THE NYMPH AND THE SHEPHERDS
Two veterans of the Cordilleran slopes could have borne witness to the
changes that the coming of white men had wrought in a century. One was a
great yellow pine whose growth-rings would have shown that it had been a
sapling long before the first Spaniards came. The pine was blasted now,
its once towering crown leveled almost to the height of the trees about
it. Only its girth was evidence of what a mighty tree the yellow pine
had been.
The other veteran was a golden eagle whose years were close to the
century mark. In his youth he had soared above endless plains that were
as green and undulating as the far-off ocean. Now they were a desert all
the year. As the green retreated the eagle too retreated farther and
farther into the mountains. Yet even here food had grown somewhat scarce
of late. And the eagle’s pinions were becoming less powerful with every
season. He could no longer soar for hours at a time hundreds of feet
above the peaks, poising almost motionless in the sky, sailing without a
wing-beat down over blue abysses.
Now he often perched upon the great blasted tree. It stood near falling
water on a sunny slope that looked up to the Coronado Peaks, unchanging,
familiar.
Time and again Dawn had passed within a few hundred feet of the great
tree without knowing it. Time and again the golden eagle had cast a
fleeting shadow over Dawn’s trail and more often than not she had
thought it a cloud.
As spring thawed the slopes she tried again to find the Silverstake pine
and again she visited the source above the waterfall. Dawn could never
have explained how much the spot meant to her. Nor could any one who had
not her love for the mountain have understood. This spot, unconquered
for so long! It was hers by right of discovery. She shared old secrets
long guarded by the Indians.
But now the spring ranges were opening up, and Dawn was very busy
helping Damon. She came in one day after a long morning’s ride to
far-lying western pastures to find old Hinray Dorsay, their friend, and
one of the most faithful of the rangers, seated on the steps of the
aspen log cabin, combing his long mustaches. There was trouble on the
range—trespassing before the pastures were in condition. Hinray’s
knowledge was wide and infinitely practical, drawn from Bible and
almanac, experience and government bulletins.
Goats had eaten the bark off the young trees on a whole hillside, Dawn
told him. “The Rocky Mountain sheep never did that, did they, Hinray?”
she asked. “But then they were native dwellers in the mountains.”
“No,” Hinray pronounced as he moved from the cabin steps to a place in
the sun, “no, goats ain’t indignant to these mount’ns, and trees is.
Consequence, the two don’t git along.”
Dawn’s ready laughter melted the wrath with which she had been
complaining to the old ranger of the invasion of the forest. “Well,” she
gasped, “we’re indignant, if the goats aren’t, I guess! Oh, Hinray,
you’re funny, and smart.”
Hinray appeared gratified. “Take stock,” he went on; “cattle stock, I
mean. They trim the grass and let the young trees alone. I told
Superintendent what would happen iffen he gave a permit to Gonzales to
graze them goats and sheep on the range. Well, I guess you’ve saw Bald
Mountain meadow this spring?”
Dawn nodded. “Daddy’s furious. But that isn’t the worst. Gonzales and
his herders simply will not keep in their own pasture. They roam all
over the mountain. If I find ’em outside that fence again—” She struck
her quirt through the air with sudden fury at the desecration.
Hinray nodded and pointed a horny forefinger over her shoulder. Dawn
sprang to her feet and looked up. On the trail above them a rider
appeared. He waved before he was hidden by the trees.
“It’s Daddy!” Eagerness and pleasure erased her momentary passion. She
stood in the sun, her thick short hair touched with golden light. Hinray
looked fondly and admiringly at the robust young figure. “Soople as a
mountain cat,” he thought; “sinewy, yet purty as a tiger lily.”
“A big gal for fifteen,” he said aloud. “Seems like yestiddy, Dawn, that
your father brought you up to the Santo Spirito. Never thought you’d
take hold. Sickly as a spruce seedlin’ transplanted in August. Used to
lay out in the sun right where yore paw’d set you; never seemed to want
to move. All eyes, yore teeny hands as trassparent.” He reminisced, not
thinking whether Dawn heard him or not. But she came and sat down on the
log beside the grizzled ranger.
