Books: The Man of the Forest

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"Crazy or not, I'll git gold out of thet kid!" he roared.

"But, man, talk sense. Are you gittin' daffy, too? I declare
this outfit's been eatin' loco. You can't git gold fer her!"
said Wilson, deliberately.

"Why can't I?"

"'Cause we're tracked. We can't make no dickers. Why, in
another day or so we'll be dodgin' lead."

"Tracked! Whar 'd you git thet idee? As soon as this?"
queried Anson, lifting his head like a striking snake. His
men, likewise, betrayed sudden interest.

"Shore it's no idee. I 'ain't seen any one. But I feel it in
my senses. I hear somebody comin' -- a step on our trail --
all the time -- night in particular. Reckon there's a big
posse after us."

"Wal, if I see or hear anythin' I'll knock the girl on the
head an' we'll dig out of hyar," replied Anson, sullenly.

Wilson executed a swift forward motion, violent and
passionate, so utterly unlike what might have been looked
for from him, that the three outlaws gaped.

"Then you'll shore hev to knock Jim Wilson on the haid
first," he said, in voice as strange as his action.

"Jim! You wouldn't go back on me!" implored Anson, with
uplifted hands, in a dignity of pathos.

"I'm losin' my haid, too, an' you shore might as well knock
it in, an' you'll hev to before I'll stand you murderin'
thet pore little gurl you've drove crazy."

"Jim, I was only mad," replied Anson. "Fer thet matter, I'm
growin' daffy myself. Aw! we all need a good stiff drink of
whisky."

So he tried to throw off gloom and apprehension, but he
failed. His comrades did not rally to his help. Wilson
walked away, nodding his head.

"Boss, let Jim alone," whispered Shady. "It's orful the way
you buck ag'in' him -- when you seen he's stirred up. Jim's
true blue. But you gotta be careful."

Moze corroborated this statement by gloomy nods.

When the card-playing was resumed, Anson did not join the
game, and both Moze and Shady evinced little of that
whole-hearted obsession which usually attended their
gambling. Anson lay at length, his head in a saddle,
scowling at the little shelter where the captive girl kept
herself out of sight. At times a faint song or laugh, very
unnatural, was wafted across the space. Wilson plodded at
the cooking and apparently heard no sounds. Presently he
called the men to eat, which office they surlily and
silently performed, as if it was a favor bestowed upon the
cook.

"Snake, hadn't I ought to take a bite of grub over to the
gurl?" asked Wilson.

"Do you hev to ask me thet?" snapped Anson. "She's gotta be
fed, if we hev to stuff it down her throat."

"Wal, I ain't stuck on the job," replied Wilson. "But I'll
tackle it, seein' you-all got cold feet."

With plate and cup be reluctantly approached the little
lean-to, and, kneeling, he put his head inside. The girl,
quick-eyed and alert, had evidently seen him coming. At any
rate, she greeted him with a cautious smile.

"Jim, was I pretty good?" she whispered.

"Miss, you was shore the finest aktress I ever seen," he
responded, in a low voice. "But you dam near overdid it. I'm
goin' to tell Anson you're sick now -- poisoned or somethin'
awful. Then we'll wait till night. Dale shore will help us
out."

"Oh, I'm on fire to get away," she exclaimed. "Jim Wilson,
I'll never forget you as long as I live!"

He seemed greatly embarrassed.

"Wal -- miss -- I -- I'll do my best licks. But I ain't
gamblin' none on results. Be patient. Keep your nerve. Don't
get scared. I reckon between me an' Dale you'll git away
from heah."

Withdrawing his head, he got up and returned to the
camp-fire, where Anson was waiting curiously.

"I left the grub. But she didn't touch it. Seems sort of
sick to me, like she was poisoned."

"Jim, didn't I hear you talkin'?" asked Anson.

"Shore. I was coaxin' her. Reckon she ain't so ranty as she
was. But she shore is doubled-up, an' sickish."

