III

Dan didn't see his host at first. For the first instant he was entirely

engrossed by a surging sense of disappointment,--a feeling that he had

been tricked and had only come to another city after all. He got down on

to the gravel of the station yard, and out on the gray street pavement

he heard the clang of a trolley car. Trolley cars didn't fit into his

picture of the West at all. Many automobiles were parked just beside the

station, some of them foreign cars of expensive makes, such as he

supposed would be wholly unknown on the frontier. A man in golf clothes

brushed his shoulder.

It wasn't a large city; but there was certainly lack of any suggestion

of the frontier. But there were a number of things that Dan Failing did

not know about the West. One of the most important of them was the

curious way in which wildernesses and busy cities are sometimes mixed up

indiscriminately together, and how one can step out of a modern country

club to hear the coyotes wailing on the hills. He really had no right to

feel disappointed. He had simply come to the real West--that bewildering

land in which To-morrow and Yesterday sit right next to each other, with

no To-day between. The cities, often built on the dreams of the future,

sometimes are modern to such a point that they give many a sophisticated

Eastern man a decided shock. But quite often this quality extends to the

corporation limits and not a step further. Then, likely as not, they

drop sheer off, as over a precipice, into the utter wildness of the

Past.

Dan looked up to the hills, and he felt better. He couldn't see them

plainly. The faint smoke of a distant forest fire half obscured them.

Yet he saw fold on fold of ridges of a rather peculiar blue in color,

and even his untrained eyes could see that they were clothed in forests

of evergreen. It is a strange thing about evergreen forests that they

never, even when one is close to them, appear to be really green. To a

distant eye, they range all the way from lavender to a pale sort of blue

for which no name has ever been invented. Just before dark, when, as all

mountaineers know, the sky turns green, the forests are simply curious,

dusky shadows. The pines are always dark. Perhaps, after all, they are

simply the symbol of the wilderness,--eternal, silent, and in a vague

way rather dark and sad. No one who really knows the mountains can

completely get away from their tone of sadness. Over the heads of the

green hills Dan could see a few great peaks; McLaughlin, even and

regular as a painted mountain; Wagner, with queer white gashes where the

snow still lay in its ravines, and to the southeast the misty range of

snow-covered hills that were the Siskeyous. He felt decidedly better.

And when he saw old Silas Lennox waiting patiently beside the station,

he felt he had come to the right place.

It would be interesting to explain why Dan at once recognized the older

man for the breed he was. But unfortunately, there are certain of the

many voices that speak within the minds of human beings of which

scientists have never been able to take phonographic records. They

simply whisper their messages, and their hearer, without knowing why,

knows that he has heard the truth. Silas Lennox was not dressed in a way

that would distinguish him. It was true that he wore a flannel shirt,

riding trousers, and rather heavy, leathern boots. But sportsmen all

over the face of the earth wear this costume at sundry times. Mountain

men have a peculiar stride by which experienced persons can occasionally

recognize them; but Silas Lennox was standing still when Dan got his

first glimpse of him. The case resolves itself into a simple matter of

the things that could be read in Lennox's face.

Dan disbelieved wholly in a book that told how to read characters at

sight. Yet at the first glance of the lean, bronzed face his heart gave

a curious little bound. A pair of gray eyes met his,--two fine black

points in a rather hard gray iris. They didn't look past him, or at

either side of him, or at his chin or his forehead. They looked right at

his own eyes. The skin around the eyes was burned brown by the sun, and

the flesh was so lean that the cheek bones showed plainly. The mouth was

straight; but yet it was neither savage nor cruel. It was simply

determined.

But the strangest part of all was that Dan felt an actual sense of

familiarity with this kind of man. To his knowledge, he had never known

one before; and it was extremely doubtful if, in his middle-western

city, he had even seen the type. In spite of the fact that he thinks

nothing of starting out thirty miles across the snow on snowshoes, the

mountain man cannot be called an extensive traveler. He plans to go to

some great city once in a lifetime and dreams about it of nights, but

rather often the Death that is every one's next-door neighbor in the

wilderness comes in and cheats him out of the trip. Few of the breed had

ever come to Gitcheapolis. Yet all his life, Dan felt, he had known this

straight, gray-eyed mountain breed even better than he knew the boys

that went to college with him. At the time he didn't stop to wonder at

the feeling. He was too busy looking about. But the time was to come

when he would wonder and conclude that it was just another bit of

evidence pointing to the same conclusion. And besides this unexplainable

feeling of familiarity, he felt a sudden sense of peace, even a quiet

sort of exultation, such as a man feels when he gets back into his own

home country at last.

Lennox came up with a light, silent tread and extended his hand. "You're

Dan Failing's grandson, aren't you?" he asked. "I'm Silas Lennox, who

used to know him when he lived on the Divide. You are coming to spend

the summer and fall on my ranch."

