“I'll ride you if it breaks--my neck!” panted Bo, passionately, shaking
her gloved fist at the gray pony.
Dale stood near with a broad smile on his face. Helen was within
earshot, watching from the edge of the park, and she felt so fascinated
and frightened that she could not call out for Bo to stop. The little
gray mustang was a beauty, clean-limbed and racy, with long black mane
and tail, and a fine, spirited head. There was a blanket strapped on his
back, but no saddle. Bo held the short halter that had been fastened
in a hackamore knot round his nose. She wore no coat; her blouse was
covered with grass and seeds, and it was open at the neck; her hair hung
loose and disheveled; one side of her face bore a stain of grass and
dirt and a suspicion of blood; the other was red and white; her eyes
blazed; beads of sweat stood out on her brow and wet places shone on her
cheeks. As she began to strain on the halter, pulling herself closer
to the fiery pony, the outline of her slender shape stood out lithe and
strong.
Bo had been defeated in her cherished and determined ambition to ride
Dale's mustang, and she was furious. The mustang did not appear to be
vicious or mean. But he was spirited, tricky, mischievous, and he had
thrown her six times. The scene of Bo's defeat was at the edge of the
park, where thick moss and grass afforded soft places for her to fall.
It also afforded poor foothold for the gray mustang, obviously placing
him at a disadvantage. Dale did not bridle him, because he had not been
broken to a bridle; and though it was harder for Bo to try to ride him
bareback, there was less risk of her being hurt. Bo had begun in all
eagerness and enthusiasm, loving and petting the mustang, which she
named “Pony.” She had evidently anticipated an adventure, but her
smiling, resolute face had denoted confidence. Pony had stood fairly
well to be mounted, and then had pitched and tossed until Bo had slid
off or been upset or thrown. After each fall Bo bounced up with less of
a smile, and more of spirit, until now the Western passion to master a
horse had suddenly leaped to life within her. It was no longer fun, no
more a daring circus trick to scare Helen and rouse Dale's admiration.
The issue now lay between Bo and the mustang.
Pony reared, snorting, tossing his head, and pawing with front feet.
“Pull him down!” yelled Dale.
Bo did not have much weight, but she had strength, an she hauled with
all her might, finally bringing him down.
“Now hold hard an' take up rope an' get in to him,” called Dale. “Good!
You're sure not afraid of him. He sees that. Now hold him, talk to him,
tell him you're goin' to ride him. Pet him a little. An' when he quits
shakin', grab his mane an' jump up an' slide a leg over him. Then hook
your feet under him, hard as you can, an' stick on.”
If Helen had not been so frightened for Bo she would have been able to
enjoy her other sensations. Creeping, cold thrills chased over her as
Bo, supple and quick, slid an arm and a leg over Pony and straightened
up on him with a defiant cry. Pony jerked his head down, brought his
feet together in one jump, and began to bounce. Bo got the swing of him
this time and stayed on.
“You're ridin' him,” yelled Dale. “Now squeeze hard with your knees.
Crack him over the head with your rope.... That's the way. Hang on now
an' you'll have him beat.”
The mustang pitched all over the space adjacent to Dale and Helen,
tearing up the moss and grass. Several times he tossed Bo high, but she
slid back to grip him again with her legs, and he could not throw her.
Suddenly he raised his head and bolted. Dale answered Bo's triumphant
cry. But Pony had not run fifty feet before he tripped and fell,
throwing Bo far over his head. As luck would have it--good luck,
Dale afterward said--she landed in a boggy place and the force of her
momentum was such that she slid several yards, face down, in wet moss
and black ooze.
Helen uttered a scream and ran forward. Bo was getting to her knees when
Dale reached her. He helped her up and half led, half carried her out
of the boggy place. Bo was not recognizable. From head to foot she was
dripping black ooze.
“Oh, Bo! Are you hurt?” cried Helen.
Evidently Bo's mouth was full of mud.
“Pp--su--tt! Ough! Whew!” she sputtered. “Hurt? No! Can't you see what I
lit in? Dale, the sun-of-a-gun didn't throw me. He fell, and I went over
his head.”
“Right. You sure rode him. An' he tripped an' slung you a mile,” replied
Dale. “It's lucky you lit in that bog.”
“Lucky! With eyes and nose stopped up? Oooo! I'm full of mud. And my
nice--new riding-suit!”
Bo's tones indicated that she was ready to cry. Helen, realizing Bo
had not been hurt, began to laugh. Her sister was the funniest-looking
object that had ever come before her eyes.
“Nell Rayner--are you--laughing--at me?” demanded Bo, in most righteous
amaze and anger.
“Me laugh-ing? N-never, Bo,” replied Helen. “Can't you see I'm
just--just--”
“See? You idiot! my eyes are full of mud!” flashed Bo. “But I hear you.
