In almost a moment, Duncan was out of the thickets and into the big
timber, for really the first time. In his journey up the mountain road
and on the trail that led to the old woman's cabin, he had been many
times in the shade of the tall evergreens, but always there had been
some little intrusion of civilization, some hint of the works of man
that had kept him from the full sense of the majesty of the wild. At
first it had been the gleaming railroad tracks, and then a road that had
been built with blasting and shovels. To get the full effect of the
forest one must be able to behold wide-stretching vistas, and that had
been impossible heretofore because of the brush thickets. But this was
the virgin forest. As far as he could see there was nothing but the
great pines climbing up the long slope of the ridge. He caught glimpses
of them in the vales at either side, and their dark tops made a curious
background at the very extremity of his vision. They stood straight and
aloof, and they were very old.
He fell into their spirit at once. The half-understood emotions that had
flooded him in the cabin below died within him. The great calm that is,
after all, the all-pervading quality of the big pines came over him. It
is always this way. A man knows solitude, his thoughts come clear,
superficialities are left behind in the lands of men. Bruce was rather
tremulous and exultant as he crept softly up the trail.
It was the last lap of his journey. At the end of the trail he would
find--Linda! And it seemed quite fitting that she would be waiting
there, where the trail began, in the wildest heart of the pine woods. He
was quite himself once more,--carefree, delighting in all the little
manifestations of the wild life that began to stir about him.
No experience of his existence had ever yielded the same pleasure as
that long walk up the trail. Every curve about the shoulder of a hill,
every still glen into which he dipped, every ridge that he surmounted
wakened curious memories within him and stirred him in little secret
ways under the skin. His delight grew upon him. It was a dream coming
true. Always, it seemed to him, he had carried in his mind a picture of
this very land, a sort of dream place that was a reality at last. He had
known just how it would be. The wind made the same noise in the tree
tops that he expected. Yet it was such a little sound that it could
never be heard in a city at all. His senses had already been sharpened
by the silence and the calm.
He had always known how the pine shadows would fall across the carpet of
needles. The trees themselves were the same grave companions that he had
expected, but his delight was all the more because of his expectations.
He began to catch glimpses of the smaller forest creatures,--the Little
People that are such a delight to all real lovers of the wilderness.
Sometimes it was a chipmunk, trusting to his striped skin--blending
perfectly with the light and shadow--to keep him out of sight. These are
quivering, restless, ever-frightened little folk, and heaven alone knows
what damage they may do to the roots of a tree. But Bruce wasn't in the
mood to think of forest conservation to-day. He had left a number of his
notions in the city where he had acquired them,--and this little,
bright-eyed rodent in the tree roots had almost the same right to the
forests that he had himself. Before, he had a measure of the same
arrogance with which most men--realizing the dominance of their
breed--regard the lesser people of the wild; but something of a
disastrous nature had happened to it. He spoke gayly to the chipmunk and
passed on.
As the trail climbed higher, the sense of wilderness became more
pronounced. Even the trees seemed larger and more majestic, and the
glimpses of the wild people were more frequent. The birds stopped their
rattle-brained conversation and stared at him with frank curiosity. The
grouse let him get closer before they took to cover.
Of course the bird life was not nearly so varied as in the pretty groves
of the Middle West. Most birds are gentle people, requiring an easy and
pleasant environment, and these stern, stark mountains were no place for
them. Only the hardier creatures could flourish here. Their songs would
have been out of place in the great silences and solemnity of the
evergreen forest. This was no land for weaklings. Bruce knew that as
well as he knew that his legs were under him. The few birds he saw were
mostly of the hardier varieties,--hale-fellows-well-met and cheerful
members of the lower strata in bird society. "Good old roughnecks," he
said to them, with an intuitive understanding.
That was just the name for them,--a word that is just beginning to
appear in dictionaries. They were rough in manner and rough in speech,
and they pretended to be rougher than they were. Yet Bruce liked them.
