The Forester's Daughter

by Garland, Hamlin

  Nash, who was alone in the office, looked up from his work. “Come in,” he called, heartily. “Come in and report.”

  “Thank you. I’d like to do so; and may I use your desk? I have a letter to write.”

  “Make yourself at home. Take any desk you like. The men are all out on duty.”

  “You’re very kind,” replied Wayland, gratefully. There was something reassuring in this greeting, and in the many signs of skill and scientific reading which the place displayed. It was like a bit of Washington in the midst of a careless, slovenly, lawless mountain town, and Norcross took his seat and wrote his letter with a sense of proprietorship.

  “I’m getting up an enthusiasm for the Service just from hearing Alec Belden rave against it,” he said a few minutes later, as he looked up from his letter.

  Nash grinned. “How did you like Meeker?”

  “He’s a good man, but he has his peculiarities. Belden is your real enemy. He is blue with malignity—so are most of the cowmen I met up there. I wish I could do something for the Service. I’m a thoroughly up-to-date analytical chemist and a passable mining engineer, and my doctor says that for a year at least I must work in the open air. Is there anything in this Forest Service for a weakling like me?”

  Nash considered. “The Supervisor might put you on as a temporary guard. I’ll speak to him if you like?”

  “I wish you would. Tell him to forget the pay. I’m not in need of money, but I do require some incentive—something to do—something to give me direction. It bores me stiff to fish, and I’m sick of loafing. If McFarlane can employ me I shall be happy. The country is glorious, but I can’t live on scenery.”

  “I think we can employ you, but you’ll have to go on as fire-guard or something like that for the first year. You see, the work is getting to be more and more technical each year. As a matter of fact”—here he lowered his voice a little—“McFarlane is one of the old guard, and will have to give way. He don’t know a thing about forestry, and is too old to learn. His girl knows more about it than he does. She helps him out on office work, too.”

  Wayland wondered a little at the freedom of expression on the part of Nash; but said: “If he runs his office as he runs his ranch he surely is condemned to go.”

  “There’s where the girl comes in. She keeps the boys in the office lined up and maintains things in pretty fair shape. She knows the old man is in danger of losing his job, and she’s doing her best to hold him to it. She’s like a son to him and he relies on her judgment when a close decision comes up. But it’s only a matter of time when he and all he represents must drift by. This is a big movement we’re mixed with.”

  “I begin to feel that that’s why I’d like to take it up. It’s the only thing out here that interests me—and I’ve got to do something. I can’t loaf.”

  “Well, you get Berrie to take up your case and you’re all right. She has the say about who goes on the force in this forest.”

  It was late in the afternoon before Wayland started back to Meeker’s with intent to repack his belongings and leave the ranch for good. He had decided not to call at McFarlane’s, a decision which came not so much from fear of Clifford Belden as from a desire to shield Berea from further trouble, but as he was passing the gate, the girl rose from behind a clump of willows and called to him: “Oh, Mr. Norcross! Wait a moment.”

  He drew rein, and, slipping from his horse, approached her. “What is it, Miss Berrie?” he asked, with wondering politeness.

  She confronted him with gravity. “It’s too late for you to cross the ridge. It’ll be dark long before you reach the cut-off. You’d better not try to make it.”

  “I think I can find my way,” he answered, touched by her consideration. “I’m not so helpless as I was when I came.”

  “Just the same you mustn’t go on,” she insisted. “Father told me to ask you to come in and stay all night. He wants to meet you. I was afraid you might ride by after what happened to-day, and so I came up here to head you off.” She took his horse by the rein, and flashed a smiling glance up at him. “Come now, do as the Supervisor tells you.”

  “Wait a moment,” he pleaded. “On second thought, I don’t believe it’s a good thing for me to go home with you. It will only make further trouble for—for us both.”

  She was almost as direct as Belden had been. “I know what you mean. I saw Cliff follow you. He jumped you, didn’t he?”