“I don’t even remember, Hinray. I don’t seem to remember anything ever
but being up here. Yet I was three years old when we came. Tell me about
Dad. Is he just the same?” She looked up to where the trail, which lost
itself for a way through an aspen grove, reappeared on the last stretch
down to the cabin.
“Just the same?” Hinray pulled out his pipe and stuffed it critically.
“Don’t know as he’s any different really. He’s easier in the heart,
that’s plain. He was awful silent and seemed like he had a grouch
against some one in those days. But then, no wonder.
“He had a old Mexican señora to mind you all day while he was away; but
he found the old woman wanted to chew up yore food herself for you, like
a pigeon does for its young. He had a hard time dissuadin’ her. After
that he tried to tend to feedin’ you hisself—out o’ a book. Howsoever
that might ’a’ been, you started to thrive with the old señora and grew
so fat you useter hammer with a spoon on the little table I made you,
for more food.
“I recollect comin’ in one day when you was about six years old and
findin’ you keepin’ house for yore paw. Dryin’ dishes with an apron on,
stirrin’ the oatmeal so’s it wouldn’t scorch.”
“Yo-ho, yo-hoo,” Damon O’Neill’s greeting rang out as he came at a trot
down the little clearing toward the cabin on the Rio Cascada. Dawn
shouted and ran to meet him, catching a stirrup and running along beside
the sorrel mare. Damon swung down, pulled Dawn to him, and kissed her.
“Dinner ready?” He was unsaddling the mare and would turn her loose to
graze.
“Yes,” Dawn said as they went into the cabin, whither Hinray had
preceded them. “Hinray got it, that’s why. He came just in time to make
the biscuits. I was making them, honestly, Damon. But Hinray said he’d
rather make ’em himself than eat mine!”
“Dawn sot the table, though,” Hinray testified, coming in from the
kitchen with a plate of smoking biscuits and a pan of steaming potatoes.
“And it sure does a rough-and-ready ranger good to set to a decent
civilized table once in a while. Specially after bein’ out cruisin’ or
reconnoitrin’. I like a femin-ine touch,“ he complimented.
As a matter of fact the cabin was wholly masculine. Boots, spurs, lay
around the floor; yet it was Damon, not Dawn, who made Shep gnaw his
bones outside. Pipes and bags of tobacco were laid where convenient, but
coats and sweaters were hung neatly against the wall, and on a wide
space above a large desk hung a map of the Reservation, a map colored in
sections and studded with many pegs.
Hinray could be heard busy with the wash-basin, after which he carefully
combed his long, sandy mustaches and the one upstanding lock on the top
of his bald head. Then they sat down. Spring had come, and there were
Mariposa lilies in the center of the table. It was covered with a pale
yellow oilcloth much admired by Hinray, who speared his boiled potatoes
reverently after Dawn had served herself.
“Glad it ain’t beans. Beans, beans, is all I get. I’ll take my starch in
potatoes and corn. By the way, Chief”—he turned toward Damon while he
rapidly halved and buttered half a dozen biscuits—“you seen how they’re
producin’ paper from corn stalks? That ought to go a long ways toward
easin’ up on the spruce and hemlock, eh?”
Damon nodded. He had been eating silently.
“It’s not cutting the timber that’s worrying me,” he said at length;
“it’s the damn range and grazing privilege. I don’t know what’s come
over these fellows. There’s a new bunch of cattle over on the Corona.
Heard about it this morning from one of the campers down below and rode
over, but they’d moved to the other side of the canyon.
“I’ve had no word from headquarters nor from the owners. Not a sign of a
grazing permit. I’m going over in the morning and demand the name of the
owners. I’ll probably have to put them off.
“McGuire is the right kind of homesteader,” Damon pursued. “His land is
his home, and we can give him as much rented winter range, and free
grazing too, as his stock calls for. He keeps his stock supplied with a
part of their winter feed, but Gonzales tries to get practically all his
range off the forest preserves. I’m convinced he’s not operating
entirely for himself.
“He can’t understand yet why he shouldn’t put a hundred head of cattle
on a pasture that’s got only enough range for twenty-five. Then he tried
to run in two hundred head early this spring while the little trout lily
and the bladderpod were still in bloom and before any of the wheat
grasses were more than an inch high, and what happened?”
