The Man of the Forest by Zane Grey (page 4)

Helen off for wild flowers, curious and thoughtless by turns. And at length she fell asleep, quickly, in a way that reminded Helen of the childhood now gone forever.

Dale called them to dinner about four o’clock, as the sun was reddening the western rampart of the park. Helen wondered where the day had gone. The hours had flown swiftly, serenely, bringing her scarcely a thought of her uncle or dread of her forced detention there or possible discovery by those outlaws supposed to be hunting for her. After she realized the passing of those hours she had an intangible and indescribable feeling of what Dale had meant about dreaming the hours away. The nature of Paradise Park was inimical to the kind of thought that had habitually been hers, She found the new thought absorbing, yet when 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 Dale noticed it and was trying to interest her or distract her attention. He succeeded, but she did not choose to let him see that. She strolled away 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 seemed so exquisite or the twilight so moving and shadowy or the darkness so charged with loneliness. It was their environment — the accompaniment of wild wolf-mourn, of the murmuring waterfall, of this strange man of the forest and the unfamiliar elements among which he made his home.

Next morning, her energy having returned, Helen shared Bo’s lesson in bridling and saddling her horse, and in riding. Bo, however, rode so fast and so hard that for Helen to share her company was impossible. And Dale, interested and amused, yet anxious, spent most of his time with Bo. It was thus that Helen rode all over the park alone. She was astonished at its size, when from almost any point it looked so small. The atmosphere deceived her. How clearly she could see! And she began to judge distance by the size of familiar things. A horse, looked at across the longest length of the park, seemed very small indeed. Here and there she rode upon dark, swift, little brooks, exquisitely clear and amber-colored and almost hidden from sight by the long grass. These all ran one way, and united to form a deeper brook that apparently wound under the cliffs at the west end, and plunged to an outlet in narrow clefts. When Dale and Bo came to her once she made inquiry, and she was surprised to learn from Dale that this brook disappeared in a hole in the rocks and had an outlet on the other side of the mountain. Sometime he would take them to the lake it formed.

“Over the mountain?” asked Helen, again remembering that she must regard herself as a fugitive. “Will it be safe to leave our hiding-place? I forget so often why we are here.”

“We would be better hidden over there than here,” replied Dale. “The valley on that side is accessible only from that ridge. An’ don’t worry about 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 of her mind a sense of dread. In spite of this, she determined to make the most of her opportunity. Bo was a stimulus. And so Helen spent the rest of that day riding and tagging after her sister.

The next day was less hard on Helen. Activity, rest, eating, and sleeping took on a wonderful new meaning to her. She had really never known them as strange joys. She rode, she walked, she climbed a little, she dozed under her pine-tree, she worked helping Dale at camp-fire tasks, and when night came she said she did not know herself. That fact haunted her in vague, deep dreams. Upon awakening she forgot her resolve to study herself. That day passed. And then several more went swiftly before she adapted herself to a situation she had reason to believe might 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; the sunset was rosy, glorious; the twilight was sad, changing; and night seemed infinitely sweet with its stars and silence and sleep. But the afternoon, when nothing changed, when all was serene, when time seemed to halt, that was her choice, and her solace.

One afternoon she had camp all to herself. Bo was riding. Dale had climbed the mountain to see if he could find any trace of tracks or see any smoke from camp-fire. Bud was nowhere to be seen, nor any of the other pets. Tom had gone off to some sunny ledge where he could bask in the sun, after the habit of the wilder brothers of his species. Pedro had not been seen for a night and a day, a fact that Helen had noted with concern. However, she had forgotten him, and therefore was the more surprised 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 right fore paw. The action was unmistakable. Helen examined the injured member and presently found a piece of what looked like mussel-shell embedded deeply between the toes. The wound was swollen, bloody, and evidently very painful. Pedro whined. Helen had to exert all the strength of her fingers to pull it out. Then Pedro howled. But immediately he showed his gratitude by licking her hand. Helen bathed his paw and bound it up.

When Dale returned she related the incident and, showing the piece of shell, she asked: “Where did that come from ? Are there shells in the mountains?”

“Once this country was under the sea,” replied Dale. “I’ve found things that ‘d make you wonder.”

“Under the sea!” ejaculated Helen. It was one thing to have read of such a strange fact, but a vastly different one to realize it here among these lofty peaks. Dale was always showing her something or telling her something that astounded her.

“Look here,” he said one day. “What do you make of that little bunch of aspens?”

They were on the farther side of the park and were resting under a pine-tree. The forest here encroached upon the park with its straggling lines of spruce and groves of aspen. The little clump of aspens did not differ 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 none very big. But it’s pretty with its green and yellow leaves fluttering and 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, as you 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 some more.”

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

“About a hundred altogether,” said Dale. “They’re pretty well shaded by the spruces, but they get the sunlight from east an’ south. These little trees all came from the same seedlings. They’re all the same age. Four of them stand, say, ten feet or more high an’ they’re as large around as my wrist. Here’s one that’s largest. See how full-foliaged he is — how he stands over most of the others, but not so much over these four next to him. They all stand close together, very close, you see. Most of them are no larger than my thumb. Look how few branches they have, an’ none low down. Look at how few leaves. Do you see how all the branches stand out toward the east an’ south — how the leaves, of course, face the same way? 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 little trees five feet high — four feet high — down to these only a foot high. Look how pale, delicate, fragile, unhealthy! They get so little sunshine. They were born with the other trees, but did not get an equal start. Position gives the advantage, perhaps.”

Dale led the girls around the little grove, illustrating his words by action. 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 grasp the needed moisture. Shade is death — slow death to the life of trees. These little aspens are fightin’ for place in the sunlight. It is a merciless battle. They push an’ bend one another’s branches aside an’ choke them. Only perhaps half of these aspens will survive, to make one of 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 that one. A few seasons’ advantage to one assures its dominance over the others. But it is never sure of holdin’ that dominance. An ‘if wind or storm or a strong-growin’ rival does not overthrow it, then sooner or later old age will. For there is absolute and continual fight. What is true of these aspens is true of all the trees in the forest an’ of all plant life in the forest. What is most wonderful to me is the tenacity of life.”

And next day Dale showed them an even more striking example of this mystery 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, until they emerged on the summit of the ridge where the timber grew scant and dwarfed. At the edge of timber-line he showed a gnarled and knotted spruce-tree, twisted out of all semblance to a beautiful spruce, bent and storm-blasted, with almost bare branches, all reaching one’ way. The tree was a specter. It stood alone. It had little green upon it. There seemed something tragic about its contortions. But it was alive and strong. It had no rivals to take sun or moisture. Its enemies were the snow and wind and cold of the heights.

Helen felt, as the realization came to her, the knowledge Dale wished to impart, that it was as sad as wonderful, and as mysterious as it was inspiring. At that moment there were both the sting and sweetness of life — the pain and the joy — in Helen’s heart. These strange facts were going to teach her — to transform her. And even if they hurt, she welcomed them.

CHAPTER XI

“I’ll ride you if it breaks — my neck!” panted Bo, passionately, shaking her gloved fist at the gray pony.

Dale stood near with a broad smile on his face. Helen was within earshot, watching from the edge of the park, and she felt so fascinated and frightened that she could not call out for Bo to stop. The little gray mustang was a beauty, clean-limbed and racy, with long black mane and tail, and a fine, spirited head. There was a blanket strapped on his back, but no saddle. Bo held the short halter that had been fastened in a hackamore knot round his nose. She wore no coat; her blouse was covered with grass and seeds, and it was open at the neck; her hair hung loose and disheveled; one side of her face bore a stain of grass and dirt and a suspicion of blood; the other was red and white; her eyes blazed; beads of sweat stood out on her brow and wet places shone on her cheeks. As she began to strain on the halter, pulling herself closer to the fiery pony, the outline of her slender shape stood out lithe and strong.