  “He overtook me—yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  He hesitated. “He was pretty hot, and said things he’ll be sorry for when he cools off.”

  “He told you not to come here any more—advised you to hit the out-going trail—didn’t he?”

  He flushed with returning shame of it all, but quietly answered: “Yes, he said something about riding east.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “Not to-day; but I guess I’d better keep away from here.”

  She looked at him steadily. “Why?”

  “Because you’ve been very kind to me, and I wouldn’t for the world do anything to hurt or embarrass you.”

  “Don’t you mind about me,” she responded, bluntly. “What happened this morning wasn’t your fault nor mine. Cliff made a mighty coarse play, something he’ll have to pay for. He knows that right now. He’ll be back in a day or two begging my pardon, and he won’t get it. Don’t you worry about me, not for a minute—I can take care of myself—I grew up that way, and don’t you be chased out of the country by anybody. Come, father will be looking for you.”

  With a feeling that he was involving both the girl and himself in still darker storms, the young fellow yielded to her command, and together they walked along the weed-bordered path, while she continued:

  “This isn’t the first time Cliff has started in to discipline me; but it’s obliged to be the last. He’s the kind that think they own a girl just as soon as they get her to wear an engagement ring; but Cliff don’t own me. I told him I wouldn’t stand for his coarse ways, and I won’t!”

  Wayland tried to bring her back to humor. “You’re a kind of ‘new woman.’”

  She turned a stern look on him. “You bet I am! I was raised a free citizen. No man can make a slave of me. I thought he understood that; but it seems he didn’t. He’s all right in many ways—one of the best riders in the country—but he’s pretty tolerable domineering—I’ve always known that—still, I never expected him to talk to me like he did to-day. It certainly was raw.” She broke off abruptly. “You mustn’t let Frank Meeker get the best of you, either,” she advised. “He’s a mean little weasel if he gets started. I’ll bet he put Cliff up to this business.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Yes, he just as good as told me he’d do it. I know Frank, he’s my own cousin, and someways I like him; but he’s the limit when he gets going. You see, he wanted to get even with Cliff and took that way of doing it. I’ll ride up there and give him a little good advice some Saturday.”

  He was no longer amused by her blunt speech, and her dark look saddened him. She seemed so unlike the happy girl he met that first day, and the change in her subtended a big, rough, and pitiless world of men against which she was forced to contend all her life.

  Mrs. McFarlane greeted Norcross with cordial word and earnest hand-clasp. “I’m glad to see you looking so well,” she said, with charming sincerity.

  “I’m browner, anyway,” he answered, and turned to meet McFarlane, a short, black-bearded man, with fine dark eyes and shapely hands—hands that had never done anything more toilsome than to lift a bridle rein or to clutch the handle of a gun. He was the horseman in all his training, and though he owned hundreds of acres of land, he had never so much as held a plow or plied a spade. His manner was that of the cow-boss, the lord of great herds, the claimant of empires of government grass-land. Poor as his house looked, he was in reality rich. Narrow-minded in respect to his own interests, he was well in advance of his neighbors on matters relat
ing to the general welfare, a curious mixture of greed and generosity, as most men are, and though he had been made Supervisor at a time when political pull still crippled the Service, he was loyal to the flag. “I’m mighty glad to see you,” he heartily began. “We don’t often get a man from the sea-level, and when we do we squeeze him dry.”

  His voice, low, languid, and soft, was most insinuating, and for hours he kept his guest talking of the East and its industries and prejudices; and Berrie and her mother listened with deep admiration, for the youngster had seen a good deal of the old world, and was unusually well read on historical lines of inquiry. He talked well, too, inspired by his attentive audience.

  Berrie’s eyes, wide and eager, were fixed upon him unwaveringly. He felt her wonder, her admiration, and was inspired to do his best. Something in her absorbed attention led him to speak of things so personal that he wondered at himself for uttering them.

