quickly when he got
back to the intimacy of his woodland, and that was because the people of
Pine, with few exceptions--though they liked him and greatly admired his
outdoor wisdom--regarded him as a sort of nonentity. Because he loved
the wild and preferred it to village and range life, they had classed
him as not one of them. Some believed him lazy; others believed him
shiftless; others thought him an Indian in mind and habits; and there
were many who called him slow-witted. Then there was another side to
their regard for him, which always afforded him good-natured amusement.
Two of this group asked him to bring in some turkey or venison; another
wanted to hunt with him. Lem Harden came out of the store and appealed
to Dale to recover his stolen horse. Lem's brother wanted a wild-running
mare tracked and brought home. Jesse Lyons wanted a colt broken, and
broken with patience, not violence, as was the method of the hard-riding
boys at Pine. So one and all they besieged Dale with their selfish
needs, all unconscious of the flattering nature of these overtures. And
on the moment there happened by two women whose remarks, as they entered
the store, bore strong testimony to Dale's personality.

“If there ain't Milt Dale!” exclaimed the older of the two. “How lucky!
My cow's sick, an' the men are no good doctorin'. I'll jest ask Milt
over.”

“No one like Milt!” responded the other woman, heartily.

“Good day there--you Milt Dale!” called the first speaker. “When you git
away from these lazy men come over.”

Dale never refused a service, and that was why his infrequent visits to
Pine were wont to be prolonged beyond his own pleasure.

Presently Beasley strode down the street, and when about to enter the
store he espied Dale.

“Hullo there, Milt!” he called, cordially, as he came forward with
extended hand. His greeting was sincere, but the lightning glance he
shot over Dale was not born of his pleasure. Seen in daylight, Beasley
was a big, bold, bluff man, with strong, dark features. His aggressive
presence suggested that he was a good friend and a bad enemy.

Dale shook hands with him.

“How are you, Beasley?”

“Ain't complainin', Milt, though I got more work than I can rustle.
Reckon you wouldn't take a job bossin' my sheep-herders?”

“Reckon I wouldn't,” replied Dale. “Thanks all the same.”

“What's goin' on up in the woods?”

“Plenty of turkey an' deer. Lots of bear, too. The Indians have worked
back on the south side early this fall. But I reckon winter will come
late an' be mild.”

“Good! An' where 're you headin' from?”

“'Cross-country from my camp,” replied Dale, rather evasively.

“Your camp! Nobody ever found that yet,” declared Beasley, gruffly.

“It's up there,” said Dale.

“Reckon you've got that cougar chained in your cabin door?” queried
Beasley, and there was a barely distinguishable shudder of his muscular
frame. Also the pupils dilated in his hard brown eyes.

“Tom ain't chained. An' I haven't no cabin, Beasley.”

“You mean to tell me that big brute stays in your camp without bein'
hog-tied or corralled!” demanded Beasley.

“Sure he does.”

“Beats me! But, then, I'm queer on cougars. Have had many a cougar trail
me at night. Ain't sayin' I was scared. But I don't care for that brand
of varmint.... Milt, you goin' to stay down awhile?”

“Yes, I'll hang around some.”

“Come over to the ranch. Glad to see you any time. Some old huntin'
pards of yours are workin' for me.”

“Thanks, Beasley. I reckon I'll come over.”

Beasley turned away and took a step, and then, as if with an
after-thought, he wheeled again.

“Suppose you've heard about old Al Auchincloss bein' near petered out?”
 queried Beasley. A strong, ponderous cast of thought seemed to emanate
from his features. Dale divined that Beasley's next step would be to
further his advancement by some word or hint.

“Widow Cass was tellin' me all the news. Too bad about old Al,” replied
Dale.

“Sure is. He's done for. An' I'm sorry--though Al's never been square--”

“Beasley,” interrupted Dale, quickly, “you can't say that to me. Al
Auchincloss always was the whitest an' squarest man in this sheep
country.”

Beasley gave Dale a fleeting, dark glance.

“Dale, what you think ain't goin' to influence feelin' on this range,”
 returned Beasley, deliberately. “You live in the woods an'--”

“Reckon livin' in the woods I might think--an' know a whole lot,”
 interposed Dale, just as deliberately. The group of men exchanged
surprised glances. This was Milt Dale in different aspect. And Beasley
did not conceal a puzzled surprise.

“About what--now?” he asked, bluntly.

“Why, about what's goin' on in Pine,” replied Dale.

Some of the men laughed.

“Shore lots goin' on--an' no mistake,” put in Lem Harden.

Probably the keen Beasley had never before considered Milt Dale as a
responsible person; certainly never one in any way to cross his trail.
But on the instant, perhaps, some instinct was born, or he divined an
antagonism in Dale that was both surprising and perplexing.

“Dale, I've differences with Al Auchincloss--have had them for years,”
 said Beasley. “Much of what he owns is mine. An' it's goin' to come to
me. Now I reckon people will be takin' sides--some for me an' some for
Al. Most are for me.... Where do you stand? Al Auchincloss never had no
use for you, an' besides he's a dyin' man. Are you goin' on his side?”

“Yes, I reckon I am.”

“Wal, I'm glad you've declared yourself,” rejoined Beasley, shortly,
and he strode away with the ponderous gait of a man who would brush any
obstacle from his path.

“Milt, thet's bad--makin' Beasley sore at you,” said Lem Harden. “He's
on the way to boss this outfit.”

“He's sure goin' to step into Al's boots,” said another.

“Thet was white of Milt to stick up fer poor old Al,” declared Lem's
brother.

Dale broke away from them and wended a thoughtful way down the road. The
burden of what he knew about Beasley weighed less heavily upon him, and
the close-lipped course he had decided upon appeared wisest. He needed
to think before undertaking to call upon old Al Auchincloss; and to that
end he sought an hour's seclusion under the pines.



CHAPTER III

In the afternoon, Dale, having accomplished some tasks imposed upon him
by his old friends at Pine, directed slow steps toward the Auchincloss
ranch.

The flat, square stone and log cabin of unusually large size stood upon
a little hill half a mile out of the village. A home as well as a fort,
it had been the first structure erected in that region, and the process
of building had more than once been interrupted by Indian attacks.
The Apaches had for some time, however, confined their fierce raids to
points south of the White Mountain range. Auchincloss's house looked
down upon barns and sheds and corrals of all sizes and shapes, and
hundreds of acres of well-cultivated soil. Fields of oats waved gray and
yellow in the afternoon sun; an immense green pasture was divided by a
willow-bordered brook, and here were droves of horses, and out on the
rolling bare flats were straggling herds of cattle.

The whole ranch showed many years of toil and the perseverance of
man. The brook irrigated the verdant valley between the ranch and the
village. Water for the house, however, came down from the high, wooded
slope of the mountain, and had been brought there by a simple expedient.
Pine logs of uniform size had been laid end to end, with a deep trough
cut in them, and they made a shining line down the slope, across the
valley, and up the little hill to the Auchincloss home. Near the house
the hollowed halves of logs had been bound together, making a crude
pipe. Water ran uphill in this case, one of the facts that made the
ranch famous, as it had always been a wonder and delight to the small
boys of Pine. The two good women who managed Auchincloss's large
household were often shocked by the strange things that floated into
their kitchen with the ever-flowing stream of clear, cold mountain
water.

As it happened this day Dale encountered Al Auchincloss sitting in the
shade of a porch, talking to some of his sheep-herders and stockmen.
Auchincloss was a short man of extremely powerful build and great width
of shoulder. He had no gray hairs, and he did not look old, yet there
was in his face a certain weariness, something that resembled sloping
lines of distress, dim and pale, that told of age and the ebb-tide of
vitality. His features, cast in large mold, were clean-cut and comely,
and he had frank blue eyes, somewhat sad, yet still full of spirit.

Dale had no idea how his visit would be taken, and he certainly would
not have been surprised to be ordered off the place. He had not set foot
there for years. Therefore it was with surprise that he saw Auchincloss
wave away the herders and take his entrance without any particular
expression.

“Howdy, Al! How are you?” greeted Dale, easily, as he leaned his rifle
against the log wall.

Auchincloss did not rise, but he offered his hand.

“Wal, Milt Dale, I reckon this is the first time I ever seen you that I
couldn't lay you flat on your back,” replied the rancher. His tone was
both testy and full of pathos.

“I take it you mean you ain't very well,” replied Dale. “I'm sorry, Al.”

“No, it ain't thet. Never was sick in my life. I'm just played out, like
a hoss thet had been strong an' willin', an' did too much.... Wal, you
don't look a day older, Milt. Livin' in the woods rolls over a man's
head.”

“Yes, I'm feelin' fine, an' time never bothers me.”

“Wal, mebbe you ain't such a fool, after all. I've wondered
lately--since I had time to think.... But, Milt, you don't git no
richer.”

“Al, I have all I want an' need.”

“Wal, then, you don't support anybody; you don't do any good in the
world.”

“We don't agree, Al,” replied Dale, with his slow smile.

“Reckon we never did.... An' you jest come over to pay your respects to
me, eh?”

“Not altogether,” answered Dale, ponderingly. “First off, I'd like to
say I'll pay back them sheep you always claimed my tame cougar killed.”

“You will! An' how'd you go about that?”

“Wasn't very many sheep, was there?

“A matter of fifty head.”

“So many! Al, do you still think old Tom killed them sheep?”

“Humph! Milt, I know damn well he did.”

“Al, now how could you know somethin' I don't? Be reasonable, now. Let's
don't fall out about this again. I'll pay back the sheep. Work it out--”

“Milt Dale, you'll come down here an' work out that fifty head of
sheep!” ejaculated the old rancher, incredulously.

“Sure.”

“Wal, I'll be damned!” He sat back and gazed with shrewd eyes at Dale.
“What's got into you, Milt? Hev you heard about my niece thet's comin',
an' think you'll shine up to her?”

“Yes, Al, her comin' has a good deal to do with my deal,” replied Dale,
soberly. “But I never thought to shine up to her, as you hint.”

“Haw! Haw! You're just like all the other colts hereabouts. Reckon it's
a good sign, too. It'll take a woman to fetch you out of the woods. But,
boy, this niece of mine, Helen Rayner, will stand you on your head.
I never seen her. They say she's jest like her mother. An' Nell
Auchincloss--what a girl she was!”

Dale felt his face grow red. Indeed, this was strange conversation for
him.

“Honest, Al--” he began.

“Son, don't lie to an old man.”

“Lie! I wouldn't lie to any one. Al, it's only men who live in towns an'
are always makin' deals. I live in the forest, where there's nothin' to
make me lie.”

“Wal, no offense meant, I'm sure,” responded Auchincloss. “An' mebbe
there's somethin' in what you say... We was talkin' about them sheep
your big cat killed. Wal, Milt, I can't prove it, that's sure. An' mebbe
you'll think me doddery when I tell you my reason. It wasn't what them
greaser herders said about seein' a cougar in the herd.”

“What was it, then?” queried Dale, much interested.

“Wal, thet day a year ago I seen your pet. He was lyin' in front of the
store an' you was inside tradin', fer supplies, I reckon. It was like
meetin' an enemy face to face. Because, damn me if I didn't know that
cougar was guilty when he looked in my eyes! There!”

The old rancher expected to be laughed at. But Dale was grave.

“Al, I know how you felt,” he replied, as if they were discussing an
action of a human being. “Sure I'd hate to doubt old Tom. But he's a
cougar. An' the ways of animals are strange... Anyway, Al, I'll make
good the loss of your sheep.”

“No, you won't,” rejoined Auchincloss, quickly. “We'll call it off. I'm
takin' it square of you to make the offer. Thet's enough. So forget your
worry about work, if you had any.”

“There's somethin' else, Al, I wanted to say,” began Dale, with
hesitation. “An' it's about Beasley.”

Auchincloss started violently, and a flame of red shot into his face.
Then he raised a big hand that shook. Dale saw in a flash how the old
man's nerves had gone.

“Don't mention--thet--thet greaser--to me!” burst out the rancher. “It
makes me see--red.... Dale, I ain't overlookin' that you spoke up fer
me to-day--stood fer my side. Lem Harden told me. I was glad. An' thet's
why--to-day--I forgot our old quarrel.... But not a word about thet
sheep-thief--or I'll drive you off the place!”

“But, Al--be reasonable,” remonstrated Dale. “It's necessary thet I
speak of--of Beasley.”

“It ain't. Not to me. I won't listen.”

“Reckon you'll have to, Al,” returned Dale. “Beasley's after your
property. He's made a deal--”

“By Heaven! I know that!” shouted Auchincloss, tottering up, with his
face now black-red. “Do you think thet's new to me? Shut up, Dale! I
can't stand it.”

“But Al--there's worse,” went on Dale, hurriedly. “Worse! Your life's
threatened--an' your niece, Helen--she's to be--”

“Shut up--an' clear out!” roared Auchincloss, waving his huge fists.

He seemed on the verge of a collapse as, shaking all over, he backed
into the door. A few seconds of rage had transformed him into a pitiful
old man.

“But, Al--I'm your friend--” began Dale, appealingly.

“Friend, hey?” returned the rancher, with grim, bitter passion. “Then
you're the only one.... Milt Dale, I'm rich an' I'm a dyin' man. I trust
nobody... But, you wild hunter--if you're my friend--prove it!... Go
kill thet greaser sheep-thief! DO somethin'--an' then come talk to me!”

With that he lurched, half falling, into the house, and slammed the
door.

Dale stood there for a blank moment, and then, taking up his rifle, he
strode away.

Toward sunset Dale located the camp of his four Mormon friends, and
reached it in time for supper.

John, Roy, Joe, and Hal Beeman were sons of a pioneer Mormon who had
settled the little community of Snowdrop. They were young men in years,
but hard labor and hard life in the open had made them look matured.
Only a year's difference in age stood between John and Roy, and between
Roy and Joe, and likewise Joe and Hal. When it came to appearance they
were difficult to distinguish from one another. Horsemen, sheep-herders,
cattle-raisers, hunters--they all possessed long, wiry, powerful frames,
lean, bronzed, still faces, and the quiet, keen eyes of men used to the
open.

Their camp was situated beside a spring in a cove surrounded by aspens,
some three miles from Pine; and, though working for Beasley, near
the village, they had ridden to and fro from camp, after the habit of
seclusion peculiar to their kind.

Dale and the brothers had much in common, and a warm regard had sprang
up. But their exchange of confidences had wholly concerned things
pertaining to the forest. Dale ate supper with them, and talked as usual
when he met them, without giving any hint of the purpose forming in his
mind. After the meal he helped Joe round up the horses, hobble them for
the night, and drive them into a grassy glade among the pines. Later,
when the shadows stole through the forest on the cool wind, and the
camp-fire glowed comfortably, Dale broached the subject that possessed
him.

“An' so you're working for Beasley?” he queried, by way of starting
conversation.

“We was,” drawled John. “But to-day, bein' the end of our month, we got
our pay an' quit. Beasley sure was sore.”

“Why'd you knock off?”

John essayed no reply, and his brothers all had that quiet, suppressed
look of knowledge under restraint.

“Listen to what I come to tell you, then you'll talk,” went on Dale. And
hurriedly he told of Beasley's plot to abduct Al Auchincloss's niece and
claim the dying man's property.

When Dale ended, rather breathlessly, the Mormon boys sat without any
show of surprise or feeling. John, the eldest, took up a stick and
slowly poked the red embers of the fire, making the white sparks fly.

“Now, Milt, why'd you tell us thet?” he asked, guardedly.

“You're the only friends I've got,” replied Dale. “It didn't seem safe
for me to talk down in the village. I thought of you boys right off. I
ain't goin' to let Snake Anson get that girl. An' I need help, so I come
to you.”

“Beasley's strong around Pine, an' old Al's weakenin'. Beasley will git
the property, girl or no girl,” said John.

“Things don't always turn out as they look. But no matter about that.
The girl deal is what riled me.... She's to arrive at Magdalena on
the sixteenth, an' take stage for Snowdrop.... Now what to do? If she
travels on that stage I'll be on it, you bet. But she oughtn't to be in
it at all. ... Boys, somehow I'm goin' to save her. Will you help me? I
reckon I've been in some tight corners for you. Sure, this 's different.
But are you my friends? You know now what Beasley is. An' you're all
lost at the hands of Snake Anson's gang. You've got fast hosses, eyes
for trackin', an' you can handle a rifle. You're the kind of fellows I'd
want in a tight pinch with a bad gang. Will you stand by me or see me go
alone?”

Then John Beeman, silently, and with pale face, gave Dale's hand a
powerful grip, and one by one the other brothers rose to do likewise.
Their eyes flashed with hard glint and a strange bitterness hovered
around their thin lips.

“Milt, mebbe we know what Beasley is better 'n you,” said John, at
length. “He ruined my father. He's cheated other Mormons. We boys have
proved to ourselves thet he gets the sheep Anson's gang steals.... An'
drives the herds to Phenix! Our people won't let us accuse Beasley. So
we've suffered in silence. My father always said, let some one else say
the first word against Beasley, an' you've come to us!”

Roy Beeman put a hand on Dale's shoulder. He, perhaps, was the keenest
of the brothers and the one to whom adventure and peril called most.
He had been oftenest with Dale, on many a long trail, and he was the
hardest rider and the most relentless tracker in all that range country.

“An' we're goin' with you,” he said, in a strong and rolling voice.

They resumed their seats before the fire. John threw on more wood, and
with a crackling and sparkling the blaze curled up, fanned by the wind.
As twilight deepened into night the moan in the pines increased to a
roar. A pack of coyotes commenced to pierce the air in staccato cries.

The five young men conversed long and earnestly, considering, planning,
rejecting ideas advanced by each. Dale and Roy Beeman suggested most of
what became acceptable to all. Hunters of their type resembled explorers
in slow and deliberate attention to details. What they had to deal with
here was a situation of unlimited possibilities; the horses and outfit
needed; a long detour to reach Magdalena unobserved; the rescue of a
strange girl who would no doubt be self-willed and determined to ride
on the stage--the rescue forcible, if necessary; the fight and the
inevitable pursuit; the flight into the forest, and the safe delivery of
the girl to Auchincloss.

“Then, Milt, will we go after Beasley?” queried Roy Beeman,
significantly.

Dale was silent and thoughtful.

“Sufficient unto the day!” said John. “An' fellars, let's go to bed.”

They rolled out their tarpaulins, Dale sharing Roy's blankets, and soon
were asleep, while the red embers slowly faded, and the great roar of
wind died down, and the forest stillness set in.



CHAPTER IV

Helen Rayner had been on the westbound overland train fully twenty-four
hours before she made an alarming discovery.

