Books: The Man of the Forest

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What, then, was the duty of Milt Dale to himself? Because
men preyed on one another and on the weak, should he turn
his back upon a so-called civilization or should he grow
like them? Clear as a bell came the answer that his duty was
to do neither. And then he saw how the little village of
Pine, as well as the whole world, needed men like him. He
had gone to nature, to the forest, to the wilderness for his
development; and all the judgments and efforts of his future
would be a result of that education.

Thus Dale, lying in the darkness and silence of his lonely
park, arrived at a conclusion that he divined was but the
beginning of a struggle.

It took long introspection to determine the exact nature of
that struggle, but at length it evolved into the paradox
that Helen Rayner had opened his eyes to his duty as a man,
that he accepted it, yet found a strange obstacle in the
perplexing, tumultuous, sweet fear of ever going near her
again.

Suddenly, then, all his thought revolved around the girl,
and, thrown off his balance, he weltered in a wilderness of
unfamiliar strange ideas.

When he awoke next day the fight was on in earnest. In his
sleep his mind had been active. The idea that greeted him,
beautiful as the sunrise, flashed in memory of Auchincloss's
significant words, "Take your chance with the girl!"

The old rancher was in his dotage. He hinted of things
beyond the range of possibility. That idea of a chance for
Dale remained before his consciousness only an instant.
Stars were unattainable; life could not be fathomed; the
secret of nature did not abide alone on the earth -- these
theories were not any more impossible of proving than that
Helen Rayner might be for him.

Nevertheless, her strange coming into his life had played
havoc, the extent of which he had only begun to realize.

For a month he tramped through the forest. It was October, a
still golden, fulfilling season of the year; and everywhere
in the vast dark green a glorious blaze of oak and aspen
made beautiful contrast. He carried his rifle, but he never
used it. He would climb miles and go this way and that with
no object in view. Yet his eye and ear had never been
keener. Hours he would spend on a promontory, watching. the
distance, where the golden patches of aspen shone bright out
of dark-green mountain slopes. He loved to fling himself
down in an aspen-grove at the edge of a senaca, and there
lie in that radiance like a veil of gold and purple and red,
with the white tree-trunks striping the shade. Always,
whether there were breeze or not, the aspen-leaves quivered,
ceaselessly, wonderfully, like his pulses, beyond his
control. Often he reclined against a mossy rock beside a
mountain stream to listen, to watch, to feel all that was
there, while his mind held a haunting, dark-eyed vision of a
girl. On the lonely heights, like an eagle, he sat gazing
down into Paradise Park, that was more and more beautiful,
but would never again be the same, never fill him with
content, never be all and all to him.

Late in October the first snow fell. It melted at once on
the south side of the park, but the north slopes and the
rims and domes above stayed white.

Dale had worked quick and hard at curing and storing his
winter supply of food, and now he spent days chopping and
splitting wood to burn during the months he would be
snowed-in. He watched for the dark-gray, fast-scudding
storm-clouds, and welcomed them when they came. Once there
lay ten feet of snow on the trails he would be snowed-in
until spring. It would be impossible to go down to Pine. And
perhaps during the long winter he would be cured of this
strange, nameless disorder of his feelings.

November brought storms up on the peaks. Flurries of snow
fell in the park every day, but the sunny south side, where
Dale's camp lay, retained its autumnal color and warmth. Not
till late in winter did the snow creep over this secluded
nook.

The morning came at last, piercingly keen and bright, when
Dale saw that the heights were impassable; the realization
brought him a poignant regret. He had not guessed how he had
wanted to see Helen Rayner again until it was too late. That
opened his eyes. A raging frenzy of action followed, in
which he only tired himself physically without helping
himself spiritually.

It was sunset when he faced the west, looking up at the pink
snow-domes and the dark-golden fringe of spruce, and in that
moment he found the truth.

"I love that girl! I love that girl!" he spoke aloud, to the
distant white peaks, to the winds, to the loneliness and
silence of his prison, to the great pines and to the
murmuring stream, and to his faithful pets. It was his
tragic confession of weakness, of amazing truth, of hopeless
position, of pitiful excuse for the transformation wrought
in him.

Dale's struggle ended there when he faced his soul. To
understand himself was to be released from strain, worry,
ceaseless importuning doubt and wonder and fear. But the
fever of unrest, of uncertainty, had been nothing compared
to a sudden upflashing torment of love.

With somber deliberation he set about the tasks needful, and
others that he might make -- his camp-fires and meals, the
care of his pets and horses, the mending of saddles and
pack-harness, the curing of buckskin for moccasins and
hunting-suits. So his days were not idle. But all this work
was habit for him and needed no application of mind.