The immediate result of these words, besides relief, was to set Dan

wondering how the old mountaineer had recognized him. He wondered if he

had any physical resemblance to his grandfather. But this hope was shot

to earth at once. His telegram had explained about his malady, and of

course the mountaineer had picked him out simply because he had the

mark of the disease on his face. As he shook hands, he tried his best

to read the mountaineer's expression. It was all too plain: an

undeniable look of disappointment.

The truth was that even in spite of all the Chamber of Commerce head had

told him, Lennox had still hoped to find some image of the elder Dan

Failing in the face and body of his grandson. But at first there seemed

to be none at all. The great hunter and trapper who had tamed the

wilderness about the region of the Divide--as far as mortal man could

tame it--had a skin that was rather the color of old leather. The face

of this young man was wholly without tinge of color. Because of the

thick glasses, Lennox could not see the young man's eyes; but he didn't

think it likely they were at all like the eyes with which the elder

Failing saw his way through the wilderness at night. Of course he was

tall, just as the famous frontiersman had been, but while the elder

weighed one hundred and ninety pounds, bone and muscle, this man did not

touch one hundred and thirty. Evidently the years had brought degeneracy

to the Failing clan. Lennox was desolated by the thought.

He helped Dan with his bag to a little wiry automobile that waited

beside the station. They got into the two front seats.

"You'll be wondering at my taking you in a car--clear to the Divide,"

Lennox explained. "But we mountain men can't afford to drive horses any

more where a car will go. This time of year I can make it fairly

easy--only about fifteen miles on low gear. But in the winter--it's

either a case of coming down on snowshoes or staying there."

And a moment later they were starting up the long, curved road that led

to the Divide.

During the hour that they were crossing over the foothills, on the way

to the big timber, Silas Lennox talked a great deal about the

frontiersman that had been Dan's grandfather. A mountain man does not

use profuse adjectives. He talks very simply and very straight, and

often there are long silences between his sentences. Yet he conveys his

ideas with entire clearness.

Dan realized at once that if he could be, in Lennox's eyes, one fifth of

the man his grandfather had been, he would never have to fear again the

look of disappointment with which his host had greeted him at the

station. But instead of reaching that high place, he had only--death. He

was never to be one of this strong breed from which his people sprang.

Always they would accept him for the memories that they held of his

ancestors, pity him for his weakness, and possibly be kind enough to

deplore his death. He never need fear any actual expressions of scorn.

Lennox had a natural refinement that forbade it. Dan never knew a more

intense desire than that to make good in the eyes of these mountain men.

Far back, they had been his own people; and all men know that the

upholding of a family's name and honor has been one of the greatest

impulses for good conduct and great deeds since the beginnings of

civilization. But Dan pushed the hope out of his mind at once. He knew

what his destiny was in these quiet hills. And it was true that he began

to have secret regrets that he had come. But it wasn't that he was

disappointed in the land that was opening up before him. It fulfilled

every promise. His sole reason for regrets lay in the fact that now the

whole mountain world would know of the decay that had come upon his

people. Perhaps it would have been better to have left them to their

traditions.

He had never dreamed that the fame of his grandfather had spread so far.

For the first ten miles, Dan listened to stories,--legends of a cold

nerve that simply could not be shaken; of a powerful, tireless physique;

of moral and physical strength that was seemingly without limit. Then,

as the foothills began to give way to the higher ridges, and the shadow

of the deeper forests fell upon the narrow, brown road, there began to

be long gaps in the talk. And soon they rode in utter silence, evidently

both of them absorbed in their own thoughts.

Dan did not wonder at it at all. Perhaps he began to faintly understand

the reason for the silence and the reticence that is such a predominant

trait in the forest men. There is a quality in the big timber that

doesn't make for conversation, and no one has ever been completely

successful in explaining what it is. Perhaps there is a feeling of

insignificance, a sensation that is particularly insistent in the winter

snows. No man can feel like talking very loudly when he is the only

living creature within endless miles. The trees, towering and old, seem

to ignore him as a being too unimportant to notice. And besides, the

silence of the forest itself seems to get into the spirit, and the

great, quiet spaces that lie between tree and tree simply dry up the

springs of conversation. Dan did not feel oppressed at all. He merely

seemed to fall into the spirit of the woods, and no words came to his

lips. He began to watch the ever-changing vista that the curving road

revealed.

First there had been brown hills, and here and there great heaps of

stone. The brush had been rather scrubby, and the trees somewhat sickly

and brown. But now, as the men mounted higher, they were coming into

open forest. The trees stood one and one, perfect, dark-limbed, and only

the carpet of their needles lay between. The change was evidenced in the

streams, too. They seemingly had not suffered from the drought that had

sucked up the valley streams. They were faster, whiter with foam, and

the noise of their falling waters carried farther through the still

woods. The road followed the long shoulder of a ridge, an easy grade of

perhaps six per cent, but Dan counted ridges sloping off until he was

tired.

