The Man of the Forest
CHAPTER VII

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

“You girls rest,” he said, briefly.

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

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

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

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

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

Dale was throwing the packs off the other horses.

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

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

“Milt, of course,” replied Bo.

Helen had to laugh despite her weariness and aches.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I said I had an e-normous appetite.”

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

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

“Four nights! Oh, we've slept some.”

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

“It looks so,” replied Helen, dubiously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What kind?” asked Bo.

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

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

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

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

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

Dale lifted his head alertly.

“Listen.”

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

“Bunch of coyotes comin',” he explained.

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

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

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

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

“Oh! What's that?” whispered Bo.

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

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

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

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

“I reckon so,” he replied, presently.

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

The hunter nodded his head.

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

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

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

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

“What are a cougar and a silvertip?”

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

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

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

“What's that?”

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

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

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

“Are you expecting Roy still?” inquired Helen.

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

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

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

“Listen again,” said Dale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Must have rode hard,” observed Dale.

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

“Mornin', miss. It's good news.”

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

Whereupon Bo sat up, disheveled and sleepy-eyed.

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

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

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

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

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

“So far so good,” declared Dale.

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

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

“What ain't?”

“Goin' round the north side of Baldy.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All right. We'll rustle.”

Then he called the girls to hurry.

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