And Dale, like some men of lonely wilderness lives who did
not retrograde toward the savage, was a thinker. Love made
him a sufferer.

The surprise and shame of his unconscious surrender, the
certain hopelessness of it, the long years of communion with
all that was wild, lonely, and beautiful, the wonderfully
developed insight into nature's secrets, and the
sudden-dawning revelation that he was no omniscient being
exempt from the ruthless ordinary destiny of man -- all
these showed him the strength of his manhood and of his
passion, and that the life he had chosen was of all lives
the one calculated to make love sad and terrible.

Helen Rayner haunted him. In the sunlight there was not a
place around camp which did not picture her lithe, vigorous
body, her dark, thoughtful eyes, her eloquent, resolute
lips, and the smile that was so sweet and strong. At night
she was there like a slender specter, pacing beside him
under the moaning pines. Every camp-fire held in its heart
the glowing white radiance of her spirit.

Nature had taught Dale to love solitude and silence, but
love itself taught him their meaning. Solitude had been
created for the eagle on his crag, for the blasted mountain
fir, lonely and gnarled on its peak, for the elk and the
wolf. But it had not been intended for man. And to live
always in the silence of wild places was to become obsessed
with self -- to think and dream -- to be happy, which state,
however pursued by man, was not good for him. Man must be
given imperious longings for the unattainable.

It needed, then, only the memory of an unattainable woman to
render solitude passionately desired by a man, yet almost
unendurable. Dale was alone with his secret; and every pine,
everything in that park saw him shaken and undone.

In the dark, pitchy deadness of night, when there was no
wind and the cold on the peaks had frozen the waterfall,
then the silence seemed insupportable. Many hours that
should have been given to slumber were paced out under the
cold, white, pitiless stars, under the lonely pines.

Dale's memory betrayed him, mocked his restraint, cheated
him of any peace; and his imagination, sharpened by love,
created pictures, fancies, feelings, that drove him frantic.

He thought of Helen Rayner's strong, shapely brown hand. In
a thousand different actions it haunted him. How quick and
deft in camp-fire tasks! how graceful and swift as she
plaited her dark hair! how tender and skilful in its
ministration when one of his pets had been injured! how
eloquent when pressed tight against her breast in a moment
of fear on the dangerous heights! how expressive of
unutterable things when laid on his arm!

Dale saw that beautiful hand slowly creep up his arm, across
his shoulder, and slide round his neck to clasp there. He
was powerless to inhibit the picture. And what he felt then
was boundless, unutterable. No woman had ever yet so much as
clasped his hand, and heretofore no such imaginings had ever
crossed his mind, yet deep in him, somewhere hidden, had
been this waiting, sweet, and imperious need. In the bright
day he appeared to ward off such fancies, but at night he
was helpless. And every fancy left him weaker, wilder.

When, at the culmination of this phase of his passion, Dale,
who had never known the touch of a woman's lips, suddenly
yielded to the illusion of Helen Rayner's kisses, he found
himself quite mad, filled with rapture and despair, loving
her as he hated himself. It seemed as if he had experienced
all these terrible feelings in some former life and had
forgotten them in this life. He had no right to think of
her, but he could not resist it. Imagining the sweet
surrender of her lips was a sacrilege, yet here, in spite of
will and honor and shame, he was lost.

Dale, at length, was vanquished, and he ceased to rail at
himself, or restrain his fancies. He became a dreamy,
sad-eyed, camp-fire gazer, like many another lonely man,
separated, by chance or error, from what the heart hungered
most for. But this great experience, when all its
significance had clarified in his mind, immeasurably
broadened his understanding of the principles of nature
applied to life.

Love had been in him stronger than in most men, because of
his keen, vigorous, lonely years in the forest, where health
of mind and body were intensified and preserved. How simple,
how natural, how inevitable! He might have loved any
fine-spirited, healthy-bodied girl. Like a tree shooting its
branches and leaves, its whole entity, toward the sunlight,
so had he grown toward a woman's love. Why? Because the
thing he revered in nature, the spirit, the universal, the
life that was God, had created at his birth or before his
birth the three tremendous instincts of nature -- to fight
for life, to feed himself, to reproduce his kind. That was
all there was to it. But oh! the mystery, the beauty, the
torment, and the terror of this third instinct -- this
hunger for the sweetness and the glory of a woman's love!

CHAPTER XVI

Helen Rayner dropped her knitting into her lap and sat
pensively gazing out of the window over the bare yellow
ranges of her uncle's ranch.

