Dorn Of The Mountains (8 page)

Dorn turned away. Then the girls bade Roy good bye and followed. Soon Roy and his buckskin-colored mustang were lost to sight round a clump of trees.

The unhampered horses led the way, scattered somewhat; the pack animals trotted after them, and the riders were close behind. All traveled at a jog trot. And this gait made the packs bob up and down and from side to side. The sun fell warmly at Helen’s back and the wind lost its frosty coldness that almost appeared damp, for a dry sweet fragrance. Dorn drove up the shallow valley that showed timber on the levels above, and a black border of timber some few miles ahead. It did not take long to reach the edge of the forest.

Helen wondered why the big pines grew so far on that plain and no farther. Probably the growth had to do with snow, but as the ground was level she could not see why the edge of the woods should have come just there.

They rode into the forest.

To Helen it seemed a strange critical entrance into another world that she was destined to know and to love. The pines were big, brown-barked, seamed, and knotted, with no typical conformation except a majesty and beauty. They grew far apart. Few small pines and little underbrush flourished beneath them. The floor of this forest appeared remarkable in that it consisted of patches of high silvery grass and wide brown areas of pine needles. These manifestly were what Roy had meant by pine mats. Here and there a fallen monarch lay riven or rotting. Helen was presently struck with the silence of the forest and the strange fact that the horses seldom made any sound at all, and, when they did, it was a
cracking
of dead twig or
thud
of hoof on log. Likewise she became aware of a springy nature of the ground. And then she saw that the pine mats gave like rubber cushions under the hoofs of the horses and, after they had passed, sprang back to place again leaving no track. Helen could not see a sign of a trail they left behind. Indeed, it would take a sharp eye to follow Dorn through that forest. This knowledge was infinitely comforting to Helen, and for the first time since the flight had begun she felt a loosening of a weight upon mind and heart. It left her free for some of the appreciation she might have had in this wonderful ride under happier circumstances.

Bo, however, seemed too young, too wild, too intense to mind what the circumstances were. She responded to reality. Helen began to suspect that the girl would welcome any adventure, and Helen knew surely now that Bo was a true Auchincloss. For three long days Helen had felt a constraint with which heretofore she had been unfamiliar, and for the last hours it had been submerged under dread. But it must be, she concluded, blood like her sister’s, pounding at her veins to be set free, to race and to burn.

Bo loved action. She had an eye for beauty, but she was not contemplative. She was now helping Dorn drive the horses and hold them in rather close formation. She rode well and as yet showed no symptoms of fatigue or pain. Helen began to be aware of both, but not enough yet to limit her interest.

A wonderful forest without birds did not seem real to her. Of all living creatures in Nature, Helen liked birds best and she knew many and could imitate the songs of a few. But here under the stately pines there were no birds. Squirrels, however, began to be seen here and there and, in the course of an hour’s travel, became abundant. The only one with which she was familiar was the chipmunk. All the others from the slim bright blacks to the striped russets and the white-tailed grays were totally new to her. They appeared tame and curious. The reds barked and scolded at the passing cavalcade; the blacks glided to some safe branch, there to watch; the grays paid no especial heed to this invasion of their domain.

Once, Dorn, halting his horse, pointed with long arm, and Helen, following the direction, descried several gray deer standing in a glade, motionless, with long ears up. They made a wild and beautiful picture. Suddenly they bounded away with remarkable, springy strides.

The forest on the whole held to the level open character, but there were swales and streambeds breaking up its regular conformity. Toward noon, however, it gradually changed, a fact that Helen believed she might have observed sooner had she been more keen. The general lay of the land began to ascend and the trees to grow denser.

She made another discovery. Ever since she had entered the forest, she had been aware of a fullness in her head and a something affecting her nostrils. She imagined, with regret, that she had taken cold. But presently her head cleared somewhat and she realized that the thick pine odor of the forest had clogged her nostrils as if with a sweet pitch. The smell was overpowering, and disagreeable because of its strength. Also, her throat and lungs seemed to burn.

When she began to lose interest in the forest and all pertaining to it, that regretful fact, she ascertained, owed its origin to aches and pains that would no longer be denied recognition. Thereafter she was not permitted to forget them and they grew worse. One especially was a pain beyond all her experience. It lay in the muscles of her side, above her hip, and it grew to be a treacherous thing. For it was not persis tent. It came and went. After it did, she, with a terrible flash, found it could be borne by shifting or easing the body. But it gave no warning. When she expected it, she was mistaken; when she dared to breathe again, then, with piercing swiftness, it returned like a blade in her side. This then was one of the riding pains that made a victim of a tenderfoot on a long ride. It was almost too much to be borne. Presently to bear it any longer was not possible. She would fall off the horse and walk. The beauty of the forest, the living creatures to be seen scurrying away, the time, distance—everything faded before that stab-like pain. To her infinite relief she found that it was the trot that caused this torture. When Ranger walked, she did not have to suffer it. Thereupon she held him to a walk as long as she dared or until Dorn and Bo were almost out of sight, then she loped him ahead until he had caught up.