  “I’ve been dilettante all my life,” was one of his confessions. “I’ve traveled; I’ve studied in a tepid sort of fashion; I went through college without any idea of doing anything with what I got; I had a sort of pride in keeping up with my fellows; and I had no idea of preparing for any work in the world. Then came my breakdown, and my doctor ordered me out here. I came intending to fish and loaf around, but I can’t do that. I’ve got to do something or go back home. I expected to have a chum of mine with me, but his father was injured in an automobile accident, so he went into the office to help out.”

  As he talked the girl discovered new graces, new allurements in him. His smile, so subtly self-derisive, and his voice so flexible and so quietly eloquent, completed her subjugation. She had no further care concerning Clifford—indeed, she had forgotten him—for the time at least. The other part of her—the highly civilized latent power drawn from her mother—was in action. She lost her air of command, her sense of chieftainship, and sat humbly at the feet of this shining visitor from the East.

  At last Mrs. McFarlane rose, and Berea, reluctantly, like a child loath to miss a fairy story, held out her hand to say good night, and the young man saw on her face that look of adoration which marks the birth of sudden love; but his voice was frank and his glance kindly as he said:

  “Here I’ve done all the talking when I wanted you to tell me all sorts of things.”

  “I can’t tell you anything.”

  “Oh yes, you can; and, besides, I want you to intercede for me with your father and get me into the Service. But we’ll talk about that to-morrow. Good night.”

  After the women left the room Norcross said:

  “I really am in earnest about entering the Forest Service. Landon filled me with enthusiasm about it. Never mind the pay. I’m not in immediate need of money; but I do need an interest in life.”

  McFarlane stared at him with kindly perplexity. “I don’t know exactly what you can do, but I’ll work you in somehow. You ought to work under a man like Settle, one that could put you through a training in the rudiments of the game. I’ll see what can be done.”

  “Thank you for that half promise,” said Wayland, and he went to his bed happier than at any moment since leaving home.

  Berrie, on her part, did not analyze her feeling for Wayland, she only knew that he was as different from the men she knew as a hawk from a sage-hen, and that he appealed to her in a higher way than any other had done. His talk filled her with visions of great cities, and with thoughts of books, for though she was profoundly loyal to her mountain valley, she held other, more secret admirations. She was, in fact, compounded of two opposing tendencies. Her quiet little mother longing—in secret—for the placid, refined life of her native Kentucky town, had dowered her daughter with some part of her desire. She had always hated the slovenly, wasteful, and purposeless life of the cattle-rancher, and though she still patiently bore with her husband’s shortcomings, she covertly hoped that Berea might find some other and more civilized lover than Clifford Belden. She understood her daughter too well to attempt to dictate her action; she merely said to her, as they were alone for a few moments: “I don’t wonder your father is interested in Mr. Norcross, he’s very intelligent—and very considerate.”

  “Too considerate,” said Berrie, shortly; “he makes other men seem like bears or pigs.”

  Mrs. McFarlane said no more, but she knew that Cliff was, for the time, among the bears.

  * * *

  V

  THE GOLDEN PATHWAY

  Young Norcross soon became vitally engaged with the problems which confronted McFarlane, and his possible enrolment as a guard filled him with a sense of proprietorship in the forest, which made him quite content with Bear Tooth. He set to work at once to acquire a better knowledge of the extent and boundaries of the reservation. It was, indeed, a noble possession. Containing nearly eight hundred thousand acres of woodland, and reaching to the summits of the snow-lined peaks to the east, south, and west, it appealed to him with silent majesty. It drew upon his patriotism. Remembering how the timber of his own state had been slashed and burned, he began to feel a sense of personal responsibility. He had but to ride into it a few miles in order to appreciate in some degree its grandeur, considered merely as the source of a hundred swift streams, whose waters enriched the valleys lying below.

  He bought a horse of his own—although Berrie insisted upon his retaining Pete—and sent for a saddle of the army type, and from sheer desire to keep entirely clear of the cowboy equipment procured puttees like those worn by cavalry officers, and when he presented himself completely uniformed, he looked not unlike a slender, young lieutenant of the cavalry on field duty, and in Berrie’s eyes was wondrous alluring.