Bo had been defeated in her cherished and determined ambition to ride Dale’s mustang, and she was furious. The mustang did not appear to be vicious or mean. But he was spirited, tricky, mischievous, and he had thrown her six times. The scene of Bo’s defeat was at the edge of the park, where thick moss and grass afforded soft places for her to fall. It also afforded poor foothold for the gray mustang, obviously placing him at a disadvantage. Dale did not bridle him, because he had not been broken to a bridle; and though it was harder for Bo to try to ride him bareback, there was less risk of her being hurt. Bo had begun in all eagerness and enthusiasm, loving and petting the mustang, which she named “Pony.” She had evidently anticipated an adventure, but her smiling, resolute face had denoted confidence. Pony had stood fairly well to be mounted, and then had pitched and tossed until Bo had slid off or been upset or thrown. After each fall Bo bounced up with less of a smile, and more of spirit, until now the Western passion to master a horse had suddenly leaped to life within her. It was no longer fun, no more a daring circus trick to scare Helen and rouse Dale’s admiration. The issue now lay between Bo and the mustang.

Pony reared, snorting, tossing his head, and pawing with front feet.

“Pull him down!” yelled Dale.

Bo did not have much weight, but she had strength, an she hauled with all her might, finally bringing him down.

“Now hold hard an’ take up rope an’ get in to him,” called Dale. “Good! You’re sure not afraid of him. He sees that. Now hold him, talk to him, tell him you’re goin’ to ride him. Pet him a little. An’ when he quits shakin’, grab his mane an’ jump up an’ slide a leg over him. Then hook your feet under him, hard as you can, an’ stick on.”

If Helen had not been so frightened for Bo she would have been able to enjoy her other sensations. Creeping, cold thrills chased over her as Bo, supple and quick, slid an arm and a leg over Pony and straightened up on him with a defiant cry. Pony jerked his head down, brought his feet together in one jump, and began to bounce. Bo got the swing of him this time and stayed on.

“You’re ridin’ him,” yelled Dale. “Now squeeze hard with your knees. Crack him over the head with your rope. . . . That’s the way. Hang on now an’ you’ll have him beat.”

The mustang pitched all over the space adjacent to Dale and Helen, tearing up the moss and grass. Several times he tossed Bo high, but she slid back to grip him again with her legs, and he could not throw her. Suddenly he raised his head and bolted. Dale answered Bo’s triumphant cry. But Pony had not run fifty feet before he tripped and fell, throwing Bo far over his head. As luck would have it — good luck, Dale afterward said — she landed in a boggy place and the force of her momentum was such that she slid several yards, face down, in wet moss and black ooze.

Helen uttered a scream and ran forward. Bo was getting to her knees when Dale reached her. He helped her up and half led, half carried her out of the boggy place. Bo was not recognizable. From head to foot she was dripping black ooze.

“Oh, Bo! Are you hurt?” cried Helen.

Evidently Bo’s mouth was full of mud.

“Pp–su–tt! Ough! Whew!” she sputtered. “Hurt? No! Can’t you see what I lit in? Dale, the sun-of-a-gun didn’t throw me. He fell, and I went over his head.”

“Right. You sure rode him. An’ he tripped an’ slung you a mile,” replied Dale. “It’s lucky you lit in that bog.”

“Lucky! With eyes and nose stopped up? Oooo! I’m full of mud. And my nice — new riding-suit!”

Bo’s tones indicated that she was ready to cry. Helen, realizing Bo had not been hurt, began to laugh. Her sister was the funniest-looking object that had ever come before her eyes.

“Nell Rayner — are you — laughing — at me?” demanded Bo, in most righteous amaze and anger.

“Me laugh-ing? N-never, Bo, “replied Helen. “Can’t you see I’m just — just –“

“See? You idiot! my eyes are full of mud!” flashed Bo. “But I hear you. I’ll — I’ll get even.”

Dale was laughing, too, but noiselessly, and Bo, being blind for the moment, could not be aware of that. By this time they had reached camp. Helen fell flat and laughed as she had never laughed before. When Helen forgot herself so far as to roll on the ground it was indeed a laughing matter. Dale’s big frame shook as he possessed himself of a towel and, wetting it at the spring, began to wipe the mud off Bo’s face. But that did not serve. Bo asked to be led to the water, where she knelt and, with splashing, washed out her eyes, and then her face, and then the bedraggled strands of hair.

“That mustang didn’t break my neck, but he rooted my face in the mud. I’ll fix him,” she muttered, as she got up. “Please let me have the towel, now. . . . Well! Milt Dale, you’re laughing!”

“Ex-cuse me, Bo. I — Haw! haw! haw!” Then Dale lurched off, holding his sides.

Bo gazed after him and then back at Helen.

“I suppose if I’d been kicked and smashed and killed you’d laugh,” she said. And then she melted. “Oh, my pretty riding-suit! What a mess! I must be a sight. . . . Nell, I rode that wild pony — the sun-of-a-gun! I rode him! That’s enough for me. YOU try it. Laugh all you want. It was funny. But if you want to square yourself with me, help me clean my clothes.”

Late in the night Helen heard Dale sternly calling Pedro. She felt some little alarm. However, nothing happened, and she soon went to sleep again. At the morning meal Dale explained.

“Pedro an’ Tom were uneasy last night. I think there are lions workin’ over the ridge somewhere. I heard one scream.”

“Scream?” inquired Bo, with interest.

“Yes, an’ if you ever hear a lion scream you will think it a woman in mortal agony. The cougar cry, as Roy calls it, is the wildest to be heard in the woods. A wolf howls. He is sad. hungry, and wild. But a cougar seems human an’ dyin’ an’ wild. We’ll saddle up an’ ride over there. Maybe Pedro will tree a lion. Bo, if he does will you shoot it?”

“Sure,” replied Bo, with her mouth full of biscuit.

That was how they came to take a long, slow, steep ride under cover of dense spruce. Helen liked the ride after they got on the heights. But they did not get to any point where she could indulge in her pleasure of gazing afar over the ranges. Dale led up and down, and finally mostly down, until they came out within sight of sparser wooded ridges with parks lying below and streams shining in the sun.

More than once Pedro had to be harshly called by Dale. The hound scented game.

“Here’s an old kill,” said Dale, halting to point at some bleached bones scattered under a spruce. Tufts of grayish-white hair lay strewn around.

“What was it?” asked Bo.

“Deer, of course. Killed there an’ eaten by a lion. Sometime last fall. See, even the skull is split. But I could not say that the lion did it.”

Helen shuddered. She thought of the tame deer down at Dale’s camp. How beautiful and graceful, and responsive to kindness!

They rode out of the woods into a grassy swale with rocks and clumps of some green bushes bordering it. Here Pedro barked, the first time Helen had heard him. The hair on his neck bristled, and it required stern calls from Dale to hold him in. Dale dismounted.

“Hyar, Pede, you get back,” he ordered. “I’ll let you go presently. . . . Girls, you’re goin’ to see somethin’. But stay on your horses.”

Dale, with the hound tense and bristling beside him, strode here and there at the edge of the swale. Presently he halted on a slight elevation and beckoned for the girls to ride over.

“Here, see where the grass is pressed down all nice an’ round,” he said, pointing. “A lion made that. He sneaked there, watchin’ for deer. That was done this mornin’. Come on, now. Let’s see if we can trail him.”

Dale stooped now, studying the grass, and holding Pedro. Suddenly he straightened up with a flash in his gray eyes.

“Here’s where he jumped.”

But Helen could not see any reason why Dale should say that. The man of the forest took a long stride then another.

“An’ here’s where that lion lit on the back of the deer. It was a big jump. See the sharp hoof tracks of the deer.” Dale pressed aside tall grass to show dark, rough, fresh tracks of a deer, evidently made by violent action.

“Come on,” called Dale, walking swiftly. “You’re sure goin’ to see somethin’ now. . . . Here’s where the deer bounded, carryin’ the lion.”

“What!” exclaimed Bo, incredulously.

“The deer was runnin’ here with the lion on his back. I’ll prove it to you. Come on, now. Pedro, you stay with me. Girls, it’s a fresh trail.” Dale walked along, leading his horse, and occasionally he pointed down into the grass. “There! See that! That’s hair.”