The winter day was bright, but steely, and the wind that
whipped down from the white-capped mountains had a keen,
frosty edge. A scant snow lay in protected places; cattle
stood bunched in the lee of ridges; low sheets of dust
scurried across the flats.

The big living-room of the ranch-house was warm and
comfortable with its red adobe walls, its huge stone
fireplace where cedar logs blazed, and its many-colored
blankets. Bo Rayner sat before the fire, curled up in an
armchair, absorbed in a book. On the floor lay the hound
Pedro, his racy, fine head stretched toward the warmth.

"Did uncle call?" asked Helen, with a start out of her
reverie.

"I didn't hear him," replied Bo.

Helen rose to tiptoe across the floor, and, softly parting
some curtains, she looked into the room where her uncle lay.
He was asleep. Sometimes he called out in his slumbers. For
weeks now he had been confined to his bed, slowly growing
weaker. With a sigh Helen returned to her window-seat and
took up her work.

"Bo, the sun is bright," she said. "The days are growing
longer. I'm so glad."

"Nell, you're always wishing time away. For me it passes
quickly enough," replied the sister.

"But I love spring and summer and fall -- and I guess I hate
winter," returned Helen, thoughtfully.

The yellow ranges rolled away up to the black ridges and
they in turn swept up to the cold, white mountains. Helen's
gaze seemed to go beyond that snowy barrier. And Bo's keen
eyes studied her sister's earnest, sad face.

"Nell, do you ever think of Dale?" she queried, suddenly.

The question startled Helen. A slow blush suffused neck and
cheek.

"Of course," she replied, as if surprised that Bo should ask
such a thing.

"I -- I shouldn't have asked that," said Bo, softly, and
then bent again over her book.

Helen gazed tenderly at that bright, bowed head. In this
swift-flying, eventful, busy winter, during which the
management of the ranch had devolved wholly upon Helen, the
little sister had grown away from her. Bo had insisted upon
her own free will and she had followed it, to the amusement
of her uncle, to the concern of Helen, to the dismay and
bewilderment of the faithful Mexican housekeeper, and to the
undoing of all the young men on the ranch.

Helen had always been hoping and waiting for a favorable
hour in which she might find this wilful sister once more
susceptible to wise and loving influence. But while she
hesitated to speak, slow footsteps and a jingle of spurs
sounded without, and then came a timid knock. Bo looked up
brightly and ran to open the door.

"Oh! It's only -- YOU!" she uttered, in withering scorn, to
the one who knocked.

Helen thought she could guess who that was.

"How are you-all?" asked a drawling voice.

"Well, Mister Carmichael, if that interests you -- I'm quite
ill," replied Bo, freezingly.

"Ill! Aw no, now?"

"It's a fact. If I don't die right off I'll have to be taken
back to Missouri," said Bo, casually.

"Are you goin' to ask me in?" queried Carmichael, bluntly.
"It's cold -- an' I've got somethin' to say to --"

"To ME? Well, you're not backward, I declare," retorted Bo.

"Miss Rayner, I reckon it 'll be strange to you -- findin'
out I didn't come to see you."

"Indeed! No. But what was strange was the deluded idea I had
-- that you meant to apologize to me -- like a gentleman. .
. .Come in, Mr. Carmichael. My sister is here."

The door closed as Helen turned round. Carmichael stood just
inside with his sombrero in hand, and as he gazed at Bo his
lean face seemed hard. In the few months since autumn he had
changed -- aged, it seemed, and the once young, frank,
alert, and careless cowboy traits had merged into the making
of a man. Helen knew just how much of a man he really was.
He had been her mainstay during all the complex working of
the ranch that had fallen upon her shoulders.

"Wal, I reckon you was deluded, all right -- if you thought
I'd crawl like them other lovers of yours," he said, with
cool deliberation.

Bo turned pale, and her eyes fairly blazed, yet even in what
must have been her fury Helen saw amaze and pain.

"OTHER lovers? I think the biggest delusion here is the way
you flatter yourself," replied Bo, stingingly.

"Me flatter myself? Nope. You don't savvy me. I'm shore
hatin' myself these days."

"Small wonder. I certainly hate you -- with all my heart!"

At this retort the cowboy dropped his head and did not see
Bo flaunt herself out of the room. But he heard the door
close, and then slowly came toward Helen.

"Cheer up, Las Vegas," said Helen, smiling. "Bo's
hot-tempered."

"Miss Nell, I'm just like a dog. The meaner she treats me
the more I love her," he replied, dejectedly.