Accompanied by her sister Bo, a precocious girl of sixteen, Helen had
left St. Joseph with a heart saddened by farewells to loved ones at
home, yet full of thrilling and vivid anticipations of the strange life
in the Far West. All her people had the pioneer spirit; love of change,
action, adventure, was in her blood. Then duty to a widowed mother
with a large and growing family had called to Helen to accept this rich
uncle's offer. She had taught school and also her little brothers and
sisters; she had helped along in other ways. And now, though the
tearing up of the roots of old loved ties was hard, this opportunity was
irresistible in its call. The prayer of her dreams had been answered. To
bring good fortune to her family; to take care of this beautiful, wild
little sister; to leave the yellow, sordid, humdrum towns for the great,
rolling, boundless open; to live on a wonderful ranch that was some day
to be her own; to have fulfilled a deep, instinctive, and undeveloped
love of horses, cattle, sheep, of desert and mountain, of trees and
brooks and wild flowers--all this was the sum of her most passionate
longings, now in some marvelous, fairylike way to come true.

A check to her happy anticipations, a blank, sickening dash of cold
water upon her warm and intimate dreams, had been the discovery
that Harve Riggs was on the train. His presence could mean only one
thing--that he had followed her. Riggs had been the worst of many
sore trials back there in St. Joseph. He had possessed some claim or
influence upon her mother, who favored his offer of marriage to Helen;
he was neither attractive, nor good, nor industrious, nor anything that
interested her; he was the boastful, strutting adventurer, not genuinely
Western, and he affected long hair and guns and notoriety. Helen had
suspected the veracity of the many fights he claimed had been his,
and also she suspected that he was not really big enough to be bad--as
Western men were bad. But on the train, in the station at La Junta, one
glimpse of him, manifestly spying upon her while trying to keep out of
her sight, warned Helen that she now might have a problem on her hands.

The recognition sobered her. All was not to be a road of roses to this
new home in the West. Riggs would follow her, if he could not accompany
her, and to gain his own ends he would stoop to anything. Helen felt the
startling realization of being cast upon her own resources, and then
a numbing discouragement and loneliness and helplessness. But these
feelings did not long persist in the quick pride and flash of her
temper. Opportunity knocked at her door and she meant to be at home to
it. She would not have been Al Auchincloss's niece if she had faltered.
And, when temper was succeeded by genuine anger, she could have laughed
to scorn this Harve Riggs and his schemes, whatever they were. Once
and for all she dismissed fear of him. When she left St. Joseph she had
faced the West with a beating heart and a high resolve to be worthy of
that West. Homes had to be made out there in that far country, so Uncle
Al had written, and women were needed to make homes. She meant to be one
of these women and to make of her sister another. And with the thought
that she would know definitely what to say to Riggs when he approached
her, sooner or later, Helen dismissed him from mind.

While the train was in motion, enabling Helen to watch the ever-changing
scenery, and resting her from the strenuous task of keeping Bo well in
hand at stations, she lapsed again into dreamy gaze at the pine forests
and the red, rocky gullies and the dim, bold mountains. She saw the sun
set over distant ranges of New Mexico--a golden blaze of glory, as new
to her as the strange fancies born in her, thrilling and fleeting by.
Bo's raptures were not silent, and the instant the sun sank and the
color faded she just as rapturously importuned Helen to get out the huge
basket of food they had brought from home.

They had two seats, facing each other, at the end of the coach, and
piled there, with the basket on top, was luggage that constituted all
the girls owned in the world. Indeed, it was very much more than they
had ever owned before, because their mother, in her care for them and
desire to have them look well in the eyes of this rich uncle, had spent
money and pains to give them pretty and serviceable clothes.

The girls sat together, with the heavy basket on their knees, and ate
while they gazed out at the cool, dark ridges. The train clattered
slowly on, apparently over a road that was all curves. And it was
supper-time for everybody in that crowded coach. If Helen had not been
so absorbed by the great, wild mountain-land she would have had more
interest in the passengers. As it was she saw them, and was amused
and thoughtful at the men and women and a few children in the car, all
middle-class people, poor and hopeful, traveling out there to the New
West to find homes. It was splendid and beautiful, this fact, yet it
inspired a brief and inexplicable sadness. From the train window, that
world of forest and crag, with its long bare reaches between, seemed so
lonely, so wild, so unlivable. How endless the distance! For hours and
miles upon miles no house, no hut, no Indian tepee! It was amazing, the
length and breadth of this beautiful land. And Helen, who loved brooks
and running streams, saw no water at all.

Then darkness settled down over the slow-moving panorama; a cool night
wind blew in at the window; white stars began to blink out of the blue.
The sisters, with hands clasped and heads nestled together, went to
sleep under a heavy cloak.


Early the next morning, while the girls were again delving into their
apparently bottomless basket, the train stopped at Las Vegas.

“Look! Look!” cried Bo, in thrilling voice. “Cowboys! Oh, Nell, look!”

Helen, laughing, looked first at her sister, and thought how most of all
she was good to look at. Bo was little, instinct with pulsating life,
and she had chestnut hair and dark-blue eyes. These eyes were flashing,
roguish, and they drew like magnets.

Outside on the rude station platform were railroad men, Mexicans, and
a group of lounging cowboys. Long, lean, bow-legged fellows they were,
with young, frank faces and intent eyes. One of them seemed particularly
attractive with his superb build, his red-bronze face and bright-red
scarf, his swinging gun, and the huge, long, curved spurs. Evidently
he caught Bo's admiring gaze, for, with a word to his companions, he
sauntered toward the window where the girls sat. His gait was singular,
almost awkward, as if he was not accustomed to walking. The long spurs
jingled musically. He removed his sombrero and stood at ease, frank,
cool, smiling. Helen liked him on sight, and, looking to see what effect
he had upon Bo, she found that young lady staring, frightened stiff.

“Good mawnin',” drawled the cowboy, with slow, good-humored smile. “Now
where might you-all be travelin'?”

The sound of his voice, the clean-cut and droll geniality; seemed new
and delightful to Helen.

“We go to Magdalena--then take stage for the White Mountains,” replied
Helen.

The cowboy's still, intent eyes showed surprise.

“Apache country, miss,” he said. “I reckon I'm sorry. Thet's shore no
place for you-all... Beggin' your pawdin--you ain't Mormons?”

“No. We're nieces of Al Auchincloss,” rejoined Helen.

“Wal, you don't say! I've been down Magdalena way an' heerd of Al....
Reckon you're goin' a-visitin'?”

“It's to be home for us.”

“Shore thet's fine. The West needs girls.... Yes, I've heerd of Al.
An old Arizona cattle-man in a sheep country! Thet's bad.... Now I'm
wonderin'--if I'd drift down there an' ask him for a job ridin' for
him--would I get it?”

His lazy smile was infectious and his meaning was as clear as crystal
water. The gaze he bent upon Bo somehow pleased Helen. The last year or
two, since Bo had grown prettier all the time, she had been a magnet for
admiring glances. This one of the cowboy's inspired respect and liking,
as well as amusement. It certainly was not lost upon Bo.

“My uncle once said in a letter that he never had enough men to run his
ranch,” replied Helen, smiling.

“Shore I'll go. I reckon I'd jest naturally drift that way--now.”

He seemed so laconic, so easy, so nice, that he could not have been
taken seriously, yet Helen's quick perceptions registered a daring, a
something that was both sudden and inevitable in him. His last word was
as clear as the soft look he fixed upon Bo.

Helen had a mischievous trait, which, subdue it as she would,
occasionally cropped out; and Bo, who once in her wilful life had been
rendered speechless, offered such a temptation.

“Maybe my little sister will put in a good word for you--to Uncle Al,”
 said Helen. Just then the train jerked, and started slowly. The cowboy
took two long strides beside the car, his heated boyish face almost on a
level with the window, his eyes, now shy and a little wistful, yet bold,
too, fixed upon Bo.

“Good-by--Sweetheart!” he called.

He halted--was lost to view.

“Well!” ejaculated Helen, contritely, half sorry, half amused. “What a
sudden young gentleman!”

Bo had blushed beautifully.

“Nell, wasn't he glorious!” she burst out, with eyes shining.

“I'd hardly call him that, but he was--nice,” replied Helen, much
relieved that Bo had apparently not taken offense at her.

It appeared plain that Bo resisted a frantic desire to look out of the
window and to wave her hand. But she only peeped out, manifestly to her
disappointment.

“Do you think he--he'll come to Uncle Al's?” asked Bo.

“Child, he was only in fun.”

“Nell, I'll bet you he comes. Oh, it'd be great! I'm going to love
cowboys. They don't look like that Harve Riggs who ran after you so.”

Helen sighed, partly because of the reminder of her odious suitor, and
partly because Bo's future already called mysteriously to the child.
Helen had to be at once a mother and a protector to a girl of intense
and wilful spirit.

One of the trainmen directed the girls' attention to a green, sloping
mountain rising to a bold, blunt bluff of bare rock; and, calling
it Starvation Peak, he told a story of how Indians had once driven
Spaniards up there and starved them. Bo was intensely interested, and
thereafter she watched more keenly than ever, and always had a question
for a passing trainman. The adobe houses of the Mexicans pleased her,
and, then the train got out into Indian country, where pueblos appeared
near the track and Indians with their bright colors and shaggy wild
mustangs--then she was enraptured.

“But these Indians are peaceful!” she exclaimed once, regretfully.

“Gracious, child! You don't want to see hostile Indians, do you?”
 queried Helen.

“I do, you bet,” was the frank rejoinder.

“Well, I'LL bet that I'll be sorry I didn't leave you with mother.”

“Nell--you never will!”


They reached Albuquerque about noon, and this important station, where
they had to change trains, had been the first dreaded anticipation of
the journey. It certainly was a busy place--full of jabbering Mexicans,
stalking, red-faced, wicked-looking cowboys, lolling Indians. In the
confusion Helen would have been hard put to it to preserve calmness,
with Bo to watch, and all that baggage to carry, and the other train to
find; but the kindly brakeman who had been attentive to them now helped
them off the train into the other--a service for which Helen was very
grateful.

“Albuquerque's a hard place,” confided the trainman. “Better stay in the
car--and don't hang out the windows.... Good luck to you!”

Only a few passengers were in the car and they were Mexicans at the
forward end. This branch train consisted of one passenger-coach, with a
baggage-car, attached to a string of freight-cars. Helen told herself,
somewhat grimly, that soon she would know surely whether or not her
suspicions of Harve Riggs had warrant. If he was going on to Magdalena
on that day he must go in this coach. Presently Bo, who was not obeying
admonitions, drew her head out of the window. Her eyes were wide in
amaze, her mouth open.

“Nell! I saw that man Riggs!” she whispered. “He's going to get on this
train.”

“Bo, I saw him yesterday,” replied Helen, soberly.

“He's followed you--the--the--”

“Now, Bo, don't get excited,” remonstrated Helen. “We've left home now.
We've got to take things as they come. Never mind if Riggs has followed
me. I'll settle him.”

“Oh! Then you won't speak--have anything to do with him?”

“I won't if I can help it.”

Other passengers boarded the train, dusty, uncouth, ragged men, and
some hard-featured, poorly clad women, marked by toil, and several more
Mexicans. With bustle and loud talk they found their several seats.

Then Helen saw Harve Riggs enter, burdened with much luggage. He was a
man of about medium height, of dark, flashy appearance, cultivating long
black mustache and hair. His apparel was striking, as it consisted of
black frock-coat, black trousers stuffed in high, fancy-topped boots,
an embroidered vest, and flowing tie, and a black sombrero. His belt and
gun were prominent. It was significant that he excited comment among the
other passengers.

When he had deposited his pieces of baggage he seemed to square himself,
and, turning abruptly, approached the seat occupied by the girls. When
he reached it he sat down upon the arm of the one opposite, took off
his sombrero, and deliberately looked at Helen. His eyes were light,
glinting, with hard, restless quiver, and his mouth was coarse and
arrogant. Helen had never seen him detached from her home surroundings,
and now the difference struck cold upon her heart.

“Hello, Nell!” he said. “Surprised to see me?”

“No,” she replied, coldly.

“I'll gamble you are.”

“Harve Riggs, I told you the day before I left home that nothing you
could do or say mattered to me.”

“Reckon that ain't so, Nell. Any woman I keep track of has reason to
think. An' you know it.”

“Then you followed me--out here?” demanded Helen, and her voice, despite
her control, quivered with anger.

“I sure did,” he replied, and there was as much thought of himself in
the act as there was of her.

“Why? Why? It's useless--hopeless.”

“I swore I'd have you, or nobody else would,” he replied, and here, in
the passion of his voice there sounded egotism rather than hunger for
a woman's love. “But I reckon I'd have struck West anyhow, sooner or
later.”

“You're not going to--all the way--to Pine?” faltered Helen, momentarily
weakening.

“Nell, I'll camp on your trail from now on,” he declared.

Then Bo sat bolt-upright, with pale face and flashing eyes.

“Harve Riggs, you leave Nell alone,” she burst out, in ringing, brave
young voice. “I'll tell you what--I'll bet--if you follow her and
nag her any more, my uncle Al or some cowboy will run you out of the
country.”

“Hello, Pepper!” replied Riggs, coolly. “I see your manners haven't
improved an' you're still wild about cowboys.”

“People don't have good manners with--with--”

“Bo, hush!” admonished Helen. It was difficult to reprove Bo just then,
for that young lady had not the slightest fear of Riggs. Indeed, she
looked as if she could slap his face. And Helen realized that however
her intelligence had grasped the possibilities of leaving home for a
wild country, and whatever her determination to be brave, the actual
beginning of self-reliance had left her spirit weak. She would rise
out of that. But just now this flashing-eyed little sister seemed a
protector. Bo would readily adapt herself to the West, Helen thought,
because she was so young, primitive, elemental.

Whereupon Bo turned her back to Riggs and looked out of the window. The
man laughed. Then he stood up and leaned over Helen.

“Nell, I'm goin' wherever you go,” he said, steadily. “You can take that
friendly or not, just as it pleases you. But if you've got any sense
you'll not give these people out here a hunch against me. I might hurt
somebody.... An' wouldn't it be better--to act friends? For I'm goin' to
look after you, whether you like it or not.”

Helen had considered this man an annoyance, and later a menace, and now
she must declare open enmity with him. However disgusting the idea that
he considered himself a factor in her new life, it was the truth. He
existed, he had control over his movements. She could not change that.
She hated the need of thinking so much about him; and suddenly, with a
hot, bursting anger, she hated the man.

“You'll not look after me. I'll take care of myself,” she said, and
she turned her back upon him. She heard him mutter under his breath and
slowly move away down the car. Then Bo slipped a hand in hers.

“Never mind, Nell,” she whispered. “You know what old Sheriff Haines
said about Harve Riggs. 'A four-flush would-be gun-fighter! If he ever
strikes a real Western town he'll get run out of it.' I just wish my
red-faced cowboy had got on this train!”

Helen felt a rush of gladness that she had yielded to Bo's wild
importunities to take her West. The spirit which had made Bo
incorrigible at home probably would make her react happily to life out
in this free country. Yet Helen, with all her warmth and gratefulness,
had to laugh at her sister.

“Your red-faced cowboy! Why, Bo, you were scared stiff. And now you
claim him!”

“I certainly could love that fellow,” replied Bo, dreamily.

“Child, you've been saying that about fellows for a long time. And
you've never looked twice at any of them yet.”

“He was different.... Nell, I'll bet he comes to Pine.”

“I hope he does. I wish he was on this train. I liked his looks, Bo.”

“Well, Nell dear, he looked at ME first and last--so don't get your
hopes up.... Oh, the train's starting!... Good-by, Albu-ker--what's that
awful name?... Nell, let's eat dinner. I'm starved.”

Then Helen forgot her troubles and the uncertain future, and what with
listening to Bo's chatter, and partaking again of the endless good
things to eat in the huge basket, and watching the noble mountains, she
drew once more into happy mood.

The valley of the Rio Grande opened to view, wide near at hand in a
great gray-green gap between the bare black mountains, narrow in the
distance, where the yellow river wound away, glistening under a hot
sun. Bo squealed in glee at sight of naked little Mexican children that
darted into adobe huts as the train clattered by, and she exclaimed her
pleasure in the Indians, and the mustangs, and particularly in a group
of cowboys riding into town on spirited horses. Helen saw all Bo pointed
out, but it was to the wonderful rolling valley that her gaze clung
longest, and to the dim purple distance that seemed to hold something
from her. She had never before experienced any feeling like that; she
had never seen a tenth so far. And the sight awoke something strange
in her. The sun was burning hot, as she could tell when she put a hand
outside the window, and a strong wind blew sheets of dry dust at the
train. She gathered at once what tremendous factors in the Southwest
were the sun and the dust and the wind. And her realization made her
love them. It was there; the open, the wild, the beautiful, the lonely
land; and she felt the poignant call of blood in her--to seek, to
strive, to find, to live. One look down that yellow valley, endless
between its dark iron ramparts, had given her understanding of her
uncle. She must be like him in spirit, as it was claimed she resembled
him otherwise.

At length Bo grew tired of watching scenery that contained no life, and,
with her bright head on the faded cloak, she went to sleep. But Helen
kept steady, farseeing gaze out upon that land of rock and plain; and
during the long hours, as she watched through clouds of dust and veils
of heat, some strong and doubtful and restless sentiment seemed to
change and then to fix. It was her physical acceptance--her eyes and her
senses taking the West as she had already taken it in spirit.

A woman should love her home wherever fate placed her, Helen believed,
and not so much from duty as from delight and romance and living. How
could life ever be tedious or monotonous out here in this tremendous
vastness of bare earth and open sky, where the need to achieve made
thinking and pondering superficial?

It was with regret that she saw the last of the valley of the Rio
Grande, and then of its paralleled mountain ranges. But the miles
brought compensation in other valleys, other bold, black upheavals of
rock, and then again bare, boundless yellow plains, and sparsely cedared
ridges, and white dry washes, ghastly in the sunlight, and dazzling
beds of alkali, and then a desert space where golden and blue flowers
bloomed.

She noted, too, that the whites and yellows of earth and rock had
begun to shade to red--and this she knew meant an approach to
Arizona. Arizona, the wild, the lonely, the red desert, the green
plateau--Arizona with its thundering rivers, its unknown spaces, its
pasture-lands and timber-lands, its wild horses, cowboys, outlaws,
wolves and lions and savages! As to a boy, that name stirred and
thrilled and sang to her of nameless, sweet, intangible things,
mysterious and all of adventure. But she, being a girl of twenty, who
had accepted responsibilities, must conceal the depths of her heart and
that which her mother had complained was her misfortune in not being
born a boy.

Time passed, while Helen watched and learned and dreamed. The train
stopped, at long intervals, at wayside stations where there seemed
nothing but adobe sheds and lazy Mexicans, and dust and heat. Bo awoke
and began to chatter, and to dig into the basket. She learned from the
conductor that Magdalena was only two stations on. And she was full of
conjectures as to who would meet them, what would happen. So Helen was
drawn back to sober realities, in which there was considerable zest.
Assuredly she did not know what was going to happen. Twice Riggs passed
up and down the aisle, his dark face and light eyes and sardonic smile
deliberately forced upon her sight. But again Helen fought a growing
dread with contemptuous scorn. This fellow was not half a man. It was
not conceivable what he could do, except annoy her, until she arrived
at Pine. Her uncle was to meet her or send for her at Snowdrop, which
place, Helen knew, was distant a good long ride by stage from Magdalena.
This stage-ride was the climax and the dread of all the long journey, in
Helen's considerations.

