The Man of the Forest

by Zane Grey

  CHAPTER XV

  Dale stood with face and arm upraised, and he watched Helen ride off theledge to disappear in the forest. That vast spruce slope seemed to haveswallowed her. She was gone! Slowly Dale lowered his arm with gestureexpressive of a strange finality, an eloquent despair, of which he wasunconscious.

  He turned to the park, to his camp, and the many duties of a hunter. Thepark did not seem the same, nor his home, nor his work.

  "I reckon this feelin's natural," he soliloquized, resignedly, "but it'ssure queer for me. That's what comes of makin' friends. Nell an' Bo,now, they made a difference, an' a difference I never knew before."

  He calculated that this difference had been simply one ofresponsibility, and then the charm and liveliness of the companionshipof girls, and finally friendship. These would pass now that the causeswere removed.

  Before he had worked an hour around camp he realized a change had come,but it was not the one anticipated. Always before he had put his mind onhis tasks, whatever they might be; now he worked while his thoughts werestrangely involved.

  The little bear cub whined at his heels; the tame deer seemed to regardhim with deep, questioning eyes, the big cougar padded softly here andthere as if searching for something.

  "You all miss them--now--I reckon," said Dale. "Well, they're gone an'you'll have to get along with me."

  Some vague approach to irritation with his pets surprised him. Presentlyhe grew both irritated and surprised with himself--a state of mindtotally unfamiliar. Several times, as old habit brought momentaryabstraction, he found himself suddenly looking around for Helen andBo. And each time the shock grew stronger. They were gone, but theirpresence lingered. After his camp chores were completed he went over topull down the lean-to which the girls had utilized as a tent. The spruceboughs had dried out brown and sear; the wind had blown the roof awry;the sides were leaning in. As there was now no further use forthis little habitation, he might better pull it down. Dale did notacknowledge that his gaze had involuntarily wandered toward it manytimes. Therefore he strode over with the intention of destroying it.

  For the first time since Roy and he had built the lean-to he steppedinside. Nothing was more certain than the fact that he experienced astrange sensation, perfectly incomprehensible to him. The blanketslay there on the spruce boughs, disarranged and thrown back by hurriedhands, yet still holding something of round folds where the slenderforms had nestled. A black scarf often worn by Bo lay covering thepillow of pine-needles; a red ribbon that Helen had worn on her hairhung from a twig. These articles were all that had been forgotten. Dalegazed at them attentively, then at the blankets, and all around thefragrant little shelter; and he stepped outside with an uncomfortableknowledge that he could not destroy the place where Helen and Bo hadspent so many hours.

  Whereupon, in studious mood, Dale took up his rifle and strode out tohunt. His winter supply of venison had not yet been laid in. Actionsuited his mood; he climbed far and passed by many a watching buckto slay which seemed murder; at last he jumped one that was wild andbounded away. This he shot, and set himself a Herculean task in packingthe whole carcass back to camp. Burdened thus, he staggered under thetrees, sweating freely, many times laboring for breath, aching withtoil, until at last he had reached camp. There he slid the deer carcassoff his shoulders, and, standing over it, he gazed down while his breastlabored. It was one of the finest young bucks he had ever seen. Butneither in stalking it, nor making a wonderful shot, nor in packing homea weight that would have burdened two men, nor in gazing down at hisbeautiful quarry, did Dale experience any of the old joy of the hunter.

  "I'm a little off my feed," he mused, as he wiped sweat from his heatedface. "Maybe a little dotty, as I called Al. But that'll pass."

  Whatever his state, it did not pass. As of old, after a long day's hunt,he reclined beside the camp-fire and watched the golden sunset glowschange on the ramparts; as of old he laid a hand on the soft, furry headof the pet cougar; as of old he watched the gold change to red and thento dark, and twilight fall like a blanket; as of old he listened tothe dreamy, lulling murmur of the water fall. The old familiar beauty,wildness, silence, and loneliness were there, but the old content seemedstrangely gone.