I'll--I'll get even.”
Dale was laughing, too, but noiselessly, and Bo, being blind for the
moment, could not be aware of that. By this time they had reached camp.
Helen fell flat and laughed as she had never laughed before. When Helen
forgot herself so far as to roll on the ground it was indeed a laughing
matter. Dale's big frame shook as he possessed himself of a towel and,
wetting it at the spring, began to wipe the mud off Bo's face. But that
did not serve. Bo asked to be led to the water, where she knelt and,
with splashing, washed out her eyes, and then her face, and then the
bedraggled strands of hair.
“That mustang didn't break my neck, but he rooted my face in the mud.
I'll fix him,” she muttered, as she got up. “Please let me have the
towel, now.... Well! Milt Dale, you're laughing!”
“Ex-cuse me, Bo. I--Haw! haw! haw!” Then Dale lurched off, holding his
sides.
Bo gazed after him and then back at Helen.
“I suppose if I'd been kicked and smashed and killed you'd laugh,” she
said. And then she melted. “Oh, my pretty riding-suit! What a mess! I
must be a sight.... Nell, I rode that wild pony--the sun-of-a-gun! I
rode him! That's enough for me. YOU try it. Laugh all you want. It was
funny. But if you want to square yourself with me, help me clean my
clothes.”
Late in the night Helen heard Dale sternly calling Pedro. She felt some
little alarm. However, nothing happened, and she soon went to sleep
again. At the morning meal Dale explained.
“Pedro an' Tom were uneasy last night. I think there are lions workin'
over the ridge somewhere. I heard one scream.”
“Scream?” inquired Bo, with interest.
“Yes, an' if you ever hear a lion scream you will think it a woman in
mortal agony. The cougar cry, as Roy calls it, is the wildest to be
heard in the woods. A wolf howls. He is sad, hungry, and wild. But a
cougar seems human an' dyin' an' wild. We'll saddle up an' ride over
there. Maybe Pedro will tree a lion. Bo, if he does will you shoot it?”
“Sure,” replied Bo, with her mouth full of biscuit.
That was how they came to take a long, slow, steep ride under cover of
dense spruce. Helen liked the ride after they got on the heights. But
they did not get to any point where she could indulge in her pleasure
of gazing afar over the ranges. Dale led up and down, and finally mostly
down, until they came out within sight of sparser wooded ridges with
parks lying below and streams shining in the sun.
More than once Pedro had to be harshly called by Dale. The hound scented
game.
“Here's an old kill,” said Dale, halting to point at some bleached bones
scattered under a spruce. Tufts of grayish-white hair lay strewn around.
“What was it?” asked Bo.
“Deer, of course. Killed there an' eaten by a lion. Sometime last fall.
See, even the skull is split. But I could not say that the lion did it.”
Helen shuddered. She thought of the tame deer down at Dale's camp. How
beautiful and graceful, and responsive to kindness!
They rode out of the woods into a grassy swale with rocks and clumps of
some green bushes bordering it. Here Pedro barked, the first time Helen
had heard him. The hair on his neck bristled, and it required stern
calls from Dale to hold him in. Dale dismounted.
“Hyar, Pede, you get back,” he ordered. “I'll let you go presently....
Girls, you're goin' to see somethin'. But stay on your horses.”
Dale, with the hound tense and bristling beside him, strode here
and there at the edge of the swale. Presently he halted on a slight
elevation and beckoned for the girls to ride over.
“Here, see where the grass is pressed down all nice an' round,” he said,
pointing. “A lion made that. He sneaked there, watchin' for deer. That
was done this mornin'. Come on, now. Let's see if we can trail him.”
Dale stooped now, studying the grass, and holding Pedro. Suddenly he
straightened up with a flash in his gray eyes.
“Here's where he jumped.”
But Helen could not see any reason why Dale should say that. The man of
the forest took a long stride then another.
“An' here's where that lion lit on the back of the deer. It was a big
jump. See the sharp hoof tracks of the deer.” Dale pressed aside tall
grass to show dark, rough, fresh tracks of a deer, evidently made by
violent action.
“Come on,” called Dale, walking swiftly. “You're sure goin' to see
somethin' now.... Here's where the deer bounded, carryin' the lion.”
“What!” exclaimed Bo, incredulously.
“The deer was runnin' here with the lion on his back. I'll prove it to
you. Come on, now. Pedro, you stay with me. Girls, it's a fresh trail.”
Dale walked along, leading his horse, and occasionally he pointed down
into the grass. “There! See that! That's hair.”
