The Man of the Forest

by Zane Grey

  CHAPTER XIII

  After more days of riding the grassy level of that wonderfully goldand purple park, and dreamily listening by day to the ever-low andever-changing murmur of the waterfall, and by night to the wild, lonelymourn of a hunting wolf, and climbing to the dizzy heights where thewind stung sweetly, Helen Rayner lost track of time and forgot herperil.

  Roy Beeman did not return. If occasionally Dale mentioned Roy and hisquest, the girls had little to say beyond a recurrent anxiety for theold uncle, and then they forgot again. Paradise Park, lived in a littlewhile at that season of the year, would have claimed any one, and everafterward haunted sleeping or waking dreams.

  Bo gave up to the wild life, to the horses and rides, to the many pets,and especially to the cougar, Tom. The big cat followed her everywhere,played with her, rolling and pawing, kitten-like, and he would layhis massive head in her lap to purr his content. Bo had little fear ofanything, and here in the wilds she soon lost that.

  Another of Dale's pets was a half-grown black bear named Muss. He wasabnormally jealous of little Bud and he had a well-developed hatredof Tom, otherwise he was a very good-tempered bear, and enjoyed Dale'simpartial regard. Tom, however, chased Muss out of camp whenever Dale'sback was turned, and sometimes Muss stayed away, shifting for himself.With the advent of Bo, who spent a good deal of time on the animals,Muss manifestly found the camp more attractive. Whereupon, Dalepredicted trouble between Tom and Muss.

  Bo liked nothing better than a rough-and-tumble frolic with the blackbear. Muss was not very big nor very heavy, and in a wrestling bout withthe strong and wiry girl he sometimes came out second best. It spokewell of him that he seemed to be careful not to hurt Bo. He never bitor scratched, though he sometimes gave her sounding slaps with his paws.Whereupon, Bo would clench her gauntleted fists and sail into him inearnest.

  One afternoon before the early supper they always had, Dale and Helenwere watching Bo teasing the bear. She was in her most vixenish mood,full of life and fight. Tom lay his long length on the grass, watchingwith narrow, gleaming eyes.

  When Bo and Muss locked in an embrace and went down to roll over andover, Dale called Helen's attention to the cougar.

  "Tom's jealous. It's strange how animals are like people. Pretty soonI'll have to corral Muss, or there'll be a fight."

  Helen could not see anything wrong with Tom except that he did not lookplayful.

  During supper-time both bear and cougar disappeared, though this was notremarked until afterward. Dale whistled and called, but the rival petsdid not return. Next morning Tom was there, curled up snugly at the footof Bo's bed, and when she arose he followed her around as usual. ButMuss did not return.

  The circumstance made Dale anxious. He left camp, taking Tom with him,and upon returning stated that he had followed Muss's track as far aspossible, and then had tried to put Tom on the trail, but the cougarwould not or could not follow it. Dale said Tom never liked a beartrail, anyway, cougars and bears being common enemies. So, whether byaccident or design, Bo lost one of her playmates.

  The hunter searched some of the slopes next day and even went up on oneof the mountains. He did not discover any sign of Muss, but he said hehad found something else.

  "Bo you girls want some more real excitement?" he asked.

  Helen smiled her acquiescence and Bo replied with one of her forcefulspeeches.

  "Don't mind bein' good an' scared?" he went on.

  "You can't scare me," bantered Bo. But Helen looked doubtful.

  "Up in one of the parks I ran across one of my horses--a lame bay youhaven't seen. Well, he had been killed by that old silvertip. The one wechased. Hadn't been dead over an hour. Blood was still runnin' an' onlya little meat eaten. That bear heard me or saw me an' made off into thewoods. But he'll come back to-night. I'm goin' up there, lay for him,an' kill him this time. Reckon you'd better go, because I don't want toleave you here alone at night."

  "Are you going to take Tom?" asked Bo.

  "No. The bear might get his scent. An', besides, Tom ain't reliable onbears. I'll leave Pedro home, too."

  When they had hurried supper, and Dale had gotten in the horses, the sunhad set and the valley was shadowing low down, while the ramparts werestill golden. The long zigzag trail Dale followed up the slope tooknearly an hour to climb, so that when that was surmounted and he ledout of the woods twilight had fallen. A rolling park extended as far asHelen could see, bordered by forest that in places sent out stragglingstretches of trees. Here and there, like islands, were isolated patchesof timber.

  At ten thousand feet elevation the twilight of this clear and cold nightwas a rich and rare atmospheric effect. It looked as if it was seenthrough perfectly clear smoked glass. Objects were singularly visible,even at long range, and seemed magnified. In the west, where theafterglow of sunset lingered over the dark, ragged, spruce-spearedhorizon-line, there was such a transparent golden line melting intovivid star-fired blue that Helen could only gaze and gaze in wonderingadmiration.

