THE CINNAMON CREEK FOREST RANGER
"No, Vivian," assured Virginia for at least the tenth time, "there aren't
any cattle on those hills. You just turn up the Bear Canyon road where we
went after the bear, and go till you reach the creek. It's only a mile
from here. Then if you feel a bit nervous about riding Siwash up the
mountain, why tie him to a tree and walk. Perhaps 'twill be easier anyway,
for you'll find the kinnikinnick just after you leave the creek. It will
be redder in the open places, so hunt for those. You'll love it for
Christmas boxes. If it weren't for Caesar, I'd go with you, but I want to
finish the third book before Mary goes. Is it at the creek Carver's going
to meet you?"
"There or at the crossroads," explained Vivian, as she mounted Siwash. "He
went to town this morning with Donald, but he said he'd be back in plenty
of time. I tried to 'phone, but I guess there must be something wrong. I
couldn't get any one, and it didn't buzz at all. But I know he'll be
there, and I'm not a bit afraid of Siwash. Good-by."
Virginia stood on the porch and watched Vivian ride down the lane before
returning to Caesar. She was wondering if anything could be the matter, if,
perhaps, something had happened at the barn-warming the evening before to
displease Vivian. She had seemed so unlike herself all the morning.
But, she concluded wisely, few days were cloudless, and even an almost
perfect house-party had its ups and downs. She and Donald had both
discovered that. So many different personalities were bound to collide
occasionally, and one couldn't be happy always. An afternoon on the
mountain was sure to make Vivian's world bright again.
Meanwhile Vivian neared the crossroads. Carver was not there. A scanning
of the prairie showed him nowhere in sight. She would ride up the canyon
to the ford and wait there, she said to herself. When she rode, her
thoughts were less troublesome, and it was far easier to stick to her
resolve.
Last evening, just as Mr. Benjamin Jarvis' guests were dispersing, she had
made a hasty engagement with Carver to meet her the following afternoon
and go for kinnikinnick up Cinnamon Creek. The search for kinnikinnick was
not, however, her real reason for wishing to see Carver. If her courage
did not fail her, and if her sudden resolve did not wane in the light of
day, as resolves so often do, she was going to ask Carver to ride with her
up Cinnamon Creek to the ranger's cabin, and there help her to apologize
for their rudeness. To admit her regret to Carver would be even more
difficult than to apologize to the ranger, and she was not at all sure
that she should wish to do so in severely practical daylight.
Yet daylight had come--it was early afternoon of the next day--and she was
still ready if Carver would only come. She allowed Siwash to sink his warm
nose in the amber waters of the ford while she waited. It was very still
up there. In fact, only Virginia's repeated assurances that there were no
cattle on the hills and her own knowledge that a homesteader's cabin was
just out of sight beyond the quaking-asps on her left, made Vivian endure
that stillness, broken only by the hurrying creek waters and the lazy
humming of tiny, hidden insects.
To her right rose the mountain wall, dark with pine and spruce, though
here and there a flaming service-berry or a hawthorn broke through the
evergreens like sudden fire. The tangle of trees and shrubs seemed
impenetrable, and yet Virginia had told of a trail which led from the
creek not three rods from the ford--led up, up, up for five miles until it
reached the Cinnamon Creek Station.
Why did not Carver come? She wished she could be as patient as Siwash who
stood knee deep in the ford, hung his shaggy, homely head, and stole a nap
gratefully. For the twentieth time Vivian rehearsed her speeches, the one
to Carver and the other to the insulted ranger. That is, he had every
cause to be insulted, though her memory of the smile with which he had
received her thrust would seem to dispute his justifiable indignation.
Perhaps here in the mountains people were not so easily insulted. They,
the mountains, were so big and generous that they made one ashamed of
littleness.