To Helen's first instinct of liking for this cowboy there
had been added admiration, respect, and a growing
appreciation of strong, faithful, developing character.
Carmichael's face and hands were red and chapped from winter
winds; the leather of wrist-bands, belt, and boots was all
worn shiny and thin; little streaks of dust fell from him as
he breathed heavily. He no longer looked the dashing cowboy,
ready for a dance or lark or fight.

"How in the world did you offend her so?" asked Helen. "Bo
is furious. I never saw her so angry as that."

"Miss Nell, it was jest this way," began Carmichael. "Shore
Bo's knowed I was in love with her. I asked her to marry me
an' she wouldn't say yes or no. . . . An', mean as it sounds
-- she never run away from it, thet's shore. We've had some
quarrels -- two of them bad, an' this last's the worst."

"Bo told me about one quarrel," said Helen. "It was --
because you drank -- that time."

"Shore it was. She took one of her cold spells an' I jest
got drunk."

"But that was wrong," protested Helen.

"I ain't so shore. You see, I used to get drunk often --
before I come here. An' I've been drunk only once. Back at
Las Vegas the outfit would never believe thet. Wal, I
promised Bo I wouldn't do it again, an' I've kept my word."

"That is fine of you. But tell me, why is she angry now?"

"Bo makes up to all the fellars," confessed Carmichael,
hanging his head. "I took her to the dance last week -- over
in the town-hall. Thet's the first time she'd gone anywhere
with me. I shore was proud. . . . But thet dance was hell.
Bo carried on somethin' turrible, an' I --"

"Tell me. What did she do?" demanded Helen, anxiously. "I'm
responsible for her. I've got to see that she behaves."

"Aw, I ain't sayin' she didn't behave like a lady," replied
Carmichael. "It was -- she -- wal, all them fellars are
fools over her -- an' Bo wasn't true to me."

"My dear boy, is Bo engaged to you?"

"Lord -- if she only was!" he sighed.

"Then how can you say she wasn't true to you? Be
reasonable."

"I reckon now, Miss Nell, thet no one can be in love an' act
reasonable," rejoined the cowboy. "I don't know how to
explain, but the fact is I feel thet Bo has played the --
the devil with me an' all the other fellars."

"You mean she has flirted?"

"I reckon."

"Las Vegas, I'm afraid you're right," said Helen, with
growing apprehension. "Go on. Tell me what's happened."

"Wal, thet Turner boy, who rides for Beasley, he was hot
after Bo," returned Carmichael, and he spoke as if memory
hurt him. "Reckon I've no use for Turner. He's a
fine-lookin', strappin', big cow-puncher, an' calculated to
win the girls. He brags thet he can, an' I reckon he's
right. Wal, he was always hangin' round Bo. An' he stole one
of my dances with Bo. I only had three, an' he comes up to
say this one was his; Bo, very innocent -- oh, she's a cute
one! -- she says, 'Why, Mister Turner -- is it really
yours?' An' she looked so full of joy thet when he says to
me, 'Excoose us, friend Carmichael,' I sat there like a
locoed jackass an' let them go. But I wasn't mad at thet. He
was a better dancer than me an' I wanted her to have a good
time. What started the hell was I seen him put his arm round
her when it wasn't just time, accordin' to the dance, an' Bo
-- she didn't break any records gettin' away from him. She
pushed him away -- after a little -- after I near died. Wal,
on the way home I had to tell her. I shore did. An' she said
what I'd love to forget. Then -- then, Miss Nell, I grabbed
her -- it was outside here by the porch an' all bright
moonlight -- I grabbed her an' hugged an' kissed her good.
When I let her go I says, sorta brave, but I was plumb
scared -- I says, "Wal, are you goin' to marry me now?'"

He concluded with a gulp, and looked at Helen with woe in
his eyes.

"Oh! What did Bo do?" breathlessly queried Helen.

"She slapped me," he replied. "An' then she says, I did like
you best, but NOW I hate you!' An' she slammed the door in
my face."

"I think you made a great mistake," said Helen, gravely.

"Wal, if I thought so I'd beg her forgiveness. But I reckon
I don't. What's more, I feel better than before. I'm only a
cowboy an' never was much good till I met her. Then I
braced. I got to havin' hopes, studyin' books, an' you know
how I've been lookin' into this ranchin' game. I stopped
drinkin' an' saved my money. Wal, she knows all thet. Once
she said she was proud of me. But it didn't seem to count
big with her. An' if it can't count big I don't want it to
count at all. I reckon the madder Bo is at me the more
chance I've got. She knows I love her -- thet I'd die for
her -- thet I'm a changed man. An' she knows I never before
thought of darin' to touch her hand. An' she knows she
flirted with Turner."