"Wuss an' wuss all the time," said Anson, between his teeth.
"An' where's Burt? Hyar it's noon an' he left early. He
never was no woodsman. He's got lost."

"Either thet or he's run into somethin'," replied Wilson,
thoughtfully.

Anson doubled a huge fist and cursed deep under his breath
-- the reaction of a man whose accomplices and partners and
tools, whose luck, whose faith in himself had failed him. He
flung himself down under a tree, and after a while, when his
rigidity relaxed, he probably fell asleep. Moze and Shady
kept at their game. Wilson paced to and fro, sat down, and
then got up to bunch the horses again, walked around the
dell and back to camp. The afternoon hours were long. And
they were waiting hours. The act of waiting appeared on the
surface of all these outlaws did.

At sunset the golden gloom of the glen changed to a vague,
thick twilight. Anson rolled over, yawned, and sat up. As he
glanced around, evidently seeking Burt, his face clouded.

"No sign of Burt?" he asked.

Wilson expressed a mild surprise. "Wal, Snake, you ain't
expectin' Burt now?"

"I am, course I am. Why not?" demanded Anson. "Any other
time we'd look fer him, wouldn't we?"

"Any other time ain't now. . . . Burt won't ever come back!"
Wilson spoke it with a positive finality."

"A-huh! Some more of them queer feelin's of yourn --
operatin' again, hey? Them onnatural kind thet you can't
explain, hey?"

Anson's queries were bitter and rancorous.

"Yes. An', Snake, I tax you with this heah. Ain't any of
them queer feelin's operatin' in you? "

"No!" rolled out the leader, savagely. But his passionate
denial was a proof that he lied. From the moment of this
outburst, which was a fierce clinging to the old, brave
instincts of his character, unless a sudden change marked
the nature of his fortunes, he would rapidly deteriorate to
the breaking-point. And in such brutal, unrestrained natures
as his this breaking-point meant a desperate stand, a
desperate forcing of events, a desperate accumulation of
passions that stalked out to deal and to meet disaster and
blood and death.

Wilson put a little wood on the fire and he munched a
biscuit. No one asked him to cook. No one made any effort to
do so. One by one each man went to the pack to get some
bread and meat.

Then they waited as men who knew not what they waited for,
yet hated and dreaded it.

Twilight in that glen was naturally a strange, veiled
condition of the atmosphere. It was a merging of shade and
light, which two seemed to make gray, creeping shadows.

Suddenly a snorting and stamping of the horses startled the
men.

"Somethin' scared the hosses," said Anson, rising. "Come
on."

Moze accompanied him, and they disappeared in the gloom.
More trampling of hoofs was heard, then a cracking of brush,
and the deep voices of men. At length the two outlaws
returned, leading three of the horses, which they haltered
in the open glen.

The camp-fire light showed Anson's face dark and serious.

"Jim, them hosses are wilder 'n deer," he said. "I ketched
mine, an' Moze got two. But the rest worked away whenever we
come close. Some varmint has scared them bad. We all gotta
rustle out thar quick."

Wilson rose, shaking his head doubtfully. And at that moment
the quiet air split to a piercing, horrid neigh of a
terrified horse. Prolonged to a screech, it broke and ended.
Then followed snorts of fright, pound and crack and thud of
hoofs, and crash of brush; then a gathering thumping,
crashing roar, split by piercing sounds.

"Stampede!" yelled Anson, and he ran to hold his own horse,
which he had haltered right in camp. It was big and
wild-looking, and now reared and plunged to break away.
Anson just got there in time, and then it took all his
weight to pull the horse down. Not until the crashing,
snorting, pounding melee had subsided and died away over the
rim of the glen did Anson dare leave his frightened
favorite.

"Gone! Our horses are gone! Did you hear 'em?" he exclaimed,
blankly.

"Shore. They're a cut-up an' crippled bunch by now," replied
Wilson.

"Boss, we'll never git 'ern back, not 'n a hundred years,"
declared Moze.