“Oh, Nell!” cried Bo, with delight. “We're nearly there! Next station,
the conductor said.”

“I wonder if the stage travels at night,” said Helen, thoughtfully.

“Sure it does!” replied the irrepressible Bo.

The train, though it clattered along as usual, seemed to Helen to fly.
There the sun was setting over bleak New Mexican bluffs, Magdalena was
at hand, and night, and adventure. Helen's heart beat fast. She
watched the yellow plains where the cattle grazed; their presence, and
irrigation ditches and cottonwood-trees told her that the railroad part
of the journey was nearly ended. Then, at Bo's little scream, she
looked across the car and out of the window to see a line of low, flat,
red-adobe houses. The train began to slow down. Helen saw children run,
white children and Mexican together; then more houses, and high upon a
hill an immense adobe church, crude and glaring, yet somehow beautiful.

Helen told Bo to put on her bonnet, and, performing a like office for
herself, she was ashamed of the trembling of her fingers. There were
bustle and talk in the car.

The train stopped. Helen peered out to see a straggling crowd of
Mexicans and Indians, all motionless and stolid, as if trains or nothing
else mattered. Next Helen saw a white man, and that was a relief. He
stood out in front of the others. Tall and broad, somehow striking, he
drew a second glance that showed him to be a hunter clad in gray-fringed
buckskin, and carrying a rifle.



CHAPTER V

Here, there was no kindly brakeman to help the sisters with their
luggage. Helen bade Bo take her share; thus burdened, they made an
awkward and laborious shift to get off the train.

Upon the platform of the car a strong hand seized Helen's heavy bag,
with which she was straining, and a loud voice called out:

“Girls, we're here--sure out in the wild an' woolly West!”

The speaker was Riggs, and he had possessed himself of part of her
baggage with action and speech meant more to impress the curious
crowd than to be really kind. In the excitement of arriving Helen
had forgotten him. The manner of sudden reminder--the insincerity of
it--made her temper flash. She almost fell, encumbered as she was, in
her hurry to descend the steps. She saw the tall hunter in gray step
forward close to her as she reached for the bag Riggs held.

“Mr. Riggs, I'll carry my bag,” she said.

“Let me lug this. You help Bo with hers,” he replied, familiarly.

“But I want it,” she rejoined, quietly, with sharp determination. No
little force was needed to pull the bag away from Riggs.

“See here, Helen, you ain't goin' any farther with that joke, are you?”
 he queried, deprecatingly, and he still spoke quite loud.

“It's no joke to me,” replied Helen. “I told you I didn't want your
attention.”

“Sure. But that was temper. I'm your friend--from your home town. An' I
ain't goin' to let a quarrel keep me from lookin' after you till you're
safe at your uncle's.”

Helen turned her back upon him. The tall hunter had just helped Bo off
the car. Then Helen looked up into a smooth bronzed face and piercing
gray eyes.

“Are you Helen Rayner?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“My name's Dale. I've come to meet you.”

“Ah! My uncle sent you?” added Helen, in quick relief.

“No; I can't say Al sent me,” began the man, “but I reckon--”

He was interrupted by Riggs, who, grasping Helen by the arm, pulled her
back a step.

“Say, mister, did Auchincloss send you to meet my young friends here?”
 he demanded, arrogantly.

Dale's glance turned from Helen to Riggs. She could not read this quiet
gray gaze, but it thrilled her.

“No. I come on my own hook,” he answered.

“You'll understand, then--they're in my charge,” added Riggs.

This time the steady light-gray eyes met Helen's, and if there was not a
smile in them or behind them she was still further baffled.

“Helen, I reckon you said you didn't want this fellow's attention.”

“I certainly said that,” replied Helen, quickly. Just then Bo slipped
close to her and gave her arm a little squeeze. Probably Bo's thought
was like hers--here was a real Western man. That was her first
impression, and following swiftly upon it was a sensation of eased
nerves.

Riggs swaggered closer to Dale.

“Say, Buckskin, I hail from Texas--”

“You're wastin' our time an' we've need to hurry,” interrupted Dale. His
tone seemed friendly. “An' if you ever lived long in Texas you wouldn't
pester a lady an' you sure wouldn't talk like you do.”

“What!” shouted Riggs, hotly. He dropped his right hand significantly to
his hip.

“Don't throw your gun. It might go off,” said Dale.

Whatever Riggs's intention had been--and it was probably just what Dale
evidently had read it--he now flushed an angry red and jerked at his
gun.

Dale's hand flashed too swiftly for Helen's eye to follow it. But she
heard the thud as it struck. The gun went flying to the platform and
scattered a group of Indians and Mexicans.

“You'll hurt yourself some day,” said Dale.

Helen had never heard a slow, cool voice like this hunter's. Without
excitement or emotion or hurry, it yet seemed full and significant of
things the words did not mean. Bo uttered a strange little exultant cry.

Riggs's arm had dropped limp. No doubt it was numb. He stared, and his
predominating expression was surprise. As the shuffling crowd began to
snicker and whisper, Riggs gave Dale a malignant glance, shifted it to
Helen, and then lurched away in the direction of his gun.

Dale did not pay any more attention to him. Gathering up Helen's
baggage, he said, “Come on,” and shouldered a lane through the gaping
crowd. The girls followed close at his heels.

“Nell! what 'd I tell you?” whispered Bo. “Oh, you're all atremble!”

Helen was aware of her unsteadiness; anger and fear and relief in quick
succession had left her rather weak. Once through the motley crowd
of loungers, she saw an old gray stage-coach and four lean horses. A
grizzled, sunburned man sat on the driver's seat, whip and reins in
hand. Beside him was a younger man with rifle across his knees. Another
man, young, tall, lean, dark, stood holding the coach door open. He
touched his sombrero to the girls. His eyes were sharp as he addressed
Dale.

“Milt, wasn't you held up?”

“No. But some long-haired galoot was tryin' to hold up the girls.
Wanted to throw his gun on me. I was sure scared,” replied Dale, as he
deposited the luggage.

Bo laughed. Her eyes, resting upon Dale, were warm and bright. The
young man at the coach door took a second look at her, and then a smile
changed the dark hardness of his face.

Dale helped the girls up the high step into the stage, and then, placing
the lighter luggage, in with them, he threw the heavier pieces on top.

“Joe, climb up,” he said.

“Wal, Milt,” drawled the driver, “let's ooze along.”

Dale hesitated, with his hand on the door. He glanced at the crowd, now
edging close again, and then at Helen.

“I reckon I ought to tell you,” he said, and indecision appeared to
concern him.

“What?” exclaimed Helen.

“Bad news. But talkin' takes time. An' we mustn't lose any.”

“There's need of hurry?” queried Helen, sitting up sharply.

“I reckon.”

“Is this the stage to Snowdrop?

“No. That leaves in the mornin'. We rustled this old trap to get a start
to-night.”

“The sooner the better. But I--I don't understand,” said Helen,
bewildered.

“It'll not be safe for you to ride on the mornin' stage,” returned Dale.

“Safe! Oh, what do you mean?” exclaimed Helen. Apprehensively she gazed
at him and then back at Bo.

“Explainin' will take time. An' facts may change your mind. But if you
can't trust me--”

“Trust you!” interposed Helen, blankly. “You mean to take us to
Snowdrop?”

“I reckon we'd better go roundabout an' not hit Snowdrop,” he replied,
shortly.

“Then to Pine--to my uncle--Al Auchincloss?

“Yes, I'm goin' to try hard.”

Helen caught her breath. She divined that some peril menaced her. She
looked steadily, with all a woman's keenness, into this man's face. The
moment was one of the fateful decisions she knew the West had in store
for her. Her future and that of Bo's were now to be dependent upon her
judgments. It was a hard moment and, though she shivered inwardly, she
welcomed the initial and inevitable step. This man Dale, by his dress of
buckskin, must be either scout or hunter. His size, his action, the tone
of his voice had been reassuring. But Helen must decide from what she
saw in his face whether or not to trust him. And that face was
clear bronze, unlined, unshadowed, like a tranquil mask, clean-cut,
strong-jawed, with eyes of wonderful transparent gray.

“Yes, I'll trust you,” she said. “Get in, and let us hurry. Then you can
explain.”

“All ready, Bill. Send 'em along,” called Dale.

He had to stoop to enter the stage, and, once in, he appeared to fill
that side upon which he sat. Then the driver cracked his whip; the
stage lurched and began to roll; the motley crowd was left behind. Helen
awakened to the reality, as she saw Bo staring with big eyes at the
hunter, that a stranger adventure than she had ever dreamed of had began
with the rattling roll of that old stage-coach.

Dale laid off his sombrero and leaned forward, holding his rifle between
his knees. The light shone better upon his features now that he was
bareheaded. Helen had never seen a face like that, which at first glance
appeared darkly bronzed and hard, and then became clear, cold, aloof,
still, intense. She wished she might see a smile upon it. And now that
the die was cast she could not tell why she had trusted it. There was
singular force in it, but she did not recognize what kind of force. One
instant she thought it was stern, and the next that it was sweet, and
again that it was neither.

“I'm glad you've got your sister,” he said, presently.

“How did you know she's my sister?”

“I reckon she looks like you.”

“No one else ever thought so,” replied Helen, trying to smile.

Bo had no difficulty in smiling, as she said, “Wish I was half as pretty
as Nell.”

“Nell. Isn't your name Helen?” queried Dale.

“Yes. But my--some few call me Nell.”

“I like Nell better than Helen. An' what's yours?” went on Dale, looking
at Bo.

“Mine's Bo. Just plain B-o. Isn't it silly? But I wasn't asked when they
gave it to me,” she replied.

“Bo. It's nice an' short. Never heard it before. But I haven't met many
people for years.”

“Oh! we've left the town!” cried Bo. “Look, Nell! How bare! It's just
like desert.”

“It is desert. We've forty miles of that before we come to a hill or a
tree.”

Helen glanced out. A flat, dull-green expanse waved away from the road
on and on to a bright, dark horizon-line, where the sun was setting
rayless in a clear sky. Open, desolate, and lonely, the scene gave her a
cold thrill.

“Did your uncle Al ever write anythin' about a man named Beasley?” asked
Dale.

“Indeed he did,” replied Helen, with a start of surprise. “Beasley! That
name is familiar to us--and detestable. My uncle complained of this man
for years. Then he grew bitter--accused Beasley. But the last year or so
not a word!”

“Well, now,” began the hunter, earnestly, “let's get the bad news over.
I'm sorry you must be worried. But you must learn to take the West as it
is. There's good an' bad, maybe more bad. That's because the country's
young.... So to come right out with it--this Beasley hired a gang of
outlaws to meet the stage you was goin' in to Snowdrop--to-morrow--an'
to make off with you.”

“Make off with me?” ejaculated Helen, bewildered.

“Kidnap you! Which, in that gang, would be worse than killing you!”
 declared Dale, grimly, and he closed a huge fist on his knee.

Helen was utterly astounded.

“How hor-rible!” she gasped out. “Make off with me!... What in Heaven's
name for?”

Bo gave vent to a fierce little utterance.

“For reasons you ought to guess,” replied Dale, and he leaned forward
again. Neither his voice nor face changed in the least, but yet there
was a something about him that fascinated Helen. “I'm a hunter. I live
in the woods. A few nights ago I happened to be caught out in a storm
an' I took to an old log cabin. Soon as I got there I heard horses.
I hid up in the loft. Some men rode up an' come in. It was dark. They
couldn't see me. An' they talked. It turned out they were Snake Anson
an' his gang of sheep-thieves. They expected to meet Beasley there.
Pretty soon he came. He told Anson how old Al, your uncle, was on his
last legs--how he had sent for you to have his property when he died.
Beasley swore he had claims on Al. An' he made a deal with Anson to get
you out of the way. He named the day you were to reach Magdalena. With
Al dead an' you not there, Beasley could get the property. An' then he
wouldn't care if you did come to claim it. It 'd be too late.... Well,
they rode away that night. An' next day I rustled down to Pine. They're
all my friends at Pine, except old Al. But they think I'm queer. I
didn't want to confide in many people. Beasley is strong in Pine, an'
for that matter I suspect Snake Anson has other friends there besides
Beasley. So I went to see your uncle. He never had any use for me
because he thought I was lazy like an Indian. Old Al hates lazy men.
Then we fell out--or he fell out--because he believed a tame lion of
mine had killed some of his sheep. An' now I reckon that Tom might have
done it. I tried to lead up to this deal of Beasley's about you, but
old Al wouldn't listen. He's cross--very cross. An' when I tried to tell
him, why, he went right out of his head. Sent me off the ranch. Now I
reckon you begin to see what a pickle I was in. Finally I went to four
friends I could trust. They're Mormon boys--brothers. That's Joe out
on top, with the driver. I told them all about Beasley's deal an' asked
them to help me. So we planned to beat Anson an' his gang to Magdalena.
It happens that Beasley is as strong in Magdalena as he is in Pine.
An' we had to go careful. But the boys had a couple of friends
here--Mormons, too, who agreed to help us. They had this old stage....
An' here you are.” Dale spread out his big hands and looked gravely at
Helen and then at Bo.

“You're perfectly splendid!” cried Bo, ringingly. She was white; her
fingers were clenched; her eyes blazed.

Dale appeared startled out of his gravity, and surprised, then pleased.
A smile made his face like a boy's. Helen felt her body all rigid, yet
slightly trembling. Her hands were cold. The horror of this revelation
held her speechless. But in her heart she echoed Bo's exclamation of
admiration and gratitude.

“So far, then,” resumed Dale, with a heavy breath of relief. “No wonder
you're upset. I've a blunt way of talkin'.... Now we've thirty miles to
ride on this Snowdrop road before we can turn off. To-day sometime the
rest of the boys--Roy, John, an' Hal--were to leave Show Down, which's
a town farther on from Snowdrop. They have my horses an' packs besides
their own. Somewhere on the road we'll meet them--to-night, maybe--or
tomorrow. I hope not to-night, because that 'd mean Anson's gang was
ridin' in to Magdalena.”

Helen wrung her hands helplessly.

“Oh, have I no courage?” she whispered.

“Nell, I'm as scared as you are,” said Bo, consolingly, embracing her
sister.

“I reckon that's natural,” said Dale, as if excusing them. “But, scared
or not, you both brace up. It's a bad job. But I've done my best. An'
you'll be safer with me an' the Beeman boys than you'd be in Magdalena,
or anywhere else, except your uncle's.”

“Mr.--Mr. Dale,” faltered Helen, with her tears falling, “don't think me
a coward--or--or ungrateful. I'm neither. It's only I'm so--so shocked.
After all we hoped and expected--this--this--is such a--a terrible
surprise.”

“Never mind, Nell dear. Let's take what comes,” murmured Bo.

“That's the talk,” said Dale. “You see, I've come right out with the
worst. Maybe we'll get through easy. When we meet the boys we'll take to
the horses an' the trails. Can you ride?”

“Bo has been used to horses all her life and I ride fairly well,”
 responded Helen. The idea of riding quickened her spirit.

“Good! We may have some hard ridin' before I get you up to Pine. Hello!
What's that?”

Above the creaking, rattling, rolling roar of the stage Helen heard a
rapid beat of hoofs. A horse flashed by, galloping hard.

Dale opened the door and peered out. The stage rolled to a halt. He
stepped down and gazed ahead.

“Joe, who was that?” he queried.

“Nary me. An' Bill didn't know him, either,” replied Joe. “I seen him
'way back. He was ridin' some. An' he slowed up goin' past us. Now he's
runnin' again.”

Dale shook his head as if he did not like the circumstances.

“Milt, he'll never get by Roy on this road,” said Joe.

“Maybe he'll get by before Roy strikes in on the road.”

“It ain't likely.”

Helen could not restrain her fears. “Mr. Dale, you think he was a
messenger--going ahead to post that--that Anson gang?”

“He might be,” replied Dale, simply.

Then the young man called Joe leaned out from the seat above and called:
“Miss Helen, don't you worry. Thet fellar is more liable to stop lead
than anythin' else.”

His words, meant to be kind and reassuring, were almost as sinister to
Helen as the menace to her own life. Long had she known how cheap life
was held in the West, but she had only known it abstractly, and she had
never let the fact remain before her consciousness. This cheerful young
man spoke calmly of spilling blood in her behalf. The thought it roused
was tragic--for bloodshed was insupportable to her--and then the thrills
which followed were so new, strange, bold, and tingling that they were
revolting. Helen grew conscious of unplumbed depths, of instincts at
which she was amazed and ashamed.

“Joe, hand down that basket of grub--the small one with the canteen,”
 said Dale, reaching out a long arm. Presently he placed a cloth-covered
basket inside the stage. “Girls, eat all you want an' then some.”

“We have a basket half full yet,” replied Helen.

“You'll need it all before we get to Pine.... Now, I'll ride up on top
with the boys an' eat my supper. It'll be dark, presently, an' we'll
stop often to listen. But don't be scared.”

With that he took his rifle and, closing the door, clambered up to the
driver's seat. Then the stage lurched again and began to roll along.

Not the least thing to wonder at of this eventful evening was the way Bo
reached for the basket of food. Helen simply stared at her.

“Bo, you CAN'T EAT!” she exclaimed.

“I should smile I can,” replied that practical young lady. “And you're
going to if I have to stuff things in your mouth. Where's your wits,
Nell? He said we must eat. That means our strength is going to have some
pretty severe trials.... Gee! it's all great--just like a story! The
unexpected--why, he looks like a prince turned hunter!--long, dark,
stage journey--held up--fight--escape--wild ride on horses--woods
and camps and wild places--pursued--hidden in the forest--more hard
rides--then safe at the ranch. And of course he falls madly in love with
me--no, you, for I'll be true to my Las Vegas lover--”

“Hush, silly! Bo, tell me, aren't you SCARED?”

“Scared! I'm scared stiff. But if Western girls stand such things, we
can. No Western girl is going to beat ME!”

That brought Helen to a realization of the brave place she had given
herself in dreams, and she was at once ashamed of herself and wildly
proud of this little sister.

“Bo, thank Heaven I brought you with me!” exclaimed Helen, fervently.
“I'll eat if it chokes me.”

Whereupon she found herself actually hungry, and while she ate she
glanced out of the stage, first from one side and then from the other.
These windows had no glass and they let the cool night air blow in.
The sun had long since sunk. Out to the west, where a bold, black
horizon-line swept away endlessly, the sky was clear gold, shading
to yellow and blue above. Stars were out, pale and wan, but growing
brighter. The earth appeared bare and heaving, like a calm sea. The wind
bore a fragrance new to Helen, acridly sweet and clean, and it was so
cold it made her fingers numb.

“I heard some animal yelp,” said Bo, suddenly, and she listened with
head poised.