Being sure of the speeches, she grew more and more impatient. Carver,
waiting in Elk Creek for a stock train to load up with its living freight,
was even more uneasy than she. He could not leave Donald and there was no
way of letting Vivian know that he could not meet her at the ford. At
last, having convinced himself that he could not help matters, he sat down
on the station platform, disturbed in spirit and conscience, and hoped
that Vivian had already turned back home.
But Vivian did not turn back. It grew hot by the ford, and she decided to
tie Siwash in the shadow of some quaking-asps across the creek, and go up
the trail herself to a shady place. Carver would see Siwash and call to
her if she did not hear him come.
It was cool and shady beneath the trees that bordered the rocky trail. She
would willingly have rested had not her eyes spied the red berries of
some kinnikinnick growing on either side of the path. Farther away in an
open space she saw more and larger. They were far prettier than holly for
Christmas boxes, and would be so different to her friends back East. She
loved the tiny leaves and graceful trailing of the vines, which seemed
hardly sturdy enough to hold the big, round, jolly-looking berries.
Virginia was right. They did grow more luxuriantly in the infrequent open
places, and she climbed farther and farther up the mountain side, seeking
like Hansel and Gretel for bigger berries than she had found. Sometimes
she stood still and listened. The silence made a queer catch in her
throat. Had it not been for her eagerness to find more and better
kinnikinnick, and her knowledge that the homesteader's cabin was very
near, she would have been frightened. But Carver must be there very soon,
and though she often left the trail, the sound of the creek was proof
against her being lost. Her own woodsman instinct was not strong, but
Virginia had told her always to trust the creek, which would ever lead one
down whence she had come.
Once her heart almost stopped beating. Away in the top of a great spruce
she heard a hammering sound. It echoed through the silent woods like great
blows of an ax, and some long moments passed before Vivian could assure
her frightened heart that it was only a flicker searching for his dinner.
Her box was filled with kinnikinnick and she would go back. If Carver were
not at the ford, they must make the trip up the trail the next day in
spite of Virginia's plan for a ride to Lone Mountain. If necessary, she
would be brave enough to explain matters, and then they would understand.
She turned to go down the mountain, when suddenly from above her came a
sound of breaking underbrush as though some creature were bursting from
its covert. Vivian stood motionless, too terrified to move or to scream.
It was not Carver--that was certain. He would never be upon the mountain.
It was far more likely to be a bear. Why not one here as well as farther
up the canyon where they had caught that monster from the sight of which
she had not yet recovered? Thoughts passed like flashes through her brain
while that awful sound of breaking twigs continued. Hundreds and hundreds
of them came, crowding one another for space--thoughts of St. Helen's,
snatches of poems she had learned, memories of things which had frightened
her as a child. And last of all, perhaps because without knowing it she
had reached a great tree and sunk in a little heap at its foot, came the
picture of a sallow youth in eye-glasses and a linen duster, who had once,
ages ago, crashed through some underbrush somewhere else!
The crashing ceased. Some one stepped into the trail above her. The
thought of a bear had somehow given place to her old knight-errant of the
soda-fountain. And yet when she looked up, expecting to see his pale,
sickly countenance, she saw instead the khaki-clad form and the surprised
blue eyes of the Cinnamon Creek forest ranger!
He was the very person she had wished to see. She could make her speech
now, and be spared her long ride, and yet she found herself studying the
line between his eyes and wondering why other people did not have a line
there, too. It was the Cinnamon Creek forest ranger who spoke first.
"If that were an oak tree," he said, "I'd think you were consulting an
oracle; but since it isn't, maybe you're just a Dryad who's fallen out of
the branches. What are you doing away up here anyway? I guess you startled
me almost as much as I seem to have startled you. I'm mighty sorry I
scared you though!"
His apology made Vivian remember her own, and though she quite forgot her
speech and just stammered out how sorry she was, the ranger liked it quite
as well and assured her he should never think of it again.
"And now," he said, "since you've come away off up here, I'm not going to
let you go home until you've seen my garden."
"Your garden?" queried Vivian. "Why, your cabin isn't here! It's----"
"I know," he interrupted, "but my garden is. Follow me. I'll show you. I
promise there aren't any bears."
