Books: The Man of the Forest

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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, compact
appearance, actually as if it had grown there.

"That lean-to wasn't there last night?" inquired Bo.

"I didn't see it. Lean-to? Where'd you get that name?"

"It's Western, my dear. I'll bet they put it up for us. . .
. Sure, I see our bags inside. Let's get up. It must be
late."

The girls had considerable fun as well as pain in getting up
and keeping each other erect until their limbs would hold
them firmly. They were delighted with the spruce lean-to. It
faced the open and stood just under the wide-spreading shelf
of rock. The tiny outlet from the spring flowed beside it
and spilled its clear water over a stone, to fall into a
little pool. The floor of this woodland habitation consisted
of tips of spruce boughs to about a foot in depth, all laid
one way, smooth and springy, and so sweetly odorous that the
air seemed intoxicating. Helen and Bo opened their baggage,
and what with use of the cold water, brush and comb, and
clean blouses, they made themselves feel as comfortable as
possible, considering the excruciating aches. Then they went
out to the campfire.

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