Helen did see some tufts of grayish hair scattered on the ground, and she believed she saw little, dark separations in the grass, where an animal had recently passed. All at once Dale halted. When Helen reached him Bo was already there and they were gazing down at a wide, flattened space in the grass. Even Helen’s inexperienced eyes could make out evidences of a struggle. Tufts of gray-white hair lay upon the crushed grass. Helen did not need to see any more, but Dale silently pointed to a patch of blood. Then he spoke:

“The lion brought the deer down here an’ killed him. Probably broke his neck. That deer ran a hundred yards with the lion. See, here’s the trail left where the lion dragged the deer off.”

A well-defined path showed across the swale.

“Girls, you’ll see that deer pretty quick,” declared Dale, starting forward. “This work has just been done. Only a few minutes ago.”

“How can you tell?” queried Bo.

“Look! See that grass. It has been bent down by the deer bein’ dragged over it. Now it’s springin’ up.”

Dale’s next stop was on the other side of the swale, under a spruce with low, spreading branches. The look of Pedro quickened Helen’s pulse. He was wild to give chase. Fearfully Helen looked where Dale pointed, expecting to see the lion. But she saw instead a deer lying prostrate with tongue out and sightless eyes and bloody hair.

“Girls, that lion heard us an’ left. He’s not far,” said Dale, as he stooped to lift the head of the deer. “Warm! Neck broken. See the lion’s teeth an’ claw marks. . . . It’s a doe. Look here. Don’t be squeamish, girls. This is only an hourly incident of everyday life in the forest. See where the lion has rolled the skin down as neat as I could do it, an’ he’d just begun to bite in there when he heard us.”

“What murderous work, The sight sickens me!” exclaimed Helen.

“It is nature,” said Dale, simply.

“Let’s kill the lion,” added Bo.

For answer Dale took a quick turn at their saddle-girths, and then, mounting, he called to the hound. “Hunt him up, Pedro.”

Like a shot the hound was off.

“Ride in my tracks an’ keep close to me,” called Dale, as he wheeled his horse.

“We’re off!” squealed Bo, in wild delight, and she made her mount plunge.

Helen urged her horse after them and they broke across a comer of the swale to the woods. Pedro was running straight, with his nose high. He let out one short bark. He headed into the woods, with Dale not far behind. Helen was on one of Dale’s best horses, but that fact scarcely manifested itself, because the others began to increase their lead. They entered the woods. It was open, and fairly good going. Bo’s horse ran as fast in the woods as he did in the open. That frightened Helen and she yelled to Bo to hold him in. She yelled to deaf ears. That was Bo’s great risk — she did not intend to be careful. Suddenly the forest rang with Dale’s encouraging yell, meant to aid the girls in following him. Helen’s horse caught the spirit of the chase. He gained somewhat on Bo, hurdling logs, sometimes two at once. Helen’s blood leaped with a strange excitement, utterly unfamiliar and as utterly resistless. Yet her natural fear, and the intelligence that reckoned with the foolish risk of this ride, shared alike in her sum of sensations. She tried to remember Dale’s caution about dodging branches and snags, and sliding her knees back to avoid knocks from trees. She barely missed some frightful reaching branches. She received a hard knock, then another, that unseated her, but frantically she held on and slid back, and at the end of a long run through comparatively open forest she got a stinging blow in the face from a far-spreading branch of pine. Bo missed, by what seemed only an inch, a solid snag that would have broken her in two. Both Pedro and Dale got out of Helen’s sight. Then Helen, as she began to lose Bo, felt that she would rather run greater risks than be left behind to get lost in the forest, and she urged her horse. Dale’s yell pealed back. Then it seemed even more thrilling to follow by sound than by sight. Wind and brush tore at her. The air was heavily pungent with odor of pine. Helen heard a wild, full bay of the hound, ringing back, full of savage eagerness, and she believed Pedro had roused out the lion from some covert. It lent more stir to her blood and it surely urged her horse on faster.

Then the swift pace slackened. A windfall of timber delayed Helen. She caught a glimpse of Dale far ahead, climbing a slope. The forest seemed full of his ringing yell. Helen strangely wished for level ground and the former swift motion. Next she saw Bo working down to the right, and Dale’s yell now came from that direction. Helen followed, got out of the timber, and made better time on a gradual slope down to another park.

When she reached the open she saw Bo almost across this narrow open ground. Here Helen did not need to urge her mount. He snorted and plunged at the level and he got to going so fast that Helen would have screamed aloud in mingled fear and delight if she had not been breathless.

Her horse had the bad luck to cross soft ground. He went to his knees and Helen sailed out of the saddle over his head. Soft willows and wet grass broke her fall. She was surprised to find herself unhurt. Up she bounded and certainly did not know this new Helen Rayner. Her horse was coming, and he had patience with her, but he wanted to hurry. Helen made the quickest mount of her experience and somehow felt a pride in it. She would tell Bo that. But just then Bo flashed into the woods out of sight. Helen fairly charged into that green foliage, breaking brush and branches. She broke through into open forest. Bo was inside, riding down an aisle between pines and spruces. At that juncture Helen heard Dale’s melodious yell near at hand. Coming into still more open forest, with rocks here and there, she saw Dale dismounted under a pine, and Pedro standing with fore paws upon the tree-trunk, and then high up on a branch a huge tawny colored lion, just like Tom.

Bo’s horse slowed up and showed fear, but he kept on as far as Dale’s horse. But Helen’s refused to go any nearer. She had difficulty in halting him. Presently she dismounted and, throwing her bridle over a stump, she ran on, panting and fearful, yet tingling all over, up to her sister and Dale.

“Nell, you did pretty good for a tenderfoot,” was Bo’s greeting.

“It was a fine chase,” said Dale. “You both rode well. I wish you could have seen the lion on the ground. He bounded — great long bounds with his tail up in the air — very funny. An’ Pedro almost caught up with him. That scared me, because he would have killed the hound. Pedro was close to him when he treed. An’ there he is — the yellow deer-killer. He’s a male an’ full grown.”

With that Dale pulled his rifle from its saddle-sheath and looked expectantly at Bo. But she was gazing with great interest and admiration up at the lion.

“Isn’t he just beautiful?” she burst out. “Oh, look at him spit! Just like a cat! Dale, he looks afraid he might fall off.”

“He sure does. Lions are never sure of their balance in a tree. But I never saw one make a misstep. He knows he doesn’t belong there.”

To Helen the lion looked splendid perched up there. He was long and round and graceful and tawny. His tongue hung out and his plump sides heaved, showing what a quick, hard run he had been driven to. What struck Helen most forcibly about him was something in his face as he looked down at the hound. He was scared. He realized his peril. It was not possible for Helen to watch him killed, yet she could not bring herself to beg Bo not to shoot. Helen confessed she was a tenderfoot.

“Get down, Bo, an’ let’s see how good a shot you are, said Dale. Bo slowly withdrew her fascinated gaze from the lion and looked with a rueful smile at Dale.

“I’ve changed my mind. I said I would kill him, but now I can’t. He looks so — so different from what I’d imagined.”

Dale’s answer was a rare smile of understanding and approval that warmed Helen’s heart toward him. All the same, he was amused. Sheathing the gun, he mounted his horse.

“Come on, Pedro,” he called. “Come, I tell you,” he added, sharply, “Well, girls, we treed him, anyhow, an, it was fun. Now we’ll ride back to the deer he killed an’ pack a haunch to camp for our own use.”

“Will the lion go back to his — his kill, I think you called it?” asked Bo.

“I’ve chased one away from his kill half a dozen times. Lions are not plentiful here an’ they don’t get overfed. I reckon the balance is pretty even.”

This last remark made Helen inquisitive. And as they slowly rode on the back-trail Dale talked.