She followed him for half a mile up the trail. They wound around great
bowlders and along the edges of steep, forbidding places. Then the ranger
paused before a thicket of yellow quaking-asps.
"This is the entrance," he explained. "Now prepare, for you're going to
see something more wonderful than the hanging gardens of Nineveh."
Pushing aside the quaking-asps, he made a path for Vivian, who followed,
mystified. A few moments more and they had passed the portals, and stood
in the ranger's garden.
Vivian caught her breath. Never in her life had she seen such grandeur of
color. They stood in an open place--a tiny valley surrounded by brown
foot-hills. Beyond, the higher pine-clad mountains shut off the valley
from the eyes of all who did not seek it. Some great, gray, over-hanging
rocks guarded the farther entrance. Within the inclosure, carpeting the
valley and clothing the foot-hills, great masses of color glowed in the
gold of the sunlight. The ranger's garden was a flaming pageant of yellow
and bronze and orange, crimson and scarlet and purple between a cloudless,
turquoise sky.
"Oh!" cried Vivian. "It's just like a secret, isn't it, hidden away up
here? I never saw such color in all my life, except in Thais, you know,
where the women in Alexandria wore such beautiful gowns." Somehow she knew
that the Cinnamon Creek forest ranger _did_ know.
"Yes," he said understandingly, "I remember, only this is better than
grand opera, because it's real. You see, I spotted this place last spring.
I saw all the different shrubs--quaking-asp and buck-brush and Oregon
grape and service-berry and hawthorn and wild currant--and I thought to
myself that this would be some garden in September. It's cold nights up
here in these hills, the frosts are early, and the sun strikes this valley
all day. It's going to be even more gorgeous in two weeks more. It isn't
exactly on my beat, but it's near enough so I can make it. Come on. I'll
show you all the different things."
So he led her from golden quaking-asp to crimson hawthorn, and taught her
the names of everything that grew in his wonderful garden. Before they had
made the circle, Vivian mustered courage, and, seeing the jeweled pin upon
the pocket of his rough shirt, which his coat had covered the evening
before, asked him about himself, and if Wyoming were his home.
No, he said, glad to tell her. He was from Maine, and the pin he wore was
his fraternity pin. He had studied forestry in the university there, and
then, becoming ill, had been sent West to get rid of a nasty cough which
didn't want to go away. But the mountains had proven the best doctors in
the world, and he was only staying on a year in the cabin at Cinnamon
Creek to learn the mountain trees, and to add a few more pounds before
going back home again.
Vivian grew more and more confused as she listened. Here he was a New
Englander like herself, and she had been so rude. What would Carver say
when he knew?
"It just shows," she said, "that we never can tell about persons on first
acquaintance. I'm doubly sorry I was rude last night. I thought you didn't
talk like a Westerner, but I didn't dream you were from New England!"
He smiled.
"I've learned since I've been out here," he said, "that it doesn't make
any difference where we're from. Wyoming hearts are just like New England
ones, and the only safe way is never to be rude or unkind at all."
Vivian agreed with him. She never would be again, she said to herself, as
they left the garden and went back down the trail to Siwash and the ford.
Carver was not there, and the ranger insisted upon walking home with her.
He would not have stayed for supper had not Virginia and Aunt Nan, meeting
them at the mail-box, persuaded him.
So it was a very merry party that ate supper beneath the cottonwoods--a
party saddened only by the early good-night of the Cinnamon Creek ranger,
who wanted to make his mountain cabin before darkness quite obliterated
the trail. As he swung into the main road after some cordial handshakes
which warmed his heart, he met Carver Standish III.
It was too nearly dark for Carver to see the fraternity pin, and no one
had yet told him that the ranger was from New England. Nevertheless, he
straightened his shoulders, and held out his hand.
"I've wanted to see you, sir," he said, "to tell you that I was an awful
cad last night, and that I'm dead ashamed of it!"