“He lost fifteen head from young larkspur,” Dawn supplied significantly,
“and the foothill death-camas, which are worse poison of course,
especially in the early spring. And they cropped down the sprouting
mountain brome, the blue grass, and all the forage that should have come
to seed in June and July, and ground it into the earth before we
discovered them, so that there’ll be little or no crop this summer.
“Dad, did you ever find out what the plant was that poisoned that lower
range late last autumn?” Dawn had finished her dinner and was sitting on
a bench by the door, mending a hole in the toe of the stocking she had
on, holding her foot up conveniently as she talked. “Nothing like that
ever happened on that range before.”
“It was a late season,” Damon mused, “and frost had something to do with
altering the plant chemically. The plant simply produced something that
didn’t agree with the cattle. I took those poor Picuris Indians off that
range and gave them good pasture up above, free. They’re dependent
mainly on forest range, and on the water and drainage of the northwest
slopes, and if any homesteader has a right to what the forest has to
offer surely those Pueblos have. Though Gonzales raised an awful kick at
their getting free firewood and a few hundred feet of new roof-poles.
“They were certainly grateful; they are a fine lot, the Jemez and
Picuris fellows.”
“Mebbe some letter about that new stock might ’a’ bin in the mail this
morning,” said Hinray. “I heard that the little Mexican feller who’s
been carryin’ it up couldn’t get past the lower Cascada. It’s higher
even than usual.”
“That might be,” Damon assented, “but until I get orders over my head
I’m going after them. Dawn, you like to ride over to Gonzales’ pasture
after dinner and see how he’s behavin’? I can’t go this afternoon. I
hear there’s goats coming up sometime this week.”
“Sure.” Dawn nodded emphatically, the light of battle in her eye. This
was a great game. “Goats! Piñon can smell ’em a mile.”
“How come you call that horse o’ yours ‘Little Nut,’ Piñon?” asked
Hinray. “He’s as well growed as any mountain horse I ever see.”
“Because when we first saw him, down in Benty’s corral,” Dawn explained,
“he was as little and sweet as a pine nut. The prettiest little colt I
ever saw—wasn’t he, Damon?—frisking around. I wanted him so badly I was
afraid to speak of it for fear Dad wouldn’t say yes, or that Benty had
already sold him to some one else, or that maybe he would not want to
part with him himself. I couldn’t sleep all that night thinking,
‘Benty’ll never, never sell him, never in this world. I wouldn’t if he
was mine.’
“But the next day we went back, and I rid him—yes, I know, Dad; ‘rode,’
then. He was less’n a year old. And Benty said yes. Then Dad gave him to
me for my tenth birthday. So we grew up together. He taught me how to
swim, didn’t you, honey?” The sound of hoofs daintily placed came from
the doorway. A chestnut pony put his head, a surprisingly shapely and
beautiful head, in through the door.
Dawn swept the dinner dishes to the kitchen table, covered them with a
cloth. She seized her old brown felt hat and was outside in a moment,
saddling Piñon. She vaulted into the saddle from the stoop, the motion
seeming to sweep both horse and rider around and up the trail.
Damon grinned. “Quick work. She’s been a wonderful help to me this
spring and summer. Deserves an assistant’s billet. This range trespass
business is getting my goat—but not the other fellow’s!” O’Neill smiled
feebly at the jest. “Seriously, Hinray, there’s something queer about
it.
“There’s so much work to be done this spring. There’s a bad fire-trap in
that half-dead timber on Rocky Canyon Point. And orders last month to
verify that survey of last summer that cuts into the Indian Reservation.
Do you know, Hinray, I’ve gone over that forty half a dozen times and
always come out the same. I come within two feet of the old survey of
the original Reservation grant.”
“Tree there?” Hinray asked with raised eyebrows.
“Blazed witness, you mean? No,” Damon O’Neill replied slowly. “No, that
secret, and one of my own, are hidden in the forest, Hinray. In the
heart of one tree on the whole mountain.”
