TIMBER LINE
BY ALIDA SIMS MALKUS
AUTHOR OF “RAQUEL OF THE RANCH COUNTRY”
AND “THE DRAGON FLY OF ZUÑI”
Illustrated by Ruth King
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC., RAHWAY, N. J.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO SIBYL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TIMBER LINE
CHAPTER I
A CABIN ON THE CASCADA
Capped in snow, their flanks of felspar rock robed in glistening drifts,
the Coronado Peaks swept to towering altitudes above the dark green of
the forests. Keen, fresh, heady as wine, was the air in those high
places, and each minute crevasse, each ridge, was etched clearly in the
sparkling winter sunlight.
But there was no eye to see the glories outspread before these sister
queens of the Rockies. The eagles which soared above them through the
blue of summer had departed to lower altitudes with the first icy breath
of winter, and even now were nesting in canyon crags, where as early as
March their Spartan young would hatch. The grizzly of the Holy Ghost
would not stir from his deep cave and still deeper lethargy for another
month, and it was too far above timber line for the lobo and his
followers to find food.
The sun was sinking rapidly. Over the ridges a sharp light wind
whistled. But below in the forests there was a hush, deeper than the
hush of summer, for now there was no scurrying about of small creatures,
the hum of insect life was lacking, and even the trees slept.
Yet beneath the low branches of a cluster of fir trees a life-and-death
struggle was going on. A large wolf, gaunt beneath a splendid, tawny
coat, strove in silent agony, his lips twisted back from his white
tusks, to free himself from the icy steel thing that had held him all
day. He made not a sound to break the stillness. This was instinctive
caution, for so dulled with pain had his hearing become that he did not
even notice the approach of a human being.
On a ridge above the fir and spruce stand a figure had appeared, and now
stood outlined against the turquoise sky and snowy peaks; a girl,
dressed in furry woolens of white and green, snowshoes in hand. She
looked across the rim of the world and in a moment, as though a master
stage director had so managed, her figure was bathed in a rosy light
that changed the glacier-like heights above to flame-colored damask.
The lobo gnawed with concentrated fury at his imprisoned foot. The girl
had turned, poising a moment on the ridge before starting downward. A
long blue shadow was cast before her. With a wrench the wolf tore away
from the trap and without delay limped off on three feet, disappearing
among the boles of pine and fir. In the jaws of the trap dangled a large
bloody paw.
Now the sun sank behind the great peaks. It would be dark all too soon.
The girl stooped quickly to fasten on her snowshoes, then made toward
the darkening shelter of the spruce. A snowy ptarmigan, sole dweller on
those arctic heights since the red fox had captured his mate, fluttered
before her. Now she saw the gleam of the trap and the dark trickle of
blood staining the snow. She clasped her hands and caught her breath
with a gasp.
“Oh, oh! _Damn_, curse them! I knew it, I knew it!”
Kneeling down, the girl pulled at the trap’s trophy. The paw was caught
fast. She tried to open the formidable jaws of the thing, but it was
impossible. Only a steel bar wielded by a man’s strength could open it.
She rose to her feet, tears springing, and started off rapidly down the
mountain, making her way easily through the open forest and over meadows
where within a few weeks she would be picking alpine flowers.
For half a mile the girl sped lightly over the snow, her snowshoes
barely breaking the crust. Coming to a spot that was evidently familiar
she cast about for a moment, then in the dimming light pounced upon
another trap. It was cleverly concealed on the far side of a log and set
with a frozen hare for bait. With her forest staff she struck the trap
spring smartly. It clicked with an ugly snap which made her jump back.
Then she came close and stooped over it. Yes, it was sprung all right.
“There,” said she softly to herself and to the forest, “there’ll be
nothing more caught in _that_ trap.” A moment later she was again
darting through the trees. The increasing darkness urged her to greater
speed, but as she emerged from the gloom of the forest into a barren
open space the air was once more filled with rosy light. The afterglow
of the setting sun had commenced at the foot of the mountain and was
slowly creeping upward. The world seemed to palpitate electrically with
delicate colors, mauve, green, orchid, and the spotless snow reflected
and radiated the light.
