The Man of the Forest

by Zane Grey

  CHAPTER X

  The night of sleep was so short that it was difficult for Helen tobelieve that hours had passed. Bo appeared livelier this morning, withless complaint of aches.

  "Nell, you've got color!" exclaimed Bo. "And your eyes are bright. Isn'tthe morning perfectly lovely?... Couldn't you get drunk on that air? Ismell flowers. And oh! I'm hungry!"

  "Bo, our host will soon have need of his hunting abilities if yourappetite holds," said Helen, as she tried to keep her hair out of hereyes while she laced her boots.

  "Look! there's a big dog--a hound."

  Helen looked as Bo directed, and saw a hound of unusually largeproportions, black and tan in color, with long, drooping ears. Curiouslyhe trotted nearer to the door of their hut and then stopped to gaze atthem. His head was noble, his eyes shone dark and sad. He seemed neitherfriendly nor unfriendly.

  "Hello, doggie! Come right in--we won't hurt you," called Bo, butwithout enthusiasm.

  This made Helen laugh. "Bo, you're simply delicious," she said. "You'reafraid of that dog."

  "Sure. Wonder if he's Dale's. Of course he must be."

  Presently the hound trotted away out of sight. When the girls presentedthemselves at the camp-fire they espied their curious canine visitorlying down. His ears were so long that half of them lay on the ground.

  "I sent Pedro over to wake you girls up," said Dale, after greetingthem. "Did he scare you?"

  "Pedro. So that's his name. No, he didn't exactly scare me. He did Nell,though. She's an awful tenderfoot," replied Bo.

  "He's a splendid-looking dog," said Helen, ignoring her sister's sally."I love dogs. Will he make friends?"

  "He's shy an' wild. You see, when I leave camp he won't hang around. Hean' Tom are jealous of each other. I had a pack of hounds an' lost allbut Pedro on account of Tom. I think you can make friends with Pedro.Try it."

  Whereupon Helen made overtures to Pedro, and not wholly in vain. Thedog was matured, of almost stern aloofness, and manifestly not used topeople. His deep, wine-dark eyes seemed to search Helen's soul. Theywere honest and wise, with a strange sadness.

  "He looks intelligent," observed Helen, as she smoothed the long, darkears.

  "That hound is nigh human," responded Dale. "Come, an' while you eatI'll tell you about Pedro."

  Dale had gotten the hound as a pup from a Mexican sheep-herder whoclaimed he was part California bloodhound. He grew up, becoming attachedto Dale. In his younger days he did not get along well with Dale's otherpets and Dale gave him to a rancher down in the valley. Pedro was backin Dale's camp next day. From that day Dale began to care more for thehound, but he did not want to keep him, for various reasons, chief ofwhich was the fact that Pedro was too fine a dog to be left alone halfthe time to shift for himself. That fall Dale had need to go to thefarthest village, Snowdrop, where he left Pedro with a friend. Then Dalerode to Show Down and Pine, and the camp of the Beemans' and with themhe trailed some wild horses for a hundred miles, over into New Mexico.The snow was flying when Dale got back to his camp in the mountains.And there was Pedro, gaunt and worn, overjoyed to welcome him home. RoyBeeman visited Dale that October and told that Dale's friend in Snowdrophad not been able to keep Pedro. He broke a chain and scaled a ten-footfence to escape. He trailed Dale to Show Down, where one of Dale'sfriends, recognizing the hound, caught him, and meant to keep him untilDale's return. But Pedro refused to eat. It happened that a freighterwas going out to the Beeman camp, and Dale's friend boxed Pedro up andput him on the wagon. Pedro broke out of the box, returned to Show Down,took up Dale's trail to Pine, and then on to the Beeman camp. That wasas far as Roy could trace the movements of the hound. But he believed,and so did Dale, that Pedro had trailed them out on the wild-horse hunt.The following spring Dale learned more from the herder of a sheepman atwhose camp he and the Beemans; had rested on the way into New Mexico.It appeared that after Dale had left this camp Pedro had arrived, andanother Mexican herder had stolen the hound. But Pedro got away.

  "An' he was here when I arrived," concluded Dale, smiling. "I neverwanted to get rid of him after that. He's turned out to be the finestdog I ever knew. He knows what I say. He can almost talk. An' I swear hecan cry. He does whenever I start off without him."

  "How perfectly wonderful!" exclaimed Bo. "Aren't animals great?... But Ilove horses best."