“And it’s a shame,” Hinray nodded, “because I heard when I came up from
the city that politics was surely going to open up these mount’ins an’
their perquisites to one gang, ’stead of what’s lawful to whosoever
applies first for homestead, timber or range. Iffen we could only find
the old blazed tree!”
“Dawn thought she had found it last winter,” Damon answered quietly,
“and when I went out with her a few days later the snow had melted in a
sudden thaw and we couldn’t pick it out; everything was green. Last
month I went over the ground and thought I located it—a great yellow
pine. Cut into her?” Damon shrugged. “We’ve orders not to touch a stick
of timber on the entire slope there till the boundary matter’s decided.”
“And the spruce beetle is got into the west slope too,” was Hinray’s
doleful rejoinder by way of commiseration. “First time I’ve saw it up
here.” He puffed a moment, then took out his pipe, shook it carefully,
and remarked with embarrassment, “But it ain’t about the spruce beetle’s
I’m worrying. I reckon I ought to tell you, Chief, that the animal
fellers, Predit’ry Bureau, you know, are hintin’ that we’re causin’ them
some trouble up here. ‘Stead of coöperatin’.”
Damon noted that Hinray loyally said “we.” “What do you mean, Hinray?”
he asked. “That’s either a serious charge or it’s nothing.”
“Claims he don’t get results trappin’ and exterminatin’ like he should,”
Hinray explained apologetically. In his embarrassment he took out his
pocket comb and began combing his mustaches. “Says his poison baits is
somehow removed and his traps is sprung.”
“Nonsense!” Damon disposed of the charge briskly. “Impossible! I’ll
consider such a thing when we hear about it officially, Hinray.” Then
fearing that Hinray might feel his information had been too lightly
received, he added, “I’ve known bear to drag bait off before eating it,
and this may be one of the cases where some remarkable lobo has sprung a
trap.
“Those fellows take themselves very seriously, Hinray. Of course we
coöperate loyally. Though the Creator alone knows I hate to see the
animals go! They’ve had to annihilate all the little beasties that used
to feed the wolf and coyote and bear, and have you noticed, Hinray, what
a pest those little fellows, the prairie dogs, the squirrels, gophers,
all seed-eaters, got to be when they weren’t kept down naturally? Seed
destroyed, bark eaten.”
“Sure,” assented Hinray gloomily, “and now they’re gone, some other
pest’ll follow. They’s an awful lot of life in the forest that the
laboratory ain’t taken account of yet, but Nature knew how to keep ’em
down.”
“Well, so long, Hinray. I have to get back and complete my map tonight;
timber estimate, fire hazards, burned-over areas, the best site for an
auto camp on the lower branch of the Amarillo.”
“Them’s more’n ranger’s duties, Damon,” said Hinray warmly; “you’ll be
gettin’ a supervisor’s diploma.”
Damon flushed and shook his head. “I don’t seek any office work, Hinray.
I’m not aiming to get away from the forest. I wouldn’t change a saddle
for a swivel chair or a throne.”
Hinray nodded. “I’ll be off.” He picked up pack and saddle bags, got his
horse that grazed near, and rode away.
Dawn was riding up the trail to the Corona meadows. Piñon stepped
jauntily. Whitey bounded ahead, to one side, and around them. Now and
again the collie would leap to the chestnut pony’s back and balance on
the saddle before his mistress.
Dawn was singing lustily, with a sweet boyish voice. It was spring,
early June in the Rockies, just three months since she had floundered
through the drifts, or swept over the frozen summits on her snowshoes.
The forest still bore the bright, varnished look of new buds, and shiny
baby leaves, unsullied, untouched by bug or blight. The spruce wore two
ravishing shades of green—the silvered bluish color that distinguishes
it from the other trees of the forest, and the light leaf-green of its
new tips.
The trail that Dawn followed was steep but unusually smooth, a well-made
path built by her father and Hinray Dorsay. She was on a mission that
suited her: to guard the mountain meadows. She came to the top of the
trail and reached a level path winding through an aspen glade, where
brilliant bits of darting color proved to be hummingbirds, and the
mountain bluebirds flitted like detached bits of sky. The spotted twin
fawns of the rare white-tailed doe held motionless within their laurel
covert. In a cave’s mouth a pair of lion cubs tussled in the sun,
noiselessly; but the cave where each year two grizzly cubs had rolled
was still more silent. Scraps of hide and a few bones near the entrance
where the cubs had whined for two days and nights, growing hungrier and
hungrier, told Dawn their fate.
