The train came to a sliding halt at Deer Creek, paused an infinitesimal
fraction of a second, and roared on in its ceaseless journey. That
infinitesimal fraction was long enough for Bruce, poised on the bottom
step of a sleeping car, to swing down on to the gravel right-of-way. His
bag, hurled by a sleepy porter, followed him.
He turned first to watch the vanishing tail light, speeding so swiftly
into the darkness; and curiously all at once it blinked out. But it was
not that the switchmen were neglectful of their duties. In this certain
portion of the Cascades the railroad track is constructed something
after the manner of a giant screw, coiling like a great serpent up the
ridges, and the train had simply vanished around a curve.
Duncan's next impression was one of infinite solitude. He hadn't read
any guidebooks about Deer Creek, and he had expected some sort of town.
A western mining camp, perhaps, where the windows of a dance hall would
gleam through the darkness; or one of those curious little
mushroom-growth cities that are to be found all over the West. But at
Deer Creek there was one little wooden structure with only three
sides,--the opening facing the track. It was evidently the waiting room
used by the mountain men as they waited for their local trains.
There were no porters to carry his bag. There were no shouting
officials. His only companions were the stars and the moon and, farther
up the slope, certain tall trees that tapered to incredible points
almost in the region where the stars began. The noise of the train died
quickly. It vanished almost as soon as the dot of red that had been its
tail light. It was true that he heard a faint pulsing far below him, a
sound that was probably the chug of the steam, but it only made an
effective background for the silence. It was scarcely more to be heard
than the pulse of his own blood; and as he waited even this faded and
died away.
The moon cast his shadow on the yellow grass beside the crude station,
and a curious flood of sensations--scarcely more tangible than its
silver light--came over him. The moment had a quality of enchantment;
and why he did not know. His throat suddenly filled, a curious weight
and pain came to his eyelids, a quiver stole over his nerves. He stood
silent with lifted face,--a strange figure in that mystery of moonlight.
The whole scene, for causes deeper than any words may ever seek and
reveal, moved him past any experience in his life. It was wholly new.
When he had gone to sleep in his berth, earlier that same night, the
train had been passing through a level, fertile valley that might have
been one of the river bottoms beyond the Mississippi. When darkness had
come down he had been in a great city in the northern part of the
State,--a noisy, busy place that was not greatly different from the city
whence he had come. But now he seemed in a different world.
Possibly, in the long journey to the West, he had passed through forest
before. But some way their appeal had not got to him. He was behind
closed windows, his thoughts had been busy with reading and other
occupations of travel. There had been no shading off, no gradations; he
had come straight from a great seat of civilization to the heart of the
wilderness.
He turned about until the wind was in his face. It was full of
fragrances,--strange, indescribable smells that seemed to call up a
forgotten world. They carried a message to him, but as yet he hadn't
made out its meaning. He only knew it was something mysterious and
profound: great truths that flickered, like dim lights, in his
consciousness, but whose outline he could not quite discern. They went
straight home to him, those night smells from the forest. One of them
was a balsam: a fragrance that once experienced lingers ever in the
memory and calls men back to it in the end. Those who die in its
fragrance, just as those who go to sleep, feel sure of having pleasant
dreams. There were other smells too--delicate perfumes from mountain
flowers that were deep-hidden in the grass--and many others, the nature
of which he could not even guess.
Perhaps there were sounds, but they only seemed part of the silence. The
faintest rustle in the world reached him from the forests above of many
little winds playing a running game between the trunks, and the stir of
the Little People, moving in their midnight occupations. Each of these
sounds had its message for Bruce. They all seemed to be trying to tell
him something, to make clear some great truth that was dawning in his
consciousness.
He was not in the least afraid. He felt at peace as never before. He
picked up his bag, and with stealing steps approached the long slope
behind. The moon showed him a fallen log, and he found a comfortable
seat on the ground beside it, his back against its bark. Then he waited
for the dawn to come out.