But Helen heard nothing save the steady clip-clop of hoofs, the clink of
chains, the creak and rattle of the old stage, and occasionally the low
voices of the men above.

When the girls had satisfied hunger and thirst, night had settled down
black. They pulled the cloaks up over them, and close together leaned
back in a corner of the seat and talked in whispers. Helen did not have
much to say, but Bo was talkative.

“This beats me!” she said once, after an interval. “Where are we, Nell?
Those men up there are Mormons. Maybe they are abducting us!”

“Mr. Dale isn't a Mormon,” replied Helen.

“How do you know?”

“I could tell by the way he spoke of his friends.”

“Well, I wish it wasn't so dark. I'm not afraid of men in daylight....
Nell, did you ever see such a wonderful looking fellow? What'd they call
him? Milt--Milt Dale. He said he lived in the woods. If I hadn't fallen
in love with that cowboy who called me--well, I'd be a goner now.”

After an interval of silence Bo whispered, startlingly, “Wonder if Harve
Riggs is following us now?”

“Of course he is,” replied Helen, hopelessly.

“He'd better look out. Why, Nell, he never saw--he never--what did Uncle
Al used to call it?--sav--savvied--that's it. Riggs never savvied that
hunter. But I did, you bet.”

“Savvied! What do you mean, Bo?”

“I mean that long-haired galoot never saw his real danger. But I felt
it. Something went light inside me. Dale never took him seriously at
all.”

“Riggs will turn up at Uncle Al's, sure as I'm born,” said Helen.

“Let him turn,” replied Bo, contemptuously. “Nell, don't you ever bother
your head again about him. I'll bet they're all men out here. And I
wouldn't be in Harve Riggs's boots for a lot.”

After that Bo talked of her uncle and his fatal illness, and from that
she drifted back to the loved ones at home, now seemingly at the other
side of the world, and then she broke down and cried, after which she
fell asleep on Helen's shoulder.

But Helen could not have fallen asleep if she had wanted to.

She had always, since she could remember, longed for a moving, active
life; and for want of a better idea she had chosen to dream of gipsies.
And now it struck her grimly that, if these first few hours of her
advent in the West were forecasts of the future, she was destined to
have her longings more than fulfilled.

Presently the stage rolled slower and slower, until it came to a halt.
Then the horses heaved, the harnesses clinked, the men whispered.
Otherwise there was an intense quiet. She looked out, expecting to
find it pitch-dark. It was black, yet a transparent blackness. To her
surprise she could see a long way. A shooting-star electrified her.
The men were listening. She listened, too, but beyond the slight sounds
about the stage she heard nothing. Presently the driver clucked to his
horses, and travel was resumed.

For a while the stage rolled on rapidly, evidently downhill, swaying
from side to side, and rattling as if about to fall to pieces. Then it
slowed on a level, and again it halted for a few moments, and once more
in motion it began a laborsome climb. Helen imagined miles had been
covered. The desert appeared to heave into billows, growing rougher, and
dark, round bushes dimly stood out. The road grew uneven and rocky, and
when the stage began another descent its violent rocking jolted Bo out
of her sleep and in fact almost out of Helen's arms.

“Where am I?” asked Bo, dazedly.

“Bo, you're having your heart's desire, but I can't tell you where you
are,” replied Helen.

Bo awakened thoroughly, which fact was now no wonder, considering the
jostling of the old stage.

“Hold on to me, Nell!... Is it a runaway?”

“We've come about a thousand miles like this, I think,” replied Helen.
“I've not a whole bone in my body.”

Bo peered out of the window.

“Oh, how dark and lonesome! But it'd be nice if it wasn't so cold. I'm
freezing.”

“I thought you loved cold air,” taunted Helen.

“Say, Nell, you begin to talk like yourself,” responded Bo.

It was difficult to hold on to the stage and each other and the cloak
all at once, but they succeeded, except in the roughest places, when
from time to time they were bounced around. Bo sustained a sharp rap on
the head.

“Oooooo!” she moaned. “Nell Rayner, I'll never forgive you for fetching
me on this awful trip.”

“Just think of your handsome Las Vegas cowboy,” replied Helen.

Either this remark subdued Bo or the suggestion sufficed to reconcile
her to the hardships of the ride.

Meanwhile, as they talked and maintained silence and tried to sleep, the
driver of the stage kept at his task after the manner of Western men who
knew how to get the best out of horses and bad roads and distance.

By and by the stage halted again and remained at a standstill for so
long, with the men whispering on top, that Helen and Bo were roused to
apprehension.

Suddenly a sharp whistle came from the darkness ahead.

“Thet's Roy,” said Joe Beeman, in a low voice.

“I reckon. An' meetin' us so quick looks bad,” replied Dale. “Drive on,
Bill.”

“Mebbe it seems quick to you,” muttered the driver, “but if we hain't
come thirty mile, an' if thet ridge thar hain't your turnin'-off place,
why, I don't know nothin'.”

The stage rolled on a little farther, while Helen and Bo sat clasping
each other tight, wondering with bated breath what was to be the next
thing to happen.

Then once more they were at a standstill. Helen heard the thud of boots
striking the ground, and the snorts of horses.

“Nell, I see horses,” whispered Bo, excitedly. “There, to the side of
the road... and here comes a man.... Oh, if he shouldn't be the one
they're expecting!”

Helen peered out to see a tall, dark form, moving silently, and beyond
it a vague outline of horses, and then pale gleams of what must have
been pack-loads.

Dale loomed up, and met the stranger in the road.

“Howdy, Milt? You got the girl sure, or you wouldn't be here,” said a
low voice.

“Roy, I've got two girls--sisters,” replied Dale.

The man Roy whistled softly under his breath. Then another lean, rangy
form strode out of the darkness, and was met by Dale.

“Now, boys--how about Anson's gang?” queried Dale.

“At Snowdrop, drinkin' an' quarrelin'. Reckon they'll leave there about
daybreak,” replied Roy.

“How long have you been here?”

“Mebbe a couple of hours.”

“Any horse go by?”

“No.”

“Roy, a strange rider passed us before dark. He was hittin' the road.
An' he's got by here before you came.”

“I don't like thet news,” replied Roy, tersely. “Let's rustle. With
girls on hossback you'll need all the start you can get. Hey, John?”

“Snake Anson shore can foller hoss tracks,” replied the third man.

“Milt, say the word,” went on Roy, as he looked up at the stars.
“Daylight not far away. Here's the forks of the road, an' your hosses,
an' our outfit. You can be in the pines by sunup.”

In the silence that ensued Helen heard the throb of her heart and
the panting little breaths of her sister. They both peered out, hands
clenched together, watching and listening in strained attention.

“It's possible that rider last night wasn't a messenger to Anson,” said
Dale. “In that case Anson won't make anythin' of our wheel tracks or
horse tracks. He'll go right on to meet the regular stage. Bill, can you
go back an' meet the stage comin' before Anson does?”

“Wal, I reckon so--an' take it easy at thet,” replied Bill.

“All right,” continued Dale, instantly. “John, you an' Joe an' Hal ride
back to meet the regular stage. An' when you meet it get on an' be on it
when Anson holds it up.”

“Thet's shore agreeable to me,” drawled John.

“I'd like to be on it, too,” said Roy, grimly.

“No. I'll need you till I'm safe in the woods. Bill, hand down the bags.
An' you, Roy, help me pack them. Did you get all the supplies I wanted?”

“Shore did. If the young ladies ain't powerful particular you can feed
them well for a couple of months.”

Dale wheeled and, striding to the stage, he opened the door.

“Girls, you're not asleep? Come,” he called.

Bo stepped down first.

“I was asleep till this--this vehicle fell off the road back a ways,”
 she replied.

Roy Beeman's low laugh was significant. He took off his sombrero and
stood silent. The old driver smothered a loud guffaw.

“Veehicle! Wal, I'll be doggoned! Joe, did you hear thet? All the spunky
gurls ain't born out West.”

As Helen followed with cloak and bag Roy assisted her, and she
encountered keen eyes upon her face. He seemed both gentle and
respectful, and she felt his solicitude. His heavy gun, swinging low,
struck her as she stepped down.

Dale reached into the stage and hauled out baskets and bags. These he
set down on the ground.

“Turn around, Bill, an' go along with you. John an' Hal will follow
presently,” ordered Dale.

“Wal, gurls,” said Bill, looking down upon them, “I was shore powerful
glad to meet you-all. An' I'm ashamed of my country--offerin' two sich
purty gurls insults an' low-down tricks. But shore you'll go through
safe now. You couldn't be in better company fer ridin' or huntin' or
marryin' or gittin' religion--”

“Shut up, you old grizzly!” broke in Dale, sharply.

“Haw! Haw! Good-by, gurls, an' good luck!” ended Bill, as he began to
whip the reins.

Bo said good-by quite distinctly, but Helen could only murmur hers. The
old driver seemed a friend.

Then the horses wheeled and stamped, the stage careened and creaked,
presently to roll out of sight in the gloom.

“You're shiverin',” said Dale, suddenly, looking down upon Helen. She
felt his big, hard hand clasp hers. “Cold as ice!”

“I am c-cold,” replied Helen. “I guess we're not warmly dressed.”

“Nell, we roasted all day, and now we're freezing,” declared Bo. “I
didn't know it was winter at night out here.”

“Miss, haven't you some warm gloves an' a coat?” asked Roy, anxiously.
“It 'ain't begun to get cold yet.”

“Nell, we've heavy gloves, riding-suits and boots--all fine and new--in
this black bag,” said Bo, enthusiastically kicking a bag at her feet.

“Yes, so we have. But a lot of good they'll do us, to-night,” returned
Helen.

“Miss, you'd do well to change right here,” said Roy, earnestly. “It'll
save time in the long run an' a lot of sufferin' before sunup.”

Helen stared at the young man, absolutely amazed with his simplicity.
She was advised to change her traveling-dress for a riding-suit--out
somewhere in a cold, windy desert--in the middle of the night--among
strange young men!

“Bo, which bag is it?” asked Dale, as if she were his sister. And when
she indicated the one, he picked it up. “Come off the road.”

Bo followed him, and Helen found herself mechanically at their heels.
Dale led them a few paces off the road behind some low bushes.

“Hurry an' change here,” he said. “We'll make a pack of your outfit an'
leave room for this bag.”

Then he stalked away and in a few strides disappeared.

Bo sat down to begin unlacing her shoes. Helen could just see her pale,
pretty face and big, gleaming eyes by the light of the stars. It struck
her then that Bo was going to make eminently more of a success of
Western life than she was.

“Nell, those fellows are n-nice,” said Bo, reflectively. “Aren't you
c-cold? Say, he said hurry!”

It was beyond Helen's comprehension how she ever began to disrobe out
there in that open, windy desert, but after she had gotten launched on
the task she found that it required more fortitude than courage. The
cold wind pierced right through her. Almost she could have laughed at
the way Bo made things fly.

“G-g-g-gee!” chattered Bo. “I n-never w-was so c-c-cold in all my life.
Nell Rayner, m-may the g-good Lord forgive y-you!”

Helen was too intent on her own troubles to take breath to talk. She was
a strong, healthy girl, swift and efficient with her hands, yet this,
the hardest physical ordeal she had ever experienced, almost overcame
her. Bo outdistanced her by moments, helped her with buttons, and laced
one whole boot for her. Then, with hands that stung, Helen packed the
traveling-suits in the bag.

“There! But what an awful mess!” exclaimed Helen. “Oh, Bo, our pretty
traveling-dresses!”

“We'll press them t-to-morrow--on a l-log,” replied Bo, and she giggled.

They started for the road. Bo, strange to note, did not carry her share
of the burden, and she seemed unsteady on her feet.

The men were waiting beside a group of horses, one of which carried a
pack.

“Nothin' slow about you,” said Dale, relieving Helen of the grip. “Roy,
put them up while I sling on this bag.”

Roy led out two of the horses.

“Get up,” he said, indicating Bo. “The stirrups are short on this
saddle.”

Bo was an adept at mounting, but she made such awkward and slow work of
it in this instance that Helen could not believe her eyes.

“Haw 're the stirrups?” asked Roy. “Stand in them. Guess they're about
right.... Careful now! Thet hoss is skittish. Hold him in.”

Bo was not living up to the reputation with which Helen had credited
her.

“Now, miss, you get up,” said Roy to Helen. And in another instant she
found herself astride a black, spirited horse. Numb with cold as she
was, she yet felt the coursing thrills along her veins.

Roy was at the stirrups with swift hands.

“You're taller 'n I guessed,” he said. “Stay up, but lift your foot....
Shore now, I'm glad you have them thick, soft boots. Mebbe we'll ride
all over the White Mountains.”

“Bo, do you hear that?” called Helen.

But Bo did not answer. She was leaning rather unnaturally in her saddle.
Helen became anxious. Just then Dale strode back to them.

“All cinched up, Roy?”

“Jest ready,” replied Roy.

Then Dale stood beside Helen. How tall he was! His wide shoulders seemed
on a level with the pommel of her saddle. He put an affectionate hand on
the horse.

“His name's Ranger an' he's the fastest an' finest horse in this
country.”

“I reckon he shore is--along with my bay,” corroborated Roy.

“Roy, if you rode Ranger he'd beat your pet,” said Dale. “We can start
now. Roy, you drive the pack-horses.”

He took another look at Helen's saddle and then moved to do likewise
with Bo's.

“Are you--all right?” he asked, quickly.

Bo reeled in her seat.

“I'm n-near froze,” she replied, in a faint voice. Her face shone white
in the starlight. Helen recognized that Bo was more than cold.

“Oh, Bo!” she called, in distress.

“Nell, don't you worry, now.”

“Let me carry you,” suggested Dale.

“No. I'll s-s-stick on this horse or d-die,” fiercely retorted Bo.

The two men looked up at her white face and then at each other. Then Roy
walked away toward the dark bunch of horses off the road and Dale swung
astride the one horse left.

“Keep close to me,” he said.

Bo fell in line and Helen brought up the rear.

Helen imagined she was near the end of a dream. Presently she would
awaken with a start and see the pale walls of her little room at
home, and hear the cherry branches brushing her window, and the old
clarion-voiced cock proclaim the hour of dawn.



CHAPTER VI

The horses trotted. And the exercise soon warmed Helen, until she was
fairly comfortable except in her fingers. In mind, however, she grew
more miserable as she more fully realized her situation. The night now
became so dark that, although the head of her horse was alongside the
flank of Bo's, she could scarcely see Bo. From time to time Helen's
anxious query brought from her sister the answer that she was all right.

Helen had not ridden a horse for more than a year, and for several
years she had not ridden with any regularity. Despite her thrills
upon mounting, she had entertained misgivings. But she was agreeably
surprised, for the horse, Ranger, had an easy gait, and she found she
had not forgotten how to ride. Bo, having been used to riding on a farm
near home, might be expected to acquit herself admirably. It occurred
to Helen what a plight they would have been in but for the thick,
comfortable riding outfits.

Dark as the night was, Helen could dimly make out the road underneath.
It was rocky, and apparently little used. When Dale turned off the road
into the low brush or sage of what seemed a level plain, the traveling
was harder, rougher, and yet no slower. The horses kept to the gait of
the leaders. Helen, discovering it unnecessary, ceased attempting to
guide Ranger. There were dim shapes in the gloom ahead, and always they
gave Helen uneasiness, until closer approach proved them to be rocks
or low, scrubby trees. These increased in both size and number as the
horses progressed. Often Helen looked back into the gloom behind.
This act was involuntary and occasioned her sensations of dread. Dale
expected to be pursued. And Helen experienced, along with the dread,
flashes of unfamiliar resentment. Not only was there an attempt afoot
to rob her of her heritage, but even her personal liberty. Then she
shuddered at the significance of Dale's words regarding her possible
abduction by this hired gang. It seemed monstrous, impossible. Yet,
manifestly it was true enough to Dale and his allies. The West, then, in
reality was raw, hard, inevitable.

Suddenly her horse stopped. He had come up alongside Bo's horse. Dale
had halted ahead, and apparently was listening. Roy and the pack-train
were out of sight in the gloom.

“What is it?” whispered Helen.

“Reckon I heard a wolf,” replied Dale.

“Was that cry a wolf's?” asked Bo. “I heard. It was wild.”

“We're gettin' up close to the foot-hills,” said Dale. “Feel how much
colder the air is.”

“I'm warm now,” replied Bo. “I guess being near froze was what ailed
me.... Nell, how 're you?”

“I'm warm, too, but--” Helen answered.

“If you had your choice of being here or back home, snug in bed--which
would you take?” asked Bo.

“Bo!” exclaimed Helen, aghast.

“Well, I'd choose to be right here on this horse,” rejoined Bo.

Dale heard her, for he turned an instant, then slapped his horse and
started on.

Helen now rode beside Bo, and for a long time they climbed steadily in
silence. Helen knew when that dark hour before dawn had passed, and she
welcomed an almost imperceptible lightening in the east. Then the stars
paled. Gradually a grayness absorbed all but the larger stars. The
great white morning star, wonderful as Helen had never seen it, lost its
brilliance and life and seemed to retreat into the dimming blue.

Daylight came gradually, so that the gray desert became distinguishable
by degrees. Rolling bare hills, half obscured by the gray lifting mantle
of night, rose in the foreground, and behind was gray space, slowly
taking form and substance. In the east there was a kindling of pale
rose and silver that lengthened and brightened along a horizon growing
visibly rugged.

“Reckon we'd better catch up with Roy,” said Dale, and he spurred his
horse.

Ranger and Bo's mount needed no other urging, and they swung into a
canter. Far ahead the pack-animals showed with Roy driving them. The
cold wind was so keen in Helen's face that tears blurred her eyes and
froze her cheeks. And riding Ranger at that pace was like riding in
a rocking-chair. That ride, invigorating and exciting, seemed all too
short.

“Oh, Nell, I don't care--what becomes of--me!” exclaimed Bo,
breathlessly.

Her face was white and red, fresh as a rose, her eyes glanced darkly
blue, her hair blew out in bright, unruly strands. Helen knew she felt
some of the physical stimulation that had so roused Bo, and seemed so
irresistible, but somber thought was not deflected thereby.

It was clear daylight when Roy led off round a knoll from which patches
of scrubby trees--cedars, Dale called them--straggled up on the side of
the foot-hills.

“They grow on the north slopes, where the snow stays longest,” said
Dale.

They descended into a valley that looked shallow, but proved to be deep
and wide, and then began to climb another foot-hill. Upon surmounting it
Helen saw the rising sun, and so glorious a view confronted her that she
was unable to answer Bo's wild exclamations.

Bare, yellow, cedar-dotted slopes, apparently level, so gradual was the
ascent, stretched away to a dense ragged line of forest that rose
black over range after range, at last to fail near the bare summit of a
magnificent mountain, sunrise-flushed against the blue sky.

“Oh, beautiful!” cried Bo. “But they ought to be called Black
Mountains.”

“Old Baldy, there, is white half the year,” replied Dale.