The girl sped along the white crest, avoiding those stretches where
barren rock thrust forth. Her flying figure could scarcely have been
seen against the snow, but now and again it was silhouetted against a
background of somber pine, flashing from one point to another, scarf
whipping out behind.
A quarter of a mile away, on a hog’s-back running parallel to but lower
than the height which the girl was traveling, a man was scanning the far
slopes through a field glass. The figure darted across the radius of his
fixed gaze. With an exclamation he swept the slope until he caught the
moving object again. For a moment only he focused on the flashing
figure, for it disappeared over the crest and down toward the Santo
Spirito canyon. The man rubbed his lens impatiently and looked again.
“Am I seeing things?” he grumbled, half amused. “A flying wraith of the
mountains? Is it an ice maiden, or what?”
After all, who could it be, all alone, way up here in this wilderness?
He’d inquire down below. Garen Shepherd, a young irrigation engineer,
dug his spiked walking-stick into the treacherous surface and started
down the trail—an hour or so, and even the prolonged afterglow, the
amazing snow-light, would be gone. He had barely time to get back to the
canyon of the Amarillo and Benty’s Lodge, where he was staying.
Below, in the canyon of the Santo Spirito, it lacked but three minutes
of nightfall. When the dying afterglow reached a certain point the
canyon would be suddenly submerged in darkness. Damon O’Neill, the
forest ranger of the Coronado slopes, led his mare into the log stable
back of his cabin. He blanketed her against a bitter night, so bitter
that even the chatter of the Cascada, the noisy stream that flowed at
the bottom of the canyon, was sealed up and silenced in a prison of ice.
He buckled the straps deftly, patted the sorrel mare’s nose, and went
out, closing the door carefully behind him.
As he stood on the cabin steps, peering nervously about and gazing where
the upper mountain still glowed with light, the white figure for which
he was looking emerged from the spruce. With a shout and a few sliding
steps the girl reached the cabin just as the canyon was slipping into
night.
“Dawn! You just made it. Where’ve you been so late?”
“Snowshoeing up on the divide, Dad. It was glorious. Don’t worry. I keep
my eye on the time.” She was unstrapping her snowshoes, while her father
gathered an armful of wood from the pile beside the door. She hung the
shoes on a nail against the cabin, opened the door for her father, and
followed him inside. In a moment squares of light twinkled out from the
cabin windows. All about the little log house fir and pine rose like
clustered cathedral spires. All the universe was dark except for the far
stars—and for pairs of shining eyes that came and went through the
forest.
Inside the cabin it was warm and close. Damon kicked the logs smoldering
in the wide stone fireplace and threw on light fuel till they blazed
high. In a small kitchen adjoining the one big living-room a little
cook-stove gave out waves of warmth and the smell of supper, of spruce
pitch and resin burning, of wet woolen things drying.
Dawn had taken off her outer wraps and her heavy boots. She slipped into
felt house shoes and an old green sweater and skirt. She hurried about
laying the table, filling the coffee pot, and handing her father a fresh
towel after his noisy ablutions. The cabin was very pleasant, the main
room long, and eighteen or twenty feet wide. Against the log walls hung
heavy Indian rugs, but so snug and well built was Damon O’Neill’s cabin
that the rugs never swelled with drafts, no matter how the wind might
howl outside. The floors too were strewn with well-worn Navajo blankets.
The furniture was rough, made by hand—before the fire a rustic seat, a
long table with two benches at one side, some chairs, a chest, a wood
box at the other, and five shelves of worn books.
Dawn turned the wick lower in the kerosene lamp and they sat down to
supper; beans and chili, brown bread and steaming canned tomatoes,
stewed apricots deluged with canned cream. They ate in silence. Damon
O’Neill seemed tired, but Dawn appeared not to notice it, though she
cast him covert glances. When he took his place before the fire she came
as usual and sat on a little hassock at his knee. He drew her head down
and puffed at his briar pipe in contentment, putting his stockinged feet
on top of Shep, the white collie that slept before the fire.
“You tired, Damon?”
“No. Just sleepy from the cold. Thinkin’ about a young lady I know,
too.” He patted the girl’s tousled auburn hair, his brows knitting.
“What’s troublin’ you, Dawn? Lonesome? Well, I guess it’ll be school for
you next year, Missie.”