“You girls, bein’ tender-hearted an’ not knowin’ the life of the forest, what’s good an’ what’s bad, think it was a pity the poor deer was killed by a murderous lion. But you’re wrong. As I told you, the lion is absolutely necessary to the health an’ joy of wild life — or deer’s wild life, so to speak. When deer were created or came into existence, then the lion must have come, too. They can’t live without each other. Wolves, now, are not particularly deer-killers. They live off elk an’ anythin’ they can catch. So will lions, for that matter. But I mean lions follow the deer to an’ fro from winter to summer feedin’-grounds. Where there’s no deer you will find no lions. Well, now, if left alone deer would multiply very fast. In a few years there would be hundreds where now there’s only one. An’ in time, as the generations passed, they’d lose the fear, the alertness, the speed an’ strength, the eternal vigilance that is love of life — they’d lose that an’ begin to deteriorate, an’ disease would carry them off. I saw one season of black-tongue among deer. It killed them off, an’ I believe that is one of the diseases of over-production. The lions, now, are forever on the trail of the deer. They have learned. Wariness is an instinct born in the fawn. It makes him keen, quick, active, fearful, an’ so he grows up strong an’ healthy to become the smooth, sleek, beautiful, soft-eyed, an’ wild-lookin’ deer you girls love to watch. But if it wasn’t for the lions, the deer would not thrive. Only the strongest an’ swiftest survive. That is the meanin’ of nature. There is always a perfect balance kept by nature. It may vary in different years, but on the whole, in the long years, it averages an even balance.”

“How wonderfully you put it!” exclaimed Bo, with all her impulsiveness. “Oh, I’m glad I didn’t kill the lion.”

“What you say somehow hurts me,” said Helen, wistfully, to the hunter. “I see — I feel how true — how inevitable it is. But it changes my — my feelings. Almost I’d rather not acquire such knowledge as yours. This balance of nature — how tragic — how sad!”

“But why?” asked Dale. “You love birds, an’ birds are the greatest killers in the forest.”

“Don’t tell me that — don’t prove it,” implored Helen. It is not so much the love of life in a deer or any creature, and the terrible clinging to life, that gives me distress. It is suffering. I can’t bear to see pain. I can STAND pain myself, but I can’t BEAR to see or think of it.”

“Well,” replied. Dale, thoughtfully, “There you stump me again. I’ve lived long in the forest an’ when a man’s alone he does a heap of thinkin’. An’ always I couldn’t understand a reason or a meanin’ for pain. Of all the bafflin’ things of life, that is the hardest to understand an’ to forgive — pain!”

That evening, as they sat in restful places round the camp-fire, with the still twilight fading into night, Dale seriously asked the girls what the day’s chase had meant to them. His manner of asking was productive of thought. Both girls were silent for a moment.

“Glorious!” was Bo’s brief and eloquent reply.

“Why?” asked. Dale, curiously. “You are a girl. You’ve been used to home, people, love, comfort, safety, quiet.”

“Maybe that is just why it was glorious,” said Bo, earnestly. “I can hardly explain. I loved the motion of the horse, the feel of wind in my face, the smell of the pine, the sight of slope and forest glade and windfall and rocks, and the black shade under the spruces. My blood beat and burned. My teeth clicked. My nerves all quivered. My heart sometimes, at dangerous moments, almost choked me, and all the time it pounded hard. Now my skin was hot and then it was cold. But I think the best of that chase for me was that I was on a fast horse, guiding him, controlling him. He was alive. Oh, how I felt his running!”

“Well, what you say is as natural to me as if I felt it,” said Dale. “I wondered. You’re certainly full of fire, An’, Helen, what do you say?”

“Bo has answered you with her feelings,” replied Helen, “I could not do that and be honest. The fact that Bo wouldn’t shoot the lion after we treed him acquits her. Nevertheless, her answer is purely physical. You know, Mr. Dale, how you talk about the physical. I should say my sister was just a young, wild, highly sensitive, hot-blooded female of the species. She exulted in that chase as an Indian. Her sensations were inherited ones — certainly not acquired by education. Bo always hated study. The ride was a revelation to me. I had a good many of Bo’s feelings — though not so strong. But over against them was the opposition of reason, of consciousness. A new-born side of my nature confronted me, strange, surprising, violent, irresistible. It was as if another side of my personality suddenly said: ‘Here I am. Reckon with me now!’ And there was no use for the moment to oppose that strange side. I — the thinking Helen Rayner, was powerless. Oh yes, I had such thoughts even when the branches were stinging my face and I was thrilling to the bay of the hound. Once my horse fell and threw me. . . . You needn’t look alarmed. It was fine. I went into a soft place and was unhurt. But when I was sailing through the air a thought flashed: this is the end of me! It was like a dream when you are falling dreadfully. Much of what I felt and thought on that chase must have been because of what I have studied and read and taught. The reality of it, the action and flash, were splendid. But fear of danger, pity for the chased lion, consciousness of foolish risk, of a reckless disregard for the serious responsibility I have taken — all these worked in my mind and held back what might have been a sheer physical, primitive joy of the wild moment.”

Dale listened intently, and after Helen had finished he studied the fire and thoughtfully poked the red embers with his stick. His face was still and serene, untroubled and unlined, but to Helen his eyes seemed sad, pensive, expressive of an unsatisfied yearning and wonder. She had carefully and earnestly spoken, because she was very curious to hear what he might say.

“I understand you,” he replied, presently. “An’ I’m sure surprised that I can. I’ve read my books — an’ reread them, but no one ever talked like that to me. What I make of it is this. You’ve the same blood in you that’s in Bo. An’ blood is stronger than brain. Remember that blood is life. It would be good for you to have it run an’ beat an’ burn, as Bo’s did. Your blood did that a thousand years or ten thousand before intellect was born in your ancestors. Instinct may not be greater than reason, but it’s a million years older. Don’t fight your instincts so hard. If they were not good the God of Creation would not have given them to you. To-day your mind was full of self-restraint that did not altogether restrain. You couldn’t forget yourself. You couldn’t FEEL only, as Bo did. You couldn’t be true to your real nature.”

“I don’t agree with you,” replied Helen, quickly. “I don’t have to be an Indian to be true to myself.”

“Why, yes you do,” said Dale.

“But I couldn’t be an Indian,” declared Helen, spiritedly. “I couldn’t FEEL only, as you say Bo did. I couldn’t go back in the scale, as you hint. What would all my education amount to — though goodness knows it’s little enough — if I had no control over primitive feelings that happened to be born in me?”

“You’ll have little or no control over them when the right time comes,” replied Dale. “Your sheltered life an’ education have led you away from natural instincts. But they’re in you an’ you’ll learn the proof of that out here.”

“No. Not if I lived a hundred years in the West,” asserted Helen.

“But, child, do you know what you’re talkin’ about?”

Here Bo let out a blissful peal of laughter.

“Mr. Dale!” exclaimed Helen, almost affronted. She was stirred. “I know MYSELF, at least.”

“But you do not. You’ve no idea of yourself. You’ve education, yes, but not in nature an’ life. An’ after all, they are the real things. Answer me, now — honestly, will you?”

“Certainly, if I can. Some of your questions are hard to answer.”

“Have you ever been starved?” he asked.

“No,” replied Helen.

“Have you ever been lost away from home ?”

“No.”

“Have you ever faced death — real stark an’ naked death, close an’ terrible?”

“No, indeed.”

“Have you ever wanted to kill any one with your bare hands?”

“Oh, Mr. Dale, you — you amaze me. No! . . . No!”

“I reckon I know your answer to my last question, but I’ll ask it, anyhow. . . . Have you ever been so madly in love with a man that you could not live without him?”

Bo fell off her seat with a high, trilling laugh. “Oh, you two are great!”

“Thank Heaven, I haven’t been,” replied Helen, shortly.

“Then you don’t know anythin’ about life,” declared Dale, with finality.

Helen was not to be put down by that, dubious and troubled as it made her.

“Have you experienced all those things?” she queried, stubbornly.