"Thet settles us, Snake Anson," stridently added Shady
Jones. "Them hosses are gone! You can kiss your hand to
them. . . . They wasn't hobbled. They hed an orful scare.
They split on thet stampede an' they'll never git together.
. . . See what you've fetched us to!"

Under the force of this triple arraignment the outlaw leader
dropped to his seat, staggered and silenced. In fact,
silence fell upon all the men and likewise enfolded the
glen.

Night set in jet-black, dismal, lonely, without a star.
Faintly the wind moaned. Weirdly the brook babbled through
its strange chords to end in the sound that was hollow. It
was never the same -- a rumble, as if faint, distant thunder
-- a deep gurgle, as of water drawn into a vortex -- a
rolling, as of a stone in swift current. The black cliff was
invisible, yet seemed to have many weird faces; the giant
pines loomed spectral; the shadows were thick, moving,
changing. Flickering lights from the camp-fire circled the
huge trunks and played fantastically over the brooding men.
This camp-fire did not burn or blaze cheerily; it had no
glow, no sputter, no white heart, no red, living embers. One
by one the outlaws, as if with common consent, tried their
hands at making the fire burn aright. What little wood had
been collected was old; it would burn up with false flare,
only to die quickly.

After a while not one of the outlaws spoke or stirred. Not
one smoked. Their gloomy eyes were fixed on the fire. Each
one was concerned with his own thoughts, his own lonely soul
unconsciously full of a doubt of the future. That brooding
hour severed him from comrade.

At night nothing seemed the same as it was by day. With
success and plenty, with full-blooded action past and more
in store, these outlaws were as different from their present
state as this black night was different from the bright day
they waited for. Wilson, though he played a deep game of
deceit for the sake of the helpless girl -- and thus did not
have haunting and superstitious fears on her account -- was
probably more conscious of impending catastrophe than any of
them.

The evil they had done spoke in the voice of nature, out of
the darkness, and was interpreted by each according to his
hopes and fears. Fear was their predominating sense. For
years they had lived with some species of fear -- of honest
men or vengeance, of pursuit, of starvation, of lack of
drink or gold, of blood and death, of stronger men, of luck,
of chance, of fate, of mysterious nameless force. Wilson was
the type of fearless spirit, but he endured the most gnawing
and implacable fear of all -- that of himself -- that he
must inevitably fall to deeds beneath his manhood.

So they hunched around the camp-fire, brooding because hope
was at lowest ebb; listening because the weird, black
silence, with its moan of wind and hollow laugh of brook,
compelled them to hear; waiting for sleep, for the hours to
pass, for whatever was to come.

And it was Anson who caught the first intimation of an
impending doom.

CHAPTER XXIII

"Listen!"

Anson whispered tensely. His poise was motionless, his eyes
roved everywhere. He held up a shaking, bludgy finger, to
command silence.

A third and stranger sound accompanied the low, weird moan
of the wind, and the hollow mockery of the brook -- and it
seemed a barely perceptible, exquisitely delicate wail or
whine. It filled in the lulls between the other sounds.

"If thet's some varmint he's close," whispered Anson.

"But shore, it's far off," said Wilson.

Shady Jones and Moze divided their opinions in the same way.

All breathed freer when the wail ceased, relaxing to their
former lounging positions around the fire. An impenetrable
wall of blackness circled the pale space lighted by the
camp-fire; and this circle contained the dark, somber group
of men in the center, the dying camp-fire, and a few
spectral trunks of pines and the tethered horses on the
outer edge. The horses scarcely moved from their tracks, and
their erect, alert heads attested to their sensitiveness to
the peculiarities of the night.

Then, at an unusually quiet lull the strange sound gradually
arose to a wailing whine.

"It's thet crazy wench cryin'," declared the outlaw leader.

Apparently his allies accepted that statement with as much
relief as they had expressed for the termination of the
sound.

"Shore, thet must be it," agreed Jim Wilson, gravely.

"We'll git a lot of sleep with thet gurl whinin' all night,"
growled Shady Jones.

"She gives me the creeps," said Moze.

Wilson got up to resume his pondering walk, head bent, hands
behind his back, a grim, realistic figure of perturbation.