“Look back an' see what you say,” suggested Roy.

The girls turned to gaze silently. Helen imagined she looked down upon
the whole wide world. How vastly different was the desert! Verily it
yawned away from her, red and gold near at hand, growing softly flushed
with purple far away, a barren void, borderless and immense, where
dark-green patches and black lines and upheaved ridges only served to
emphasize distance and space.

“See thet little green spot,” said Roy, pointing. “Thet's Snowdrop. An'
the other one--'way to the right--thet's Show Down.”

“Where is Pine?” queried Helen, eagerly.

“Farther still, up over the foot-hills at the edge of the woods.”

“Then we're riding away from it.”

“Yes. If we'd gone straight for Pine thet gang could overtake us. Pine
is four days' ride. An' by takin' to the mountains Milt can hide his
tracks. An' when he's thrown Anson off the scent, then he'll circle down
to Pine.”

“Mr. Dale, do you think you'll get us there safely--and soon?” asked
Helen, wistfully.

“I won't promise soon, but I promise safe. An' I don't like bein' called
Mister,” he replied.

“Are we ever going to eat?” inquired Bo, demurely.

At this query Roy Beeman turned with a laugh to look at Bo. Helen saw
his face fully in the light, and it was thin and hard, darkly bronzed,
with eyes like those of a hawk, and with square chin and lean jaws
showing scant, light beard.

“We shore are,” he replied. “Soon as we reach the timber. Thet won't be
long.”

“Reckon we can rustle some an' then take a good rest,” said Dale, and he
urged his horse into a jog-trot.

During a steady trot for a long hour, Helen's roving eyes were
everywhere, taking note of the things from near to far--the scant sage
that soon gave place to as scanty a grass, and the dark blots that
proved to be dwarf cedars, and the ravines opening out as if by magic
from what had appeared level ground, to wind away widening between gray
stone walls, and farther on, patches of lonely pine-trees, two and three
together, and then a straggling clump of yellow aspens, and up beyond
the fringed border of forest, growing nearer all the while, the black
sweeping benches rising to the noble dome of the dominant mountain of
the range.

No birds or animals were seen in that long ride up toward the timber,
which fact seemed strange to Helen. The air lost something of its cold,
cutting edge as the sun rose higher, and it gained sweeter tang of
forest-land. The first faint suggestion of that fragrance was utterly
new to Helen, yet it brought a vague sensation of familiarity and
with it an emotion as strange. It was as if she had smelled that keen,
pungent tang long ago, and her physical sense caught it before her
memory.

The yellow plain had only appeared to be level. Roy led down into a
shallow ravine, where a tiny stream meandered, and he followed this
around to the left, coming at length to a point where cedars and
dwarf pines formed a little grove. Here, as the others rode up, he sat
cross-legged in his saddle, and waited.

“We'll hang up awhile,” he said. “Reckon you're tired?”

“I'm hungry, but not tired yet,” replied Bo.

Helen dismounted, to find that walking was something she had apparently
lost the power to do. Bo laughed at her, but she, too, was awkward when
once more upon the ground.

Then Roy got down. Helen was surprised to find him lame. He caught her
quick glance.

“A hoss threw me once an' rolled on me. Only broke my collar-bone, five
ribs, one arm, an' my bow-legs in two places!”

Notwithstanding this evidence that he was a cripple, as he stood there
tall and lithe in his homespun, ragged garments, he looked singularly
powerful and capable.

“Reckon walkin' around would be good for you girls,” advised Dale. “If
you ain't stiff yet, you'll be soon. An' walkin' will help. Don't go
far. I'll call when breakfast's ready.”


A little while later the girls were whistled in from their walk and
found camp-fire and meal awaiting them. Roy was sitting cross-legged,
like an Indian, in front of a tarpaulin, upon which was spread a homely
but substantial fare. Helen's quick eye detected a cleanliness and
thoroughness she had scarcely expected to find in the camp cooking of
men of the wilds. Moreover, the fare was good. She ate heartily, and
as for Bo's appetite, she was inclined to be as much ashamed of that as
amused at it. The young men were all eyes, assiduous in their service
to the girls, but speaking seldom. It was not lost upon Helen how
Dale's gray gaze went often down across the open country. She divined
apprehension from it rather than saw much expression in it.

“I--declare,” burst out Bo, when she could not eat any more, “this
isn't believable. I'm dreaming.... Nell, the black horse you rode is the
prettiest I ever saw.”

Ranger, with the other animals, was grazing along the little brook.
Packs and saddles had been removed. The men ate leisurely. There
was little evidence of hurried flight. Yet Helen could not cast off
uneasiness. Roy might have been deep, and careless, with a motive to
spare the girls' anxiety, but Dale seemed incapable of anything he did
not absolutely mean.

“Rest or walk,” he advised the girls. “We've got forty miles to ride
before dark.”

Helen preferred to rest, but Bo walked about, petting the horses and
prying into the packs. She was curious and eager.

Dale and Roy talked in low tones while they cleaned up the utensils and
packed them away in a heavy canvas bag.

“You really expect Anson 'll strike my trail this mornin'?” Dale was
asking.

“I shore do,” replied Roy.

“An' how do you figure that so soon?”

“How'd you figure it--if you was Snake Anson?” queried Roy, in reply.

“Depends on that rider from Magdalena,” Said Dale, soberly. “Although
it's likely I'd seen them wheel tracks an' hoss tracks made where we
turned off. But supposin' he does.”

“Milt, listen. I told you Snake met us boys face to face day before
yesterday in Show Down. An' he was plumb curious.”

“But he missed seein' or hearin' about me,” replied Dale.

“Mebbe he did an' mebbe he didn't. Anyway, what's the difference whether
he finds out this mornin' or this evenin'?”

“Then you ain't expectin' a fight if Anson holds up the stage?”

“Wal, he'd have to shoot first, which ain't likely. John an' Hal, since
thet shootin'-scrape a year ago, have been sort of gun-shy. Joe might
get riled. But I reckon the best we can be shore of is a delay. An' it'd
be sense not to count on thet.”

“Then you hang up here an' keep watch for Anson's gang--say long enough
so's to be sure they'd be in sight if they find our tracks this mornin'.
Makin' sure one way or another, you ride 'cross-country to Big Spring,
where I'll camp to-night.”

Roy nodded approval of that suggestion. Then without more words both men
picked up ropes and went after the horses. Helen was watching Dale, so
that when Bo cried out in great excitement Helen turned to see a savage
yellow little mustang standing straight up on his hind legs and pawing
the air. Roy had roped him and was now dragging him into camp.

“Nell, look at that for a wild pony!” exclaimed Bo.

Helen busied herself getting well out of the way of the infuriated
mustang. Roy dragged him to a cedar near by.

“Come now, Buckskin,” said Roy, soothingly, and he slowly approached the
quivering animal. He went closer, hand over hand, on the lasso. Buckskin
showed the whites of his eyes and also his white teeth. But he stood
while Roy loosened the loop and, slipping it down over his head,
fastened it in a complicated knot round his nose.

“Thet's a hackamore,” he said, indicating the knot. “He's never had a
bridle, an' never will have one, I reckon.”

“You don't ride him?” queried Helen.

“Sometimes I do,” replied Roy, with a smile. “Would you girls like to
try him?”

“Excuse me,” answered Helen.

“Gee!” ejaculated Bo. “He looks like a devil. But I'd tackle him--if you
think I could.”

The wild leaven of the West had found quick root in Bo Rayner.

“Wal, I'm sorry, but I reckon I'll not let you--for a spell,” replied
Roy, dryly.

“He pitches somethin' powerful bad.”

“Pitches. You mean bucks?”

“I reckon.”

In the next half-hour Helen saw more and learned more about how horses
of the open range were handled than she had ever heard of. Excepting
Ranger, and Roy's bay, and the white pony Bo rode, the rest of the
horses had actually to be roped and hauled into camp to be saddled and
packed. It was a job for fearless, strong men, and one that called for
patience as well as arms of iron. So that for Helen Rayner the thing
succeeding the confidence she had placed in these men was respect. To an
observing woman that half-hour told much.

When all was in readiness for a start Dale mounted, and said,
significantly: “Roy, I'll look for you about sundown. I hope no sooner.”

“Wal, it'd be bad if I had to rustle along soon with bad news. Let's
hope for the best. We've been shore lucky so far. Now you take to the
pine-mats in the woods an' hide your trail.”

Dale turned away. Then the girls bade Roy good-by, and followed. Soon
Roy and his buckskin-colored mustang were lost to sight round a clump of
trees.

The unhampered horses led the way; the pack-animals trotted after them;
the riders were close behind. All traveled at a jog-trot. And this gait
made the packs bob up and down and from side to side. The sun felt
warm at Helen's back and the wind lost its frosty coldness, that almost
appeared damp, for a dry, sweet fragrance. Dale drove up the shallow
valley that showed timber on the levels above and a black border of
timber some few miles ahead. It did not take long to reach the edge of
the forest.

Helen wondered why the big pines grew so far on that plain and no
farther. Probably the growth had to do with snow, but, as the ground
was level, she could not see why the edge of the woods should come just
there.

They rode into the forest.

To Helen it seemed a strange, critical entrance into another world,
which she was destined to know and to love. The pines were big,
brown-barked, seamed, and knotted, with no typical conformation except
a majesty and beauty. They grew far apart. Few small pines and little
underbrush flourished beneath them. The floor of this forest appeared
remarkable in that it consisted of patches of high silvery grass and
wide brown areas of pine-needles. These manifestly were what Roy
had meant by pine-mats. Here and there a fallen monarch lay riven or
rotting. Helen was presently struck with the silence of the forest and
the strange fact that the horses seldom made any sound at all, and when
they did it was a cracking of dead twig or thud of hoof on log. Likewise
she became aware of a springy nature of the ground. And then she saw
that the pine-mats gave like rubber cushions under the hoofs of the
horses, and after they had passed sprang back to place again, leaving no
track. Helen could not see a sign of a trail they left behind. Indeed,
it would take a sharp eye to follow Dale through that forest. This
knowledge was infinitely comforting to Helen, and for the first time
since the flight had begun she felt a lessening of the weight upon mind
and heart. It left her free for some of the appreciation she might have
had in this wonderful ride under happier circumstances.

Bo, however, seemed too young, too wild, too intense to mind what the
circumstances were. She responded to reality. Helen began to suspect
that the girl would welcome any adventure, and Helen knew surely now
that Bo was a true Auchincloss. For three long days Helen had felt a
constraint with which heretofore she had been unfamiliar; for the last
hours it had been submerged under dread. But it must be, she concluded,
blood like her sister's, pounding at her veins to be set free to race
and to burn.

Bo loved action. She had an eye for beauty, but she was not
contemplative. She was now helping Dale drive the horses and hold them
in rather close formation. She rode well, and as yet showed no symptoms
of fatigue or pain. Helen began to be aware of both, but not enough yet
to limit her interest.

A wonderful forest without birds did not seem real to her. Of all living
creatures in nature Helen liked birds best, and she knew many and could
imitate the songs of a few. But here under the stately pines there were
no birds. Squirrels, however, began to be seen here and there, and in
the course of an hour's travel became abundant. The only one with which
she was familiar was the chipmunk. All the others, from the slim bright
blacks to the striped russets and the white-tailed grays, were totally
new to her. They appeared tame and curious. The reds barked and scolded
at the passing cavalcade; the blacks glided to some safe branch, there
to watch; the grays paid no especial heed to this invasion of their
domain.

Once Dale, halting his horse, pointed with long arm, and Helen,
following the direction, descried several gray deer standing in a glade,
motionless, with long ears up. They made a wild and beautiful picture.
Suddenly they bounded away with remarkable springy strides.

The forest on the whole held to the level, open character, but there
were swales and stream-beds breaking up its regular conformity. Toward
noon, however, it gradually changed, a fact that Helen believed she
might have observed sooner had she been more keen. The general lay of
the land began to ascend, and the trees to grow denser.

She made another discovery. Ever since she had entered the forest she
had become aware of a fullness in her head and a something affecting
her nostrils. She imagined, with regret, that she had taken cold. But
presently her head cleared somewhat and she realized that the thick pine
odor of the forest had clogged her nostrils as if with a sweet pitch.
The smell was overpowering and disagreeable because of its strength.
Also her throat and lungs seemed to burn.

When she began to lose interest in the forest and her surroundings
it was because of aches and pains which would no longer be denied
recognition. Thereafter she was not permitted to forget them and they
grew worse. One, especially, was a pain beyond all her experience.
It lay in the muscles of her side, above her hip, and it grew to be a
treacherous thing, for it was not persistent. It came and went. After it
did come, with a terrible flash, it could be borne by shifting or easing
the body. But it gave no warning. When she expected it she was mistaken;
when she dared to breathe again, then, with piercing swiftness,
it returned like a blade in her side. This, then, was one of the
riding-pains that made a victim of a tenderfoot on a long ride. It
was almost too much to be borne. The beauty of the forest, the living
creatures to be seen scurrying away, the time, distance--everything
faded before that stablike pain. To her infinite relief she found that
it was the trot that caused this torture. When Ranger walked she did not
have to suffer it. Therefore she held him to a walk as long as she dared
or until Dale and Bo were almost out of sight; then she loped him ahead
until he had caught up.

So the hours passed, the sun got around low, sending golden shafts
under the trees, and the forest gradually changed to a brighter, but a
thicker, color. This slowly darkened. Sunset was not far away.

She heard the horses splashing in water, and soon she rode up to see the
tiny streams of crystal water running swiftly over beds of green moss.
She crossed a number of these and followed along the last one into a
more open place in the forest where the pines were huge, towering,
and far apart. A low, gray bluff of stone rose to the right, perhaps
one-third as high as the trees. From somewhere came the rushing sound of
running water.

“Big Spring,” announced Dale. “We camp here. You girls have done well.”

Another glance proved to Helen that all those little streams poured from
under this gray bluff.

“I'm dying for a drink,” cried Bo with her customary hyperbole.

“I reckon you'll never forget your first drink here,” remarked Dale.

Bo essayed to dismount, and finally fell off, and when she did get to
the ground her legs appeared to refuse their natural function, and she
fell flat. Dale helped her up.

“What's wrong with me, anyhow?” she demanded, in great amaze.

“Just stiff, I reckon,” replied Dale, as he led her a few awkward steps.

“Bo, have you any hurts?” queried Helen, who still sat her horse, loath
to try dismounting, yet wanting to beyond all words.

Bo gave her an eloquent glance.

“Nell, did you have one in your side, like a wicked, long
darning-needle, punching deep when you weren't ready?”

“That one I'll never get over!” exclaimed Helen, softly. Then, profiting
by Bo's experience, she dismounted cautiously, and managed to keep
upright. Her legs felt like wooden things.

Presently the girls went toward the spring.

“Drink slow,” called out Dale.

Big Spring had its source somewhere deep under the gray, weathered
bluff, from which came a hollow subterranean gurgle and roar of water.
Its fountainhead must have been a great well rushing up through the cold
stone.

Helen and Bo lay flat on a mossy bank, seeing their faces as they bent
over, and they sipped a mouthful, by Dale's advice, and because they
were so hot and parched and burning they wanted to tarry a moment with a
precious opportunity.

The water was so cold that it sent a shock over Helen, made her teeth
ache, and a singular, revivifying current steal all through her,
wonderful in its cool absorption of that dry heat of flesh, irresistible
in its appeal to thirst. Helen raised her head to look at this water. It
was colorless as she had found it tasteless.

“Nell--drink!” panted Bo. “Think of our--old spring--in the
orchard--full of pollywogs!”

And then Helen drank thirstily, with closed eyes, while a memory of home
stirred from Bo's gift of poignant speech.



CHAPTER VII

The first camp duty Dale performed was to throw a pack off one of the
horses, and, opening it, he took out tarpaulin and blankets, which he
arranged on the ground under a pine-tree.

“You girls rest,” he said, briefly.

“Can't we help?” asked Helen, though she could scarcely stand.

“You'll be welcome to do all you like after you're broke in.”

“Broke in!” ejaculated Bo, with a little laugh. “I'm all broke UP now.”

“Bo, it looks as if Mr. Dale expects us to have quite a stay with him in
the woods.”

“It does,” replied Bo, as slowly she sat down upon the blankets,
stretched out with a long sigh, and laid her head on a saddle. “Nell,
didn't he say not to call him Mister?”

Dale was throwing the packs off the other horses.

Helen lay down beside Bo, and then for once in her life she experienced
the sweetness of rest.

“Well, sister, what do you intend to call him?” queried Helen,
curiously.

“Milt, of course,” replied Bo.

Helen had to laugh despite her weariness and aches.

“I suppose, then, when your Las Vegas cowboy comes along you will call
him what he called you.”

Bo blushed, which was a rather unusual thing for her.

“I will if I like,” she retorted. “Nell, ever since I could remember
you've raved about the West. Now you're OUT West, right in it good and
deep. So wake up!”

That was Bo's blunt and characteristic way of advising the elimination
of Helen's superficialities. It sank deep. Helen had no retort. Her
ambition, as far as the West was concerned, had most assuredly not been
for such a wild, unheard-of jaunt as this. But possibly the West--a
living from day to day--was one succession of adventures, trials,
tests, troubles, and achievements. To make a place for others to live
comfortably some day! That might be Bo's meaning, embodied in her
forceful hint. But Helen was too tired to think it out then. She found
it interesting and vaguely pleasant to watch Dale.

He hobbled the horses and turned them loose. Then with ax in hand he
approached a short, dead tree, standing among a few white-barked
aspens. Dale appeared to advantage swinging the ax. With his coat off,
displaying his wide shoulders, straight back, and long, powerful arms,
he looked a young giant. He was lithe and supple, brawny but not bulky.
The ax rang on the hard wood, reverberating through the forest. A few
strokes sufficed to bring down the stub. Then he split it up. Helen was
curious to see how he kindled a fire. First he ripped splinters out of
the heart of the log, and laid them with coarser pieces on the ground.
Then from a saddlebag which hung on a near-by branch he took flint and
steel and a piece of what Helen supposed was rag or buckskin, upon
which powder had been rubbed. At any rate, the first strike of the steel
brought sparks, a blaze, and burning splinters. Instantly the flame
leaped a foot high. He put on larger pieces of wood crosswise, and the
fire roared.

That done, he stood erect, and, facing the north, he listened. Helen
remembered now that she had seen him do the same thing twice before
since the arrival at Big Spring. It was Roy for whom he was listening
and watching. The sun had set and across the open space the tips of the
pines were losing their brightness.

The camp utensils, which the hunter emptied out of a sack, gave forth a
jangle of iron and tin. Next he unrolled a large pack, the contents
of which appeared to be numerous sacks of all sizes. These evidently
contained food supplies. The bucket looked as if a horse had rolled over
it, pack and all. Dale filled it at the spring. Upon returning to the
camp-fire he poured water into a washbasin, and, getting down to his
knees, proceeded to wash his hands thoroughly. The act seemed a habit,
for Helen saw that while he was doing it he gazed off into the woods
and listened. Then he dried his hands over the fire, and, turning to the
spread-out pack, he began preparations for the meal.