  Dale spurred his horse into a lope and the spirited mounts of the girlskept up with him. The ground was rough, with tufts of grass growingclose together, yet the horses did not stumble. Their action andsnorting betrayed excitement. Dale led around several clumps of timber,up a long grassy swale, and then straight westward across an open flattoward where the dark-fringed forest-line raised itself wild and clearagainst the cold sky. The horses went swiftly, and the wind cut like ablade of ice. Helen could barely get her breath and she panted as if shehad just climbed a laborsome hill. The stars began to blink out of theblue, and the gold paled somewhat, and yet twilight lingered. It seemedlong across that flat, but really was short. Coming to a thin line oftrees that led down over a slope to a deeper but still isolated patchof woods, Dale dismounted and tied his horse. When the girls got off hehaltered their horses also.

  "Stick close to me an' put your feet down easy," he whispered. How talland dark he loomed in the fading light! Helen thrilled, as she had oftenof late, at the strange, potential force of the man. Stepping softly,without the least sound, Dale entered this straggly bit of woods, whichappeared to have narrow byways and nooks. Then presently he came tothe top of a well-wooded slope, dark as pitch, apparently. But as Helenfollowed she perceived the trees, and they were thin dwarf spruce,partly dead. The slope was soft and springy, easy to step upon withoutnoise. Dale went so cautiously that Helen could not hear him, andsometimes in the gloom she could not see him. Then the chill thrills ranover her. Bo kept holding on to Helen, which fact hampered Helen aswell as worked somewhat to disprove Bo's boast. At last level ground wasreached. Helen made out a light-gray background crossed by black bars.Another glance showed this to be the dark tree-trunks against the openpark.

  Dale halted, and with a touch brought Helen to a straining pause. He waslistening. It seemed wonderful to watch him bend his head and stand assilent and motionless as one of the dark trees.

  "He's not there yet," Dale whispered, and he stepped forward veryslowly. Helen and Bo began to come up against thin dead branches thatwere invisible and then cracked. Then Dale knelt down, seemed to meltinto the ground.

  "You'll have to crawl," he whispered.

  How strange and thrilling that was for Helen, and hard work! The groundbore twigs and dead branches, which had to be carefully crawled over;and lying flat, as was necessary, it took prodigious effort to drag herbody inch by inch. Like a huge snake, Dale wormed his way along.

  Gradually the wood lightened. They were nearing the edge of the park.Helen now saw a strip of open with a high, black wall of spruce beyond.The afterglow flashed or changed, like a dimming northern light, andthen failed. Dale crawled on farther to halt at length between twotree-trunks at the edge of the wood.

  "Come up beside me," he whispered.

  Helen crawled on, and presently Bo was beside her panting, with paleface and great, staring eyes, plain to be seen in the wan light.

  "Moon's comin' up. We're just in time. The old grizzly's not there y
et,but I see coyotes. Look."

  Dale pointed across the open neck of park to a dim blurred patchstanding apart some little distance from the black wall.

  "That's the dead horse," whispered Dale. "An' if you watch close you cansee the coyotes. They're gray an' they move.... Can't you hear them?"

  Helen's excited ears, so full of throbs and imaginings, presentlyregistered low snaps and snarls. Bo gave her arm a squeeze.

  "I hear them. They're fighting. Oh, gee!" she panted, and drew a long,full breath of unutterable excitement.

  "Keep quiet now an' watch an' listen," said the hunter.

  Slowly the black, ragged forest-line seemed to grow blacker and lift;slowly the gray neck of park lightened under some invisible influence;slowly the stars paled and the sky filled over. Somewhere the moon wasrising. And slowly that vague blurred patch grew a little clearer.

  Through the tips of the spruce, now seen to be rather close at hand,shone a slender, silver crescent moon, darkening, hiding, shining again,climbing until its exquisite sickle-point topped the trees, and then,magically, it cleared them, radiant and cold. While the eastern blackwall shaded still blacker, the park blanched and the border-lineopposite began to stand out as trees.

  "Look! Look!" cried Bo, very low and fearfully, as she pointed.

  "Not so loud," whispered Dale.

  "But I see something!"

  "Keep quiet," he admonished.

  Helen, in the direction Bo pointed, could not see anything butmoon-blanched bare ground, rising close at hand to a little ridge.

  "Lie still," whispered Dale. "I'm goin' to crawl around to get a lookfrom another angle. I'll be right back."

  He moved noiselessly backward and disappeared. With him gone, Helen felta palpitating of her heart and a prickling of her skin.

