THANKSGIVING
“Well, if I’m not going to school this winter I might as well be busy.”
Dawn was pecking at the typewriter, copying botanical notes. Her school
books were spread on the long bare table around her; a fire was burning
in the fireplace. Frost had already touched the aspens, turning them
into little silver trees with golden leaves. The mountain side was a
glory of yellow and copper.
Hal Benty sat on the swing seat and ate piñons contentedly. “Gee, I’m
glad we live up here, Dawn. Folks down in town are havin’ an awful time.
My aunt’s husband is a butcher and now that meat’s so cheap he says you
can’t give it away. Nobody will buy it. They’re awful poor.”
“Did your ma’s summer boarders all pay up?” Dawn questioned
sympathetically.
Hal shook his head gloomily. “Some of ’em had to borrow money from her
to get back to town. She figgered it would be cheaper to let ’em go than
to keep ’em and feed ’em. So they went. Never have heard from them two
boys that was the cause of the fire creepin’ up on me.”
“Oh, you will, I think,” Dawn consoled. “They were good kids. They’re
just broke. When they get some money they’ll remember your mother. How
about the Perrys?”
“Oh, yes, they settled up nearly everything before they left. Perry sent
Ma a check for the last week’s balance, the eggs and canned goods, after
they got back. Say, that reminds me. Do you ever hear from Jack Perry?”
Hal put his question slyly, he thought. In fact he had been leading up
to it all afternoon. He had arrived at the stage where he got red in the
face and grinned foolishly at the least provocation in Dawn’s presence.
Dawn did not answer. Hal went on, “That reminds me, Dawn, here’s a
letter from Kansas City, and it says J. Perry on the back. It came this
morning. I brought it up to you.”
“So I see,” Dawn replied calmly. “Well, why didn’t you give it to me
then?” She reached out a hand for the letter.
What was in it? She laid it down on the table, looking at the unformed
scrawly boy handwriting. Somehow she didn’t want to read a letter from
Jack now. She picked it up and held it before the fire, ready to toss it
in; then laid it slowly down again, between the leaves of her study
book. If she opened it Hal would want to know what was in it.
Damon had gone over to the Amarillo Ridge to look at the burned-over
area for his final report. Dawn would not go. She could not bear to look
at it now. It was but two weeks until Thanksgiving, when Garen would
come. When Dad had come home from town, on the trip after the
cloudburst, he had been downcast. His sample of ore, treasured for so
many years, had been assayed, and showed up wonderfully well. The silver
deposit would run three hundred and fifty ounces to the ton easily. But
he could get no one interested in a silver mine. Why, the state was
flat, suffering under the worst depression it had ever known! There had
never been such hard times. Even mining men handed the sample back to
him regretfully. “Nothing doing, O’Neill, I’m afraid.”
As he sat in the dusty red plush seat of the train on his way back home
Damon told himself that he was an impractical fool, not fitted for the
world. He was tired, discouraged. Just because he had wanted so much to
send Dawn to school this winter, in spite of the bank failure, he had
thought he would be able to wrest money from his claim. Even yet it was
hard to give up. Damon was full of visions and tenacious. Dawn had done
her part; she’d found the witness tree. Why couldn’t he do his?
He brooded all the way up the grade. Last winter he’d had an offer to be
forester for a big private lumber company in California. He knew how to
grow trees; a good farmer he was. They offered him a fine salary. But he
had just laughed. He and Dawn had money in the bank then; why, they
wouldn’t think of leaving the mountain and the Service. Then last spring
there had been another offer from an Oregon concern—wood pulp. To
superintend the cutting on a million acres! Perhaps he had been a fool
not to accept such offers. They would probably never come again. Great
forest tracts were, after all, getting scarce.
Dawn was nearing seventeen; she was so well grown. She didn’t want
schooling so much for her self, but Damon wanted it passionately for
her. She had never known anything but the mountain, but he, after all,
could never forget the ambitions of his youth. Dawn should have a taste
of life _beyond_ the mountains; then she would return to them with even
greater affection. It never occurred to him that Dawn might ever be
wooed away from the life she loved. He knew better than that.
He had stepped out of Benty’s old mountain rig on to the stoop of the
aspen-log cabin, feeling dirty and silly in his town clothes. But Dawn’s
arms about his neck had restored him. They sat for hours before the
fire, and Dawn listened sympathetically, the shining pebble in her palm,
turning it this way and that in the firelight.
“Don’t mind, Dad. We’ll work the claim ourselves if no one wants it!”
She laughed with delight at the idea. “Can’t you see me in overalls, my
face dirty, a miner’s candle on my forehead? No, Dad, when this bank
failure has cleared up we’ll be able to sell the mine all right, or get
the cash to operate it maybe—on a small scale.”
“But who knows when that will be, child? It might be five years. School
can’t wait forever.”