So the hours passed, the sun got around low, sending golden shafts under the trees, and the forest gradually changed to a brighter, but a thicker color. This slowly darkened. Sunset was not far away.

She heard the horses splashing in water, and soon she rode up to see tiny streams of crystal water running swiftly over beds of green moss. She crossed a number of these and followed along the last one into a more open place in the forest where the pines were huge, towering, and far apart. A low gray bluff of stone rose to the right, perhaps one third as high as the trees. From somewhere came the rushing sound of running water.

“Big Spring,” announced Dorn. “We camp here. You girls have done well.”

Another glance proved to Helen that all those little streams poured from under this gray bluff.

“I’m dying for a drink!” cried Bo with her customary hyperbole.

“I reckon you’ll never forget your first drink here,” remarked Dorn.

Bo essayed to dismount and finally almost fell off, and, when she did get to the ground, her legs appeared to refuse their natural function and she fell flat. Dorn helped her up.

“What’s wrong with me anyhow?” she demanded in great amaze.

“Just stiff, I reckon,” replied Dorn as he led her a few awkward steps.

“Bo, have you any hurts?” queried Helen, who still sat her horse, loath to try dismounting, yet wanting to beyond all words.

Bo gave her an eloquent glance. “Nell, did you have one in your side, like a wicked long darning needle, punching deep when you weren’t ready?”

“That one I’ll never get over!” exclaimed Helen softly. Then profiting by Bo’s experience she dismounted cautiously and managed to keep upright. Her legs felt like wooden things.

Presently the girls went toward the spring.

“Drink slow!” called out Dorn.

Big Spring had its source somewhere deep inside the gray weathered bluff, from which came a hollow subterranean gurgle and roar of water. The fountainhead must have been a great well rushing up though the cold stone.

Helen and Bo lay flat on a mossy bank, seeing their faces as they bent over, and they sipped a mouthful, by Dorn’s advice, and because they were so hot and parched and burning that they wanted to tarry a moment with a precious opportunity.

The water was so cold that it sent a shock over Helen, made her teeth ache, and a singular revivifying current steal all through her, wonderful in its cool absorption of that dry heat of flesh, irresistible in its appeal to thirst. Helen raised her head to look at this water. It was colorless as she had found it tasteless.

“Nell…drink!” panted Bo. “Think of our…old spring…in the orchard…full of pollywogs!”

And then Helen drank thirstily, with closed eyes, while a memory of home stirred from Bo’s gift of poignant speech.

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

“You girls rest,” he said briefly.

“Can’t we help?” asked Helen, although 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 Mister Dorn 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?”

Dorn 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 someday. 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 Dorn.

He hobbled the horses and turned them loose. Then with axe in hand he approached a short dead tree standing among a few white-barked aspens. This dead stub was black, showing that fire had visited the forest. Dorn appeared to advantage swinging the axe. 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 axe 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 saddlebag, which hung on a nearby 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. 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 all 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 packs of all sizes. These evidently contained food supplies. The bucket looked as if a horse had rolled over it, pack and all. Dorn filled it at the spring. Upon returning to the campfire, he poured water into a wash basin 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 campfire 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 schoolteacher and used to boys, and she sensed a boyish simplicity or vigor, a freshness in this hunter. She believed, however, that it was a mental and spiritual force in Dorn that 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 enormous 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 some up in this woods. Do you suppose we’ll sleep right here…right 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 Dorn 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. Dorn attended them with a pleasant light upon his still face.

“Tomorrow 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.”

“Nummm,”
murmured Bo greedily. “I’ve heard of wild turkey.”

When they had finished, Dorn 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 flames. 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.

Dorn 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 campfire light, that she, too, had failed to catch whatever it was Dorn 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, and 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 Dorn. 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 loafer as he’s sometimes called,” replied Dorn. “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 Dorn.

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

Assuredly Dorn 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 Dorn. “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 newborn 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 point in natural history, but a clear intimation of 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 Dorn knew its secrets, its life, its terror, its beauty, its sadness and 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 that divined that.

Dorn 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 Dorn, 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 treetop and then at adjacent trees held more of that significance that so interested Helen.

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

This pine was the monarch of that widespread group.

“Listen again,” said Dorn.

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

“Wind. It’s goin’ to storm,” explained Dorn. “You’ll hear somethin’ worthwhile. 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 upon the saddle that served as pillow. Dorn 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 campfire she saw Dorn’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.