"Jim -- set down. You make me nervous," said Anson,
irritably.

Wilson actually laughed, but low, as if to keep his strange
mirth well confined.

"Snake, I'll bet you my hoss an' my gun ag'in' a biscuit
thet in aboot six seconds more or less I'll be stampedin
like them hosses."

Anson's lean jaw dropped. The other two outlaws stared with
round eyes. Wilson was not drunk, they evidently knew; but
what he really was appeared a mystery.

"Jim Wilson, are you showin' yellow?" queried Anson,
hoarsely.

"Mebbe. The Lord only knows. But listen heah. . . . Snake,
you've seen an' heard people croak?"

"You mean cash in -- die?"

"Shore."

"Wal, yes -- a couple or so," replied Anson, grimly.

"But you never seen no one die of shock -- of an orful
scare?"

"No, I reckon I never did."

"I have. An' thet's what's ailin' Jim Wilson," and he
resumed his dogged steps.

Anson and his two comrades exchanged bewildered glances with
one another.

"A-huh! Say, what's thet got to do with us hyar? asked
Anson, presently.

"Thet gurl is dyin'!" retorted Wilson, in a voice cracking
like a whip.

The three outlaws stiffened in their seats, incredulous, yet
irresistibly swayed by emotions that stirred to this dark,
lonely, ill-omened hour.

Wilson trudged to the edge of the lighted circle, muttering
to himself, and came back again; then he trudged farther,
this time almost out of sight, but only to return; the third
time he vanished in the impenetrable wall of light. The
three men scarcely moved a muscle as they watched the place
where he had disappeared. In a few moments he came stumbling
back.

"Shore she's almost gone," he said, dismally. "It took my
nerve, but I felt of her face. . . . Thet orful wail is her
breath chokin' in her throat. . . . Like a death-rattle,
only long instead of short."

"Wal, if she's gotta croak it's good she gits it over
quick," replied Anson. "I 'ain't hed sleep fer three nights.
. . . An' what I need is whisky."

"Snake, thet's gospel you're spoutin'," remarked Shady
Jones, morosely.

The direction of sound in the glen was difficult to be
assured of, but any man not stirred to a high pitch of
excitement could have told that the difference in volume of
this strange wail must have been caused by different
distances and positions. Also, when it was loudest, it was
most like a whine. But these outlaws heard with their
consciences.

At last it ceased abruptly.

Wilson again left the group to be swallowed up by the night.
His absence was longer than usual, but he returned
hurriedly.

"She's daid!" he exclaimed, solemnly. "Thet innocent kid --
who never harmed no one -- an' who'd make any man better fer
seein' her -- she's daid! . . . Anson, you've shore a heap
to answer fer when your time comes."

"What's eatin' you?" demanded the leader, angrily. "Her
blood ain't on my hands."

"It shore is," shouted Wilson, shaking his hand at Anson.
"An' you'll hev to take your medicine. I felt thet comin'
all along. An' I feel some more."

"Aw! She's jest gone to sleep," declared Anson, shaking his
long frame as he rose. "Gimme a light."

"Boss, you're plumb off to go near a dead gurl thet's jest
died crazy," protested Shady Jones.

"Off! Haw! Haw! Who ain't off in this outfit, I'd like to
know?" Anson possessed himself of a stick blazing at one
and, and with this he stalked off toward the lean-to where
the girl was supposed to be dead. His gaunt figure, lighted
by the torch, certainly fitted the weird, black
surroundings. And it was seen that once near the girl's
shelter he proceeded more slowly, until he halted. He bent
to peer inside.

"SHE'S GONE!" he yelled, in harsh, shaken accents.

Than the torch burned out, leaving only a red glow. He
whirled it about, but the blaze did not rekindle. His
comrades, peering intently, lost sight of his tall form and
the end of the red-ended stick. Darkness like pitch
swallowed him. For a moment no sound intervened. Again the
moan of wind, the strange little mocking hollow roar,
dominated the place. Then there came a rush of something,
perhaps of air, like the soft swishing of spruce branches
swinging aside. Dull, thudding footsteps followed it. Anson
came running back to the fire. His aspect was wild, his face
pale, his eyes were fierce and starting from their sockets.
He had drawn his gun.