“All but the last one. Love never came my way. How could it? I live alone. I seldom go to the villages where there are girls. No girl would ever care for me. I have nothin’. . . . But, all the same, I understand love a little, just by comparison with strong feelin’s I’ve lived.”

Helen watched the hunter and marveled at his simplicity. His sad and penetrating gaze was on the fire, as if in its white heart to read the secret denied him. He had said that no girl would ever love him. She imagined he might know considerably less about the nature of girls than of the forest.

“To come back to myself,” said Helen, wanting to continue the argument. “You declared I didn’t know myself. That I would have no self-control. I will!”

“I meant the big things of life,” he said, patiently.

“What things?”

“I told you. By askin’ what had never happened to you I learned what will happen.”

“Those experiences to come to ME!” breathed Helen, incredulously. “Never!”

“Sister Nell, they sure will — particularly the last-named one — the mad love,” chimed in Bo, mischievously, yet believingly.

Neither Dale nor Helen appeared to hear her interruption.

“Let me put it simpler,” began Dale, evidently racking his brain for analogy. His perplexity appeared painful to him, because he had a great faith, a great conviction that he could not make clear. “Here I am, the natural physical man, livin’ in the wilds. An’ here you come, the complex, intellectual woman. Remember, for my argument’s sake, that you’re here. An’ suppose circumstances forced you to stay here. You’d fight the elements with me an’ work with me to sustain life. There must be a great change in either you or me, accordin’ to the other’s influence. An’ can’t you see that change must come in you, not because of anythin’ superior in me — I’m really inferior to you — but because of our environment? You’d lose your complexity. An’ in years to come you’d be a natural physical woman, because you’d live through an’ by the physical.”

“Oh dear, will not education be of help to the Western woman?” queried Helen, almost in despair.

“Sure it will,” answered Dale, promptly. “What the West needs is women who can raise an’ teach children. But you don’t understand me. You don’t get under your skin. I reckon I can’t make you see my argument as I feel it. You take my word for this, though. Sooner or later you WILL wake up an’ forget yourself. Remember.”

“Nell, I’ll bet you do, too,” said Bo, seriously for her. “It may seem strange to you, but I understand Dale. I feel what he means. It’s a sort of shock. Nell, we’re not what we seem. We’re not what we fondly imagine we are. We’ve lived too long with people — too far away from the earth. You know the Bible says something like this: ‘Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.’ Where DO we come from?”

CHAPTER XII

Days passed.

Every morning Helen awoke with a wondering question as to what this day would bring forth, especially with regard to possible news from her uncle. It must come sometime and she was anxious for it. Something about this simple, wild camp life had begun to grip her. She found herself shirking daily attention to the clothes she had brought West. They needed it, but she had begun to see how superficial they really were. On the other hand, camp-fire tasks had come to be a pleasure. She had learned a great deal more about them than had Bo. Worry and dread were always impinging upon the fringe of her thoughts — always vaguely present, though seldom annoying. They were like shadows in dreams. She wanted to get to her uncle’s ranch, to take up the duties of her new life. But she was not prepared to believe she would not regret this wild experience. She must get away from that in order to see it clearly, and she began to have doubts of herself.

Meanwhile the active and restful outdoor life went on. Bo leaned more and more toward utter reconciliation to it. Her eyes had a wonderful flash, like blue lightning; her cheeks were gold and brown; her hands tanned dark as an Indian’s.

She could vault upon the gray mustang, or, for that matter, clear over his back. She learned to shoot a rifle accurately enough to win Dale’s praise, and vowed she would like to draw a bead upon a grizzly bear or upon Snake Anson.

“Bo, if you met that grizzly Dale said has been prowling round camp lately you’d run right up a tree,” declared Helen, one morning, when Bo seemed particularly boastful.

“Don’t fool yourself,” retorted Bo.

“But I’ve seen you run from a mouse!”

“Sister, couldn’t I be afraid of a mouse and not a bear?”

“I don’t see how.”

“Well, bears, lions, outlaws, and other wild beasts are to be met with here in the West, and my mind’s made up,” said Bo, in slow-nodding deliberation.

They argued as they had always argued, Helen for reason and common sense and restraint, Bo on the principle that if she must fight it was better to get in the first blow.

The morning on which this argument took place Dale was a long time in catching the horses. When he did come in he shook his head seriously.

“Some varmint’s been chasin’ the horses,” he said, as he reached for his saddle. “Did you hear them snortin’ an’ runnin’ last night?”

Neither of the girls had been awakened.

“I missed one of the colts,” went on Dale, “an’ I’m goin’ to ride across the park.”

Dale’s movements were quick and stern. It was significant that he chose his heavier rifle, and, mounting, with a sharp call to Pedro, he rode off without another word to the girls.

Bo watched him for a moment and then began to saddle the mustang.

“You won’t follow him?” asked Helen, quickly.

“I sure will,” replied Bo. “He didn’t forbid it.”

“But he certainly did not want us.”

“He might not want you, but I’ll bet he wouldn’t object to me, whatever’s up,” said Bo, shortly.

“Oh! So you think –” exclaimed Helen, keenly hurt. She bit her tongue to keep back a hot reply. And it was certain that a bursting gush of anger flooded over her. Was she, then, such a coward? Did Dale think this slip of a sister, so wild and wilful, was a stronger woman than she? A moment’s silent strife convinced her that no doubt he thought so and no doubt he was right. Then the anger centered upon herself, and Helen neither understood nor trusted herself.

The outcome proved an uncontrollable impulse. Helen began to saddle her horse. She had the task half accomplished when Bo’s call made her look up.

“Listen!”

Helen heard a ringing, wild bay of the hound.

“That’s Pedro,” she said, with a thrill.

“Sure. He’s running. We never heard him bay like that before.”

“Where’s Dale?”

“He rode out of sight across there,” replied Bo, pointing. “And Pedro’s running toward us along that slope. He must be a mile — two miles from Dale.”

“But Dale will follow.”

“Sure. But he’d need wings to get near that hound now. Pedro couldn’t have gone across there with him. . . . just listen.”

The wild note of the hound manifestly stirred Bo to irrepressible action. Snatching up Dale’s lighter rifle, she shoved it into her saddle-sheath, and, leaping on the mustang, she ran him over brush and brook, straight down the park toward the place Pedro was climbing. For an instant Helen stood amazed beyond speech. When Bo sailed over a big log, like a steeple-chaser, then Helen answered to further unconsidered impulse by frantically getting her saddle fastened. Without coat or hat she mounted. The nervous horse bolted almost before she got into the saddle. A strange, trenchant trembling coursed through all her veins. She wanted to scream for Bo to wait. Bo was out of sight, but the deep, muddy tracks in wet places and the path through the long grass afforded Helen an easy trail to follow. In fact, her horse needed no guiding. He ran in and out of the straggling spruces along the edge of the park, and suddenly wheeled around a corner of trees to come upon the gray mustang standing still. Bo was looking up and listening.

“There he is!” cried Bo, as the hound bayed ringingly, closer to them this time, and she spurred away.

Helen’s horse followed without urging. He was excited. His ears were up. Something was in the wind. Helen had never ridden along this broken end of the park, and Bo was not easy to keep up with. She led across bogs, brooks, swales, rocky little ridges, through stretches of timber and groves of aspen so thick Helen could scarcely squeeze through. Then Bo came out into a large open offshoot of the park, right under the mountain slope, and here she sat, her horse watching and listening. Helen rode up to her, imagining once that she had heard the hound.

“Look! Look!” Bo’s scream made her mustang stand almost straight up.

Helen gazed up to see a big brown bear with a frosted coat go lumbering across an opening on the slope.

“It’s a grizzly! He’ll kill Pedro! Oh, where is Dale!” cried Bo, with intense excitement.

“Bo! That bear is running down! We — we must get — out of his road,” panted Helen, in breathless alarm.

“Dale hasn’t had time to be close. . . . Oh, I wish he’d come! I don’t know what to do.”

“Ride back. At least wait for him.”

Just then Pedro spoke differently, in savage barks, and following that came a loud growl and crashings in the brush. These sounds appeared to be not far up the slope.

