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This etext prepared by Richard Fane

THE MAN OF THE FOREST

by Zane Grey

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 settle 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 the
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 be 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."

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