Not even Bruce knew or understood all the thoughts that came over him in
that lonely wait. But he did have a peculiar sense of expectation, a
realization that the coming of the dawn would bring him a message
clearer than all these messages of fragrance and sound. The moon made
wide silver patches between the distant trees; but as yet the forest had
not opened its secrets to him. As yet it was but a mystery, a profundity
of shadows and enchantment that he did not understand.
The night hours passed. The sense of peace seemed to deepen on the man.
He sat relaxed, his brown face grave, his eyes lifted. The stars began
to dim and draw back farther into the recesses of the sky. The round
outline of the moon seemed less pronounced. And a faint ribbon of light
began to grow in the east.
It widened. The light grew. The night wind played one more little game
between the tree trunks and slipped away to the Home of Winds that lies
somewhere above the mountains. The little night sounds were slowly
stilled.
Bruce closed his eyes, not knowing why. His blood was leaping in his
veins. An unfamiliar excitement, almost an exultation, had come upon
him. He lowered his head nearly to his hands that rested in his lap,
then waited a full five minutes more.
Then he opened his eyes. The light had grown around him. His hands were
quite plain. Slowly, as a man raises his eyes to a miracle, he lifted
his face.
The forest was no longer obscured in darkness. The great trees had
emerged, and only the dusk as of twilight was left between. He saw them
plainly,--their symmetrical forms, their declining limbs, their tall
tops piercing the sky. He saw them as they were,--those ancient, eternal
symbols and watchmen of the wilderness. And he knew them at last,
acquaintances long forgotten but remembered now.
"The pines!" he cried. He leaped to his feet with flashing eyes. "I have
come back to the pines!"
V
The dawn revealed a narrow road along the bank of Deer Creek,--a brown
little wanderer which, winding here and there, did not seem to know
exactly where it wished to go. It seemed to follow the general direction
of the creek bed; it seemed to be a prying, restless little highway,
curious about things in general as the wild creatures that sometimes
made tracks in its dust, thrusting now into a heavy thicket, now
crossing the creek to examine a green and grassy bank on the opposite
side, now taking an adventurous tramp about the shoulder of a hill,
circling back for a drink in the creek and hurrying on again. It made
singular loops; it darted off at a right and left oblique; it made
sudden spurts and turns seemingly without reason or sense, and at last
it dimmed away into the fading mists of early morning. Bruce didn't know
which direction to take, whether up or down the creek.
He gave the problem a moment's thought. "Take the road up the Divide,"
Barney Wegan had said; and at once Bruce knew that the course lay up the
creek, rather than down. A divide means simply the high places between
one water-shed and another, and of course Trail's End lay somewhere
beyond the source of the stream. The creek itself was apparently a
sub-tributary of the Rogue, the great river to the south.
There was something pleasing to his spirit in the sight of the little
stream, tumbling and rippling down its rocky bed. He had no vivid
memories of seeing many waterways. The river that flowed through the
city whence he had come had not been like this at all. It had been a
great, slow-moving sheet of water, the banks of which were lined with
factories and warehouses. The only lining of the banks of this little
stream were white-barked trees, lovely groves with leaves of glossy
green. It was a cheery, eager little waterway, and more than once--as he
went around a curve in the road--it afforded him glimpses of really
striking beauty. Sometimes it was just a shimmer of its waters beneath
low-hanging bushes, sometimes a distant cataract, and once or twice a
long, still place on which the shadows were still deep.
These sloughs were obviously the result of dams, and at first he could
not understand what had been the purpose of dam-building in this lonely
region. There seemed to be no factories needing water power, no
slow-moving mill wheels. He left the road to investigate. And he
chuckled with delight when he knew the truth.
These dams had not been the work of men at all. Rather they were
structures laid down by those curious little civil engineers, the
beavers. The cottonwood trees had been felled so that the thick branches
had lain across the waters, and in their own secret ways the limbs had
been matted and caked until no water could pass through. True, the
beavers themselves did not emerge for him to converse with. Perhaps
they were busy at their under-water occupations, and possibly the
trappers who sooner or later penetrate every wilderness had taken them
all away. He looked along the bank for further evidence of the beavers'
work.