Suddenly Helen thought of the man and all that his actions implied.
At Magdalena, on the stage-ride, and last night, she had trusted
this stranger, a hunter of the White Mountains, who appeared ready to
befriend her. And she had felt an exceeding gratitude. Still, she had
looked at him impersonally. But it began to dawn upon her that chance
had thrown her in the company of a remarkable man. That impression
baffled her. It did not spring from the fact that he was brave and kind
to help a young woman in peril, or that he appeared deft and quick at
camp-fire chores. Most Western men were brave, her uncle had told her,
and many were roughly kind, and all of them could cook. This hunter was
physically a wonderful specimen of manhood, with something leonine about
his stature. But that did not give rise to her impression. Helen
had been a school-teacher and used to boys, and she sensed a boyish
simplicity or vigor or freshness in this hunter. She believed, however,
that it was a mental and spiritual force in Dale which had drawn her to
think of it.

“Nell, I've spoken to you three times,” protested Bo, petulantly. “What
're you mooning over?”

“I'm pretty tired--and far away, Bo,” replied Helen. “What did you say?”

“I said I had an e-normous appetite.”

“Really. That's not remarkable for you. I'm too tired to eat. And afraid
to shut my eyes. They'd never come open. When did we sleep last, Bo?”

“Second night before we left home,” declared Bo.

“Four nights! Oh, we've slept some.”

“I'll bet I make mine up in this woods. Do you suppose we'll sleep right
here--under this tree--with no covering?”

“It looks so,” replied Helen, dubiously.

“How perfectly lovely!” exclaimed Bo, in delight. “We'll see the stars
through the pines.”

“Seems to be clouding over. Wouldn't it be awful if we had a storm?”

“Why, I don't know,” answered Bo, thoughtfully. “It must storm out
West.”

Again Helen felt a quality of inevitableness in Bo. It was something
that had appeared only practical in the humdrum home life in St. Joseph.
All of a sudden Helen received a flash of wondering thought--a thrilling
consciousness that she and Bo had begun to develop in a new and wild
environment. How strange, and fearful, perhaps, to watch that growth!
Bo, being younger, more impressionable, with elemental rather than
intellectual instincts, would grow stronger more swiftly. Helen wondered
if she could yield to her own leaning to the primitive. But how could
anyone with a thoughtful and grasping mind yield that way? It was the
savage who did not think.

Helen saw Dale stand erect once more and gaze into the forest.

“Reckon Roy ain't comin',” he soliloquized. “An' that's good.” Then he
turned to the girls. “Supper's ready.”

The girls responded with a spirit greater than their activity. And
they ate like famished children that had been lost in the woods. Dale
attended them with a pleasant light upon his still face.

“To-morrow night we'll have meat,” he said.

“What kind?” asked Bo.

“Wild turkey or deer. Maybe both, if you like. But it's well to take
wild meat slow. An' turkey--that 'll melt in your mouth.”

“Uummm!” murmured Bo, greedily. “I've heard of wild turkey.”

When they had finished Dale ate his meal, listening to the talk of the
girls, and occasionally replying briefly to some query of Bo's. It was
twilight when he began to wash the pots and pans, and almost dark by the
time his duties appeared ended. Then he replenished the campfire and
sat down on a log to gaze into the fire. The girls leaned comfortably
propped against the saddles.

“Nell, I'll keel over in a minute,” said Bo. “And I oughtn't--right on
such a big supper.”

“I don't see how I can sleep, and I know I can't stay awake,” rejoined
Helen.

Dale lifted his head alertly.

“Listen.”

The girls grew tense and still. Helen could not hear a sound, unless it
was a low thud of hoof out in the gloom. The forest seemed sleeping. She
knew from Bo's eyes, wide and shining in the camp-fire light, that she,
too, had failed to catch whatever it was Dale meant.

“Bunch of coyotes comin',” he explained.

Suddenly the quietness split to a chorus of snappy, high-strung, strange
barks. They sounded wild, yet they held something of a friendly or
inquisitive note. Presently gray forms could be descried just at the
edge of the circle of light. Soft rustlings of stealthy feet surrounded
the camp, and then barks and yelps broke out all around. It was a
restless and sneaking pack of animals, thought Helen; she was glad after
the chorus ended and with a few desultory, spiteful yelps the coyotes
went away.

Silence again settled down. If it had not been for the anxiety always
present in Helen's mind she would have thought this silence sweet and
unfamiliarly beautiful.

“Ah! Listen to that fellow,” spoke up Dale. His voice was thrilling.

Again the girls strained their ears. That was not necessary, for
presently, clear and cold out of the silence, pealed a mournful howl,
long drawn, strange and full and wild.

“Oh! What's that?” whispered Bo.

“That's a big gray wolf--a timber-wolf, or lofer, as he's sometimes
called,” replied Dale. “He's high on some rocky ridge back there. He
scents us, an' he doesn't like it.... There he goes again. Listen! Ah,
he's hungry.”

While Helen listened to this exceedingly wild cry--so wild that it made
her flesh creep and the most indescribable sensations of loneliness come
over her--she kept her glance upon Dale.

“You love him?” she murmured involuntarily, quite without understanding
the motive of her query.

Assuredly Dale had never had that question asked of him before, and
it seemed to Helen, as he pondered, that he had never even asked it of
himself.

“I reckon so,” he replied, presently.

“But wolves kill deer, and little fawns, and everything helpless in the
forest,” expostulated Bo.

The hunter nodded his head.

“Why, then, can you love him?” repeated Helen.

“Come to think of it, I reckon it's because of lots of reasons,”
 returned Dale. “He kills clean. He eats no carrion. He's no coward. He
fights. He dies game.... An' he likes to be alone.”

“Kills clean. What do you mean by that?”

“A cougar, now, he mangles a deer. An' a silvertip, when killin' a
cow or colt, he makes a mess of it. But a wolf kills clean, with sharp
snaps.”

“What are a cougar and a silvertip?”

“Cougar means mountain-lion or panther, an' a silvertip is a grizzly
bear.”

“Oh, they're all cruel!” exclaimed Helen, shrinking.

“I reckon. Often I've shot wolves for relayin' a deer.”

“What's that?”

“Sometimes two or more wolves will run a deer, an' while one of them
rests the other will drive the deer around to his pardner, who'll, take
up the chase. That way they run the deer down. Cruel it is, but nature,
an' no worse than snow an' ice that starve deer, or a fox that kills
turkey-chicks breakin' out of the egg, or ravens that pick the eyes out
of new-born lambs an' wait till they die. An' for that matter, men are
crueler than beasts of prey, for men add to nature, an' have more than
instincts.”

Helen was silenced, as well as shocked. She had not only learned a new
and striking viewpoint in natural history, but a clear intimation to the
reason why she had vaguely imagined or divined a remarkable character in
this man. A hunter was one who killed animals for their fur, for their
meat or horns, or for some lust for blood--that was Helen's definition
of a hunter, and she believed it was held by the majority of people
living in settled states. But the majority might be wrong. A hunter
might be vastly different, and vastly more than a tracker and slayer
of game. The mountain world of forest was a mystery to almost all men.
Perhaps Dale knew its secrets, its life, its terror, its beauty, its
sadness, and its joy; and if so, how full, how wonderful must be his
mind! He spoke of men as no better than wolves. Could a lonely life
in the wilderness teach a man that? Bitterness, envy, jealousy, spite,
greed, and hate--these had no place in this hunter's heart. It was not
Helen's shrewdness, but a woman's intuition, which divined that.

Dale rose to his feet and, turning his ear to the north, listened once
more.

“Are you expecting Roy still?” inquired Helen.

“No, it ain't likely he'll turn up to-night,” replied Dale, and then he
strode over to put a hand on the pine-tree that soared above where the
girls lay. His action, and the way he looked up at the tree-top and then
at adjacent trees, held more of that significance which so interested
Helen.

“I reckon he's stood there some five hundred years an' will stand
through to-night,” muttered Dale.

This pine was the monarch of that wide-spread group.

“Listen again,” said Dale.

Bo was asleep. And Helen, listening, at once caught low, distant roar.

“Wind. It's goin' to storm,” explained Dale. “You'll hear somethin'
worth while. But don't be scared. Reckon we'll be safe. Pines blow down
often. But this fellow will stand any fall wind that ever was.... Better
slip under the blankets so I can pull the tarp up.”

Helen slid down, just as she was, fully dressed except for boots, which
she and Bo had removed; and she laid her head close to Bo's. Dale pulled
the tarpaulin up and folded it back just below their heads.

“When it rains you'll wake, an' then just pull the tarp up over you,” he
said.

“Will it rain?” Helen asked. But she was thinking that this moment
was the strangest that had ever happened to her. By the light of the
camp-fire she saw Dale's face, just as usual, still, darkly serene,
expressing no thought. He was kind, but he was not thinking of these
sisters as girls, alone with him in a pitch-black forest, helpless and
defenseless. He did not seem to be thinking at all. But Helen had never
before in her life been so keenly susceptible to experience.

“I'll be close by an' keep the fire goin' all night,” he said.

She heard him stride off into the darkness. Presently there came a
dragging, bumping sound, then a crash of a log dropped upon the fire.
A cloud of sparks shot up, and many pattered down to hiss upon the damp
ground. Smoke again curled upward along the great, seamed tree-trunk,
and flames sputtered and crackled.

Helen listened again for the roar of wind. It seemed to come on a breath
of air that fanned her cheek and softly blew Bo's curls, and it was
stronger. But it died out presently, only to come again, and still
stronger. Helen realized then that the sound was that of an approaching
storm. Her heavy eyelids almost refused to stay open, and she knew if
she let them close she would instantly drop to sleep. And she wanted to
hear the storm-wind in the pines.

A few drops of cold rain fell upon her face, thrilling her with the
proof that no roof stood between her and the elements. Then a breeze
bore the smell of burnt wood into her face, and somehow her quick mind
flew to girlhood days when she burned brush and leaves with her little
brothers. The memory faded. The roar that had seemed distant was now
back in the forest, coming swiftly, increasing in volume. Like a
stream in flood it bore down. Helen grew amazed, startled. How rushing,
oncoming, and heavy this storm-wind! She likened its approach to the
tread of an army. Then the roar filled the forest, yet it was back there
behind her. Not a pine-needle quivered in the light of the camp-fire.
But the air seemed to be oppressed with a terrible charge. The roar
augmented till it was no longer a roar, but an on-sweeping crash, like
an ocean torrent engulfing the earth. Bo awoke to cling to Helen
with fright. The deafening storm-blast was upon them. Helen felt the
saddle-pillow move under her head. The giant pine had trembled to its
very roots. That mighty fury of wind was all aloft, in the tree-tops.
And for a long moment it bowed the forest under its tremendous power.
Then the deafening crash passed to roar, and that swept on and on,
lessening in volume, deepening in low detonation, at last to die in the
distance.

No sooner had it died than back to the north another low roar rose and
ceased and rose again. Helen lay there, whispering to Bo, and heard
again the great wave of wind come and crash and cease. That was the way
of this storm-wind of the mountain forest.

A soft patter of rain on the tarpaulin warned Helen to remember Dale's
directions, and, pulling up the heavy covering, she arranged it hoodlike
over the saddle. Then, with Bo close and warm beside her, she closed
her eyes, and the sense of the black forest and the wind and rain
faded. Last of all sensations was the smell of smoke that blew under the
tarpaulin.


When she opened her eyes she remembered everything, as if only a moment
had elapsed. But it was daylight, though gray and cloudy. The pines were
dripping mist. A fire crackled cheerily and blue smoke curled upward and
a savory odor of hot coffee hung in the air. Horses were standing
near by, biting and kicking at one another. Bo was sound asleep. Dale
appeared busy around the camp-fire. As Helen watched the hunter she
saw him pause in his task, turn his ear to listen, and then look
expectantly. And at that juncture a shout pealed from the forest.
Helen recognized Roy's voice. Then she heard a splashing of water, and
hoof-beats coming closer. With that the buckskin mustang trotted into
camp, carrying Roy.

“Bad mornin' for ducks, but good for us,” he called.

“Howdy, Roy!” greeted Dale, and his gladness was unmistakable. “I was
lookin' for you.”

Roy appeared to slide off the mustang without effort, and his swift
hands slapped the straps as he unsaddled. Buckskin was wet with sweat
and foam mixed with rain. He heaved. And steam rose from him.

“Must have rode hard,” observed Dale.

“I shore did,” replied Roy. Then he espied Helen, who had sat up, with
hands to her hair, and eyes staring at him.

“Mornin', miss. It's good news.”

“Thank Heaven!” murmured Helen, and then she shook Bo. That young lady
awoke, but was loath to give up slumber. “Bo! Bo! Wake up! Mr. Roy is
back.”

Whereupon Bo sat up, disheveled and sleepy-eyed.

“Oh-h, but I ache!” she moaned. But her eyes took in the camp scene to
the effect that she added, “Is breakfast ready?”

“Almost. An' flapjacks this mornin',” replied Dale.

Bo manifested active symptoms of health in the manner with which she
laced her boots. Helen got their traveling-bag, and with this they
repaired to a flat stone beside the spring, not, however, out of earshot
of the men.

“How long are you goin' to hang around camp before tellin' me?” inquired
Dale.

“Jest as I figgered, Milt,” replied Roy. “Thet rider who passed you was
a messenger to Anson. He an' his gang got on our trail quick. About ten
o'clock I seen them comin'. Then I lit out for the woods. I stayed off
in the woods close enough to see where they come in. An' shore they
lost your trail. Then they spread through the woods, workin' off to the
south, thinkin', of course, thet you would circle round to Pine on the
south side of Old Baldy. There ain't a hoss-tracker in Snake Anson's
gang, thet's shore. Wal, I follered them for an hour till they'd rustled
some miles off our trail. Then I went back to where you struck into
the woods. An' I waited there all afternoon till dark, expectin' mebbe
they'd back-trail. But they didn't. I rode on a ways an' camped in the
woods till jest before daylight.”

“So far so good,” declared Dale.

“Shore. There's rough country south of Baldy an' along the two or three
trails Anson an' his outfit will camp, you bet.”

“It ain't to be thought of,” muttered Dale, at some idea that had struck
him.

“What ain't?”

“Goin' round the north side of Baldy.”

“It shore ain't,” rejoined Roy, bluntly.

“Then I've got to hide tracks certain--rustle to my camp an' stay there
till you say it's safe to risk takin' the girls to Pine.”

“Milt, you're talkin' the wisdom of the prophets.”

“I ain't so sure we can hide tracks altogether. If Anson had any eyes
for the woods he'd not have lost me so soon.

“No. But, you see, he's figgerin' to cross your trail.”

“If I could get fifteen or twenty mile farther on an' hide tracks
certain, I'd feel safe from pursuit, anyway,” said the hunter,
reflectively.

“Shore an' easy,” responded Roy, quickly. “I jest met up with some
greaser sheep-herders drivin' a big flock. They've come up from the
south an' are goin' to fatten up at Turkey Senacas. Then they'll drive
back south an' go on to Phenix. Wal, it's muddy weather. Now you break
camp quick an' make a plain trail out to thet sheep trail, as if you
was travelin' south. But, instead, you ride round ahead of thet flock of
sheep. They'll keep to the open parks an' the trails through them necks
of woods out here. An', passin' over your tracks, they'll hide 'em.”

“But supposin' Anson circles an' hits this camp? He'll track me easy out
to that sheep trail. What then?”

“Jest what you want. Goin' south thet sheep trail is downhill an' muddy.
It's goin' to rain hard. Your tracks would get washed out even if you
did go south. An' Anson would keep on thet way till he was clear off the
scent. Leave it to me, Milt. You're a hunter. But I'm a hoss-tracker.”

“All right. We'll rustle.”

Then he called the girls to hurry.



CHAPTER VIII

Once astride the horse again, Helen had to congratulate herself upon not
being so crippled as she had imagined. Indeed, Bo made all the audible
complaints.

Both girls had long water-proof coats, brand-new, and of which they were
considerably proud. New clothes had not been a common event in their
lives.

“Reckon I'll have to slit these,” Dale had said, whipping out a huge
knife.

“What for?” had been Bo's feeble protest.

“They wasn't made for ridin'. An' you'll get wet enough even if I do cut
them. An' if I don't, you'll get soaked.”

“Go ahead,” had been Helen's reluctant permission.

So their long new coats were slit half-way up the back. The exigency of
the case was manifest to Helen, when she saw how they came down over the
cantles of the saddles and to their boot-tops.

The morning was gray and cold. A fine, misty rain fell and the trees
dripped steadily. Helen was surprised to see the open country again and
that apparently they were to leave the forest behind for a while. The
country was wide and flat on the right, and to the left it rolled and
heaved along a black, scalloped timber-line. Above this bordering of
the forest low, drifting clouds obscured the mountains. The wind was at
Helen's back and seemed to be growing stronger. Dale and Roy were ahead,
traveling at a good trot, with the pack-animals bunched before them.
Helen and Bo had enough to do to keep up.

The first hour's ride brought little change in weather or scenery, but
it gave Helen an inkling of what she must endure if they kept that up
all day. She began to welcome the places where the horses walked, but
she disliked the levels. As for the descents, she hated those. Ranger
would not go down slowly and the shake-up she received was unpleasant.
Moreover, the spirited black horse insisted on jumping the ditches and
washes. He sailed over them like a bird. Helen could not acquire the
knack of sitting the saddle properly, and so, not only was her person
bruised on these occasions, but her feelings were hurt. Helen had
never before been conscious of vanity. Still, she had never rejoiced
in looking at a disadvantage, and her exhibitions here must have been
frightful. Bo always would forge to the front, and she seldom looked
back, for which Helen was grateful.

Before long they struck into a broad, muddy belt, full of innumerable
small hoof tracks. This, then, was the sheep trail Roy had advised
following. They rode on it for three or four miles, and at length,
coming to a gray-green valley, they saw a huge flock of sheep. Soon the
air was full of bleats and baas as well as the odor of sheep, and a
low, soft roar of pattering hoofs. The flock held a compact formation,
covering several acres, and grazed along rapidly. There were three
herders on horses and several pack-burros. Dale engaged one of the
Mexicans in conversation, and passed something to him, then pointed
northward and down along the trail. The Mexican grinned from ear to ear,
and Helen caught the quick “SI, SENOR! GRACIAS, SENOR!” It was a pretty
sight, that flock of sheep, as it rolled along like a rounded woolly
stream of grays and browns and here and there a black. They were keeping
to a trail over the flats. Dale headed into this trail and, if anything,
trotted a little faster.

Presently the clouds lifted and broke, showing blue sky and one streak
of sunshine. But the augury was without warrant. The wind increased. A
huge black pall bore down from the mountains and it brought rain that
could be seen falling in sheets from above and approaching like a
swiftly moving wall. Soon it enveloped the fugitives.