He exulted in the easy freedom of their ways. Creatures have to be rough
to exist in and love such wilderness as this. Life gets down to a matter
of cold metal,--some brass but mostly iron! He rather imagined that they
could be fairly capable thieves if occasion arose, making off with the
edibles he had bought without a twitch of a feather. They squawked and
scolded at him, after their curiosity was satisfied. They said the most
shocking things they could think of and seemed to rejoice in it. He
didn't know their breeds, yet he felt that they were old friends. They
were rather large birds, mostly of the families of jays and magpies.
The hours passed. The trail grew dimmer. Now it was just a brown serpent
in the pine needles, coiling this way and that,--but he loved every foot
of it. It dipped down to a little stream, of which the blasting sun of
summer had made only a succession of shallow pools. Yet the water was
cold to his lips. And he knew that little brook trout--waiting until
the fall rains should make a torrent of their tiny stream and thus
deliver them--were gazing at him while he drank.
The trail followed the creek a distance, and at last he found the spring
that was its source. It was only a small spring, lost in a bed of deep,
green ferns. He sat down to rest and to eat part of his lunch. The
little wind had died, leaving a profound silence.
By a queer pounding of his blood Bruce knew that he was in the high
altitudes. He had already come six miles from the cabin. The hour was
about six-thirty; in two hours more it would be too dark to make his way
at all.
He examined the mud about the spring, and there was plenty of evidence
that the forest creatures had passed that way. Here was a little
triangle where a buck had stepped, and farther away he found two pairs
of deer tracks,--evidently those of a doe with fawn. A wolf had stopped
to cool his heated tongue in the waters, possibly in the middle of some
terrible hunt in the twilight hours.
There was a curious round track, as if of a giant cat, a little way
distant in the brown earth. It told a story plainly. A cougar--one of
those great felines that is perhaps better called puma--had had an
ambush there a few nights before. Bruce wondered what wilderness tragedy
had transpired when the deer came to drink. Then he found another huge
abrasion in the mud that puzzled him still more.
At first he couldn't believe that it was a track. The reason was simply
that the size of the thing was incredible,--as if some one had laid a
flour sack in the mud and taken it up again. He did not think of any of
the modern-day forest creatures as being of such proportions. It was
very stale and had been almost obliterated by many days of sun. Perhaps
he had been mistaken in thinking it an imprint of a living creature. He
went to his knees to examine it.
But in one instant he knew that he had not been mistaken. It was a track
not greatly different from that of an enormous human foot; and the
separate toes were entirely distinct. It was a bear track, of course,
but one of such size that the general run of little black bears that
inhabited the hills could almost use it for a den of hibernation!
His thought went back to his talk with Barney Wegan; and he remembered
that the man had spoken of a great, last grizzly that the mountaineers
had named "The Killer." No other animal but the great grizzly bear
himself could have made such a track as this. Bruce wondered if the
beast had yet been killed.
He got up and went on,--farther toward Trail's End. He walked more
swiftly now, for he hoped to reach the end of Pine-needle Trail before
nightfall, but he had no intention of halting in case night came upon
him before he reached it. He had waited too long already to find Linda.
The land seemed ever more familiar. A high peak thrust a white head
above a distant ridge, and it appealed to him almost like the face of an
old friend. Sometime--long and long ago--he had gazed often at a white
peak of a mountain thrust above a pine-covered ridge.
Another hour ended the day's sunlight. The shadows fell quickly, but it
was a long time yet until darkness. He yet might make the trail-end. He
gave no thought to fatigue. In the first place, he had stood up
remarkably well under the day's tramp for no other reason than that he
had always made a point of keeping in the best of physical condition.
Besides, there was something more potent than mere physical strength to
sustain him now. It was the realization of the nearing end of the
trail,--a knowledge of tremendous revelations that would come to him in
a few hours more.
Already great truths were taking shape in his brain; he only needed a
single sentence of explanation to connect them all together. He began to
feel a growing excitement and impatience.
For the first time he began to notice a strange breathlessness in the
air. He paused, just for an instant, his face lifted to the wind. He did
not realize that all his senses were at razor edge, trying to interpret
the messages that the wind brought. He felt that the forest was
wakening. A new stir and impulse had come in the growing shadows. All at
once he understood. It was the hunting hour.