“Yes, it can, Dad; as far as I’m concerned it can wait a long time,”
Dawn asserted stoutly. But in the days that followed this talk, she
turned with more than her old interest and fervor to her books. Garen
Shepherd sent her a box of his own favorite books and one or two new
ones for which he’d paid quite a penny. Dawn had finished a classified
list of the trees of their mountain. She had gathered rare data on
seventy-five birds. What she needed was a good camera. Her own had been
ruined last summer when she had attempted to swim the lake with the
camera held aloft in her left hand. That was all right, but when she had
tried to snap a picture of a kingfisher, treading water meanwhile, she
had got a ducking and so had the camera. The camera had never recovered.
“Your notes are excellent,” Garen wrote her, “and the snaps are good,
the illustrations extraordinary. Did you really draw them yourself? I
showed them all to Mrs. Stearn—you remember, the wife of my chief, who
entertained us—and she was immensely interested.”
Dawn was enchanted. Garen’s interest stimulated her, pushed her forward.
She had gathered her material from love of it, but had made no attempt
at orderly and complete data. Accurate classification she had insisted
on. Damon had used much of Dawn’s findings in his reports and had
secretly hoped that in some way the Forest Service would sponsor the
publication of a book on Rocky Mountain flowers when Dawn had completed
her collection. It was almost ready now. She had but to mount the
specimens gathered in the summer and drying now between sheets of
blotting-paper.
He did not himself realize how much she knew about birds until one
evening after the cloudburst, when Garen had challenged the statement of
how early the golden eagle nested. With the first week of February, at
over eight thousand feet altitude, too, she had _seen_ eggs, Dawn told
them. She knew far more about the feathered inhabitants of the forest
than the ranger did.
Garen was amazed and filled with admiration. “What a contribution to the
Biological Survey all this personal observation would be!” he exclaimed.
“Why, I know their bird expert is dying for just such data as you can
roll off your tongue, the actual observation of an eyewitness of the
habits of the birds in all the various zones in this state.”
Dawn flushed with resentment. “I wouldn’t tell him a word,” she fired,
“if he begged me on his knees. Not if he’s one of the Biological Survey
gang.”
And nothing he could say would change her. She’d keep her facts to
herself and thank Mr. Garen Shepherd to mind his own affairs. “Little
spitfire,” he grinned. A wild cat herself. Nevertheless Garen gave the
idea that had come to him a good deal of thought.
And Dawn gave Garen a good deal of thought. She wanted him to be proud
of her. Ever since the visit to the dam and the glimpse of another
world, she had thought seriously of Garen. That nice lady had liked him;
he was very smart. He knew figures. She had acquired a vast respect for
figures. Everything he did had to be worked out by arithmetic, she
suspected. But she knew more about the mountain than he did. Ah, that
was something! Well, she’d just show him how much she did know. So from
six to ten every long evening since the great rain, she had burned the
old student-lamp while Dad dozed before the fire, read a bit, or worked
at his desk. Painstakingly Dawn wrote out all that was stored back of
her level brows and in her loving heart. Enthusiasm for her task
possessed her; she could remember all sorts of things that she’d seen
and known ever since she could remember at all on the Cascada.
She could see that Damon had set his heart on doing something with the
Silverstake claim. She could see that he brooded. Well, perhaps she
could sell it for him. She knew there must be money somewhere else than
in this state. A silver mine was a silver mine. One day she wrote a
letter. Hal Benty took it down for her to the weekly mail that left from
the village at the foot of the valley. Damon was in truth having a bad
attack of depression and resentment over the loss of his money, but he
would not speak of it to Dawn. He did not need to; she knew him too
well. Damon could not part with the slow savings of years without a
pang, or some effort to recover or replace the loss.
But when the opportunity came and father and daughter sat in the big
room of the aspen-log cabin, opposite Gershwin, on a Monday before
Thanksgiving, they were silent. Neither reached out to grasp the
dazzling chance. Gershwin was patient. He thought he understood them.
“I don’t think you will do better than that, Mr. O’Neill,” he said with
an air of openness and candor. “You understand that this particular
proposition will require capital. It will have to be developed on a big
scale.” Developed? Dawn shuddered. Gershwin went on unheeding. “Your
former claim, and the new claim you’ve made, cover the only direct
outcroppings of ore.
“I had the ground gone over last summer by expert mining engineers. The
mountain is full of faulted veins, and the risk of locating the mother
vein would be too much of a venture. You might sink a million and not
strike ore. There’s enough exposed on your claims, however, to justify
following the vein along, although it will take capital to cover the
initial investment: shafts, tracks, engines, and so on.”
