XI

"Men own the day, but the night is ours," is an old saying among the

wild folk that inhabit the forests of Trail's End. And the saying has

really deep significances that can't be discerned at one hearing.

Perhaps human beings--their thoughts busy with other things--can never

really get them at all. But the mountain lion--purring a sort of queer,

singsong lullaby to her wicked-eyed little cubs in the lair--and the

gray wolf, running along the ridges in the mystery of the moon--and

those lesser hunters, starting with Tuft-ear the lynx and going all the

way down to that terrible, white-toothed cutthroat, Little Death the

mink--_they_ know exactly what the saying means, and they know that it

is true. The only one of the larger forest creatures that doesn't know

is old Ashur, the black bear (_Ashur_ means black in an ancient tongue,

just as _Brunn_ means brown, and the common Oregon bear is usually

decidedly black) and the fact that he doesn't is curious in itself. In

most ways Ashur has more intelligence than all the others put together;

but he is also the most indifferent. He is not a hunter; and he doesn't

care who owns anything as long as there are plenty of bee trees to mop

out with his clumsy paw, and plenty of grubs under the rotten logs.

The saying originated long and long ago when the world was quite young.

Before that time, likely enough, the beasts owned both the day and the

night, and you can imagine them denying man's superiority just as long

as possible. But they came to it in the end, and perhaps now they are

beginning to be doubtful whether they still hold dominion over the night

hours. You can fancy the forest people whispering the saying back and

forth, using it as a password when they meet on the trails, and trying

their best to believe it. "Man owns the day but the night is ours," the

coyotes whisper between sobs. In a world where men have slowly, steadily

conquered all the wild creatures, killed them and driven them away,

their one consolation lies in the fact that when the dark comes down

their old preeminence returns to them.

Of course the saying is ridiculous if applied to cities or perhaps even

to the level, cleared lands of the Middle West. The reason is simply

that the wild life is practically gone from these places. Perhaps a

lowly skunk steals along a hedge on the way to a chicken pen, but he

quivers and skulks with fear, and all the arrogance of hunting is as

dead in him as his last year's perfume. And perhaps even the little

bobwhites, nestling tail to tail, know that it is wholly possible that

the farmer's son has marked their roost and will come and pot them while

they sleep. But a few places remain in America where the reign of the

wild creatures, during the night hours at least, is still supreme. And

Trail's End is one of them.

It doesn't lie in the Middle West. It is just about as far west as one

can conveniently go, unless he cares to trace the rivers down to their

mouths. Neither was it cleared land, nor had its soil ever been turned

by a plow. The few clearings that there were--such as the great five

sections of the Rosses--were so far apart that a wolf could run all

night (and the night-running of a wolf is something not to speak of

lightly) without passing one. There is nothing but forest,--forest that

stretches without boundaries, forest to which a great mountain is but a

single flower in a meadow, forest to make the brain of a timber cruiser

reel and stagger from sheer higher mathematics. Perhaps man owns these

timber stretches in the daytime. He can go out and cut down the trees,

and when they don't choose to fall over on top of him, return safely to

his cabin at night. He can venture forth with his rifle and kill Ashur

the black bear and Blacktail the deer, and even old Brother Bill, the

grand and exalted ruler of the elk lodge. The sound of his feet disturbs

the cathedral silence of the tree aisles, and his oaths--when the

treacherous trail gives way beneath his feet--carry far through the

coverts. But he behaves somewhat differently at night. He doesn't feel

nearly so sure of himself. The sound of a puma screaming a few dozen

feet away in the shadows is likely enough to cause an unpleasant

twitching of the skin of his back. And he feels considerably better if

there are four stout walls about him. At nighttime, the wild creatures

come into their own.

Bruce sensed these things as he waited for the day to break. For all the

hard exertion of the previous day, he wakened early on the first morning

of his return to his father's home. Through the open window he watched

the dawn come out. And he fancied how a puma, still hungry, turned to

snarl at the spreading light as he crept to his lair.

All over the forest the hunting creatures left their trails and crept

into the coverts. Their reign was done until darkness fell again. The

night life of the forest was slowly stilled. The daylight

creatures--such as the birds--began to waken. Probably they welcomed the

sight of day as much as Bruce himself. The man dressed slowly. He

wouldn't waken the two women that slept in the next room, he thought. He

crept slowly out into the gray dawn.