With head bowed, Helen rode along for what seemed ages in a cold, gray
rain that blew almost on a level. Finally the heavy downpour passed,
leaving a fine mist. The clouds scurried low and dark, hiding the
mountains altogether and making the gray, wet plain a dreary sight.
Helen's feet and knees were as wet as if she had waded in water. And
they were cold. Her gloves, too, had not been intended for rain, and
they were wet through. The cold bit at her fingers so that she had to
beat her hands together. Ranger misunderstood this to mean that he was
to trot faster, which event was worse for Helen than freezing.

She saw another black, scudding mass of clouds bearing down with its
trailing sheets of rain, and this one appeared streaked with white.
Snow! The wind was now piercingly cold. Helen's body kept warm, but
her extremities and ears began to suffer exceedingly. She gazed ahead
grimly. There was no help; she had to go on. Dale and Roy were hunched
down in their saddles, probably wet through, for they wore no rain-proof
coats. Bo kept close behind them, and plain it was that she felt the
cold.

This second storm was not so bad as the first, because there was less
rain. Still, the icy keenness of the wind bit into the marrow. It lasted
for an hour, during which the horses trotted on, trotted on. Again the
gray torrent roared away, the fine mist blew, the clouds lifted and
separated, and, closing again, darkened for another onslaught. This one
brought sleet. The driving pellets stung Helen's neck and cheeks, and
for a while they fell so thick and so hard upon her back that she was
afraid she could not hold up under them. The bare places on the ground
showed a sparkling coverlet of marbles of ice.

Thus, storm after storm rolled over Helen's head. Her feet grew numb
and ceased to hurt. But her fingers, because of her ceaseless efforts
to keep up the circulation, retained the stinging pain. And now the wind
pierced right through her. She marveled at her endurance, and there were
many times that she believed she could not ride farther. Yet she kept
on. All the winters she had ever lived had not brought such a day as
this. Hard and cold, wet and windy, at an increasing elevation--that was
the explanation. The air did not have sufficient oxygen for her blood.

Still, during all those interminable hours, Helen watched where she was
traveling, and if she ever returned over that trail she would recognize
it. The afternoon appeared far advanced when Dale and Roy led down into
an immense basin where a reedy lake spread over the flats. They rode
along its margin, splashing up to the knees of the horses. Cranes and
herons flew on with lumbering motion; flocks of ducks winged swift
flight from one side to the other. Beyond this depression the land
sloped rather abruptly; outcroppings of rock circled along the edge of
the highest ground, and again a dark fringe of trees appeared.

How many miles! wondered Helen. They seemed as many and as long as
the hours. But at last, just as another hard rain came, the pines
were reached. They proved to be widely scattered and afforded little
protection from the storm.

Helen sat her saddle, a dead weight. Whenever Ranger quickened his gait
or crossed a ditch she held on to the pommel to keep from falling
off. Her mind harbored only sensations of misery, and a persistent
thought--why did she ever leave home for the West? Her solicitude for Bo
had been forgotten. Nevertheless, any marked change in the topography
of the country was registered, perhaps photographed on her memory by the
torturing vividness of her experience.

The forest grew more level and denser. Shadows of twilight or gloom lay
under the trees. Presently Dale and Roy, disappeared, going downhill,
and likewise Bo. Then Helen's ears suddenly filled with a roar of rapid
water. Ranger trotted faster. Soon Helen came to the edge of a great
valley, black and gray, so full of obscurity that she could not see
across or down into it. But she knew there was a rushing river at
the bottom. The sound was deep, continuous, a heavy, murmuring roar,
singularly musical. The trail was steep. Helen had not lost all feeling,
as she had believed and hoped. Her poor, mistreated body still responded
excruciatingly to concussions, jars, wrenches, and all the other
horrible movements making up a horse-trot.

For long Helen did not look up. When she did so there lay a green,
willow-bordered, treeless space at the bottom of the valley, through
which a brown-white stream rushed with steady, ear-filling roar.

Dale and Roy drove the pack-animals across the stream, and followed,
going deep to the flanks of their horses. Bo rode into the foaming water
as if she had been used to it all her days. A slip, a fall, would have
meant that Bo must drown in that mountain torrent.

Ranger trotted straight to the edge, and there, obedient to Helen's
clutch on the bridle, he halted. The stream was fifty feet wide, shallow
on the near side, deep on the opposite, with fast current and big waves.
Helen was simply too frightened to follow.

“Let him come!” yelled Dale. “Stick on now!... Ranger!”

The big black plunged in, making the water fly. That stream was nothing
for him, though it seemed impassable to Helen. She had not the strength
left to lift her stirrups and the water surged over them. Ranger, in two
more plunges, surmounted the bank, and then, trotting across the green
to where the other horses stood steaming under some pines, he gave a
great heave and halted.

Roy reached up to help her off.

“Thirty miles, Miss Helen,” he said, and the way he spoke was a
compliment.

He had to lift her off and help her to the tree where Bo leaned. Dale
had ripped off a saddle and was spreading saddle-blankets on the ground
under the pine.

“Nell--you swore--you loved me!” was Bo's mournful greeting. The girl
was pale, drawn, blue-lipped, and she could not stand up.

“Bo, I never did--or I'd never have brought you to this--wretch that I
am!” cried Helen. “Oh, what a horrible ride!”

Rain was falling, the trees were dripping, the sky was lowering. All the
ground was soaking wet, with pools and puddles everywhere. Helen could
imagine nothing but a heartless, dreary, cold prospect. Just then home
was vivid and poignant in her thoughts. Indeed, so utterly miserable
was she that the exquisite relief of sitting down, of a cessation of
movement, of a release from that infernal perpetual-trotting horse,
seemed only a mockery. It could not be true that the time had come for
rest.

Evidently this place had been a camp site for hunters or sheep-herders,
for there were remains of a fire. Dale lifted the burnt end of a log
and brought it down hard upon the ground, splitting off pieces. Several
times he did this. It was amazing to see his strength, his facility, as
he split off handfuls of splinters. He collected a bundle of them, and,
laying them down, he bent over them. Roy wielded the ax on another log,
and each stroke split off a long strip. Then a tiny column of smoke
drifted up over Dale's shoulder as he leaned, bareheaded, sheltering the
splinters with his hat. A blaze leaped up. Roy came with an armful of
strips all white and dry, out of the inside of a log. Crosswise these
were laid over the blaze, and it began to roar. Then piece by piece the
men built up a frame upon which they added heavier woods, branches
and stumps and logs, erecting a pyramid through which flames and smoke
roared upward. It had not taken two minutes. Already Helen felt the
warmth on her icy face. She held up her bare, numb hands.

Both Dale and Roy were wet through to the skin, yet they did not tarry
beside the fire. They relieved the horses. A lasso went up between two
pines, and a tarpaulin over it, V-shaped and pegged down at the four
ends. The packs containing the baggage of the girls and the supplies and
bedding were placed under this shelter.

Helen thought this might have taken five minutes more. In this short
space of time the fire had leaped and flamed until it was huge and hot.
Rain was falling steadily all around, but over and near that roaring
blaze, ten feet high, no water fell. It evaporated. The ground began to
steam and to dry. Helen suffered at first while the heat was driving out
the cold. But presently the pain ceased.

“Nell, I never knew before how good a fire could feel,” declared Bo.

And therein lay more food for Helen's reflection.

In ten minutes Helen was dry and hot. Darkness came down upon the
dreary, sodden forest, but that great camp-fire made it a different
world from the one Helen had anticipated. It blazed and roared, cracked
like a pistol, hissed and sputtered, shot sparks everywhere, and sent
aloft a dense, yellow, whirling column of smoke. It began to have a
heart of gold.

Dale took a long pole and raked out a pile of red embers upon which the
coffee-pot and oven soon began to steam.

“Roy, I promised the girls turkey to-night,” said the hunter.

“Mebbe to-morrow, if the wind shifts. This 's turkey country.”

“Roy, a potato will do me!” exclaimed Bo. “Never again will I ask for
cake and pie! I never appreciated good things to eat. And I've been a
little pig, always. I never--never knew what it was to be hungry--until
now.”

Dale glanced up quickly.

“Lass, it's worth learnin',” he said.

Helen's thought was too deep for words. In such brief space had she been
transformed from misery to comfort!

The rain kept on falling, though it appeared to grow softer as night
settled down black. The wind died away and the forest was still, except
for the steady roar of the stream. A folded tarpaulin was laid between
the pine and the fire, well in the light and warmth, and upon it the
men set steaming pots and plates and cups, the fragrance from which was
strong and inviting.

“Fetch the saddle-blanket an' set with your backs to the fire,” said
Roy.


Later, when the girls were tucked away snugly in their blankets and
sheltered from the rain, Helen remained awake after Bo had fallen
asleep. The big blaze made the improvised tent as bright as day. She
could see the smoke, the trunk of the big pine towering aloft, and
a blank space of sky. The stream hummed a song, seemingly musical at
times, and then discordant and dull, now low, now roaring, and always
rushing, gurgling, babbling, flowing, chafing in its hurry.

Presently the hunter and his friend returned from hobbling the horses,
and beside the fire they conversed in low tones.

“Wal, thet trail we made to-day will be hid, I reckon,” said Roy, with
satisfaction.

“What wasn't sheeped over would be washed out. We've had luck. An' now I
ain't worryin',” returned Dale.

“Worryin'? Then it's the first I ever knowed you to do.”

“Man, I never had a job like this,” protested the hunter.

“Wal, thet's so.”

“Now, Roy, when old Al Auchincloss finds out about this deal, as he's
bound to when you or the boys get back to Pine, he's goin' to roar.”

“Do you reckon folks will side with him against Beasley?”

“Some of them. But Al, like as not, will tell folks to go where it's
hot. He'll bunch his men an' strike for the mountains to find his
nieces.”

“Wal, all you've got to do is to keep the girls hid till I can guide him
up to your camp. Or, failin' thet, till you can slip the girls down to
Pine.”

“No one but you an' your brothers ever seen my senaca. But it could be
found easy enough.”

“Anson might blunder on it. But thet ain't likely.”

“Why ain't it?”

“Because I'll stick to thet sheep-thief's tracks like a wolf after a
bleedin' deer. An' if he ever gets near your camp I'll ride in ahead of
him.”

“Good!” declared Dale. “I was calculatin' you'd go down to Pine, sooner
or later.”

“Not unless Anson goes. I told John thet in case there was no fight on
the stage to make a bee-line back to Pine. He was to tell Al an' offer
his services along with Joe an' Hal.”

“One way or another, then, there's bound to be blood spilled over this.”

“Shore! An' high time. I jest hope I get a look down my old 'forty-four'
at thet Beasley.”

“In that case I hope you hold straighter than times I've seen you.”

“Milt Dale, I'm a good shot,” declared Roy, stoutly.

“You're no good on movin' targets.”

“Wal, mebbe so. But I'm not lookin' for a movin' target when I meet up
with Beasley. I'm a hossman, not a hunter. You're used to shootin' flies
off deer's horns, jest for practice.”

“Roy, can we make my camp by to-morrow night?” queried Dale, more
seriously.

“We will, if each of us has to carry one of the girls. But they'll do it
or die. Dale, did you ever see a gamer girl than thet kid Bo?”

“Me! Where'd I ever see any girls?” ejaculated Dale. “I remember some
when I was a boy, but I was only fourteen then. Never had much use for
girls.”

“I'd like to have a wife like that Bo,” declared Roy, fervidly.

There ensued a moment's silence.

“Roy, you're a Mormon an' you already got a wife,” was Dale's reply.

“Now, Milt, have you lived so long in the woods thet you never heard of
a Mormon with two wives?” returned Roy, and then he laughed heartily.

“I never could stomach what I did hear pertainin' to more than one wife
for a man.”

“Wal, my friend, you go an' get yourself ONE. An' see then if you
wouldn't like to have TWO.”

“I reckon one 'd be more than enough for Milt Dale.”

“Milt, old man, let me tell you thet I always envied you your freedom,”
 said Roy, earnestly. “But it ain't life.”

“You mean life is love of a woman?”

“No. Thet's only part. I mean a son--a boy thet's like you--thet you
feel will go on with your life after you're gone.”

“I've thought of that--thought it all out, watchin' the birds an'
animals mate in the woods.... If I have no son I'll never live
hereafter.”

“Wal,” replied Roy, hesitatingly, “I don't go in so deep as thet. I mean
a son goes on with your blood an' your work.”

“Exactly... An', Roy, I envy you what you've got, because it's out of
all bounds for Milt Dale.”

Those words, sad and deep, ended the conversation. Again the rumbling,
rushing stream dominated the forest. An owl hooted dismally. A horse
trod thuddingly near by and from that direction came a cutting tear of
teeth on grass.


A voice pierced Helen's deep dreams and, awaking, she found Bo shaking
and calling her.

“Are you dead?” came the gay voice.

“Almost. Oh, my back's broken,” replied Helen. The desire to move seemed
clamped in a vise, and even if that came she believed the effort would
be impossible.

“Roy called us,” said Bo. “He said hurry. I thought I'd die just sitting
up, and I'd give you a million dollars to lace my boots. Wait, sister,
till you try to pull on one of those stiff boots!”

With heroic and violent spirit Helen sat up to find that in the act
her aches and pains appeared beyond number. Reaching for her boots,
she found them cold and stiff. Helen unlaced one and, opening it wide,
essayed to get her sore foot down into it. But her foot appeared swollen
and the boot appeared shrunken. She could not get it half on, though
she expended what little strength seemed left in her aching arms. She
groaned.

Bo laughed wickedly. Her hair was tousled, her eyes dancing, her cheeks
red.

“Be game!” she said. “Stand up like a real Western girl and PULL your
boot on.”

Whether Bo's scorn or advice made the task easier did not occur to
Helen, but the fact was that she got into her boots. Walking and
moving a little appeared to loosen the stiff joints and ease that tired
feeling. The water of the stream where the girls washed was colder than
any ice Helen had ever felt. It almost paralyzed her hands. Bo mumbled,
and blew like a porpoise. They had to run to the fire before being able
to comb their hair. The air was wonderfully keen. The dawn was clear,
bright, with a red glow in the east where the sun was about to rise.

“All ready, girls,” called Roy. “Reckon you can help yourselves. Milt
ain't comin' in very fast with the hosses. I'll rustle off to help him.
We've got a hard day before us. Yesterday wasn't nowhere to what to-day
'll be.”

“But the sun's going to shine?” implored Bo.

“Wal, you bet,” rejoined Roy, as he strode off.

Helen and Bo ate breakfast and had the camp to themselves for perhaps
half an hour; then the horses came thudding down, with Dale and Roy
riding bareback.

By the time all was in readiness to start the sun was up, melting the
frost and ice, so that a dazzling, bright mist, full of rainbows, shone
under the trees.

Dale looked Ranger over, and tried the cinches of Bo's horse.

“What's your choice--a long ride behind the packs with me--or a short
cut over the hills with Roy?” he asked.

“I choose the lesser of two rides,” replied Helen, smiling.

“Reckon that 'll be easier, but you'll know you've had a ride,” said
Dale, significantly.

“What was that we had yesterday?” asked Bo, archly.

“Only thirty miles, but cold an' wet. To-day will be fine for ridin'.”

“Milt, I'll take a blanket an' some grub in case you don't meet us
to-night,” said Roy. “An' I reckon we'll split up here where I'll have
to strike out on thet short cut.”

Bo mounted without a helping hand, but Helen's limbs were so stiff that
she could not get astride the high Ranger without assistance. The hunter
headed up the slope of the canyon, which on that side was not steep.
It was brown pine forest, with here and there a clump of dark,
silver-pointed evergreens that Roy called spruce. By the time this slope
was surmounted Helen's aches were not so bad. The saddle appeared to
fit her better, and the gait of the horse was not so unfamiliar. She
reflected, however, that she always had done pretty well uphill. Here it
was beautiful forest-land, uneven and wilder. They rode for a time along
the rim, with the white rushing stream in plain sight far below, with
its melodious roar ever thrumming in the ear.

Dale reined in and peered down at the pine-mat.

“Fresh deer sign all along here,” he said, pointing.

“Wal, I seen thet long ago,” rejoined Roy.

Helen's scrutiny was rewarded by descrying several tiny depressions in
the pine-needles, dark in color and sharply defined.

“We may never get a better chance,” said Dale. “Those deer are workin'
up our way. Get your rifle out.”

Travel was resumed then, with Roy a little in advance of the pack-train.
Presently he dismounted, threw his bridle, and cautiously peered ahead.
Then, turning, he waved his sombrero. The pack-animals halted in a
bunch. Dale beckoned for the girls to follow and rode up to Roy's horse.
This point, Helen saw, was at the top of an intersecting canuon. Dale
dismounted, without drawing his rifle from its saddle-sheath, and
approached Roy.

“Buck an' two does,” he said, low-voiced. “An' they've winded us, but
don't see us yet.... Girls, ride up closer.”

Following the directions indicated by Dale's long arm, Helen looked down
the slope. It was open, with tall pines here and there, and clumps of
silver spruce, and aspens shining like gold in the morning sunlight.
Presently Bo exclaimed: “Oh, look! I see! I see!” Then Helen's roving
glance passed something different from green and gold and brown.
Shifting back to it she saw a magnificent stag, with noble spreading
antlers, standing like a statue, his head up in alert and wild posture.
His color was gray. Beside him grazed two deer of slighter and more
graceful build, without horns.

“It's downhill,” whispered Dale. “An' you're goin' to overshoot.”

Then Helen saw that Roy had his rifle leveled.

“Oh, don't!” she cried.

Dale's remark evidently nettled Roy. He lowered the rifle.

“Milt, it's me lookin' over this gun. How can you stand there an' tell
me I'm goin' to shoot high? I had a dead bead on him.”

“Roy, you didn't allow for downhill... Hurry. He sees us now.”

Roy leveled the rifle and, taking aim as before, he fired. The buck
stood perfectly motionless, as if he had indeed been stone. The does,
however, jumped with a start, and gazed in fright in every direction.

“Told you! I seen where your bullet hit thet pine--half a foot over his
shoulder. Try again an' aim at his legs.”

Roy now took a quicker aim and pulled trigger. A puff of dust right at
the feet of the buck showed where Roy's lead had struck this time. With
a single bound, wonderful to see, the big deer was out of sight behind
trees and brush. The does leaped after him.

“Doggone the luck!” ejaculated Roy, red in the face, as he worked the
lever of his rifle. “Never could shoot downhill, nohow!”

His rueful apology to the girls for missing brought a merry laugh from
Bo.

“Not for worlds would I have had you kill that beautiful deer!” she
exclaimed.

“We won't have venison steak off him, that's certain,” remarked Dale,
dryly. “An' maybe none off any deer, if Roy does the shootin'.”

They resumed travel, sheering off to the right and keeping to the edge
of the intersecting canuon. At length they rode down to the bottom,
where a tiny brook babbled through willows, and they followed this for
a mile or so down to where it flowed into the larger stream. A dim trail
overgrown with grass showed at this point.