  It seemed to Helen that Pedro understood they were talking about him,for he looked ashamed, and swallowed hard, and dropped his gaze. Sheknew something of the truth about the love of dogs for their owners.This story of Dale's, however, was stranger than any she had ever heard.

  Tom, the cougar, put in an appearance then, and there was scarcely lovein the tawny eyes he bent upon Pedro. But the hound did not deign tonotice him. Tom sidled up to Bo, who sat on the farther side of thetarpaulin table-cloth, and manifestly wanted part of her breakfast.

  "Gee! I love the look of him," she said. "But when he's close he makesmy flesh creep."

  "Beasts are as queer as people," observed Dale. "They take likes an'dislikes. I believe Tom has taken a shine to you an' Pedro begins to beinterested in your sister. I can tell."

  "Where's Bud?" inquired Bo.

  "He's asleep or around somewhere. Now, soon as I get the work done, whatwould you girls like to do?"

  "Ride!" declared Bo, eagerly.

  "Aren't you sore an' stiff?"

  "I am that. But I don't care. Besides, when I used to go out to myuncle's farm near Saint Joe I always found riding to be a cure foraches."

  "Sure is, if you can stand it. An' what will your sister like to do?"returned Dale, turning to Helen.

  "Oh, I'll rest, and watch you folks--and dream," replied Helen.

  "But after you've rested you must be active," said Dale, seriously. "Youmust do things. It doesn't matter what, just as long as you don't sitidle."

  "Why?" queried Helen, in surprise. "Why not be idle here in thisbeautiful, wild place? just to dream away the hours--the days! I coulddo it."

  "But you mustn't. It took me years to learn how bad that was for me. An'right now I would love nothin' more than to forget my work, my horsesan' pets--everythin', an' just lay around, seein' an' feelin'."

  "Seeing and feeling? Yes, that must be what I mean. But why--what isit? There are the beauty and color--the wild, shaggy slopes--the graycliffs--the singing wind--the lulling water--the clouds--the sky. Andthe silence, loneliness, sweetness of it all."

  "It's a driftin' back. What I love to do an' yet fear most. It's whatmakes a lone hunter of a man. An' it can grow so strong that it binds aman to the wilds."

  "How strange!" murmured Helen. "But that could never bind ME. Why, Imust live and fulfil my mission, my work in the civilized world."

  It seemed to Helen that Dale almost imperceptibly shrank at her earnestwords.

  "The ways of Nature are strange," he said. "I look at it different.Nature's just as keen to wean you back to a savage state as you are tobe civilized. An' if Nature won, you would carry out her design all thebetter."

  This hunter's talk shocked Helen and yet stimulated her mind.

  "Me--a savage? Oh no!" she exclaimed. "But, if that were possible, whatwould Nature's design be?"

  "You spoke of your mission in life," he replied. "A woman's mission isto have children. The female of any species has only one mission--toreproduce its kind. An' Nature has only one mission--toward greaterstrength, virility, efficiency--absolute perfection, which isunattainable."

  "What of mental and spiritual development of man and woman?" askedHelen.

  "Both are direct obstacles to the design of Nature. Nature is physical.To create for limitless endurance for eternal life. That must beNature's inscrutable design. An' why she must fail."

  "But the soul!" whispered Helen.

  "Ah! When you speak of the soul an' I speak of life we mean the same.You an' I will have some talks while you're here. I must brush up mythoughts."

  "So must I, it seems," said Helen, with a slow smile. She had beenrendered grave a
nd thoughtful. "But I guess I'll risk dreaming under thepines."

  Bo had been watching them with her keen blue eyes.

  "Nell, it'd take a thousand years to make a savage of you," she said."But a week will do for me."

  "Bo, you were one before you left Saint Joe," replied Helen. "Don't youremember that school-teacher Barnes who said you were a wildcat and anIndian mixed? He spanked you with a ruler."

  "Never! He missed me," retorted Bo, with red in her cheeks. "Nell, Iwish you'd not tell things about me when I was a kid."

  "That was only two years ago," expostulated Helen, in mild surprise.

  "Suppose it was. I was a kid all right. I'll bet you--" Bo broke upabruptly, and, tossing her head, she gave Tom a pat and then ran awayaround the corner of cliff wall.

  Helen followed leisurely.

  "Say, Nell," said Bo, when Helen arrived at their little greenledge-pole hut, "do you know that hunter fellow will upset some of yourtheories?"

  "Maybe. I'll admit he amazes me--and affronts me, too, I'm afraid,"replied Helen. "What surprises me is that in spite of his evident lackof schooling he's not raw or crude. He's elemental."