“Nell! Do you hear? Pedro’s fighting the bear,” burst out Bo. Her face paled, her eyes flashed like blue steel. “The bear ‘ll kill him!”

“Oh, that would be dreadful!” replied Helen, in distress. “But what on earth can we do?”

“HEL-LO, DALE!” called Bo, at the highest pitch of her piercing voice.

No answer came. A heavy crash of brush, a rolling of stones, another growl from the slope told Helen that the hound had brought the bear to bay.

“Nell, I’m going up,” said Bo, deliberately.

“No-no! Are you mad?” returned Helen.

“The bear will kill Pedro.”

“He might kill you.”

“You ride that way and yell for Dale,” rejoined Bo.

“What will — you do?” gasped Helen.

“I’ll shoot at the bear — scare him off. If he chases me he can’t catch me coming downhill. Dale said that.”

“You’re crazy!” cried Helen, as Bo looked up the slope, searching for open ground. Then she pulled the rifle from its sheath.

But Bo did not hear or did not care. She spurred the mustang, and he, wild to run, flung grass and dirt from his heels. What Helen would have done then she never knew, but the fact was that her horse bolted after the mustang. In an instant, seemingly, Bo had disappeared in the gold and green of the forest slope. Helen’s mount climbed on a run, snorting and heaving, through aspens, brush, and timber, to come out into a narrow, long opening extending lengthwise up the slope.

A sudden prolonged crash ahead alarmed Helen and halted her horse. She saw a shaking of aspens. Then a huge brown beast leaped as a cat out of the woods. It was a bear of enormous size. Helen’s heart stopped — her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. The bear turned. His mouth was open, red and dripping. He looked shaggy, gray. He let out a terrible bawl. Helen’s every muscle froze stiff. Her horse plunged high and sidewise, wheeling almost in the air, neighing his terror. Like a stone she dropped from the saddle. She did not see the horse break into the woods, but she heard him. Her gaze never left the bear even while she was falling, and it seemed she alighted in an upright position with her back against a bush. It upheld her. The bear wagged his huge head from side to side. Then, as the hound barked close at hand, he turned to run heavily uphill and out of the opening.

The instant of his disappearance was one of collapse for Helen. Frozen with horror, she had been unable to move or feel or think. All at once she was a quivering mass of cold, helpless flesh, wet with perspiration, sick with a shuddering, retching, internal convulsion, her mind liberated from paralyzing shock. The moment was as horrible as that in which the bear had bawled his frightful rage. A stark, icy, black emotion seemed in possession of her. She could not lift a hand, yet all of her body appeared shaking. There was a fluttering, a strangling in her throat. The crushing weight that surrounded her heart eased before she recovered use of her limbs. Then, the naked and terrible thing was gone, like a nightmare giving way to consciousness. What blessed relief! Helen wildly gazed about her. The bear and hound were out of sight, and so was her horse. She stood up very dizzy and weak. Thought of Bo then seemed to revive her, to shock different life and feeling throughout all her cold extremities. She listened.

She heard a thudding of hoofs down the slope, then Dale’s clear, strong call. She answered. It appeared long before he burst out of the woods, riding hard and leading her horse. In that time she recovered fully, and when he reached her, to put a sudden halt upon the fiery Ranger, she caught the bridle he threw and swiftly mounted her horse. The feel of the saddle seemed different. Dale’s piercing gray glance thrilled her strangely.

“You’re white. Are you hurt?” he said.

“No. I was scared.”

“But he threw you?”

“Yes, he certainly threw me.”

“What happened?”

“We heard the hound and we rode along the timber. Then we saw the bear — a monster — white — coated –“

“I know. It’s a grizzly. He killed the colt — your pet. Hurry now. What about Bo?”

“Pedro was fighting the bear. Bo said he’d be killed. She rode right up here. My horse followed. I couldn’t have stopped him. But we lost Bo. Right there the bear came out. He roared. My horse threw me and ran off. Pedro’s barking saved me — my life, I think. Oh! that was awful! Then the bear went up — there. . . . And you came.”

“Bo’s followin’ the hound!” ejaculated Dale. And, lifting his hands to his mouth, he sent out a stentorian yell that rolled up the slope, rang against the cliffs, pealed and broke and died away. Then he waited, listening. From far up the slope came a faint, wild cry, high-pitched and sweet, to create strange echoes, floating away to die in the ravines.

“She’s after him!” declared Dale, grimly.

“Bo’s got your rifle,” said Helen. “Oh, we must hurry.”

“You go back,” ordered Dale, wheeling his horse.

“No!” Helen felt that word leave her lips with the force of a bullet.

Dale spurred Ranger and took to the open slope. Helen kept at his heels until timber was reached. Here a steep trail led up. Dale dismounted.

“Horse tracks — bear tracks — dog tracks,” he said, bending over. “We’ll have to walk up here. It’ll save our horses an’ maybe time, too.”

“Is Bo riding up there?” asked Helen, eying the steep ascent.

“She sure is.” With that Dale started up, leading his horse. Helen followed. It was rough and hard work. She was lightly clad, yet soon she was hot, laboring, and her heart began to hurt. When Dale halted to rest Helen was just ready to drop. The baying of the hound, though infrequent, inspirited her. But presently that sound was lost. Dale said bear and hound had gone over the ridge and as soon as the top was gained he would hear them again.

“Look there,” he said, presently, pointing to fresh tracks, larger than those made by Bo’s mustang. “Elk tracks. We’ve scared a big bull an’ he’s right ahead of us. Look sharp an’ you’ll see him.”

Helen never climbed so hard and fast before, and when they reached the ridge-top she was all tuckered out. It was all she could do to get on her horse. Dale led along the crest of this wooded ridge toward the western end, which was considerably higher. In places open rocky ground split the green timber. Dale pointed toward a promontory.

Helen saw a splendid elk silhouetted against the sky. He was a light gray over all his hindquarters, with shoulders and head black. His ponderous, wide-spread antlers towered over him, adding to the wildness of his magnificent poise as he stood there, looking down into the valley, no doubt listening for the bay of the hound. When he heard Dale’s horse he gave one bound, gracefully and wonderfully carrying his antlers, to disappear in the green.

Again on a bare patch of ground Dale pointed down. Helen saw big round tracks, toeing in a little, that gave her a chill. She knew these were grizzly tracks.

Hard riding was not possible on this ridge crest, a fact that gave Helen time to catch her breath. At length, coming out upon the very summit of the mountain, Dale heard the hound. Helen’s eyes feasted afar upon a wild scene of rugged grandeur, before she looked down on this western slope at her feet to see bare, gradual descent, leading down to sparsely wooded bench and on to deep-green canuon.

“Ride hard now!” yelled Dale. “I see Bo, an’ I’ll have to ride to catch her.”

Dale spurred down the slope. Helen rode in his tracks and, though she plunged so fast that she felt her hair stand up with fright, she saw him draw away from her. Sometimes her horse slid on his haunches for a few yards, and at these hazardous moments she got her feet out of the stirrups so as to fall free from him if he went down. She let him choose the way, while she gazed ahead at Dale, and then farther on, in the hope of seeing Bo. At last she was rewarded. Far Down the wooded bench she saw a gray flash of the little mustang and a bright glint of Bo’s hair. Her heart swelled. Dale would soon overhaul Bo and come between her and peril. And on the instant, though Helen was unconscious of it then, a remarkable change came over her spirit. Fear left her. And a hot, exalting, incomprehensible something took possession of her.

She let the horse run, and when he had plunged to the foot of that slope of soft ground he broke out across the open bench at a pace that made the wind bite Helen’s cheeks and roar in her ears. She lost sight of Dale. It gave her a strange, grim exultance. She bent her eager gaze to find the tracks of his horse, and she found them. Also she made out the tracks of Bo’s mustang and the bear and the hound. Her horse, scenting game, perhaps, and afraid to be left alone, settled into a fleet and powerful stride, sailing over logs and brush. That open bench had looked short, but it was long, and Helen rode down the gradual descent at breakneck speed. She would not be left behind. She had awakened to a heedlessness of risk. Something burned steadily within her. A grim, hard anger of joy! When she saw, far down another open, gradual descent, that Dale had passed Bo and that Bo was riding the little mustang as never before, then Helen flamed with a madness to catch her, to beat her in that wonderful chase, to show her and Dale what there really was in the depths of Helen Rayner.