"Did -- ye -- see er hear -- anythin'?" he panted, peering
back, then all around, and at last at his man.

"No. An' I shore was lookin' an' listenin'," replied Wilson.

"Boss, there wasn't nothin'," declared Moze.

"I ain't so sartin," said Shady Jones, with doubtful,
staring eyes. "I believe I heerd a rustlin'."

"She wasn't there!" ejaculated Anson, in wondering awe.
"She's gone! . . . My torch went out. I couldn't see. An'
jest then I felt somethin' was passin'. Fast! I jerked
'round. All was black, an' yet if I didn't see a big gray
streak I'm crazier 'n thet gurl. But I couldn't swear to
anythin' but a rushin' of wind. I felt thet."

"Gone!" exclaimed Wilson, in great alarm. "Fellars, if
thet's so, then mebbe she wasn't daid an' she wandered off.
. . . But she was daid! Her heart hed quit beatin'. I'll
swear to thet."

"I move to break camp," said Shady Jones, gruffly, and he
stood up. Moze seconded that move by an expressive flash of
his black visage.

"Jim, if she's dead -- an' gone -- what 'n hell's come off?"
huskily asked Anson. "It, only seems thet way. We're all
worked up. . . . Let's talk sense."

"Anson, shore there's a heap you an' me don't know," replied
Wilson. "The world come to an end once. Wal, it can come to
another end. . . . I tell you I ain't surprised --"

"THAR!" cried Anson, whirling, with his gun leaping out.

Something huge, shadowy, gray against the black rushed
behind the men and trees; and following it came a
perceptible acceleration of the air.

"Shore, Snake, there wasn't nothin'," said Wilson,
presently."

"I heerd," whispered Shady Jones.

"It was only a breeze blowin' thet smoke," rejoined Moze.

"I'd bet my soul somethin' went back of me," declared Anson,
glaring into the void.

"Listen an' let's make shore," suggested Wilson.

The guilty, agitated faces of the outlaws showed plain
enough in the flickering light for each to see a convicting
dread in his fellow. Like statues they stood, watching and
listening.

Few sounds stirred in the strange silence. Now and then the
horses heaved heavily, but stood still; a dismal, dreary
note of the wind in the pines vied with a hollow laugh of
the brook. And these low sounds only fastened attention upon
the quality of the silence. A breathing, lonely spirit of
solitude permeated the black dell. Like a pit of unplumbed
depths the dark night yawned. An evil conscience, listening
there, could have heard the most peaceful, beautiful, and
mournful sounds of nature only as strains of a calling hell.

Suddenly the silent, oppressive, surcharged air split to a
short, piercing scream.

Anson's big horse stood up straight, pawing the air, and
came down with a crash. The other horses shook with terror.

"Wasn't -- thet -- a cougar?" whispered Anson, thickly.

"Thet was a woman's scream," replied Wilson, and he appeared
to be shaking like a leaf in the wind.

"Then -- I figgered right -- the kid's alive -- wonderin'
around -- an' she let out thet orful scream," said Anson.

"Wonderin' 'round, yes -- but she's daid!"

"My Gawd! it ain't possible!"

"Wal, if she ain't wonderin' round daid she's almost daid,"
replied Wilson. And he began to whisper to himself.

"If I'd only knowed what thet deal meant I'd hev plugged
Beasley instead of listenin'. . . . An' I ought to hev
knocked thet kid on the head an' made sartin she'd croaked.
If she goes screamin' 'round thet way --"

His voice failed as there rose a thin, splitting,
high-pointed shriek, somewhat resembling the first scream,
only less wild. It came apparently from the cliff.

From another point in the pitch-black glen rose the wailing,
terrible cry of a woman in agony. Wild, haunting, mournful
wail!