By now the smaller wild things of the mountains began to present

themselves a breathless instant beside the road. These little people

have an actual purpose in the hills other than to furnish food for the

larger forest creatures. They give a note of sociability, of

companionship, that is sorely needed to dull the edge of the utter,

stark lonesomeness and severity that is the usual tone of the mountains.

The fact that they all live under the snow in winter is one reason why

this season is especially dreadful to the spirit.

Every tree trunk seemed to have its chipmunks, and they all appeared to

be suffering from the same delusion. They all were afflicted with the

idea that the car was trying to cut off their retreat, and only by

crossing the road in front of it could they save themselves. This idea

is a particularly prevalent one with wild animals; and it is the same

instinct that makes a domestic cow almost invariably cross the road in

front of a motorist. And it also explains why certain cowardly animals,

such as the wolf or cougar, will sometimes seemingly without a cause on

earth, make a desperate charge on a hunter. They think their retreat is

cut off, and they have to fight. Again and again the chipmunks crossed

at the risk of their lives. Sometimes the two men saw those big,

flat-footed rabbits that are especially constructed for moving about in

the winter snows, and more than once the grouse rose with a whir and

beat of wings.

Every mile was an added delight to Dan. Not even wine could have brought

a brighter sparkle to his eyes. He had begun to experience a vague sort

of excitement, an emotion that was almost kin to exultation, over the

constant stir and movement of the forest life. He didn't know that a

bird dog feels the same when it gets to the uplands where the quail are

hiding. He had no acquaintance with bird dogs whatever. He hadn't

remembered that he had qualities in common with them,--a long line of

ancestors who had lived by hunting.

Once, as they stopped the car to refill the radiator from a mountain

stream, Lennox looked at him with sudden curiosity. "You are getting a

thrill out of this, aren't you?" he asked wonderingly.

It was a curious tone. Perhaps it was a hopeful tone, too. He spoke as

if he hardly understood.

"A thrill!" Dan echoed. He spoke as a man speaks in the presence of some

great wonder. "Good Heavens, I never saw anything like it in my life."

"In this very stream," the mountaineer told him joyously, "you may

occasionally catch trout that weigh three pounds."

But as he got back into the car, the look of interest died out of

Lennox's eyes. Of course any man would be somewhat excited by his first

glimpse of the wilderness. It was not that he had inherited any of the

traits of his grandfather. It was absurd to hope that he had. And he

would soon get tired of the silences and want to go back to his cities.

He told his thought--that it would all soon grow old to him; and Dan

turned almost in anger.

"You don't know," he said. "I didn't know myself, how I would feel about

it. I'm never going to leave the hills again."

"You don't mean that."

"But I do." He tried to speak further, but he coughed instead. "But I

couldn't if I wanted to. That cough tells you why, I guess."

"You mean to say--" Silas Lennox turned in amazement. "You mean that

you're a--a goner? That you've given up hope of recovering?"

"That's the impression I meant to convey. I've got a little over four

months--though I don't see that I'm any weaker than I was when the

doctor said I had six months. Those four will take me all through the

fall and the early winter. And I hope you won't feel that you've been

imposed upon--to have a dying man on your hands."

"It isn't that." Silas Lennox threw his car into gear and started up the

long grade. And he drove clear to the top of it and into another glen

before he spoke again. Then he pointed to what looked to Dan like a

brown streak that melted into the thick brush. "That was a deer," he

said slowly. "Just a glimpse, but your grandfather could have got him

between the eyes. Most like as not, though, he'd have let him go. He

never killed except when he needed meat. But that--as you say--ain't the

impression I'm trying to convey."

He seemed to be groping for words.

"What is it, Mr. Lennox?" Dan asked.

"Instead of being sorry, I'm mighty glad you've come," Lennox told him.

"It's not that I expect you to be like your grandfather. You haven't had

his chance. But it's always the way of true men, the world over, to come

back to their own kind to die. That deer we just saw--he's your people,

and so are all these ranchers that grub their lives out of the

forests--they are your people too. The bears and the elk, and even the

porcupines. Though you likely won't care for 'em, it's almost as if they

were your grandfather's own folks. And you couldn't have pleased the old

man's old friends any better, or done more for his memory, than to come

back to his own land for your last days."

There were great depths of meaning in the simple words. There were

significances, such as the love that the mountain men have for their own

land, that came but dimly to Dan's perceptions. The words were strange,

yet Dan intuitively understood. It was as if a prodigal son had returned

at last, and although his birthright was squandered and he came only to

die, the people of his home would give him kindness and forgiveness,

even though they could not give him their respect.