  "Oh, my! Nell! Look!" whispered Bo, in fright. "I know I saw something."

  On top of the little ridge a round object moved slowly, getting fartherout into the light. Helen watched with suspended breath. It moved outto be silhouetted against the sky--apparently a huge, round, bristlinganimal, frosty in color. One instant it seemed huge--the nextsmall--then close at hand--and far away. It swerved to come directlytoward them. Suddenly Helen realized that the beast was not a dozenyards distant. She was just beginning a new experience--a realand horrifying terror in which her blood curdled, her heart gave atremendous leap and then stood still, and she wanted to fly, but wasrooted to the spot--when Dale returned to her side.

  "That's a pesky porcupine," he whispered. "Almost crawled over you. Hesure would have stuck you full of quills."

  Whereupon he threw a stick at the animal. It bounced straight up to turnround with startling quickness, and it gave forth a rattling sound; thenit crawled out of sight.

  "Por--cu--pine!" whispered Bo, pantingly. "It might--as well--havebeen--an elephant!"

  Helen uttered a long, eloquent sigh. She would not have cared todescribe her emotions at sight of a harmless hedgehog.

  "Listen!" warned Dale, very low. His big hand closed over Helen'sgauntleted one. "There you have--the real cry of the wild."

  Sharp and cold on the night air split the cry of a wolf, distant, yetwonderfully distinct. How wild and mournful and hungry! How marvelouslypure! Helen shuddered through all her frame with the thrill of itsmusic, the wild and unutterable and deep emotions it aroused. Againa sound of this forest had pierced beyond her life, back into the dimremote past from which she had come.

  The cry was not repeated. The coyotes were still. And silence fell,absolutely unbroken.

  Dale nudged Helen, and then reached over to give Bo a tap. He waspeering keenly ahead and his strained intensity could be felt. Helenlooked with all her might and she saw the shadowy gray forms of thecoyotes skulk away, out of the moonlight into the gloom of the woods,where they disappeared. Not only Dale's intensity, but the very silence,the wildness of the moment and place, seemed fraught with wonderfulpotency. Bo must have felt it, too, for she was trembling all over, andholding tightly to Helen, and breathing quick and fast.

  "A-huh!" muttered Dale, under his breath.

  Helen caught the relief and certainty in his exclamation, and shedivined, then, something of what the moment must have been to a hunter.

  Then her roving, alert glance was arrested by a looming gray shadowcoming out of the forest. It moved, but surely that huge thing could notbe a bear. It passed out of gloom into silver moonlight. Helen's heartbounded. For it was a great frosty-coated bear lumbering along towardthe dead horse. Instinctively Helen's hand sought the arm of the hunter.It felt like iron under a rippling surface. The touch eased away theoppression over her lungs, the tightness of her throat. What must havebeen fear left her, and only a powerful excitement remained. A sharpexpulsion of breath from Bo and a violent jerk of her frame were signsthat she had sighted the grizzly.

  In the moonlight he looked of immense size, and that wild park withthe gloomy blackness of forest furnished a fit setting for him. Helen'squick mind, so taken up with emotion, still had a thought for the wonderand the meaning of that scene. She wanted the bear killed, yet thatseemed a pity.

  He had a wagging, rolling, slow walk which took several moments to reachhis quarry. When at length he reached it he walked around with sniffsplainly heard and then a cross growl. Evidently he had discovered thathis meal had been messed over. As a whole the big bear could be seendistinctly, but only in outline and color. The distance was perhaps twohundred yards. Then it looked as if he had begun to tug at the carcass.Indeed, he was dragging it, very slowly, but surely.

  "Look at that!" whispered Dale. "If he ain't strong!... Reckon I'll haveto stop him."

  The grizzly, however, stopped of his own accord, just outside of theshadow-line of the forest. Then he hunched in a big frosty heap over hisprey and began to tear and rend.

  "Jess was a mighty good horse," muttered Dale, grimly; "too good to makea meal for a hog silvertip."

  Then the hunter silently rose to a kneeling position, swinging therifle in front of him. He glanced up into the low branches of the treeoverhead.

  "Girls, there's no tellin' what a grizzly will do. If I yell, you climbup in this tree, an' do it quick."

  With that he leveled the rifle, resting his left elbow on his knee. Thefront end of the rifle, reaching out of the shade, shone silver in themoonlight. Man and weapon became still as stone. Helen held her breath.But Dale relaxed, lowering the barrel.

  "Can't see the sights very well," he whispered, shaking his head."Remember, now--if I yell you climb!"

  Again he aimed and slowly grew rigid. Helen could not take herfascinated eyes off him. He knelt, bareheaded, and in the shadow shecould make out the gleam of his clear-cut profile, stern and cold.