Anson's horse, loosing the halter, plunged back, almost
falling over a slight depression in the rocky ground. The
outlaw caught him and dragged him nearer the fire. The other
horses stood shaking and straining. Moze ran between them
and held them. Shady Jones threw green brush on the fire.
With sputter and crackle a blaze started, showing Wilson
standing tragically, his arms out, facing the black shadows.

The strange, live shriek was not repeated. But the cry, like
that of a woman in her death-throes, pierced the silence
again. It left a quivering ring that softly died away. Then
the stillness clamped down once more and the darkness seemed
to thicken. The men waited, and when they had begun to relax
the cry burst out appallingly close, right behind the trees.
It was human -- the personification of pain and terror --
the tremendous struggle of precious life against horrible
death. So pure, so exquisite, so wonderful was the cry that
the listeners writhed as if they saw an innocent, tender,
beautiful girl torn frightfully before their eyes. It was
full of suspense; it thrilled for death; its marvelous
potency was the wild note -- that beautiful and ghastly note
of self-preservation.

In sheer desperation the outlaw leader fired his gun at the
black wall whence the cry came. Then he had to fight his
horse to keep him from plunging away. Following the shot was
an interval of silence; the horses became tractable; the men
gathered closer to the fire, with the halters still held
firmly.

"If it was a cougar -- thet 'd scare him off," said Anson.

"Shore, but it ain't a cougar," replied Wilson. "Wait an'
see!"

They all waited, listening with ears turned to different
points, eyes roving everywhere, afraid of their very
shadows. Once more the moan of wind, the mockery of brook,
deep gurgle, laugh and babble, dominated the silence of the
glen.

"Boss, let's shake this spooky hole," whispered Moze.

The suggestion attracted Anson, and he pondered it while
slowly shaking his head.

"We've only three hosses. An' mine 'll take ridin' -- after
them squalls," replied the leader. "We've got packs, too.
An' hell 'ain't nothin' on this place fer bein' dark."

"No matter. Let's go. I'll walk an' lead the way," said
Moze, eagerly. "I got sharp eyes. You fellars can ride an'
carry a pack. We'll git out of here an' come back in
daylight fer the rest of the outfit."

"Anson, I'm keen fer thet myself," declared Shady Jones.

"Jim, what d'ye say to thet?" queried Anson. "Rustlin' out
of this black hole?"

"Shore it's a grand idee," agreed Wilson.

"Thet was a cougar," avowed Anson, gathering courage as the
silence remained unbroken. "But jest the same it was as
tough on me as if it hed been a woman screamin' over a blade
twistin' in her gizzards."

"Snake, shore you seen a woman heah lately?" deliberately
asked Wilson.

"Reckon I did. Thet kid," replied Anson, dubiously.

"Wal, you seen her go crazy, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"'An' she wasn't heah when you went huntin' fer her?"

"Correct."

"Wal, if thet's so, what do you want to blab about cougars
for?"

Wilson's argument seemed incontestable. Shady and Moze
nodded gloomily and shifted restlessly from foot to foot.
Anson dropped his head.

"No matter -- if we only don't hear --" he began, suddenly
to grow mute.

Right upon them, from some place, just out the circle of
light, rose a scream, by reason of its proximity the most
piercing and agonizing yet heard, simply petrifying the
group until the peal passed. Anson's huge horse reared, and
with a snort of terror lunged in tremendous leap, straight
out. He struck Anson with thudding impact, knocking him over
the rocks into the depression back of the camp-fire, and
plunging after him. Wilson had made a flying leap just in
time to avoid being struck, and he turned to see Anson go
down. There came a crash, a groan, and then the strike and
pound of hoofs as the horse struggled up. Apparently he had
rolled over his master.

"Help, fellars!" yelled Wilson, quick to leap down over the
little bank, and in the dim light to grasp the halter. The
three men dragged the horse out and securely tied him close
to a tree. That done, they peered down into the depression.
Anson's form could just barely be distinguished in the
gloom. He lay stretched out. Another groan escaped him.

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