THE WITNESS TREE
Dawn had never been spanked. Damon O’Neill had evaded that bitter duty.
She had never even been beaten at anything she undertook, and was like a
bull pup that has never lost a fight and thinks the world is his. Damon
was proud of her daring; he envied it, but he feared for it. The
experience of his young manhood had put a mark on him. Though of
physical courage he had plenty and to spare, he was cautious and
taciturn.
Damon was not afraid to trust Dawn to the mountain; he feared to trust
her to the world. The world had not treated him any too well. Yet he
knew that the day would come when Dawn too must undergo her trial. For
that reason he welcomed the coming of the Perrys to the mountain. For
more than a month now young Perry had been a visitor to the ranger’s
cabin, his daughter’s constant companion in her comings and goings.
Dawn bullied Jack shamelessly. She made sport of him, teasing, harrying,
showing him up. He took it all amiably enough, just as Shep took a poke
in the belly from her teasing foot while he lay with his four paws up in
the air.
“You’re so good at figures, Jack,” she bantered as they lolled on the
cabin steps one afternoon, “and I don’t pretend to like ’em. What’s the
rate of precipitation down into the Cascada when a cloudburst deposits
an inch of water in ten minutes?”
They were watching Hinray laboriously trace red rings on a map to
indicate to the Range Supervisor where the fire hazards were in their
section.
“Ask him instead what makes Chiny a near treeless waste?” Hinray cackled
spitefully. “Ask him w’y and w’ere Joseph said, ‘Every shepherd is an
abomination to the Egyptians.’ And w’y the Prophet Ezekiel balled out
the shepherds of Israel?
“‘Woe unto ye,’ he says, says he, ‘shepherds of Israel. Seemeth it a
small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye tread
down with yore feet the residoo of yore pastures?’”
“What are you balling me out for?” Jack complained. “Is it my fault
nothing grows on your ranges any more but cattle, and they’re dying?
Whose fault is it anyway?”
“Well, the old-timers is mostly to blame, and that’s a fact,” said
Hinray sternly. “They just spread out in the public domain and grazed it
all to death. Then when they got confined down to their own pastures
they just naturally let them git wore out too.”
“They’d like to make a Sahara of the whole state,” exclaimed Dawn hotly.
“Who was that French author Damon was reading out of last winter? He
said that the Sahara used to be well watered and well wooded, but it was
made a desert by the folly of man. Many parts of the Arabian and African
deserts, he said, too, would be covered by forests if man and domestic
animals were banished from them for a while. He says trees spring all
round the watercourses, just like they do down on the ranges here,
Hinray; you know. And grasses grow there, but the cattle of the Bedouins
chew ’em off before ever they can seed.”
“It’s sure the truth!” said Hinray. “Git me the Bible, Dawn.”
She darted into the cabin and came out with the worn old book. Hinray
opened at a marked spot and read. “Second Kings, Chapter Three: ‘Mesha,
King of Moab, was a sheepmaster, and rendered unto the King of Israel an
hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand rams with wool.’ How’s
that for a sizable herd? But wait!
“First Chronicles tells how Solomon, when he finished the Temple,
sacrificed twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand
head of sheep. So, Mister”—Hinray turned on Jack—“you see what expansion
brought that country to!”
“Help, help!” Jack shouted. “Here endeth the second lesson! Hinray reads
the almanac and quotes it to me from cover to cover, and then you both
quote the Bible. But how is it,” he added with a warming spark of
interest, “that the wild animals get off scot-free of these charges?
Don’t they eat their share of the range too? Or is that why the Rocky
Mountain sheep got killed off, because they were too tough for mutton
and they crowded the range?”
“Now you’re talkin’ sense, boy,” Hinray nodded approvingly. “You got
yore bean workin’. Fact is, though, wild animals _ain’t_ destructive.
Their grazin’ habits is conservative. Nature and experience must ’a’
learned ’em.”