The brilliant Rocky Mountain woodpecker and the golden-crowned kinglet
flashed through the trees. Delicate fern uncurled in the little copses
and meadows which Piñon’s feet threaded daintily. Bluets and bloodroot,
late anemone, jeweled the fine grass and the brink of the torrential
streamlet. It was a fairy land uplifted to the sky. The tips of its
pointed firs were often in the clouds.
Dawn greeted each old acquaintance joyfully. The young leaves danced and
trembled on the trees, so that the air seemed in an ecstasy of movement.
From the berry bushes the warbling vireo lifted his voice, the
bright-throated scarlet tanager dallied with his golden-breasted mate.
Soon they would be on the wing to lower climes, but for this brief
season the enchantment of the aspen grove was theirs.
Now the copse was behind Dawn and she had still higher to climb. She was
above the heavy forest, and the barren mountain thrust through before
her. The trail dropped to a narrow shelf which skirted the mountain.
Above her the shallow-rooted hemlock found precarious hold in the
fissures of rock and on the thinly covered surfaces. Below, the mountain
fell away into a vast valley which was only a cup in the system of the
great range.
The trail wound up through a dark and heavy rim of trees that stopped
abruptly: timber line. Dawn, Piñon, and the collie traversed the flat
rocky height silently, solemnly, and it was not till they dropped down
and down, over rough going for even a mountain pony, and emerged on a
sunny crest, that Whitey’s tail again wagged and Piñon frisked. Below
them lay the meadow of the Corona. Dawn gasped. It was crowded with
white stock.
“Goats!”
Who had put goats up here? This was what Dad had heard of. Could such a
permit have been allowed over his head? He himself would never hear of
opening up this part of the range, so far outside the Gonzales’ pasture,
with its new and tender growth, so carefully guarded since the terrible
fire six years ago.
“It can’t be Gonzales. He hasn’t that many goats, and we would have
heard if he had bought goats. It must be some newcomer. Well, here’s
where they move on! Come on, Piñon, Whitey, go get ’em!”
With a shout she was racing down the slopes, her knees pressing close
Piñon’s warm, shiny sides. The horse took the steeps superbly. When a
fissure yawned suddenly in the earth before them he took that too
without hesitation, as readily as a bird the air, sailing across a
ten-foot jump all in his stride.
Below them the goats were beginning already to run, baa-ing nervously,
trampling one another, climbing into trees, up on rocks. There were
perhaps two hundred of them, and no shepherd was about. Dawn rode back
and forth around their flanks, trying to turn their heads, get them
started in the other direction. Whitey was barking back and forth,
nipping heels here and there.
“Herd them, Whitey, herd them! Chase ’em out, Whitey! Attaboy!”
The collie was delighted and raced forward and back across one end while
Dawn and Piñon herded the other. In five minutes the goats had turned
their beards and were persuaded to advance down the mountain in the
opposite direction, amidst a bleating and ma-aaa-ing that filled the
air.
As they fled they left the sloping meadow a pulp behind them. The
mountain grass that remained uneaten was ground into the soft rich
earth; not a flower starred the once lovely lawn; the young trees were
almost stripped of leaves and even of bark as high as a grown goat could
reach. A swarm of locust might have swept it, save that then the earth
would not have been plowed up by the hundreds of sharp little hoofs.
Last autumn Dawn had come upon this meadow full of piles of poisoned
prairie dogs and gophers, their soft, limp little bodies heaped five and
six feet high. This devastation was even worse. What would happen now
was that the rainfalls would furrow through this soil and tear their way
down the eastern slopes to cut old Johnny Marston’s homestead crops to
ribbons and then dry up in the desert. Dad had described it all too
often. And hadn’t they _seen_?