He waited again for three, five minutes. “Well, what do you say? I’ll
make you an offer—” he spoke slowly, letting out each word impressively
and as though testing its effect. “I’ll make you an offer—of—” He named
a sum far beyond their wildest dreams, twenty-five thousand dollars,
fifteen thousand down and ten more in the next six months. Damon almost
put his head in his hands. The agony of indecision was terrible. Dawn
did not speak. She was waiting to hear what her father would say.
Damon got up and paced the floor. School, travel, comfort, security,
luxuries. Finally he looked at Dawn. “What do you think, daughter?”
She shook her head. “We won’t sell,” she said simply. Gershwin looked at
her in astonishment. His wolfish intelligence was off guard. Sheer
surprise overtook him, anger. They wouldn’t sell? Surely that wasn’t
final? They’d live to regret it—that he could prophesy. It would take
this country twelve years to recover from the financial blow it had
suffered this summer. It would take it fifteen or twenty to begin to
recover from the overgrazed condition of its ranges.
Here was a chance for them to bring in some outside capital. It would
help develop the state—develop it. At that word Dawn’s eyebrows pricked.
Her lips set in a stubborn line. No, they would hold on to their claims
just the same. Fifteen or twenty years to recover. She looked at Damon;
Damon looked at her. Before them a vision of the fire-swept heights
above Snow Lake materialized; in another five years the barren slopes
beyond would have grown into golden glades of aspen and cool stretches
of blue spruce. Others might take up the work, some one else labor in
the vineyard. Some one else? On this part of the forest? Never. Never so
long as Dawn and Damon lived. She caught her lip between her teeth;
stinging tears came.
Suppose Damon should decide to sell and to send her away? Sometimes he
got stubborn and held to a notion, and then she knew that after all he
would have his way. But Damon was thinking too.
“Why are you so greedy?” Dawn cried to Gershwin. “Didn’t this summer
teach you a lesson? Must every one begin again right away? Can’t you
wait to start in wrecking the forest? I’d rather live right here the
rest of my life than anywhere. I don’t want to hear engines snorting,
whistles screeching, under the Three Sister Peaks. I don’t want to see
one tree cut on the most perfect spot on the mountain. If the fire
spared it that’s the least that we can do.”
“I thought last summer that you were a very sensible young woman.”
Gershwin glared, rolling his big cigar betweeen his lips. “But now you
are behaving foolishly.
“Well, O’Neill, if you change your mind in the next ten days let me
know. The offer won’t be open indefinitely.” Gershwin got into the
mountain wagon, which sagged perilously from his great girth, and it
rolled down the hill, forded the Cascada, and disappeared through the
trees.
Dawn heaved a great sigh. Another peril had passed them by. “Dad,” she
said, pushing Damon into a chair and piling on to his lap like a young
colt trying to dispose of its legs, “Dad, it’s rather fun just having a
silver mine for a hobby, isn’t it?”
Damon could not speak. After all these years, what had he done,
sentimental visionary that he was! But the spirit of the mountain that
had brooded above the peaks in the shape of the soaring golden eagle
still flowed about the two in the cabin on the Cascada.
“Order is Heaven’s first law,” he said at last. “Let us see how we have
followed it on earth. Do you know that we had more range this summer, my
girl, than for seven years past?”
The first snow of the season had fallen on the mountain two nights
before Thanksgiving. The thermometer stood at zero at noon. Yet it did
not seem cold, for there was no wind. By night the thermometer had
dropped to ten below, and on the deep silence of the dark Dawn could
hear once more the wolf song, the cry of the hungry wild under the moon.
She bolted the door securely, having kissed Piñon on his cool velvet
nose and petted Little Sorrel. “I’d let you sleep indoors, darling, but
Daddy wouldn’t like it,” she murmured into each pricked ear.
Back in the cabin she pored over the work spread out under the
student-lamp. She must get it finished before Garen came up tomorrow. It
was midnight before the last slip was pasted into place, and Dawn’s eyes
were a deep violet with unaccustomed fatigue. “Come, my girl,” Damon
said at length, “you mustn’t keep at that any longer.” But the task was
done. The beautiful book was set on the shelf and Dawn tumbled into bed.
Tomorrow would be a great day. Garen Shepherd reached the cabin on the
Cascada about three o’clock. He brought with him many good things that
did not suggest hard times. Cigars of the finest for Damon, the red wine
he had promised, candy for Dawn, and dainties she’d never eaten in her
life. Last of all he pulled a letter from his pocket. It was from Mrs.
Stearn, their hostess of last summer; an invitation for Dawn to visit
the Stearns in Washington that winter. Couldn’t she leave New Mexico
after Christmas and stay in Washington as Mrs. Stearn’s guest throughout
the winter? They would be in New York a while.
“Will you go?” Garen asked, his face beaming.
“Must I, Daddy? Oh, I scarcely know, Garen. But what a wonderful sound
it has.”