  He took quarters at the hotel, but spent a larger part of each day in Berrie’s company—a fact which was duly reported to Clifford Belden. Hardly a day passed without his taking at least one meal at the Supervisor’s home.

  As he met the rangers one by one, he perceived by their outfits, as well as by their speech, that they were sharply divided upon old lines and new. The experts, the men of college training, were quite ready to be known as Uncle Sam’s men. They held a pride in their duties, a respect for their superiors, and an understanding of the governmental policy which gave them dignity and a quiet authority. They were less policemen than trusted agents of a federal department. Nevertheless, there was much to admire in the older men, who possessed a self-reliance, a knowledge of nature, and a certain rough grace which made them interesting companions, and rendered them effective teachers of camping and trailing, and while they were secretly a little contemptuous of the “schoolboys”; they were all quite ready to ask for expert aid when knotty problems arose. It was no longer a question of grazing, it was a question of lumbering and reforestration.

  Nash, who took an almost brotherly interest in his apprentice, warningly said: “You want to go well clothed and well shod. You’ll have to meet all kinds of weather. Every man in the service, I don’t care what his technical job is, should be schooled in taking care of himself in the forest and on the trail. I often meet surveyors and civil engineers—experts—who are helpless as children in camp, and when I want them to go into the hills and do field work, they are almost useless. The old-style ranger has his virtues. Settle is just the kind of instructor you young fellows need.”

  Berrie also had keen eyes for his outfit and his training, and under her direction he learned to pack a horse, set a tent, build a fire in the rain, and other duties.

  “You want to remember that you carry your bed and board with you,” she said, “and you must be prepared to camp anywhere and at any time.”

  The girl’s skill in these particulars was marvelous to him, and added to the admiration he already felt for her. Her hand was as deft, as sure, as the best of them, and her knowledge of cayuse psychology more profound than any of the men excepting her father.

  One day, toward the end of his second week in the village, the Supervisor said: “Well, now, if you’re ready to experiment I’ll send you over to
Settle, the ranger, on the Horseshoe. He’s a little lame on his pen-hand side, and you may be able to help him out. Maybe I’ll ride over there with you. I want to line out some timber sales on the west side of Ptarmigan.”

  This commission delighted Norcross greatly. “I’m ready, sir, this moment,” he answered, saluting soldier-wise.

  That night, as he sat in the saddle-littered, boot-haunted front room of Nash’s little shack, his host said, quaintly: “Don’t think you are inheriting a soft snap, son. The ranger’s job was a man’s job in the old days when it was a mere matter of patrolling; but it’s worse and more of it to-day. A ranger must be ready and willing to build bridges, fight fire, scale logs, chop a hole through a windfall, use a pick in a ditch, build his own house, cook, launder, and do any other old trick that comes along. But you’ll know more about all this at the end of ten days than I can tell you in a year.”

  “I’m eager for duty,” replied Wayland.

  The next morning, as he rode down to the office to meet the Supervisor, he was surprised and delighted to find Berea there. “I’m riding, too,” she announced, delightedly. “I’ve never been over that new trail, and father has agreed to let me go along.” Then she added, earnestly: “I think it’s fine you’re going in for the Service; but it’s hard work, and you must be careful till you’re hardened to it. It’s a long way to a doctor from Settle’s station.”

  He was annoyed as well as touched by her warning, for it proclaimed that he was still far from looking the brave forester he felt himself to be. He replied: “I’m not going to try anything wild, but I do intend to master the trailer’s craft.”

  “I’ll teach you how to camp, if you’ll let me,” she continued. “I’ve been on lots of surveys with father, and I always take my share of the work. I threw that hitch alone.” She nodded toward the pack-horse, whose neat load gave evidence of her skill. “I told father this was to be a real camping expedition, and as the grouse season is on we’ll live on the country. Can you fish?”