  Soberly he confessed then that he missed the happy company of the girls.He did not distinguish Helen from Bo in his slow introspection. Whenhe sought his bed he did not at once fall to sleep. Always, after afew moments of wakefulness, while the silence settled down or the windmoaned through the pines, he had fallen asleep. This night he founddifferent. Though he was tired, sleep would not soon come. Thewilderness, the mountains, the park, the camp--all seemed to have lostsomething. Even the darkness seemed empty. And when at length Dale fellasleep it was to be troubled by restless dreams.

  Up with the keen-edged, steely-bright dawn, he went at the his taskswith the springy stride of the deer-stalker.

  At the end of that strenuous day, which was singularly full of the oldexcitement and action and danger, and of new observations, he was boundto confess that no longer did the chase suffice for him.

  Many times on the heights that day, with the wind keen in his face, andthe vast green billows of spruce below him, he had found that he wasgazing without seeing, halting without object, dreaming as he had neverdreamed before.

  Once, when a magnificent elk came out upon a rocky ridge and, whistlinga challenge to invisible rivals, stood there a target to stir anyhunter's pulse, Dale did not even raise his rifle. Into his ear justthen rang Helen's voice: "Milt Dale, you are no Indian. Giving yourselfto a hunter's wildlife is selfish. It is wrong. You love this lonelylife, but it is not work. Work that does not help others is not a realman's work."

  From that moment conscience tormented him. It was not what he loved,but what he ought to do, that counted in the sum of good achieved in theworld. Old Al Auchincloss had been right. Dale was wasting strength andintelligence that should go to do his share in the development of theWest. Now that he had reached maturity, if through his knowledge ofnature's law he had come to see the meaning of the strife of men forexistence, for place, for possession, and to hold them in contempt, thatwas no reason why he should keep himself aloof from them, from some workthat was needed in an incomprehensible world.

  Dale did not hate work, but he loved freedom. To be alone, to live withnature, to feel the elements, to labor and dream and idle and climband sleep unhampered by duty, by worry, by restriction, by the pettyinterests of men--this had always been his ideal of living. Cowboys,riders, sheep-herders, farmers--these toiled on from one place andone job to another for the little money doled out to them. Nothingbeautiful, nothing significant had ever existed in that for him. He hadworked as a boy at every kind of range-work, and of all that humdrumwaste of effort he had liked sawing wood best. Once he had quit a jobof branding cattle because the smell of burning hide, the bawl of theterrified calf, had sickened him. If men were honest there would be noneed to scar cattle. He had never in the least desired to own land anddroves of stock, and make deals with ranchmen, deals advantageous tohimself. Why should a man want to make a deal or trade a horse or do apiece of work to another man's disadvantage? Self-preservation was thefirst law of life. But as the plants and trees and birds and beastsinterpreted that law, merciless and inevitable as they were, they hadneither greed nor dishonesty. They lived by the grand rule of what wasbest for the greatest number.

  But Dale's philosophy, cold and clear and inevitable, like natureitself, began to be pierced by the human appeal in Helen Rayner's words.What did she mean? Not that he should lose his love of the wilderness,but that he realize himself! Many chance words of that girl had depth.He was young, strong, intelligent, free from taint of disease or thefever of drink. He could do something for others. Who? If that mattered,there, for instance, was poor old Mrs. Cass, aged and lame now; therewas Al Auchincloss, dying in his boots, afraid of enemies, and wistfulfor his blood and his property to receive the fruit of his labors; therewere the two girls, Helen and Bo, new and st
range to the West, about tobe confronted by a big problem of ranch life and rival interests. Dalethought of still more people in the little village of Pine--of otherswho had failed, whose lives were hard, who could have been made happierby kindness and assistance.

  What, then, was the duty of Milt Dale to himself? Because men preyed onone another and on the weak, should he turn his back upon a so-calledcivilization or should he grow like them? Clear as a bell came theanswer that his duty was to do neither. And then he saw how the littlevillage of Pine, as well as the whole world, needed men like him. He hadgone to nature, to the forest, to the wilderness for his development;and all the judgments and efforts of his future would be a result ofthat education.

  Thus Dale, lying in the darkness and silence of his lonely park, arrivedat a conclusion that he divined was but the beginning of a struggle.