"She's only a child," replied Helen. "And all this change --
the West -- the wildness -- and you boys making much of her
-- why, it's turned her head. But Bo will come out of it
true blue. She is good, loving. Her heart is gold."

"I reckon I know, an' my faith can't be shook," rejoined
Carmichael, simply. "But she ought to believe thet she'll
make bad blood out here. The West is the West. Any kind of
girls are scarce. An' one like Bo -- Lord! we cowboys never
seen none to compare with her. She'll make bad blood an'
some of it will be spilled."

"Uncle Al encourages her," said Helen, apprehensively. "It
tickles him to hear how the boys are after her. Oh, she
doesn't tell him. But he hears. And I, who must stand in
mother's place to her, what can I do?"

"Miss Nell, are you on my side?" asked the cowboy,
wistfully. He was strong and elemental, caught in the toils
of some power beyond him.

Yesterday Helen might have hesitated at that question. But
to-day Carmichael brought some proven quality of loyalty,
some strange depth of rugged sincerity, as if she had
learned his future worth.

"Yes, I am," Helen replied, earnestly. And she offered her
hand.

"Wal, then it 'll shore turn out happy," he said, squeezing
her hand. His smile was grateful, but there was nothing in
it of the victory he hinted at. Some of his ruddy color had
gone. "An' now I want to tell you why I come."

He had lowered his voice. "Is Al asleep?" he whispered.

"Yes," replied Helen. "He was a little while ago."

"Reckon I'd better shut his door."

Helen watched the cowboy glide across the room and carefully
close the door, then return to her with intent eyes. She
sensed events in his look, and she divined suddenly that he
must feel as if he were her brother.

"Shore I'm the one thet fetches all the bad news to you," he
said, regretfully.

Helen caught her breath. There had indeed been many little
calamities to mar her management of the ranch -- loss of
cattle, horses, sheep -- the desertion of herders to Beasley
-- failure of freighters to arrive when most needed --
fights among the cowboys -- and disagreements over
long-arranged deals.

"Your uncle Al makes a heap of this here Jeff Mulvey,"
asserted Carmichael.

"Yes, indeed. Uncle absolutely relies on Jeff," replied
Helen.

"Wal, I hate to tell you, Miss Nell," said the cowboy,
bitterly, "thet Mulvey ain't the man he seems."

"Oh, what do you mean?"

"When your uncle dies Mulvey is goin' over to Beasley an'
he's goin' to take all the fellars who'll stick to him."

"Could Jeff be so faithless -- after so many years my
uncle's foreman? Oh, how do you know?"

"Reckon I guessed long ago. But wasn't shore. Miss Nell,
there's a lot in the wind lately, as poor old Al grows
weaker. Mulvey has been particular friendly to me an' I've
nursed him along, 'cept I wouldn't drink. An' his pards have
been particular friends with me, too, more an' more as I
loosened up. You see, they was shy of me when I first got
here. To-day the whole deal showed clear to me like a hoof
track in soft ground. Bud Lewis, who's bunked with me, come
out an' tried to win me over to Beasley -- soon as
Auchincloss dies. I palavered with Bud an' I wanted to know.
But Bud would only say he was goin' along with Jeff an'
others of the outfit. I told him I'd reckon over it an' let
him know. He thinks I'll come round."

"Why -- why will these men leave me when -- when -- Oh, poor
uncle! They bargain on his death. But why -- tell me why?"

"Beasley has worked on them -- won them over," replied
Carmichael, grimly. "After Al dies the ranch will go to you.
Beasley means to have it. He an' Al was pards once, an' now
Beasley has most folks here believin' he got the short end
of thet deal. He'll have papers -- shore -- an' he'll have
most of the men. So he'll just put you off an' take
possession. Thet's all, Miss Nell, an' you can rely on its
bein' true."

"I -- I believe you -- but I can't believe such -- such
robbery possible," gasped Helen.

"It's simple as two an' two. Possession is law out here.
Once Beasley gets on the ground it's settled. What could you
do with no men to fight for your property?"

"But, surely, some of the men will stay with me?"

"I reckon. But not enough."

"Then I can hire more. The Beeman boys. And Dale would come
to help me."

"Dale would come. An' he'd help a heap. I wish he was here,"
replied Carmichael, soberly. "But there's no way to get him.
He's snowed-up till May."

"I dare not confide in uncle," said Helen, with agitation.
"The shock might kill him. Then to tell him of the
unfaithfulness of his old men -- that would be cruel. . . .
Oh, it can't be so bad as you think."

"I reckon it couldn't be no worse. An' -- Miss Nell, there's
only one way to get out of it -- an' thet's the way of the
West."

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