“Mrs. Stearn also invites you to come down to the dam next June and be
her guest at the official opening. And”—here Garen paused
impressively—“I am allowed to inform you that you will be officially
asked to inaugurate the ceremony, baptize the dam. You’ll do it, won’t
you?” Garen seized her hands boyishly.
“Do it?” Her eyes were solemn and reverent as she raised them to his.
“Why, I think it’s perfectly wonderful, Garen! Of course I will.” He was
radiant. Garen had long cherished a vision of Dawn dressed in white,
standing on the summit of the dam above the blue water, drawing the cord
that would let the water through the dam—the symbolical figure of the
mountains.
“You know,” he said, “I’ve always told you that you were the guardian of
the water. Well, I told the chief too all about you, and he suggested
you for the baptism and said it would typify the union of the mountain
and desert. Sort of poetic thing, you know? The wedding of the mountain
and the plain—”
“Is weddin’s bein’ talked of?” Hinray D’Orsay interrupted. Hinray came
in through the kitchen door and dumped his bulging sack on the hearth.
Garen shrugged hopelessly.
“I have something else still to tell you, Dawn,” he said later, sitting
down to talk seriously, “some grand news. Your flower and bird material
can be made into a book; I’ve talked with some publishers who will bring
it out. What do you think? Could you work on it this winter, get enough
in shape to show them by spring?”
She got the leather binder from the shelf, its sides bulging with the
mounted cards and the typewritten sheets, and laid it in his lap. A
white envelope from Kansas City fell to the floor unnoticed. Garen
opened the book with delight. It was wonderful. She had done this in two
months! He was astounded with the book’s skill and beauty. Could he take
it with him? Would she trust him?
She would. “Providing—” They both burst into laughter at memory of
Dawn’s animosities. Then he must hear all about Gershwin. But the tale
was soon told. Oh, yes, Garen said, fellows like that were already
trying to buy up the dam reclamation facilities. Today there was no time
for anything but themselves, and this vast, silent, frozen world.
Twilight fell too early now, but in the morning they would snowshoe
across the divide to the Silverstake pine.
The Thanksgiving dinner would be late in the afternoon, and Damon would
watch the turkey roasting; Hinray would be on hand as assistant cook
too. They would have wild turkey, stuffed with piñons, red wine from
Pecos grapes, wild berry jelly, rice and canned vegetables. Mrs. Benty
would send them mince pies, and Dawn would make a plum pudding, which
she would deck with holly, and around which she would burn the brandy
Dad had been saving since last year. The McGuires had promised them a
large pumpkin from their fields and a sack of beans, and Hal James had
sent them a kid and two young pigs, scarcely larger than shoats, for
their winter larder. They were squealing and rooting now in a new corral
out back on the hillside.
Hinray had brought in for his contribution some wild honey, found in the
mountains, and promised them a haunch of venison too. That would be
good, for Dawn was tired of rabbit stew. They had had a lean cupboard
all fall. Provisions were hard to get up here, and prices in town had
gone up. Thinking of the good food they would have soon, Dawn did not
mind living on beans and cornbread, with an occasional chicken. They
hadn’t had butter in three weeks, and she’d used the last of the lard in
the biscuits and beans last night.
The bird must be stuffed tonight; so Damon tied on an apron and set
himself to the task of plucking out pinfeathers while Dawn and Garen
cracked piñon nuts for the stuffing and jokes for the sauce.
Fresh snow fell during the night, and when they left the cabin stoop the
next morning the little snowshoe cottontail flopped before them, leaving
its unguarded spoor clear as day. “It knows that it has nothing to be
afraid of,” said Dawn, “with that turkey and a haunch of venison
inside.”
It was no easy hike that Dawn took Garen on. He was fairly winded when
they reached the top of the hills above McGuire’s valley. Swiftly they
shot down the slopes, along the ridge from which Dawn had watched the
fire in the early fall. They reached the shore of Snow Lake, frozen now,
and climbed to a seat on a boulder.
“Do you know where we are?” Dawn asked. Would he ever forget?
It was the stone on which he had sat when he watched Dawn swim Piñon
across the lake so long ago last summer. The snow covered the scarred
bank now, but the dead trees stood exquisitely etched against the
drifts. Yet the world was glistening and white, lovely as a bride. Here
they had sat in the summer, and here Garen had carried Dawn when he
pulled her from the water on the night of the fire. They sat for a
while, resting, then made for the top of the ridge. The sun would be
going down early.
Indeed, it was already dropping in a fiery disk below the western
mountain. Hand in hand Garen and Dawn stood on the top of the ridge,
bathed in glowing color, that waxed and waned and reappeared again on
the slopes of the Coronado Peaks. As the rich afterglow crept up their
granite flanks the two snowshoers dug their staffs into the snow and
sped along the ridge, down the slopes, and into the deepening twilight
of the Canyon of the Cascada.