She rode full tilt after the routed flocks. The slopes over which they
retreated were as bad as the meadow. There was no shepherd about. The
flocks had been turned loose to go where they would. Steadily,
persistently, Piñon and the white collie pressed back and forth behind
the bleating trespassers. Up over a slope, where the vegetation changed
to a sparse undergrowth of cedar, down through tall pine, they retreated
at least a mile, when they came to a fence, the pasture. The gate was
down. Outrage! The bearded old billy and the bellwethers went scurrying
through, assisted by Shep, while Dawn pelted the stragglers, still
snatching at distracting leaves, with the stones which she had loaded
into her saddle pouch.
When the last goat had passed through the gate she rode in, dismounted,
and was pushing it to when two herders, a Mexican man and boy, came
riding through the pines from the west end of the pasture.
“What you do?” the man demanded angrily. “What business herding the
goats?”
“They’re out of pasture, and you know it. You work for Gonzales? No? For
whom then? _Quien?_ Well, you’d better know!” Dawn grew more and more
defiant. “That pasture above is ruined. Little you care, though. It is
_not open for grazing. Sabe?_”
She had drawn near to Piñon and now mounted quickly. The Mexican herders
sat on their horses facing her, silently, inimically. Suddenly the man
dismounted and walked quickly toward the gate. Quick as a flash Dawn
wheeled Piñon and reached the gate with a bound. She stooped and passed
about the posts the stout chain that dangled there, endeavoring to
fasten it with a padlock. Her fingers trembled so that she could not
adjust the lock.
The Mexican broke into a run, yelling. He was cursing and threatening
her. Dawn struggled to slip the padlock through the links and snapped it
to just as the Mexican reached out to it. Digging her heels into Piñon’s
belly Dawn tore down the slope with Whitey a lap ahead. The two herders
regained their horses and were close upon her heels.
The enclosure was fenced right down to the shores of a little mountain
lake. There was no way of getting out of the pasture except to jump the
fence, which the herders might also do. As there were two of them they
might cut off her retreat. That wouldn’t be exactly disastrous—she could
throw away the key to the padlock, which she still carried; but it would
be ignominious, and the possibility did not enter into Dawn’s plans.
Piñon had outdistanced the other horses and now emerged from a fringe of
underbrush that skirted Snow Lake on its eastern shore. The bank was so
steep that the chestnut pony was sliding on all fours. Dawn pulled up
his head and held him in for a moment while she examined the shore. Just
as the goat herders broke through the bushes, scrambling afoot and
flinging imprecation ahead of them, she pressed her heels into the
pony’s flanks and gave him his head.
Without a moment’s hesitation he plunged into the cold water, swimming
easily, head and neck outstretched. There was nothing but silence from
the shore they left behind them. The icy little lake, fed by melting
snows, the natives regarded with superstition and fear. Dawn could feel
the sharp cold of the water even through her oiled boots. The collie had
lingered a moment on the shelving shore. Now, with a look of
resignation, he plunged in after them.
To a young man sitting on the far side of the lake this drama presented
a striking picture. The dark green of the forests had parted for a nymph
in fawn color, astride a sleek dark horse, and a bounding white shepherd
dog, whose sharp barking came startlingly over the water.
The young man watched them emerge from the shadow cast by forest and
peak upon the mirroring lake, and move silently through placid sapphire
waters, disturbing them only with the ribbon-like ripples that flowed
from Piñon’s neck.
Garen Shepherd was fascinated. Now he remembered the white figure flying
over the snow last winter! The pony and rider were already near the
bank. The chestnut rose up out of the water suddenly as his feet touched
bottom. He lost the treacherous footing, submerged, and rose again.
Emerging on a tiny, white-pebbled beach, he stood politely while his
rider slipped from his dripping neck. Her laughter echoed with a thin
clarity across the tiny lake and back again, to the discomfiture of the
outrun, outwitted men on the other shore.
Dog and horse were shaking themselves efficiently, and the girl
retreated to the rock. She almost stumbled over Garen Shepherd, who had
risen, hat in hand, pipe removed from his mouth, smiling broadly. She
had not seen him, and was more taken aback by this encounter than she
had been by that with the trespassing herders.
“Who are you?” Dawn demanded, almost panic-stricken.