Her ambition was to be short-lived, she divined from the lay of the land ahead, but the ride she lived then for a flying mile was something that would always blanch her cheeks and prick her skin in remembrance.

The open ground was only too short. That thundering pace soon brought Helen’s horse to the timber. Here it took all her strength to check his headlong flight over deadfalls and between small jack-pines. Helen lost sight of Bo, and she realized it would take all her wits to keep from getting lost. She had to follow the trail, and in some places it was hard to see from horseback.

Besides, her horse was mettlesome, thoroughly aroused, and he wanted a free rein and his own way. Helen tried that, only to lose the trail and to get sundry knocks from trees and branches. She could not hear the hound, nor Dale. The pines were small, close together, and tough. They were hard to bend. Helen hurt her hands, scratched her face, barked her knees. The horse formed a habit suddenly of deciding to go the way he liked instead of the way Helen guided him, and when he plunged between saplings too close to permit easy passage it was exceedingly hard on her. That did not make any difference to Helen. Once worked into a frenzy, her blood stayed at high pressure. She did not argue with herself about a need of desperate hurry. Even a blow on the head that nearly blinded her did not in the least retard her. The horse could hardly be held, and not at all in the few open places.

At last Helen reached another slope. Coming out upon canuon rim, she heard Dale’s clear call, far down, and Bo’s answering peal, high and piercing, with its note of exultant wildness. Helen also heard the bear and the hound fighting at the bottom of this canuon.

Here Helen again missed the tracks made by Dale and Bo. The descent looked impassable. She rode back along the rim, then forward. Finally she found where the ground had been plowed deep by hoofs, down over little banks. Helen’s horse balked at these jumps. When she goaded him over them she went forward on his neck. It seemed like riding straight downhill. The mad spirit of that chase grew more stingingly keen to Helen as the obstacles grew. Then, once more the bay of the hound and the bawl of the bear made a demon of her horse. He snorted a shrill defiance. He plunged with fore hoofs in the air. He slid and broke a way down the steep, soft banks, through the thick brush and thick clusters of saplings, sending loose rocks and earth into avalanches ahead of him. He fell over one bank, but a thicket of aspens upheld him so that he rebounded and gained his feet. The sounds of fight ceased, but Dale’s thrilling call floated up on the pine-scented air.

Before Helen realized it she was at the foot of the slope, in a narrow canuon-bed, full of rocks and trees, with a soft roar of running water filling her ears. Tracks were everywhere, and when she came to the first open place she saw where the grizzly had plunged off a sandy bar into the water. Here he had fought Pedro. Signs of that battle were easy to read. Helen saw where his huge tracks, still wet, led up the opposite sandy bank.

Then down-stream Helen did some more reckless and splendid riding. On level ground the horse was great. Once he leaped clear across the brook. Every plunge, every turn Helen expected to come upon Dale and Bo facing the bear. The canuon narrowed, the stream-bed deepened. She had to slow down to get through the trees and rocks. Quite unexpectedly she rode pell-mell upon Dale and Bo and the panting Pedro. Her horse plunged to a halt, answering the shrill neighs of the other horses.

Dale gazed in admiring amazement at Helen.

“Say, did you meet the bear again?” he queried, blankly.

“No. Didn’t — you — kill him?” panted Helen, slowly sagging in her saddle.

“He got away in the rocks. Rough country down here.

Helen slid off her horse and fell with a little panting cry of relief. She saw that she was bloody, dirty, disheveled, and wringing wet with perspiration. Her riding habit was torn into tatters. Every muscle seemed to burn and sting, and all her bones seemed broken. But it was worth all this to meet Dale’s penetrating glance, to see Bo’s utter, incredulous astonishment.

“Nell — Rayner!” gasped Bo.

“If — my horse ‘d been — any good — in the woods,” panted Helen, “I’d not lost — so much time — riding down this mountain. And I’d caught you — beat you.”

“Girl, did you RIDE down this last slope?” queried Dale.

“I sure did,” replied Helen, smiling.

“We walked every step of the way, and was lucky to get down at that,” responded Dale, gravely. “No horse should have been ridden down there. Why, he must have slid down.”

“We slid — yes. But I stayed on him.”

Bo’s incredulity changed to wondering, speechless admiration. And Dale’s rare smile changed his gravity.

“I’m sorry. It was rash of me. I thought you’d go back. . . . But all’s well that ends well. . . . Helen, did you wake up to-day?”

She dropped her eyes, not caring to meet the questioning gaze upon her.

“Maybe — a little,” she replied, and she covered her face with her hands. Remembrance of his questions — of his assurance that she did not know the real meaning of life — of her stubborn antagonism — made her somehow ashamed. But it was not for long.

“The chase was great,” she said. “I did not know myself. You were right.”

“In how many ways did you find me right?” he asked.

“I think all — but one,” she replied, with a laugh and a shudder. “I’m near starved NOW — I was so furious at Bo that I could have choked her. I faced that horrible brute. . . . Oh, I know what it is to fear death! . . . I was lost twice on the ride — absolutely lost. That’s all.”

Bo found her tongue. “The last thing was for you to fall wildly in love, wasn’t it?”

“According to Dale, I must add that to my new experiences of to-day — before I can know real life,” replied Helen, demurely.

The hunter turned away. “Let us go,” he said, soberly.

CHAPTER XIII

After more days of riding the grassy level of that wonderfully gold and purple park, and dreamily listening by day to the ever-low and ever-changing murmur of the waterfall, and by night to the wild, lonely mourn of a hunting wolf, and climbing to the dizzy heights where the wind stung sweetly, Helen Rayner lost track of time and forgot her peril.

Roy Beeman did not return. If occasionally Dale mentioned Roy and his quest, the girls had little to say beyond a recurrent anxiety for the old uncle, and then they forgot again. Paradise Park, lived in a little while at that season of the year, would have claimed any one, and ever afterward 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 lay his massive head in her lap to purr his content. Bo had little fear of anything, and here in the wilds she soon lost that.

Another of Dale’s pets was a half-grown black bear named Muss. He was abnormally jealous of little Bud and he had a well-developed hatred of Tom, otherwise he was a very good-tempered bear, and enjoyed Dale’s impartial regard. Tom, however, chased Muss out of camp whenever Dale’s back 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, Dale predicted trouble between Tom and Muss.

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

One afternoon before the early supper they always had, Dale and Helen were 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, watching with narrow, gleaming eyes.

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

“Tom’s jealous. It’s strange how animals are like people. Pretty soon I’ll have to corral Muss, or there’ll be a fight.”

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

During supper-time both bear and cougar disappeared, though this was not remarked until afterward. Dale whistled and called, but the rival pets did not return. Next morning Tom was there, curled up snugly at the foot of Bo’s bed, and when she arose he followed her around as usual. But Muss 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 as possible, and then had tried to put Tom on the trail, but the cougar would not or could not follow it. Dale said Tom never liked a bear trail, anyway, cougars and bears being common enemies. So, whether by accident or design, Bo lost one of her playmates.

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

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

Helen smiled her acquiescence and Bo replied with one of her forceful speeches.

“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 you haven’t seen. Well, he had been killed by that old silvertip. The one we chased. Hadn’t been dead over an hour. Blood was still runnin’ an’ only a little meat eaten. That bear heard me or saw me an’ made off into the woods. 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 to leave 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 on bears. I’ll leave Pedro home, too.”