  "Sister dear, wake up. The man's wonderful. You can learn more fromhim than you ever learned in your life. So can I. I always hated books,anyway."

  When, a little later, Dale approached carrying some bridles, the houndPedro trotted at his heels.

  "I reckon you'd better ride the horse you had," he said to Bo.

  "Whatever you say. But I hope you let me ride them all, by and by."

  "Sure. I've a mustang out there you'll like. But he pitches a little,"he rejoined, and turned away toward the park. The hound looked after himand then at Helen.

  "Come, Pedro. Stay with me," called Helen.

  Dale, hearing her, motioned the hound back. Obediently Pedro trotted toher, still shy and soberly watchful, as if not sure of her intentions,but with something of friendliness about him now. Helen found a soft,restful seat in the sun facing the park, and there composed herself forwhat she felt would be slow, sweet, idle hours. Pedro curled down besideher. The tall form of Dale stalked across the park, out toward thestraggling horses. Again she saw a deer grazing among them. How erectand motionless it stood watching Dale! Presently it bounded away towardthe edge of the forest. Some of the horses whistled and ran, kickingheels high in the air. The shrill whistles rang clear in the stillness.

  "Gee! Look at them go!" exclaimed Bo, gleefully, coming up to whereHelen sat. Bo threw herself down upon the fragrant pine-needles andstretched herself languorously, like a lazy kitten. There was somethingfeline in her lithe, graceful outline. She lay flat and looked upthrough the pines.

  "Wouldn't it be great, now," she murmured, dreamily, half to herself,"if that Las Vegas cowboy would happen somehow to come, and then anearthquake would shut us up here in this Paradise valley so we'd neverget out?"

  "Bo! What would mother say to such talk as that?" gasped Helen.

  "But, Nell, wouldn't it be great?"

  "It would be terrible."

  "Oh, there never was any romance in you, Nell Rayner," replied Bo. "Thatvery thing has actually happened out here in this wonderful countryof wild places. You need not tell me! Sure it's happened. With thecliff-dwellers and the Indians and then white people. Every place I lookmakes me feel that. Nell, you'd have to see people in the moon through atelescope before you'd believe that."

  "I'm practical and sensible, thank goodness!"

  "But, for the sake of argument," protested Bo, with flashing eyes,"suppose it MIGHT happen. Just to please me, suppose we DID get shut uphere with Dale and that cowboy we saw from the train. Shut in withoutany hope of ever climbing out.... What would you do? Would you give upand pine away and die? Or would you fight for life and whatever joy itmight mean?"

  "Self-preservation is the first instinct," replied Helen, surprised ata strange, deep thrill in the depths of her. "I'd fight for life, ofcourse."

  "Yes. Well, really, when I think seriously I don't want anything likethat to happen. But, just the same, if it DID happen I would glory init."

  While they were talking Dale returned with the horses.

  "Can you bridle an' saddle your own horse?" he asked.

  "No. I'm ashamed to say I can't," replied Bo.

  "Time to learn then. Come on. Watch me first when I saddle mine."

  Bo was all eyes while Dale slipped off the bridle from his horse andthen with slow, plain action readjusted it. Next he smoothed the back ofthe horse, shook out the blanket, and, folding it half over, he threwit in place, being careful to explain to Bo just the right position. Helifted his saddle in a certain way and put that in place, and then hetightened the cinches.

  "Now you try," he said.

  According to Helen's judgment Bo might have been a Western girl all herdays. But Dale shook his head and made her do it over.

  "That was better. Of course, the saddle is too heavy for you to slingit up. You can learn that with a light one. Now put the bridle onagain. Don't be afraid of your hands. He won't bite. Slip the bit insideways.... There. Now let's see you mount."

  When Bo got into the saddle Dale continued: "You went up quick an'light, but the wrong way. Watch me."

  Bo had to mount several times before Dale was satisfied. Then he toldher to ride off a little distance. When Bo had gotten out of earshotDale said to Helen: "She'll take to a horse like a duck takes to water."Then, mounting, he rode out after her.

  Helen watched them trotting and galloping and running the horses roundthe grassy park, and rather regretted she had not gone with them.Eventually Bo rode back, to dismount and fling herself down, red-cheekedand radiant, with disheveled hair, and curls damp on her temples. Howalive she seemed! Helen's senses thrilled with the grace and charmand vitality of this surprising sister, and she was aware of a sheerphysical joy in her presence. Bo rested, but she did not rest long. Shewas soon off to play with Bud. Then she coaxed the tame doe to eatout of her hand. She dragged Helen off for wild flowers, curious andthoughtless by turns. And at length she fell asleep, quickly, in a waythat reminded Helen of the childhood now gone forever.