He made straight for the great pine that stood a short distance from the

house. For reasons unknown to him, the pine had come often into his

dreams. He had thought that its limbs rubbed together and made

words,--but of the words themselves he had hardly caught the meaning.

There was some high message in them, however; and the dream had left him

with a vague curiosity, an unexplainable desire to see the forest

monarch in the daylight.

As he waited, the mist blew off of the land; the gray of twilight was

whisked away to a twilightland that is hidden in the heart of the

forest. He found to his delight that the tree was even more impressive

in the vivid morning light than it had been at night. It was not that

the light actually got into it. Its branches were too thick and heavy

for that. It still retained its air of eternal secrecy, an impression

that it knew great mysteries that a thousand philosophers would give

their lives to learn. He was constantly awed by the size of it. He

guessed its circumference as about twenty-five feet. The great lower

limbs were themselves like massive tree trunks. Its top surpassed by

fifty feet any pine in the vicinity.

As he watched, the sun came up, gleaming first on its tall spire. It

slowly overtook it. The dusk of its green lightened. Bruce was not a

particularly imaginative man; but the impression grew that this towering

tree had an answer for some great question in his own heart,--a question

that he had never been able to shape into words. He felt that it knew

the wholly profound secret of life.

After all, it could not but have such knowledge. It was so incredibly

old; it had seen so much. His mind flew back to some of the dramas of

human life that had been enacted in its shade, and his imagination could

picture many more. His own father had lain here dead, shot down by a

murderer concealed in the distant thicket. It had beheld his own wonder

when he had found the still form lying in the moonlight; it had seen his

mother's grief and terror. Wilderness dramas uncounted had been enacted

beneath it. Many times the mountain lion had crept into its dark

branches. Many times the bear had grunted beneath it and reached up to

write a challenge with his claws in its bark. The eyes of Tuft-ear the

lynx had gleamed from its very top, and the old bull-elk had filed off

his velvet on the sharp edges of the bark. It had seen savage battles

between the denizens of the wood; the deer racing by with the wolf pack

in pursuit. For uncounted years it had stood aloft, above all the

madness and bloodshed and passion that are the eternal qualities of the

wilderness, somber, stately, unutterably aloof.

It had known the snows. When the leaves fell and the wind came out of

the north, it would know them again. For the snow falls for a depth of

ten feet or more over most of Trail's End. For innumerable winters its

limbs had been heaped with the white load, the great branches bending

beneath it. The wind made faint sounds through its branches now, but

would be wholly silent when the winter snows weighted the limbs. He

could picture the great, white giant, silent as death, still keeping its

vigil over the snow-swept wilderness.

Bruce felt a growing awe. The great tree seemed so wise, it gave him

such a sense of power. The winds had buffeted it in vain. It had endured

the terrible cold of winter. Generation after generation of the

creatures who moved on the face of the earth had lived their lives

beneath it; they had struggled and mated and fought their battles and

felt their passions, and finally they had died; and still it

endured,--silent, passionless, full of thoughts. Here was real

greatness. Not stirring, not struggling, not striving; only standing

firm and straight and impassive; not taking part, but only watching,

knowing no passion but only strength,--ineffably patient and calm.

But it was sad too. Such knowledge always brings sadness. It had seen

too much to be otherwise. The pines are never cheerful trees, like the

apple that blossoms in spring, or the elm whose leaves shimmer in the

sunlight; and this great monarch of all the pines was sad as great

music. In this quality, as well as in its strength, it was the symbol of

the wilderness itself. But it was more than that. It was the Great

Sentinel, and in its unutterable impassiveness it was the emblem and

symbol of even mightier powers. Bruce's full wisdom had not yet come to

him, so he couldn't name these powers. He only knew that they lived far

and far above the world and, like the tree itself, held aloof from all

the passion of Eve and the blood-lust of Cain. Like the pine itself,

they were patient, impassive, and infinitely wise.

He felt stilled and calmed himself. Such was its influence. And he

turned with a start when he saw Linda in the doorway.

Her face was calm too in the morning light. Her dark eyes were lighted.

He felt a curious little glow of delight at the sight of her.

"I've been talking to the pine--all the morning," he told her.

"But it won't talk to you," she answered. "It talks only to the stars."