“Here's where we part,” said Dale. “You'll beat me into my camp, but
I'll get there sometime after dark.”

“Hey, Milt, I forgot about thet darned pet cougar of yours an' the rest
of your menagerie. Reckon they won't scare the girls? Especially old
Tom?”

“You won't see Tom till I get home,” replied Dale.

“Ain't he corralled or tied up?”

“No. He has the run of the place.”

“Wal, good-by, then, an' rustle along.”

Dale nodded to the girls, and, turning his horse, he drove the
pack-train before him up the open space between the stream and the
wooded slope.

Roy stepped off his horse with that single action which appeared such a
feat to Helen.

“Guess I'd better cinch up,” he said, as he threw a stirrup up over the
pommel of his saddle. “You girls are goin' to see wild country.”

“Who's old Tom?” queried Bo, curiously.

“Why, he's Milt's pet cougar.”

“Cougar? That's a panther--a mountain-lion, didn't he say?”

“Shore is. Tom is a beauty. An' if he takes a likin' to you he'll love
you, play with you, maul you half to death.”

Bo was all eyes.

“Dale has other pets, too?” she questioned, eagerly.

“I never was up to his camp but what it was overrun with birds an'
squirrels an' vermin of all kinds, as tame as tame as cows. Too darn
tame, Milt says. But I can't figger thet. You girls will never want to
leave thet senaca of his.”

“What's a senaca?” asked Helen, as she shifted her foot to let him
tighten the cinches on her saddle.

“Thet's Mexican for park, I guess,” he replied. “These mountains are
full of parks; an', say, I don't ever want to see no prettier place till
I get to heaven.... There, Ranger, old boy, thet's tight.”

He slapped the horse affectionately, and, turning to his own, he stepped
and swung his long length up.

“It ain't deep crossin' here. Come on,” he called, and spurred his bay.

The stream here was wide and it looked deep, but turned out to be
deceptive.

“Wal, girls, here beginneth the second lesson,” he drawled, cheerily.
“Ride one behind the other--stick close to me--do what I do--an' holler
when you want to rest or if somethin' goes bad.”

With that he spurred into the thicket. Bo went next and Helen followed.
The willows dragged at her so hard that she was unable to watch Roy, and
the result was that a low-sweeping branch of a tree knocked her hard
on the head. It hurt and startled her, and roused her mettle. Roy was
keeping to the easy trot that covered ground so well, and he led up
a slope to the open pine forest. Here the ride for several miles was
straight, level, and open. Helen liked the forest to-day. It was brown
and green, with patches of gold where the sun struck. She saw her first
bird--big blue grouse that whirred up from under her horse, and little
checkered gray quail that appeared awkward on the wing. Several times
Roy pointed out deer flashing gray across some forest aisle, and often
when he pointed Helen was not quick enough to see.

Helen realized that this ride would make up for the hideous one of
yesterday. So far she had been only barely conscious of sore places
and aching bones. These she would bear with. She loved the wild and the
beautiful, both of which increased manifestly with every mile. The sun
was warm, the air fragrant and cool, the sky blue as azure and so deep
that she imagined that she could look far up into it.

Suddenly Roy reined in so sharply that he pulled the bay up short.

“Look!” he called, sharply.

Bo screamed.

“Not thet way! Here! Aw, he's gone!”

“Nell! It was a bear! I saw it! Oh! not like circus bears at all!” cried
Bo.

Helen had missed her opportunity.

“Reckon he was a grizzly, an' I'm jest as well pleased thet he loped
off,” said Roy. Altering his course somewhat, he led to an old rotten
log that the bear had been digging in. “After grubs. There, see his
track. He was a whopper shore enough.”

They rode on, out to a high point that overlooked canuon and range,
gorge and ridge, green and black as far as Helen could see. The ranges
were bold and long, climbing to the central uplift, where a number of
fringed peaks raised their heads to the vast bare dome of Old Baldy.
Far as vision could see, to the right lay one rolling forest of pine,
beautiful and serene. Somewhere down beyond must have lain the desert,
but it was not in sight.

“I see turkeys 'way down there,” said Roy, backing away. “We'll go down
and around an' mebbe I'll get a shot.”

Descent beyond a rocky point was made through thick brush. This slope
consisted of wide benches covered with copses and scattered pines and
many oaks. Helen was delighted to see the familiar trees, although these
were different from Missouri oaks. Rugged and gnarled, but not tall,
these trees spread wide branches, the leaves of which were yellowing.
Roy led into a grassy glade, and, leaping off his horse, rifle in hand,
he prepared to shoot at something. Again Bo cried out, but this time it
was in delight. Then Helen saw an immense flock of turkeys, apparently
like the turkeys she knew at home, but these had bronze and checks
of white, and they looked wild. There must have been a hundred in the
flock, most of them hens. A few gobblers on the far side began the
flight, running swiftly off. Helen plainly heard the thud of their
feet. Roy shot once--twice--three times. Then rose a great commotion and
thumping, and a loud roar of many wings. Dust and leaves whirling in the
air were left where the turkeys had been.

“Wal, I got two,” said Roy, and he strode forward to pick up his game.
Returning, he tied two shiny, plump gobblers back of his saddle and
remounted his horse. “We'll have turkey to-night, if Milt gets to camp
in time.”

The ride was resumed. Helen never would have tired riding through those
oak groves, brown and sear and yellow, with leaves and acorns falling.

“Bears have been workin' in here already,” said Roy. “I see tracks all
over. They eat acorns in the fall. An' mebbe we'll run into one yet.”

The farther down he led the wilder and thicker grew the trees, so that
dodging branches was no light task. Ranger did not seem to care how
close he passed a tree or under a limb, so that he missed them himself;
but Helen thereby got some additional bruises. Particularly hard was it,
when passing a tree, to get her knee out of the way in time.

Roy halted next at what appeared a large green pond full of vegetation
and in places covered with a thick scum. But it had a current and an
outlet, proving it to be a huge, spring. Roy pointed down at a muddy
place.

“Bear-wallow. He heard us comin'. Look at thet little track. Cub track.
An' look at these scratches on this tree, higher 'n my head. An old
she-bear stood up, an' scratched them.”

Roy sat his saddle and reached up to touch fresh marks on the tree.

“Woods's full of big bears,” he said, grinning. “An' I take it
particular kind of this old she rustlin' off with her cub. She-bears
with cubs are dangerous.”

The next place to stir Helen to enthusiasm was the glen at the bottom
of this canuon. Beech-trees, maples, aspens, overtopped by lofty
pines, made dense shade over a brook where trout splashed on the brown,
swirling current, and leaves drifted down, and stray flecks of golden
sunlight lightened the gloom. Here was hard riding to and fro across the
brook, between huge mossy boulders, and between aspens so close together
that Helen could scarce squeeze her knees through.

Once more Roy climbed out of that canuon, over a ridge into another,
down long wooded slopes and through scrub-oak thickets, on and on
till the sun stood straight overhead. Then he halted for a short rest,
unsaddled the horses to let them roll, and gave the girls some cold
lunch that he had packed. He strolled off with his gun, and, upon
returning, resaddled and gave the word to start.

That was the last of rest and easy traveling for the girls. The forest
that he struck into seemed ribbed like a washboard with deep ravines
so steep of slope as to make precarious travel. Mostly he kept to the
bottom where dry washes afforded a kind of trail. But it was necessary
to cross these ravines when they were too long to be headed, and this
crossing was work.

The locust thickets characteristic of these slopes were thorny and close
knit. They tore and scratched and stung both horses and riders. Ranger
appeared to be the most intelligent of the horses and suffered less.
Bo's white mustang dragged her through more than one brambly place. On
the other hand, some of these steep slopes, were comparatively free of
underbrush. Great firs and pines loomed up on all sides. The earth was
soft and the hoofs sank deep. Toward the bottom of a descent Ranger
would brace his front feet and then slide down on his haunches. This
mode facilitated travel, but it frightened Helen. The climb out then on
the other side had to be done on foot.

After half a dozen slopes surmounted in this way Helen's strength was
spent and her breath was gone. She felt light-headed. She could not get
enough air. Her feet felt like lead, and her riding-coat was a burden.
A hundred times, hot and wet and throbbing, she was compelled to stop.
Always she had been a splendid walker and climber. And here, to break up
the long ride, she was glad to be on her feet. But she could only drag
one foot up after the other. Then, when her nose began to bleed, she
realized that it was the elevation which was causing all the trouble.
Her heart, however, did not hurt her, though she was conscious of an
oppression on her breast.

At last Roy led into a ravine so deep and wide and full of forest
verdure that it appeared impossible to cross. Nevertheless, he started
down, dismounting after a little way. Helen found that leading Ranger
down was worse than riding him. He came fast and he would step right
in her tracks. She was not quick enough to get away from him. Twice
he stepped on her foot, and again his broad chest hit her shoulder and
threw her flat. When he began to slide, near the bottom, Helen had to
run for her life.

“Oh, Nell! Isn't--this--great?” panted Bo, from somewhere ahead.

“Bo--your--mind's--gone,” panted Helen, in reply.

Roy tried several places to climb out, and failed in each. Leading down
the ravine for a hundred yards or more, he essayed another attempt.
Here there had been a slide, and in part the earth was bare. When he had
worked up this, he halted above, and called:

“Bad place! Keep on the up side of the hosses!”

This appeared easier said than done. Helen could not watch Bo, because
Ranger would not wait. He pulled at the bridle and snorted.

“Faster you come the better,” called Roy.

Helen could not see the sense of that, but she tried. Roy and Bo had dug
a deep trail zigzag up that treacherous slide. Helen made the mistake
of starting to follow in their tracks, and when she realized this Ranger
was climbing fast, almost dragging her, and it was too late to get
above. Helen began to labor. She slid down right in front of Ranger. The
intelligent animal, with a snort, plunged out of the trail to keep from
stepping on her. Then he was above her.

“Lookout down there,” yelled Roy, in warning. “Get on the up side!”

But that did not appear possible. The earth began to slide under Ranger,
and that impeded Helen's progress. He got in advance of her, straining
on the bridle.

“Let go!” yelled Roy.

Helen dropped the bridle just as a heavy slide began to move with
Ranger. He snorted fiercely, and, rearing high, in a mighty plunge he
gained solid ground. Helen was buried to her knees, but, extricating
herself, she crawled to a safe point and rested before climbing farther.

“Bad cave-in, thet,” was Roy's comment, when at last she joined him and
Bo at the top.

Roy appeared at a loss as to which way to go. He rode to high ground and
looked in all directions. To Helen, one way appeared as wild and rough
as another, and all was yellow, green, and black under the westering
sun. Roy rode a short distance in one direction, then changed for
another.

Presently he stopped.

“Wal, I'm shore turned round,” he said.

“You're not lost?” cried Bo.

“Reckon I've been thet for a couple of hours,” he replied, cheerfully.
“Never did ride across here I had the direction, but I'm blamed now if I
can tell which way thet was.”

Helen gazed at him in consternation.

“Lost!” she echoed.



CHAPTER IX

A silence ensued, fraught with poignant fear for Helen, as she gazed
into Bo's whitening face. She read her sister's mind. Bo was remembering
tales of lost people who never were found.

“Me an' Milt get lost every day,” said Roy. “You don't suppose any man
can know all this big country. It's nothin' for us to be lost.”

“Oh!... I was lost when I was little,” said Bo.

“Wal, I reckon it'd been better not to tell you so offhand like,”
 replied Roy, contritely. “Don't feel bad, now. All I need is a peek at
Old Baldy. Then I'll have my bearin'. Come on.”

Helen's confidence returned as Roy led off at a fast trot. He rode
toward the westering sun, keeping to the ridge they had ascended, until
once more he came out upon a promontory. Old Baldy loomed there, blacker
and higher and closer. The dark forest showed round, yellow, bare spots
like parks.

“Not so far off the track,” said Roy, as he wheeled his horse. “We'll
make camp in Milt's senaca to-night.”

He led down off the ridge into a valley and then up to higher altitude,
where the character of the forest changed. The trees were no longer
pines, but firs and spruce, growing thin and exceedingly tall, with
few branches below the topmost foliage. So dense was this forest that
twilight seemed to have come.

Travel was arduous. Everywhere were windfalls that had to be avoided,
and not a rod was there without a fallen tree. The horses, laboring
slowly, sometimes sank knee-deep into the brown duff. Gray moss
festooned the tree-trunks and an amber-green moss grew thick on the
rotting logs.

Helen loved this forest primeval. It was so still, so dark, so gloomy,
so full of shadows and shade, and a dank smell of rotting wood, and
sweet fragrance of spruce. The great windfalls, where trees were jammed
together in dozens, showed the savagery of the storms. Wherever a single
monarch lay uprooted there had sprung up a number of ambitious sons,
jealous of one another, fighting for place. Even the trees fought one
another! The forest was a place of mystery, but its strife could be read
by any eye. The lightnings had split firs clear to the roots, and others
it had circled with ripping tear from top to trunk.

Time came, however, when the exceeding wildness of the forest, in
density and fallen timber, made it imperative for Helen to put all her
attention on the ground and trees in her immediate vicinity. So the
pleasure of gazing ahead at the beautiful wilderness was denied her.
Thereafter travel became toil and the hours endless.

Roy led on, and Ranger followed, while the shadows darkened under the
trees. She was reeling in her saddle, half blind and sick, when Roy
called out cheerily that they were almost there.

Whatever his idea was, to Helen it seemed many miles that she followed
him farther, out of the heavy-timbered forest down upon slopes of low
spruce, like evergreen, which descended sharply to another level, where
dark, shallow streams flowed gently and the solemn stillness held a low
murmur of falling water, and at last the wood ended upon a wonderful
park full of a thick, rich, golden light of fast-fading sunset.

“Smell the smoke,” said Roy. “By Solomon! if Milt ain't here ahead of
me!”

He rode on. Helen's weary gaze took in the round senaca, the circling
black slopes, leading up to craggy rims all gold and red in the
last flare of the sun; then all the spirit left in her flashed up in
thrilling wonder at this exquisite, wild, and colorful spot.

Horses were grazing out in the long grass and there were deer grazing
with them. Roy led round a corner of the fringed, bordering woodland,
and there, under lofty trees, shone a camp-fire. Huge gray rocks loomed
beyond, and then cliffs rose step by step to a notch in the mountain
wall, over which poured a thin, lacy waterfall. As Helen gazed in
rapture the sunset gold faded to white and all the western slope of the
amphitheater darkened.

Dale's tall form appeared.

“Reckon you're late,” he said, as with a comprehensive flash of eye he
took in the three.

“Milt, I got lost,” replied Roy.

“I feared as much.... You girls look like you'd done better to ride with
me,” went on Dale, as he offered a hand to help Bo off. She took it,
tried to get her foot out of the stirrups, and then she slid from the
saddle into Dale's arms. He placed her on her feet and, supporting her,
said, solicitously: “A hundred-mile ride in three days for a tenderfoot
is somethin' your uncle Al won't believe.... Come, walk if it kills
you!”

Whereupon he led Bo, very much as if he were teaching a child to walk.
The fact that the voluble Bo had nothing to say was significant to
Helen, who was following, with the assistance of Roy.

One of the huge rocks resembled a sea-shell in that it contained a
hollow over which the wide-spreading shelf flared out. It reached toward
branches of great pines. A spring burst from a crack in the solid rock.
The campfire blazed under a pine, and the blue column of smoke rose just
in front of the shelving rock. Packs were lying on the grass and some
of them were open. There were no signs here of a permanent habitation of
the hunter. But farther on were other huge rocks, leaning, cracked, and
forming caverns, some of which perhaps he utilized.

“My camp is just back,” said Dale, as if he had read Helen's mind.
“To-morrow we'll fix up comfortable-like round here for you girls.”

Helen and Bo were made as easy as blankets and saddles could make them,
and the men went about their tasks.

“Nell--isn't this--a dream?” murmured Bo.

“No, child. It's real--terribly real,” replied Helen. “Now that we're
here--with that awful ride over--we can think.”

“It's so pretty--here,” yawned Bo. “I'd just as lief Uncle Al didn't
find us very soon.”

“Bo! He's a sick man. Think what the worry will be to him.”

“I'll bet if he knows Dale he won't be so worried.”

“Dale told us Uncle Al disliked him.”

“Pooh! What difference does that make?... Oh, I don't know which I
am--hungrier or tireder!”

“I couldn't eat to-night,” said Helen, wearily.

When she stretched out she had a vague, delicious sensation that that
was the end of Helen Rayner, and she was glad. Above her, through the
lacy, fernlike pine-needles, she saw blue sky and a pale star just
showing. Twilight was stealing down swiftly. The silence was beautiful,
seemingly undisturbed by the soft, silky, dreamy fall of water. Helen
closed her eyes, ready for sleep, with the physical commotion within her
body gradually yielding. In some places her bones felt as if they had
come out through her flesh; in others throbbed deep-seated aches; her
muscles appeared slowly to subside, to relax, with the quivering twinges
ceasing one by one; through muscle and bone, through all her body,
pulsed a burning current.

Bo's head dropped on Helen's shoulder. Sense became vague to Helen. She
lost the low murmur of the waterfall, and then the sound or feeling of
some one at the campfire. And her last conscious thought was that she
tried to open her eyes and could not.

When she awoke all was bright. The sun shone almost directly overhead.
Helen was astounded. Bo lay wrapped in deep sleep, her face flushed,
with beads of perspiration on her brow and the chestnut curls damp.
Helen threw down the blankets, and then, gathering courage--for she felt
as if her back was broken--she endeavored to sit up. In vain! Her spirit
was willing, but her muscles refused to act. It must take a violent
spasmodic effort. She tried it with shut eyes, and, succeeding, sat
there trembling. The commotion she had made in the blankets awoke Bo,
and she blinked her surprised blue eyes in the sunlight.

“Hello--Nell! do I have to--get up?” she asked, sleepily.

“Can you?” queried Helen.

“Can I what?” Bo was now thoroughly awake and lay there staring at her
sister.

“Why--get up.”

“I'd like to know why not,” retorted Bo, as she made the effort. She got
one arm and shoulder up, only to flop back like a crippled thing. And
she uttered the most piteous little moan. “I'm dead! I know--I am!”

“Well, if you're going to be a Western girl you'd better have spunk
enough to move.”

“A-huh!” ejaculated Bo. Then she rolled over, not without groans, and,
once upon her face, she raised herself on her hands and turned to a
sitting posture. “Where's everybody?... Oh, Nell, it's perfectly lovely
here. Paradise!”

Helen looked around. A fire was smoldering. No one was in sight.
Wonderful distant colors seemed to strike her glance as she tried to fix
it upon near-by objects. A beautiful little green tent or shack had been
erected out of spruce boughs. It had a slanting roof that sloped all the
way from a ridge-pole to the ground; half of the opening in front was
closed, as were the sides. The spruce boughs appeared all to be laid in
the same direction, giving it a smooth, compac

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