  Dale called them to dinner about four o'clock, as the sun was reddeningthe western rampart of the park. Helen wondered where the day had gone.The hours had flown swiftly, serenely, bringing her scarcely a thoughtof her uncle or dread of her forced detention there or possiblediscovery by those outlaws supposed to be hunting for her. Aftershe realized the passing of those hours she had an intangible andindescribable feeling of what Dale had meant about dreaming the hoursaway. The nature of Paradise Park was inimical to the kind of thoughtthat had habitually been hers. She found the new thought absorbing, yetwhen she tried to name it she found that, after all, she had only felt.At the meal hour she was more than usually quiet. She saw that Dalenoticed it and was trying to interest her or distract her attention. Hesucceeded, but she did not choose to let him see that. She strolledaway alone to her seat under the pine. Bo passed her once, and cried,tantalizingly:

  "My, Nell, but you're growing romantic!"

  Never before in Helen's life had the beauty of the evening star seemedso exquisite or the twilight so moving and shadowy or the darkness socharged with loneliness. It was their environment--the accompaniment ofwild wolf-mourn, of the murmuring waterfall, of this strange man of theforest and the unfamiliar elements among which he made his home.

  Next morning, her energy having returned, Helen shared Bo's lesson inbridling and saddling her horse, and in riding. Bo, however, rode sofast and so hard that for Helen to share her company was impossible. AndDale, interested and amused, yet anxious, spent most of his timewith Bo. It was thus that Helen rode all over the park alone. She wasastonished at its size, when from almost any point it looked so small.The atmosphere deceived her. How clearly she could see! And she began tojudge distance by the size of familiar things. A horse, looked at acrossthe longest length of the park, seemed very small indeed. Here andthere she rode upon dark, swift, little brooks, e
xquisitely clear andamber-colored and almost hidden from sight by the long grass. These allran one way, and united to form a deeper brook that apparently woundunder the cliffs at the west end, and plunged to an outlet in narrowclefts. When Dale and Bo came to her once she made inquiry, and she wassurprised to learn from Dale that this brook disappeared in a hole inthe rocks and had an outlet on the other side of the mountain. Sometimehe would take them to the lake it formed.

  "Over the mountain?" asked Helen, again remembering that she must regardherself as a fugitive. "Will it be safe to leave our hiding-place? Iforget so often why we are here."

  "We would be better hidden over there than here," replied Dale. "Thevalley on that side is accessible only from that ridge. An' don't worryabout bein' found. I told you Roy Beeman is watchin' Anson an' his gang.Roy will keep between them an' us."

  Helen was reassured, yet there must always linger in the background ofher mind a sense of dread. In spite of this, she determined to make themost of her opportunity. Bo was a stimulus. And so Helen spent the restof that day riding and tagging after her sister.

  The next day was less hard on Helen. Activity, rest, eating, andsleeping took on a wonderful new meaning to her. She had really neverknown them as strange joys. She rode, she walked, she climbed a little,she dozed under her pine-tree, she worked helping Dale at camp-firetasks, and when night came she said she did not know herself. That facthaunted her in vague, deep dreams. Upon awakening she forgot her resolveto study herself. That day passed. And then several more went swiftlybefore she adapted herself to a situation she had reason to believemight last for weeks and even months.

  It was afternoon that Helen loved best of all the time of the day.The sunrise was fresh, beautiful; the morning was windy, fragrant; thesunset was rosy, glorious; the twilight was sad, changing; and nightseemed infinitely sweet with its stars and silence and sleep. But theafternoon, when nothing changed, when all was serene, when time seemedto halt, that was her choice, and her solace.

  One afternoon she had camp all to herself. Bo was riding. Dale hadclimbed the mountain to see if he could find any trace of tracks or seeany smoke from camp-fire. Bud was nowhere to be seen, nor any of theother pets. Tom had gone off to some sunny ledge where he could bask inthe sun, after the habit of the wilder brothers of his species. Pedrohad not been seen for a night and a day, a fact that Helen had notedwith concern. However, she had forgotten him, and therefore was the moresurprised to see him coming limping into camp on three legs.

  "Why, Pedro! You have been fighting. Come here," she called.