“School! Who should I be lonesome for when I’ve got you for company! I
tell you, I’m mad. Daddy, if you must know. You’d find it out anyway;
you always do. I found another lobo’s paw in a trap this afternoon. Up
on the divide. Not very far below timber line.”
Damon O’Neill shook his head in annoyance. He did not answer for a few
moments.
“Too bad. Hate to see it. It’s all wrong,” he said. “But these predatory
animal fellows’ve got their orders. It’s been a hard winter for the
stockmen, and it’s going to be a harder summer down below. They think
they had it bad last year, but,” he predicted, “it was nothing compared
to what they’re going to get.”
“You think there’s going to be another drouth, Damon?” queried Dawn
anxiously.
“Drouth? No. And that would never affect us up here to amount to
anything. The forest will always draw its own water, Dawn, never forget
that. But down below it’s different. Yet as a matter of fact,” he went
on, “for the past seven years they’ve had more rainfall in this country
than for a quarter century past.
“But there’ll be little grass just the same. Dust will fly in their
pastures and the folks down below will be bleating, ‘Drouth, drouth.’
They’ve not sowed; so they can’t reap. They’re greedy, those fellows,
but can’t see it. Overstocked, that’s the trouble; the range eaten up,
and cattle dying for lack of food. And what with losses from the wolves
and lions—” Damon puffed for a while silently.
“And so they’re killing off all the wild things that interfere with
cattle or eat anything cattle might eat.” Dawn shuddered. “I’d feel
awful if they ever caught the old Custer wolf. They’d never get him to
take poison bait, would they, Damon? He’s too smart, isn’t he? He
wouldn’t even let one of his pack touch poison bait, would he? If they
were starving he wouldn’t take a chance.”
“I guess that’s right,” agreed her father. “He knows about traps too.
Can smell one under a snow drift. He’s got almost human reasoning, that
lobo.”
“I reckon that couldn’t have been his paw in the trap this afternoon
then?”
“Not likely. And old Grizzly”—Damon leaned his head contentedly against
the balsam pillow on the chair’s back—“that bear can spring a trap
easier than a man. Hinray Dorsay claims he crept up on the bear one
time. It was traveling along through light feathery snow and its foot
struck the outer rim of a trap. It stopped, then dainty and cunning as
if he’d thought it out, struck straight at the spring—”
“And?” Dawn prompted breathlessly, although she had heard the tale
twenty times before from old Hinray himself.
“And sprung the teeth of the trap, click!”
The white collie whimpered and yelped softly in his sleep before the
fire, wrapped in primeval visions of the chase. Outside a far, lone wail
came up the canyon.
“But, Dad,” Dawn pressed, “can’t the Government see that the big animals
wouldn’t kill hardly any stock if they had enough of the small game
they’re used to?”
“The scheme of Nature is all upset,” Damon replied slowly, “and it’s
going to take some time to straighten it out again. They never can get
back to where they were. But that’s to be expected to a certain extent
when man enters into the scheme.—It’s hard for us of the forest to stick
up for the animals when they pile up such records as the Magdalena
wolf’s a few summers ago. Remember?”
Dawn nodded. “Seventy-two sheep killed in two weeks. A hundred and fifty
head of cattle in six months.”
“Yet we need the animals.” Damon shook his head. “We need them all here
in the forest, and in the end only harm can come, I believe, from this
business of killing off all one kind of creature and favoring another.
They never learned a thing from the slaughter of the passenger pigeon,
though when they’d wiped ’em clean out there came a hemlock blight that
near destroyed hundreds of miles of forests.
“We kill off vultures, eagles, hawks and goshawks, cat, wolf, and lion,
and leave the range free for rabbits to breed, and gophers, and prairie
dogs to gnaw at roots, and all the grain-eatin’ creatures to fill their
craws with seed for next year’s range.—That’s not going to better
Nature’s scheme of things. No, sir, not yet awhile.” Damon O’Neill was
off on his favorite topic, but Dawn remembered something that she had
been saving up to tell him.
“Damon, what do you think? I’ve found the great pine of the Silverstake.
No, let me tell you about it. You know that forty where McGuire’s
homestead stops? Follow that ridge up about a mile to where it faults;
it drops there maybe twenty-five feet. But the same vein shows up in a
ledge that rises several hundred feet away.” Dawn had turned round on
her hassock to face her father, her eyes round with excitement. “The
ledge is broad, tilted—and the same stratum runs right through it, all
right. It’s the mother vein, a part of the main mountain, I’m sure.”