  It took long introspection to determine the exact nature of thatstruggle, but at length it evolved into the paradox that Helen Raynerhad opened his eyes to his duty as a man, that he accepted it, yet founda strange obstacle in the perplexing, tumultuous, sweet fear of evergoing near her again.

  Suddenly, then, all his thought revolved around the girl, and, thrownoff his balance, he weltered in a wilderness of unfamiliar strangeideas.

  When he awoke next day the fight was on in earnest. In his sleep hismind had been active. The idea that greeted him, beautiful as thesunrise, flashed in memory of Auchincloss's significant words, "Takeyour chance with the girl!"

  The old rancher was in his dotage. He hinted of things beyond the rangeof possibility. That idea of a chance for Dale remained before hisconsciousness only an instant. Stars were unattainable; life couldnot be fathomed; the secret of nature did not abide alone on theearth--these theories were not any more impossible of proving than thatHelen Rayner might be for him.

  Nevertheless, her strange coming into his life had played havoc, theextent of which he had only begun to realize.

  For a month he tramped through the forest. It was October, a stillgolden, fulfilling season of the year; and everywhere in the vast darkgreen a glorious blaze of oak and aspen made beautiful contrast. Hecarried his rifle, but he never used it. He would climb miles and gothis way and that with no object in view. Yet his eye and ear hadnever been keener. Hours he would spend on a promontory, watchingthe distance, where the golden patches of aspen shone bright outof dark-green mountain slopes. He loved to fling himself down in anaspen-grove at the edge of a senaca, and there lie in that radiance likea veil of gold and purple and red, with the white tree-trunks stripingthe shade. Always, whether there were breeze or not, the aspen-leavesquivered, ceaselessly, wonderfully, like his pulses, beyond his control.Often he reclined against a mossy rock beside a mountain stream tolisten, to watch, to feel all that was there, while his mind held ahaunting, dark-eyed vision of a girl. On the lonely heights, like aneagle, he sat gazing down into Paradise Park, that was more and morebeautiful, but would never again be the same, never fill him withcontent, never be all and all to him.

  Late in October the first snow fell. It melted at once on the south sideof the park, but the north slopes and the rims and domes above stayedwhite.

  Dale had worked quick and hard at curing and storing his winter supplyof food, and now he spent days chopping and splitting wood to burnduring the months he would be snowed-in. He watched for the dark-gray,fast-scudding storm-clouds, and welcomed them when they came. Once therelay ten feet of snow on the trails he would be snowed-in until spring.It would be impossible to go down to Pine. And perhaps during the longwinter he would be cured of this strange, nameless disorder of hisfeelings.

  November brought storms up on the peaks. Flurries of snow fell inthe park every day, but the sunny south side, where Dale's camp lay,retained its autumnal color and warmth. Not till late in winter did thesnow creep over this secluded nook.

  The morning came at last, piercingly keen and bright, when Dale sawthat the heights were impassable; the realization brought him a poignantregret. He had not guessed how he had wanted to see Helen Rayner againuntil it was too late. That opened his eyes. A raging frenzy of actionfollowed, in which he only tired himself physically without helpinghimself spiritually.

  It was sunset when he faced the west, looking up at the pink snow-domesand the dark-golden fringe of spruce, and in that moment he found thetruth.

  "I love that girl! I love that girl!" he spoke aloud, to the distantwhite peaks, to the winds, to the loneliness and silence of his prison,to the great pines and to the murmuring stream, and to his faithfulpets. It was his tragic confession of weakness, of amazing truth, ofhopeless position, of pitiful excuse for the transformation wrought inhim.

  Dale's struggle ended there when he faced his soul. To understandhimself was to be released from strain, worry, ceaseless importuningdoubt and wonder and fear. But the fever of unrest, of uncertainty, hadbeen nothing compared to a sudden upflashing torment of love.

  With somber deliberation he set about the tasks needful, and othersthat he might make--his camp-fires and meals, the care of his pets andhorses, the mending of saddles and pack-harness, the curing of buckskinfor moccasins and hunting-suits. So his days were not idle. But all thiswork was habit for him and needed no application of mind.

  And Dale, like some men of lonely wilderness lives who did notretrograde toward the savage, was a thinker. Love made him a sufferer.