Wonderful as the dams were, he found plenty of evidence that the beavers
had not always used to advantage the crafty little brains that nature
has given them. They had made plenty of mistakes. But these very
blunders gave Bruce enough delight almost to pay for the extra work they
had occasioned. After all, he considered, human beings in their works
are often just as short-sighted. For instance, he found tall trees lying
rotting and out of reach, many feet back from the stream. The beavers
had evidently felled them in high water, forgetting that the stream
dwindled in summer and the trees would be of no use to them. They had
been an industrious colony! He found short poles of cottonwood sharpened
at the end, as if the little fur bearers had intended them for braces,
but which--through some wilderness tragedy--had never been utilized.
But Bruce was in a mood to be delighted, these early morning hours. He
was on the way to Linda; a dream was about to come true. The whole
adventure was of the most thrilling and joyous anticipations. He did not
feel the load of his heavy suitcase. It was nothing to his magnificent
young strength. And all at once he beheld an amazing change in the
appearance of the stream.
It had abruptly changed to a stream of melted, shimmering silver. The
waters broke on the rocks with opalescent spray; the whole coloring was
suggestive of the vivid tints of a Turner landscape. The waters gleamed;
they danced and sparkled as they sped about the boulders of the river
bed; the leaves shimmered above them. And it was all because the sun had
risen at last above the mountain range and was shining down.
At first Bruce could hardly believe that just sunlight could effect such
a transformation. For no other reason than that he couldn't resist doing
so, he left his bag on the road and crept down to the water's edge.
He stood very still. It seemed to him that some one had told him, far
away and long ago, that if he wished to see miracles he had only to
stand very still. Not to move a muscle, so that his vivid shadow would
not even waver. It is a trait possessed by all men of the wilderness,
but it takes time for city men to learn it. He waited a long time. And
all at once the shining surface of a deep pool below him broke with a
fountain of glittering spray.
Something that was like light itself flung into the air and down again
with a splash. Bruce shouted then. He simply couldn't help it. And all
the time there was a strange straining and travail in his brain, as if
it were trying to give birth to a memory from long ago. He knew now what
had made that glittering arc. Such a common thing,--it was singular that
it should yield him such delight. It was a trout, leaping for an insect
that had fallen on the waters.
It was strange that he had such a sense of familiarity with trout. True,
he had heard Barney Wegan tell of them. He had listened to many tales of
the way they seized a fly, how the reel would spin, and how they would
fight to absolute exhaustion before they would yield to the landing net.
"The King among fish," Barney had called them. Yet the tales seemingly
had meant little to him then. His interest in them had been superficial
only; and they had seemed as distant and remote as the marsupials of
Australia. But it wasn't this way now. He had a sense of long and close
acquaintance, of an interest such as men have in their own townsmen.
He went on, and the forest world opened before him. Once a flock of
grouse--a hen and a dozen half-grown chickens--scurried away through the
underbrush at the sound of his step. One instant, and he had a clear
view of the entire covey. The next, and they had vanished like so many
puffs of smoke. He had a delicious game of hide-and-seek with them
through the coverts, but he was out-classed in every particular. He knew
that the birds were all within forty feet of him, each of them pressed
flat to the brown earth, but in this maze of light and shadow he could
not detect their outline. Nature has been kind to the grouse family in
the way of protective coloration. He had to give up the search and
continue up the creek for further adventure.
Once a pair of mallards winged by on a straight course above his head.
Their sudden appearance rather surprised him. These beautiful game
birds are usually habitants of the lower lakes and marshes, not
rippling mountain streams. He didn't know that a certain number of these
winged people nested every year along the Rogue River, far below, and
made rapturous excursions up and down its tributaries. Mallards do not
have to have aeroplanes to cover distance quickly. They are the very
masters of the aerial lanes, and in all probability this pair had come
forty miles already that morning. Where they would be at dark no man
could guess. Their wings whistled down to him, and it seemed to him that
the drake stretched down his bright green head for a better look. Then
he spurted ahead, faster than ever.
