"You are. Your experience fits you for a position where the fight is hot.
The Washakie Forest is even more a bone of contention than this. We have
laid out the lines of division between the sheep and the cows, and it will
take a man to enforce our regulations. You will have the support of the
best citizens. They will all rally, with you as leader, and so end the
warfare there."
"It can never end till Uncle Sam puts rangers over every section of public
lands and lays out the grazing lines as we have done in this forest,"
retorted Cavanagh.
"I know; but to get that requires a revolution in the whole order of
things." Then his fine young face lighted up. "But we'll get it. Public
sentiment is coming our way. The old order is already so eaten away that
only its shell remains."
"It may be. If these assassins are punished I shall feel hopeful of the
change."
"I shall recommend you for the supervisorship of the Washakie Forest,"
concluded Dalton, decisively. "And so good-bye and good-luck."
England, his blood relatives, even the Redfields, seemed very remote to
the ranger, as he stood in his door that night and watched the sparkle of
Swenson's camp-fire through the trees. With the realization that there
waited a brave girl of the type that loves single-heartedly, ready to
sacrifice everything to the welfare of her idealized subject, he felt
unworthy, selfish, vain.
"If I should fall sick she would insist on nursing me. For her sake I must
give Swenson the most rigid orders not to allow her--no matter what
happens--to approach. I will not have her touched by this thing."
Beside the blaze Lee and her mother sat for the most part in silence, with
nothing to do but to wait the issue of the struggle going on in the cabin,
so near and yet so inaccessible to their will. It was as if a magic wall,
crystal-clear yet impenetrable, shut them away from the man whose quiet
heroism was the subject of their constant thought.
To the girl this ride up into her lover's world had been both exalting and
awesome--not merely because the rough and precipitous road took her closer
to her lover while placing her farther from medical aid, but also because
it was so vast a world, so unpeopled and so beautiful.
It was marvellous, as the dusk fell and the air nipped keen, to see how
Lize Wetherford renewed her youth. The excitement seemed to have given her
a fresh hold on life. She was wearied but by no means weakened by her
ride, and ate heartily of the rude fare which Swenson set before her.
"This is what I needed," she exultantly said; "the open air and these
trout. I feel ten years younger already. Many's the night I've camped on
the range with your father with nothing but a purp-tent to cover us both,
and the wolves howling round us. I'd feel pretty fairly gay if it weren't
for Ross over there in that cabin playin' nurse and cook all by his
lonesomeness."
Lee expressed a deep satisfaction from the fact of their nearness. "If he
is ill we can help him," she reiterated.
She had put behind her all the doubt and fear which his abrupt desertion
of her had caused, and, though he had not been able to speak a word to
her, his self-sacrifice had made amends. She excused it all as part of his
anxious care. Whatever the mood of that other day had been, it had given
way to one that was lofty and deeply altruistic. Her one anxiety now was
born of a deepening sense of his danger, but against this she bent the
full strength of her will. "He shall not die," she declared beneath her
breath. "God will not permit it."
There was a touch of frost in the air as they went to their beds, and,
though she shivered, Lize was undismayed. "There's nothing the matter with
my heart," she exulted. "I don't believe there was anything really serious
the matter with me, anyway. I reckon I was just naturally grouchy and
worried over you and Ross."
Lee Virginia was now living a romance stranger and more startling than any
she had ever read. In imagination she was able to look back and down upon
the Fork as if she had been carried into another world--a world that was
at once primeval yet peaceful: a world of dreaming trees, singing streams,
and silent peaks; a realm in which law and order reigned, maintained by
one determined young man whose power was derived from the President
himself. She felt safe--entirely safe--for just across the roaring
mountain torrent the two intrepid guardians of the forest were encamped.
One of them, it is true, came of Swedish parentage and the other was a
native of England, but they were both American in the high sense of being
loyal to the Federal will, and she trusted them more unquestioningly than
any other men in all that West save only Redfield. She had no doubt there
were others equally loyal, equally to be trusted, but she did not know
them.
She rose to a complete understanding of Cavanagh's love for "the high
country" and his enthusiasm for the cause, a cause which was able to bring
together the student from Yale and the graduates of Bergen and of Oxford,
and make them comrades in preserving the trees and streams of the mountain
States against the encroachments of some of their own citizens, who were
openly, short-sightedly, and cynically bent upon destruction, spoliation,
and misuse.
She had listened to the talk of the Forester and the Supervisor, and she
had learned from them that Cavanagh was sure of swift advancement, now
that he had shown his courage and his skill; and the thought that he might
leave the State to take charge of another forest brought her some
uneasiness, for she and Lize had planned to go to Sulphur City. She had
consented to this because it still left to her the possibility of
occasionally seeing or hearing from Cavanagh. But the thought that he
might go away altogether took some of the music out of the sound of the
stream and made the future vaguely sad.