Hinray had finished his work and was smoking his pipe, leaning back
against the cabin. Jack was no longer listening; he was idly absorbed in
watching Dawn. He could sit for an hour and just watch her. Dawn was
listening intently as she restrung her Indian leggings with new
deer-hide thongs.
“The Injins never saw the buffalo returnin’ south,” Hinray droned on.
“They used to think that they passed underground, or that a new lot come
out o’ the south every spring. Fact is, they went back by a different
route every autumn from the way they came up. No, they never harmed the
range none, and there was more buffalo, too, than they ever will be
cattle. An’ better eatin’. Men sure was foolish them days.—Looky here,
Dawn, there’s a bad spot, a sure trap for lightnin’ fire. Show yore paw,
will you?”
Hinray hung his unfinished map on the wall and was making ready to
depart. There was fire in the forest, and Damon was putting down a
rather bad blaze of uncertain origin. Dawn had been riding range on Hal
James’s cattle for the past two days and was resting today. Taking care
of James’s stock was an effort to make up, in part at least, for her
responsibility in increasing his losses from wolves and bear.
Undoubtedly it was her fault, she felt, that his stock had fallen prey
to the wild animals of her mountain. Pretty hard, she realized, with all
the range troubles below. She herded his cattle with wisdom and skill,
and with passionate fidelity to a task which was also a service to the
mountain. She rode early and late, spending hours at a time in the
saddle. Jack had gone with her several times. He rode much better now.
James’s cattle had thriven amazingly. They were fine stock and had
fattened on the excellent pasture. Nor had the range suffered; as the
season advanced Dawn had helped the herders move them up higher and
higher into the mountains till now they were in the high parks on the
upper Amarillo.
The weeks had dragged on and nothing had been heard of any action on the
Reservation survey. The question was whether the new survey was to
stand, or that made according to Ranger O’Neill’s interpretation of the
old boundaries. While the question whether the Reservation range should
be opened was held in abeyance through the summer months, Gershwin’s
cattle fattened along with Gonzales’ stock on the homesteader’s leased
range. It was range that he was entitled to if the cattle were his. But
they were not.
Damon O’Neill was not blind to this, but there was nothing that he could
do about it if his superiors could not. He would obey orders and save
his scalp. It was unthinkable, but there were ways in which he might be
removed! He would antagonize no one as he went about his duties.
Mr. Perry had arranged with the Predatory Animal Bureau to go on one of
their hunts, and had brought down a cat, much to his delight. But he
could not make a party of it and bring his friends out to share in the
sport. He’d have to arrange that for himself, he was told, so he went
ahead, preparing for a big hunting party that fall.
Damon and Dawn had twice ridden over to the great tree which Dawn had
been so sure was the Silverstake pine, inspecting it, debating whether
or not it was the boundary of the ancient grant. Damon’s survey brought
the boundary some hundred feet north of the tree and there he had
erected a stone witness, in default of a tree. Yet the lie of the land,
and some doubt as to the interpretation of the old description of the
grant, made him wonder. Damon’s reverence for the forest and for the
rules of its administration was such that he would not have felled the
suspected tree. Those things went so slowly. He had no idea how to press
them.
But there were women down in the capital who did. White women who had
become interested in the welfare of the Pueblo Indians; in their land
and water rights. A bad summer for the pueblos of the Rio Grande had
left many of them almost without crops. Before ever it reached their
ditches the little water remaining to them was diverted by white
settlers, Mexican squatters, homesteaders of both races.
But a voice had gone up out of the wilderness, and the power of press
and of public sympathy had brought the matter of this new invasion of
Indian rights very nearly to a head. Whose water was this? Whose land?
Meanwhile deep in the forest some great tree lifted its branches to the
blue sky and bore silent witness of the source of water and the hidden
wealth of the Rockies. Graven upon its heart wood was the testimony as
to who should be owner of their treasure. Dawn was sure that she would
find the witness tree.