“Vein of granite?” Damon reached out to tweak Dawn’s ear. She paid no
heed, brushing him off.
“And it’s on a corner of the spot you always said was the old survey
boundary of the Indian Reservation grant. The Little Falls of the Holy
Ghost come out of the mountain not far above it and a little inside the
line. And, Father, _I_ know where it comes from! I’ve seen the source!”
She sat back solemnly to note the effect on her father.
Damon opened his eyes wide, but it was only to mock her. He laughed for
the first time that week. “I might have known you’d get up to the source
some day. Oh, last summer, was it? Why didn’t you tell me then? I guess
there’s not half a dozen rangers, including myself, ever made the climb;
and no one else except the Pueblo Indians from down below fifteen or
twenty miles.
“But what has that to do with the Silverstake, and what makes you think
you’ve located the old tree?”
“Because, Daddy, it was when I was standing by the pool where the water
seems to gush out of the mountain that I first saw the white quartz of
the faulted vein where it cropped up along the mountain side. I thought
to myself then, ‘Here’s where the Indians must have stood and seen that
vein beneath them, and then found silver.’ I was trying to fix it in my
mind so that I could find that ledge with the quartz vein again when I
came down. That was a hard job.” Damon nodded sympathetically. “But I
couldn’t fix on any landmark.
“Then today it just came to me. I was standing on the end of that ridge
where it faults, looking away over the mountain side, following the
ridge along, because the snow sticking to it outlined it almost like the
quartz had from above—though I hadn’t thought much about it since
summer—and suddenly my eyes picked out a great tree, higher than all the
rest, a pine among fir and hemlock. It stood out from the rest, it was
so green. _They_ were covered with snow, but the top branches of this
big pine didn’t hold any. It was an old tree, Damon. Could it be the
Silverstake?”
“Might be,” replied Damon. “It’s been sixty, seventy-five years, since
that pine was blazed, according to the old survey report. They say it
bore a ‘witness’ of the old Indian grant, and of the location of an old
claim on the Silverstake, beneath. There’s a record in the archives of
the state that speaks of the Reservation witness too.
“But no one thought of it for fifty years. Then this business came up
about the water rights of the Pueblos, and their Reservation boundaries.
The attorney representing them was a damn clever scoundrel that was at
the same time representin’ a political gang. This gang wanted to take
over the Reservation for themselves, ‘throw it open for the use of the
citizens of the state,’ meanin’ themselves. The attorney got a resurvey
made. He got a measure introduced openin’ up the Indian Reservation to
the public; but the new boundaries never were accepted, so fortunately
that held them up for a while.
“It’s bein’ contested now. The Indians didn’t know about it at first,
nor did the Forest Service. You remember, dear. They couldn’t find any
witness stake or tree that marked the survey of the original grant. No
trace. And how could they? It might have been struck by lightnin’, or
blown over, or possibly cut down.
“Anyway, it’s always remained a mystery, that old blaze. It’s a pity,
too”—Damon knocked the ashes out of his pipe preparatory to turning in
for the night—“because I staked me a claim up there. You were a little
thing not more than four or five years old. You never heard me speak of
it? Well, no one else has either. Scotch enough in me for that!” Damon
chuckled.
“Well, that’s it. Right inside the forty, in the National Forest
Reservation, that being open to any one. I was looking to verify the
Indians’ original grant, and I found me a silver mine. Much good is it
likely to do me!
“But to this day I’d swear there was silver ore in that quartz. I got a
fair sample out of the bed of the stream below the falls a way. Must
have washed down from an outcropping of the vein above. But there was no
use doing anything with it; I hadn’t the money or the time for
prospecting, and then the uncertainty as to the claim came up, and I
knew if I turned it over to the Pueblos it would likely be grabbed from
them.
“I had the sample assayed and dreamed about it awhile—what we’d do when
you got to be a big girl, with the proceeds from our mine.” He laughed a
bit wryly. “I never told any one about it. Thought I might as well get
the _right_ location myself. I couldn’t even find the outcropping on the
exposed vein, though. I’m no miner. I’m a forester.”