  The surprise and shame of his unconscious surrender, the certainhopelessness of it, the long years of communion with all that was wild,lonely, and beautiful, the wonderfully developed insight into nature'ssecrets, and the sudden-dawning revelation that he was no omniscientbeing exempt from the ruthless ordinary destiny of man--all these showedhim the strength of his manhood and of his passion, and that the lifehe had chosen was of all lives the one calculated to make love sad andterrible.

  Helen Rayner haunted him. In the sunlight there was not a placearound camp which did not picture her lithe, vigorous body, her dark,thoughtful eyes, her eloquent, resolute lips, and the smile that was sosweet and strong. At night she was there like a slender specter, pacingbeside him under the moaning pines. Every camp-fire held in its heartthe glowing white radiance of her spirit.

  Nature had taught Dale to love solitude and silence, but love itselftaught him their meaning. Solitude had been created for the eagle on hiscrag, for the blasted mountain fir, lonely and gnarled on its peak, forthe elk and the wolf. But it had not been intended for man. And tolive always in the silence of wild places was to become obsessed withself--to think and dream--to be happy, which state, however pursued byman, was not good for him. Man must be given imperious longings for theunattainable.

  It needed, then, only the memory of an unattainable woman to rendersolitude passionately desired by a man, yet almost unendurable. Dale wasalone with his secret; and every pine, everything in that park saw himshaken and undone.

  In the dark, pitchy deadness of night, when there was no wind and thecold on the peaks had frozen the waterfall, then the silence seemedinsupportable. Many hours that should have been given to slumber werepaced out under the cold, white, pitiless stars, under the lonely pines.

  Dale's memory betrayed him, mocked his restraint, cheated him ofany peace; and his imagination, sharpened by love, created pictures,fancies, feelings, that drove him frantic.

  He thought of Helen Rayner's strong, shapely brown hand. In a thousanddifferent actions it haunted him. How quick and deft in camp-fire tasks!how graceful and swift as she plaited her dark hair! how tender andskilful in its ministration when one of his pets had been injured! howeloquent when pressed tight against her breast in a moment of fear onthe dangerous heights! how expressive of unutterable things when laid onhis arm!

  Dale saw that beautiful hand slowly creep up his arm, across hisshoulder, and slide round his neck to clasp there. He was powerless toinhibit the picture. And what he felt then was boundless, unutterable.No woman had ever yet so much as clasped his hand, and heretofore nosuch imaginings had ever crossed his m
ind, yet deep in him, somewherehidden, had been this waiting, sweet, and imperious need. In the brightday he appeared to ward off such fancies, but at night he was helpless.And every fancy left him weaker, wilder.

  When, at the culmination of this phase of his passion, Dale, whohad never known the touch of a woman's lips, suddenly yielded to theillusion of Helen Rayner's kisses, he found himself quite mad, filledwith rapture and despair, loving her as he hated himself. It seemed asif he had experienced all these terrible feelings in some former lifeand had forgotten them in this life. He had no right to think of her,but he could not resist it. Imagining the sweet surrender of her lipswas a sacrilege, yet here, in spite of will and honor and shame, he waslost.

  Dale, at length, was vanquished, and he ceased to rail at himself, orrestrain his fancies. He became a dreamy, sad-eyed, camp-fire gazer,like many another lonely man, separated, by chance or error, from whatthe heart hungered most for. But this great experience, when all itssignificance had clarified in his mind, immeasurably broadened hisunderstanding of the principles of nature applied to life.

  Love had been in him stronger than in most men, because of his keen,vigorous, lonely years in the forest, where health of mind and body wereintensified and preserved. How simple, how natural, how inevitable! Hemight have loved any fine-spirited, healthy-bodied girl. Like a treeshooting its branches and leaves, its whole entity, toward the sunlight,so had he grown toward a woman's love. Why? Because the thing he reveredin nature, the spirit, the universal, the life that was God, had createdat his birth or before his birth the three tremendous instincts ofnature--to fight for life, to feed himself, to reproduce his kind. Thatwas all there was to it. But oh! the mystery, the beauty, the torment,and the terror of this third instinct--this hunger for the sweetness andthe glory of a woman's love!