  The hound did not look guilty. He limped to her and held up his rightfore paw. The action was unmistakable. Helen examined the injured memberand presently found a piece of what looked like mussel-shell embeddeddeeply between the toes. The wound was swollen, bloody, and evidentlyvery painful. Pedro whined. Helen had to exert all the strength of herfingers to pull it out. Then Pedro howled. But immediately he showed hisgratitude by licking her hand. Helen bathed his paw and bound it up.

  When Dale returned she related the incident and, showing the piece ofshell, she asked: "Where did that come from? Are there shells in themountains?"

  "Once this country was under the sea," replied Dale. "I've found thingsthat 'd make you wonder."

  "Under the sea!" ejaculated Helen. It was one thing to have read ofsuch a strange fact, but a vastly different one to realize it here amongthese lofty peaks. Dale was always showing her something or telling hersomething that astounded her.

  "Look here," he said one day. "What do you make of that little bunch ofaspens?"

  They were on the farther side of the park and were resting under apine-tree. The forest here encroached upon the park with its stragglinglines of spruce and groves of aspen. The little clump of aspens did notdiffer from hundreds Helen had seen.

  "I don't make anything particularly of it," replied Helen, dubiously."Just a tiny grove of aspens--some very small, some larger, but nonevery big. But it's pretty with its green and yellow leaves flutteringand quivering."

  "It doesn't make you think of a fight?"

  "Fight? No, it certainly does not," replied Helen.

  "Well, it's as good an example of fight, of strife, of selfishness, asyou will find in the forest," he said. "Now come over, you an' Bo, an'let me show you what I mean."

  "Come on, Nell," cried Bo, with enthusiasm. "He'll open our eyes somemore."

  Nothing loath, Helen went with them to the little clump of aspens.

  "About a hundred altogether," said Dale. "They're pretty well shaded bythe spruces, but they get the sunlight from east an' south. These littletrees all came from the same seedlings. They're all the same age. Fourof them stand, say, ten feet or more high an' they're as large around asmy wrist. Here's one that's largest. See how full-foliaged he is--how hestands over most of the others, but not so much over these four next tohim. They all stand close together, very close, you see. Most of themare no larger than my thumb. Look how few branches they have, an' nonelow down. Look at how few leaves. Do you see how all the branches standout toward the east an' south--how the leaves, of course, face the sameway? See how one branch of one tree bends aside one from another tree.That's a fight for the sunlight. Here are one--two--three dead trees.Look, I can snap them off. An' now look down under them. Here are littletrees five feet high--four feet high--down to these only a foothigh. Look how pale, delicate, fragile, unhealthy! They get so littlesunshine. They were born with the other trees, but did not get an equalstart. Position gives the advantage, perhaps."

  Dale led the girls around the little grove, illustrating his words byaction. He seemed deeply in earnest.

  "You understand it's a fight for water an' sun. But mostly sun, because,if the leaves can absorb the sun, the tree an' roots will grow to graspthe needed moisture. Shade is death--slow death to the life of trees.These little aspens are fightin' for place in the sunlight. It is amerciless battle. They push an' bend one another's branches aside an'choke them. Only perhaps half of these aspens will survive, to make oneof the larger clumps, such as that one of full-grown trees over there.One season will give advantage to this saplin' an' next year to thatone. A few seasons' advantage to one assures its dominance over theothers. But it is never sure of holdin' that dominance. An 'if wind orstorm or a strong-growin' rival does not overthrow it, then sooner orlater old age will. For there is absolute and continual fight. What istrue of these aspens is true of all the trees in the forest an' of allplant life in the forest. What is most wonderful to me is the tenacityof life."

  And next day Dale showed them an even more striking example of thismystery of nature.

  He guided them on horseback up one of the thick, verdant-wooded slopes,calling their attention at various times to the different growths, untilthey emerged on the summit of the ridge where the timber grew scantand dwarfed. At the edge of timber-line he showed a gnarled and knottedspruce-tree, twisted out of all semblance to a beautiful spruce, bentand storm-blasted, with almost bare branches, all reaching one' way. Thetree was a specter. It stood alone. It had little green upon it. Thereseemed something tragic about its contortions. But it was alive andstrong. It had no rivals to take sun or moisture. Its enemies were thesnow and wind and cold of the heights.

  Helen felt, as the realization came to her, the knowledge Dale wishedto impart, that it was as sad as wonderful, and as mysterious as it wasinspiring. At that moment there were both the sting and sweetness oflife--the pain and the joy--in Helen's heart. These strange factswere going to teach her--to transform her. And even if they hurt, shewelcomed them.