Yet even this seemed familiar. Always, it seemed to him, he had known
this same strange thrill at the fall of darkness, the same sense of
deepening mystery. The jays no longer gossiped in the shrubs. They had
been silenced by the same awe that had come over Bruce. And now the man
began to discern, here and there through the forest, queer rustlings of
the foliage that meant the passing through of some of the great beasts
of prey.
Once two deer flashed by him,--just a streak that vanished quickly. The
dusk deepened. The further trees were dimming. The sky turned green,
then gray. The distant mountains were enfolded in gloom. Bruce headed
on--faster, up the trail.
The heaviness in his limbs had changed to an actual ache, but he gave no
thought to it. He was enthralled by the change that was on the
forest,--a whipping-back of a thousand-thousand years to a young and
savage world. There was the sense of vast and tragic events all in
keeping with the gathering gloom of the forest. He was awed and
mystified as never before.
It was quite dark now, and he could barely see the trail. For the first
time he began to despair, feeling that another night of overpowering
impatience must be spent before he could reach Trail's End. The stars
began to push through the darkening sky. Then, fainter than the gleam of
a firefly, he saw the faint light of a far distant camp fire.
His heart bounded. He knew what was there. It was the end of the trail
at last. And it guided him the rest of the way. When he reached the top
of a little rise in the trail, the whole scene was laid out in mystery
below him.
The fire had been built at the door of a mountain house,--a log
structure of perhaps four rooms. The firelight played in its open
doorway. Something beside it caught his attention, and instinctively he
followed it with his eyes until it ended in an incredible region of the
stars. It was a great pine tree, the largest he had ever
seen,--seemingly a great sentinel over all the land.
But the sudden awe that came over him at the sight of it was cut short
by the sight of a girl's figure in the firelight. He had an instant's
sense that he had come to the wilderness's heart at last, that this tall
tree was its symbol, that if he could understand the eternal watch that
it kept over this mountain world, he would have an understanding of all
things,--but all these thoughts were submerged in the realization that
he had come back to Linda at last.
He had known how the mountains would seem. All that he had beheld to-day
was just the recurrence of things beheld long ago. Nothing had seemed
different from what he had expected; rather he had a sense that a lost
world had been returned to him, and it was almost as if he had never
been away. But the girl in the firelight did not answer in the least
degree the picture he had carried of Linda.
He remembered her as a blond-headed little girl with irregular features
and a rather unreasonable allowance of homeliness. All the way he had
thought of her as a baby sister,--not as a woman in her flower. For a
long second he gazed at her in speechless amazement.
Her hair was no longer blond. Time, it had peculiar red lights when the
firelight shone through it; but he knew that by the light of day it
would be deep brown. He remembered her as an awkward little thing that
was hardly able to keep her feet under her. This tall girl had the
wilderness grace,--which is the grace of a deer and only blind eyes
cannot see it. He dimly knew that she wore a khaki-colored skirt and a
simple blouse of white tied with a blue scarf. Her arms were bare in the
fire's gleam. And there was a dark beauty about her face that simply
could not be denied.
She came toward him, and her hands were open before her. And her lips
trembled. Bruce could see them in the firelight.
It was a strange meeting. The firelight gave it a tone of unreality, and
the whole forest world seemed to pause in its whispered business as if
to watch. It was as if they had been brought face to face by the
mandates of an inexorable destiny.
"So you've come," the girl said. The words were spoken unusually soft,
scarcely above a whisper; but they were inexpressibly vivid to Bruce. In
his lifetime he had heard many words that were just so many lifeless
selections from a dictionary,--flat utterances with no overtones to give
them vitality. He had heard voices in plenty that were merely the
mechanical result of the vibration of vocal cords. But these words--not
for their meaning but because of the quality of the voice that had
spoken them--really lived. They told first of a boundless relief and joy
at his coming. But more than that, in these deep vibrant tones was the
expression of an unquenchable life and spirit. Every fiber of her body
lived in the fullest sense; he knew this fact the instant that she
spoke.
She smiled at him, ever so quietly. "Bwovaboo," she said, recalling the
name by which she called him in her babyhood, "you've come to Linda."