Once, at a distance, Bruce caught a glimpse of a pair of peculiar,
little, sawed-off, plump-breasted ducks that wagged their tails, as if
in signals, in a still place above a dam. He made a wide circle,
intending to wheel back to the creekside for a closer inspection of the
singular flirtation of those bobbing, fan-like tails. He rather thought
he could outwit these little people, at least. But when he turned back
to the water's edge they were nowhere to be seen.
If he had had more experience with the creatures of the wild he could
have explained this mysterious disappearance. These little
ducks--"ruddies" the sportsmen call them--have advantages other than an
extra joint in their tails. One of them seems to be a total and
unprincipled indifference to the available supply of oxygen. When they
wish to go out of sight they simply duck beneath the water and stay
apparently as long as they desire. Of course they have to come up some
time--but usually it is just the tip of a bill--like the top of a
river-bottom weed, thrust above the surface. Bruce gaped in amazement,
but he chuckled again when he discovered his birds farther up the creek,
just as far distant from him as ever.
The sun rose higher, and he began to feel its power. But it was a kindly
heat. The temperature was much higher than was commonly met in the
summers of the city, but there was little moisture in the air to make it
oppressive. The sweat came out on his bronze face, but he never felt
better in his life. There was but one great need, and that was
breakfast.
A man of his physique feels hunger quickly. The sensation increased in
intensity, and the suitcase grew correspondingly heavy. And all at once
he stopped short in the road. The impulse along his nerves to his leg
muscles was checked, like an electric current at the closing of a
switch, and an instinct of unknown origin struggled for expression
within him.
In an instant he had it. He didn't know whence it came. It was nothing
he had read or that any one had told him. It seemed to be rather the
result of some experience in his own immediate life, an occurrence of so
long ago that he had forgotten it. He suddenly knew where he could find
his breakfast. There was no need of toiling farther on an empty stomach
in this verdant season of the year. He set his suitcase down, and with
the confidence of a man who hears the dinner call in his own home, he
struck off into the thickets beside the creek bed. Instinct--and really,
after all, instinct is nothing but memory--led his steps true.
He glanced here and there, not even wondering at the singular fact that
he did not know exactly what manner of food he was seeking. In a moment
he came to a growth of thorn-covered bushes, a thicket that only the
she-bear knew how to penetrate. But it was enough for Bruce just to
stand at its edges. The bushes were bent down with a load of delicious
berries.
He wasn't in the least surprised. He had known that he would find them.
Always, at this season of the year, the woods were rich with them; one
only had to slip quickly through the back door--while the mother's eye
was elsewhere--to find enough of them not only to pack the stomach full
but to stain and discolor most of the face. It seemed a familiar thing
to be plucking the juicy berries and cramming them into his mouth,
impervious as the old she-bear to the remonstrance of the thorns. But it
seemed to him that he reached them easier than he expected. Either the
bushes were not so tall as he remembered them, or--since his first
knowledge of them--his own stature had increased.
When he had eaten the last berry he could possibly hold, he went to the
creek to drink. He lay down beside a still pool, and the water was cold
to his lips. Then he rose at the sound of an approaching motor car
behind him.
The driver--evidently a cattleman--stopped his car and looked at Bruce
with some curiosity. He marked the perfectly fitting suit of dark
flannel, the trim, expensive shoes that were already dust-stained, the
silken shirt on which a juicy berry had been crushed. "Howdy," the man
said after the western fashion. He was evidently simply feeling
companionable and was looking for a moment's chat. It is a desire that
often becomes very urgent and most real after enough lonely days in the
wilderness.
"How do you do," Bruce replied. "How far to Martin's store?"
The man filled his pipe with great care before he answered. "Jump in the
car," he replied at last, "and I'll show you. I'm going up that way
myself."