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

At ten thousand feet elevation the twilight of this clear and cold night was a rich and rare atmospheric effect. It looked as if it was seen through perfectly clear smoked glass. Objects were singularly visible, even at long range, and seemed magnified. In the west, where the afterglow of sunset lingered over the dark, ragged, spruce-speared horizon-line, there was such a transparent golden line melting into vivid star-fired blue that Helen could only gaze and gaze in wondering admiration.

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

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

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

“He’s not there yet,” Dale whispered, and he stepped forward very slowly. Helen and Bo began to come up against thin dead branches that were invisible and then cracked. Then Dale knelt down, seemed to melt into the ground.

“You’ll have to crawl,” he whispered.

How strange and thrilling that was for Helen, and hard work! The ground bore twigs and dead branches, which had to be carefully crawled over; and lying flat, as was necessary, it took prodigious effort to drag her body 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, and then failed. Dale crawled on farther to halt at length between two tree-trunks at the edge of the wood.

“Come up beside me,” he whispered.

Helen crawled on, and presently Bo was beside her panting, with pale face 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 yet, but I see coyotes. Look.”

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

“That’s the dead horse,” whispered Dale. “An’ if you watch close you can see the coyotes. They’re gray an’ they move. . . . Can’t you hear them?”

Helen’s excited ears, so full of throbs and imaginings, presently registered 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 was rising. 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 black wall shaded still blacker, the park blanched and the border-line opposite 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 but moon-blanched bare ground, rising close at hand to a little ridge.

“Lie still,” whispered Dale. “I’m goin’ to crawl around to get a look from another angle. I’ll be right back.”

He moved noiselessly backward and disappeared. With him gone, Helen felt a 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 farther out into the light. Helen watched with suspended breath. It moved out to be silhouetted against the sky — apparently a huge, round, bristling animal, frosty in color. One instant it seemed huge — the next small — then close at hand — and far away. It swerved to come directly toward them. Suddenly Helen realized that the beast was not a dozen yards distant. She was just beginning a new experience — a real and horrifying terror in which her blood curdled, her heart gave a tremendous leap and then stood still, and she wanted to fly, but was rooted to the spot — when Dale returned to her side.

“That’s a pesky porcupine,” he whispered. “Almost crawled over you. He sure would have stuck you full of quills.”

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

“Por — cu — pine!” whispered Bo, pantingly. “It might — as well — have been — an elephant!”

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

“Listen!” warned Dale, very low. His big hand closed over Helen’s gauntleted one. “There you have — the real cry of the wild.”

Sharp and cold on the night air split the cry of a wolf, distant, yet wonderfully distinct. How wild and mournful and hungry! How marvelously pure! Helen shuddered through all her frame with the thrill of its music, the wild and unutterable and deep emotions it aroused. Again a sound of this forest had pierced beyond her life, back into the dim remote 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 was peering keenly ahead and his strained intensity could be felt. Helen looked with all her might and she saw the shadowy gray forms of the coyotes 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 wonderful potency. Bo must have felt it, too, for she was trembling all over, and holding 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 she divined, then, something of what the moment must have been to a hunter.

Then her roving, alert glance was arrested by a looming gray shadow coming out of the forest. It moved, but surely that huge thing could not be a bear. It passed out of gloom into silver moonlight. Helen’s heart bounded. For it was a great frosty-coated bear lumbering along toward the dead horse. Instinctively Helen’s hand sought the arm of the hunter. It felt like iron under a rippling surface. The touch eased away the oppression over her lungs, the tightness of her throat. What must have been fear left her, and only a powerful excitement remained. A sharp expulsion of breath from Bo and a violent jerk of her frame were signs that she had sighted the grizzly.

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

He had a wagging, rolling, slow walk which took several moments to reach his quarry. When at length he reached it he walked around with sniffs plainly heard and then a cross growl. Evidently he had discovered that his meal had been messed over. As a whole the big bear could be seen distinctly, but only in outline and color. The distance was perhaps two hundred 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 have to stop him.”

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

“Jess was a mighty good horse,” muttered Dale, grimly; “too good to make a meal for a hog silvertip.”

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

“Girls, there’s no tellin’ what a grizzly will do. If I yell, you climb up in this tree, an’ do it quick.”

With that he leveled the rifle, resting his left elbow on his knee. The front end of the rifle, reaching out of the shade, shone silver in the moonlight. 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 her fascinated eyes off him. He knelt, bareheaded, and in the shadow she could 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 the bullet hit. Shifting her glance, she saw the bear lurch with convulsive action, rearing on his hind legs. Loud clicking snaps must have been a clashing of his jaws in rage. But there was no other sound. Then again Dale’s heavy gun boomed. Helen heard again that singular spatting thud of striking lead. The bear went down with a flop as if he had been dealt a terrific blow. But just as quickly he was up on all-fours and began to whirl with hoarse, savage bawls of agony and fury. His action quickly carried him out of the moonlight into the shadow, where he disappeared. There the bawls gave place to gnashing snarls, and crashings in the brush, 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 and very 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. But that did not prevent a strange warmness along her veins and a quickened pulse, the cause of which she did not conjecture.

“Let’s rustle,” said Dale, and led the way out of the wood and skirted its edge around to the slope. There they climbed to the flat, and went through the straggling line of trees to where the horses were tethered.

Up here the wind began to blow, not hard through the forest, but still strong and steady out in the open, and bitterly cold. Dale helped Bo to mount, 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 some goin’ back. Let Ranger pick the way an’ you hang on.”

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

Dale’s horse, a little in advance, sailed over a ditch. Ranger made a splendid leap, but he alighted among some grassy tufts and fell. Helen shot over his head. She struck lengthwise, her arms stretched, and slid hard to a shocking impact that stunned her.

Bo’s scream rang in her ears; she felt the wet grass under her face and then the strong hands that lifted her. Dale loomed over her, bending down to look into her face; Bo was clutching her with frantic hands. And Helen could only gasp. Her breast seemed caved in. The need to breathe was torture.

“Nell! — you’re not hurt. You fell light, like a feather. All grass here. . . . You can’t be hurt!” said Dale, sharply.

His anxious voice penetrated beyond her hearing, and his strong hands went 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, and then 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 do that often. I reckon we were travelin’ too fast. But it was fun, don’t you 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 at him. The moment was realization for her of what for days had been a vague, sweet uncertainty, becoming near and strange, disturbing and present. This accident had been a sudden, violent end to the wonderful ride. 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.

CHAPTER XIV

On the next morning Helen was awakened by what she imagined had been a dream of some one shouting. With a start she sat up. The sunshine showed pink and gold on the ragged spruce line of the mountain rims. Bo was on her knees, braiding her hair with shaking hands, and at the same time trying to peep out.

And the echoes of a ringing cry were cracking back from the cliffs. That had been Dale’s voice.

“Nell! Nell! Wake up!” called Bo, wildly. “Oh, some one’s come! Horses and men!”

Helen got to her knees and peered out over Bo’s shoulder. Dale, standing tall and striking beside the campfire, was waving his sombrero. Away down the open edge of the park came a string of pack-burros with mounted men behind. In the foremost rider Helen recognized Roy Beeman.

“That first one’s Roy!” she exclaimed. “I’d never forget him on a horse. . . . Bo, it must mean Uncle Al’s come!”

“Sure! We’re born lucky. Here we are safe and sound — and all this grand camp trip. . . . Look at the cowboys. . . . LOOK! Oh, maybe this isn’t great!” babbled Bo.

Dale wheeled to see the girls peeping out.

“It’s time you’re up!” he called. “Your uncle Al is here.”

For an instant after Helen sank back out of Dale’s sight she sat there perfectly motionless, so struck was she by the singular tone of Dale’s voice. She imagined that he regretted what this visiting cavalcade of horsemen meant — they had come to take her to her ranch in Pine. Helen’s heart suddenly began to beat fast, but thickly, as if muffled within her breast.

“Hurry now, girls,” called Dale.

Bo was already out, kneeling on the flat stone at the little brook, splashing water in a great hurry. Helen’s hands trembled so that she could scarcely lace her boots or brush her hair, and she was long behind Bo in making herself presentable. When Helen stepped out, a short, powerfully