“What would we do if we had a mine?” Dawn mused. “I’d get Whitey Shep a
silver-studded collar, and Piñon a silver-mounted Cordoba leather
saddle, and you that set of books you’ve never got and would have time
to read.” Dawn laughed happily. “And we’d go to the Canadian woods, and
to—”
“To bed, girl, to bed. It’s all of nine o’clock.” Damon rose abruptly
and turned toward the door. He lifted his hand awkwardly to brush a
sudden mist from his eyes. At times vague but nevertheless poignant
misgivings about his girl wrung him.
“We didn’t mount the blue columbine tonight, Damon.” Dawn reminded him
sleepily of her neglected studies. She still lolled before the fire, her
cheeks flushed, her eyes dreamy, her strong young body relaxed in the
heat. “I’ve three hundred specimens to mount. The alpine blossoms will
soon be coming; it will be spring before we know it.”
“That’s right,” Damon agreed in a cheerful tone. He was fumbling on the
shelf for his flashlight. “We got talking, and no lessons. To tell the
truth I was tired. I was down at Benty’s cabin all day. One of the
Government trappers was there. He’s going the rounds of his traps in the
morning. And two of the engineers from the Irrigation Service. They’re
up looking over water sources, calculating snow depth, and how much
rainshed and snow water are likely to come down in the spring. The young
chap went up the mountain alone.”
“Oh, Damon—” Dawn sat up quickly—“why didn’t he stay here? Did you tell
him about me? Oh, Dad, it’s such fun to see some one once in a while! I
like those Irrigation men. They understand about forests and trees.”
“She wants company,” Damon thought. “Trees and animals, they’ve had to
take the place of folks to her.”
Out of the silence that surrounded the warm little cabin above the
Cascada sounded a sharp, eerie yapping. It was answered by a far and
mournful howling, a full-throated wolf song that rose and swelled. There
was a moment of utter quiet, broken only by the ticking of Damon’s wrist
watch. Then, just outside the cabin apparently, there came a sudden
barking.
“The coyotes are growing worse every winter, spite of everything,” Damon
said. “They’ve had to come up into the mountains for food. I’d better
get out to Little Sorrel. I should have put a new fastening on that
door. She might kick it down.” He took a burning stick from the
fireplace, and stepped outside, pulling his fur cap over his ears, but
not stopping for a blazer.
Dawn reluctantly pulled herself up from before the fire. She pushed
aside a thick Indian rug curtaining a doorway which led into her little
bedroom and looped it over a nail. In the cold room she undressed
quickly, knelt in her nightgown and bare feet a moment, then opened her
window a crack, fastened it by a stout iron hook, and sprang into bed.
Tomorrow she would look again for the Silverstake Pine. If her chestnut
pony’s foot was healed she would ride him. Perhaps they would meet the
engineer. In less than a minute she was asleep, deep in the long
dreamless slumber of mountain nights.
Damon O’Neill sat long before the fire. He came in from securing the
stable door, looked into his daughter’s room, saw that she was asleep,
and sank into his chair again.
A fine girl. What a puny little thing she’d been when he brought her to
the mountains. “Take her out west,” the clinic specialist had said.
“Sunshine, altitude.” This was the way he’d found. Study, a year of
practical training, and Damon O’Neill emerged a forest ranger.
Before he could get the baby up here into the sunshine she had been
starving herself, clenching her tiny teeth on the spoon forced between
her lips. It was the thought of all that, everything that had happened
before and after his wife’s death, that had kept him up here. Two
wretched years in the east, while his wife was dying of tuberculosis,
had filled him with a hatred of cities. Poverty and want had left him
with a deep-seated fear of ever being without money in the bank. The
mountains had given him a life that was worth living, and security.
“I’ll stick by the mountain,” he swore. “It saved Dawn for me, and a
forest full of trees is better company than most cities full o’ humans.
Folks may say I’m not doing right by her, but she’s to go to school a
year on the money in the bank, some of it, an’ the rest shall be saved
for her.”
Damon reached deep into his pocket and pulled out a chunk of white
quartz. A bright silvery vein ran through it; a pretty thing.
“By Golly, if Dawn ever _did_ find the Silverstake witness tree!”