  A streak of fire and a heavy report startled her. Then she heard thebullet hit. Shifting her glance, she saw the bear lurch with convulsiveaction, rearing on his hind legs. Loud clicking snaps must have been aclashing of his jaws in rage. But there was no other sound. Then againDale's heavy gun boomed. Helen heard again that singular spatting thudof striking lead. The bear went down with a flop as if he had been dealta terrific blow. But just as quickly he was up on all-fours and beganto whirl with hoarse, savage bawls of agony and fury. His action quicklycarried him out of the moonlight into the shadow, where he disappeared.There the bawls gave place to gnashing snarls, and crashings in thebrush, and snapping of branches, as he made his way into the forest.

  "Sure he's mad," said Dale, rising to his feet. "An' I reckon hard hit.But I won't follow him to-night."

  Both the girls got up, and Helen found she was shaky on her feet andvery cold.

  "Oh-h, wasn't--it--won-wonder-ful!" cried Bo.

  "Are you scared? Your teeth are chatterin'," queried Dale.

  "I'm--cold."

  "Well, it sure is cold, all right," he responded. "Now the fun's over,you'll feel it.... Nell, you're froze, too?"

  Helen nodded. She was, indeed, as cold as she had ever been before. Butthat did not prevent a stra
nge warmness along her veins and a quickenedpulse, the cause of which she did not conjecture.

  "Let's rustle," said Dale, and led the way out of the wood and skirtedits edge around to the slope. There they climbed to the flat, and wentthrough the straggling line of trees to where the horses were tethered.

  Up here the wind began to blow, not hard through the forest, but stillstrong and steady out in the open, and bitterly cold. Dale helped Bo tomount, and then Helen.

  "I'm--numb," she said. "I'll fall off--sure."

  "No. You'll be warm in a jiffy," he replied, "because we'll ride somegoin' back. Let Ranger pick the way an' you hang on."

  With Ranger's first jump Helen's blood began to run. Out he shot, hislean, dark head beside Dale's horse. The wild park lay clear and brightin the moonlight, with strange, silvery radiance on the grass. Thepatches of timber, like spired black islands in a moon-blanched lake,seemed to harbor shadows, and places for bears to hide, ready to springout. As Helen neared each little grove her pulses shook and her heartbeat. Half a mile of rapid riding burned out the cold. And all seemedglorious--the sailing moon, white in a dark-blue sky, the white,passionless stars, so solemn, so far away, the beckoning fringe offorest-land at once mysterious and friendly, and the fleet horses,running with soft, rhythmic thuds over the grass, leaping the ditchesand the hollows, making the bitter wind sting and cut. Coming upthat park the ride had been long; going back was as short as it wasthrilling. In Helen, experiences gathered realization slowly, and itwas this swift ride, the horses neck and neck, and all the wildness andbeauty, that completed the slow, insidious work of years. The tearsof excitement froze on her cheeks and her heart heaved full. All thatpertained to this night got into her blood. It was only to feel, to livenow, but it could be understood and remembered forever afterward.

  Dale's horse, a little in advance, sailed over a ditch. Ranger made asplendid leap, but he alighted among some grassy tufts and fell. Helenshot over his head. She struck lengthwise, her arms stretched, and slidhard to a shocking impact that stunned her.

  Bo's scream rang in her ears; she felt the wet grass under her face andthen the strong hands that lifted her. Dale loomed over her, bendingdown to look into her face; Bo was clutching her with frantic hands. AndHelen could only gasp. Her breast seemed caved in. The need to breathewas torture.

  "Nell!--you're not hurt. You fell light, like a feather. All grasshere.... You can't be hurt!" said Dale, sharply.

  His anxious voice penetrated beyond her hearing, and his strong handswent swiftly over her arms and shoulders, feeling for broken bones.

  "Just had the wind knocked out of you," went on Dale. "It feels awful,but it's nothin'."

  Helen got a little air, that was like hot pin-points in her lungs, andthen a deeper breath, and then full, gasping respiration.

  "I guess--I'm not hurt--not a bit," she choked out.

  "You sure had a header. Never saw a prettier spill. Ranger doesn't dothat often. I reckon we were travelin' too fast. But it was fun, don'tyou think?"

  It was Bo who answered. "Oh, glorious!... But, gee! I was scared."

  Dale still held Helen's hands. She released them while looking up athim. The moment was realization for her of what for days had been avague, sweet uncertainty, becoming near and strange, disturbing andpresent. This accident had been a sudden, violent end to the wonderfulride. But its effect, the knowledge of what had got into her blood,would never change. And inseparable from it was this man of the forest.