Helen did see some tufts of grayish hair scattered on the ground, and
she believed she saw little, dark separations in the grass, where an
animal had recently passed. All at once Dale halted. When Helen reached
him Bo was already there and they were gazing down at a wide, flattened
space in the grass. Even Helen's inexperienced eyes could make out
evidences of a struggle. Tufts of gray-white hair lay upon the crushed
grass. Helen did not need to see any more, but Dale silently pointed to
a patch of blood. Then he spoke:
“The lion brought the deer down here an' killed him. Probably broke his
neck. That deer ran a hundred yards with the lion. See, here's the trail
left where the lion dragged the deer off.”
A well-defined path showed across the swale.
“Girls, you'll see that deer pretty quick,” declared Dale, starting
forward. “This work has just been done. Only a few minutes ago.”
“How can you tell?” queried Bo.
“Look! See that grass. It has been bent down by the deer bein' dragged
over it. Now it's springin' up.”
Dale's next stop was on the other side of the swale, under a spruce with
low, spreading branches. The look of Pedro quickened Helen's pulse.
He was wild to give chase. Fearfully Helen looked where Dale pointed,
expecting to see the lion. But she saw instead a deer lying prostrate
with tongue out and sightless eyes and bloody hair.
“Girls, that lion heard us an' left. He's not far,” said Dale, as he
stooped to lift the head of the deer. “Warm! Neck broken. See the lion's
teeth an' claw marks.... It's a doe. Look here. Don't be squeamish,
girls. This is only an hourly incident of everyday life in the forest.
See where the lion has rolled the skin down as neat as I could do it,
an' he'd just begun to bite in there when he heard us.”
“What murderous work, The sight sickens me!” exclaimed Helen.
“It is nature,” said Dale, simply.
“Let's kill the lion,” added Bo.
For answer Dale took a quick turn at their saddle-girths, and then,
mounting, he called to the hound. “Hunt him up, Pedro.”
Like a shot the hound was off.
“Ride in my tracks an' keep close to me,” called Dale, as he wheeled his
horse.
“We're off!” squealed Bo, in wild delight, and she made her mount
plunge.
Helen urged her horse after them and they broke across a corner of the
swale to the woods. Pedro was running straight, with his nose high.
He let out one short bark. He headed into the woods, with Dale not far
behind. Helen was on one of Dale's best horses, but that fact scarcely
manifested itself, because the others began to increase their lead. They
entered the woods. It was open, and fairly good going. Bo's horse ran as
fast in the woods as he did in the open. That frightened Helen and she
yelled to Bo to hold him in. She yelled to deaf ears. That was Bo's
great risk--she did not intend to be careful. Suddenly the forest rang
with Dale's encouraging yell, meant to aid the girls in following him.
Helen's horse caught the spirit of the chase. He gained somewhat on
Bo, hurdling logs, sometimes two at once. Helen's blood leaped with a
strange excitement, utterly unfamiliar and as utterly resistless. Yet
her natural fear, and the intelligence that reckoned with the foolish
risk of this ride, shared alike in her sum of sensations. She tried to
remember Dale's caution about dodging branches and snags, and sliding
her knees back to avoid knocks from trees. She barely missed some
frightful reaching branches. She received a hard knock, then another,
that unseated her, but frantically she held on and slid back, and at the
end of a long run through comparatively open forest she got a stinging
blow in the face from a far-spreading branch of pine. Bo missed, by what
seemed only an inch, a solid snag that would have broken her in two.
Both Pedro and Dale got out of Helen's sight. Then Helen, as she began
to lose Bo, felt that she would rather run greater risks than be left
behind to get lost in the forest, and she urged her horse. Dale's yell
pealed back. Then it seemed even more thrilling to follow by sound than
by sight. Wind and brush tore at her. The air was heavily pungent with
odor of pine. Helen heard a wild, full bay of the hound, ringing back,
full of savage eagerness, and she believed Pedro had roused out the lion
from some covert. It lent more stir to her blood and it surely urged her
horse on faster.
Then the swift pace slackened. A windfall of timber delayed Helen. She
caught a glimpse of Dale far ahead, climbing a slope. The forest seemed
full of his ringing yell. Helen strangely wished for level ground and
the former swift motion. Next she saw Bo working down to the right, and
Dale's yell now came from that direction. Helen followed, got out of the
timber, and made better time on a gradual slope down to another park.
When she reached the open she saw Bo almost across this narrow open
ground. Here Helen did not need to urge her mount. He snorted and
plunged at the level and he got to going so fast that Helen would
have screamed aloud in mingled fear and delight if she had not been
breathless.
Her horse had the bad luck to cross soft ground. He went to his knees
and Helen sailed out of the saddle over his head. Soft willows and wet
grass broke her fall. She was surprised to find herself unhurt. Up she
bounded and certainly did not know this new Helen Rayner. Her horse was
coming, and he had patience with her, but he wanted to hurry. Helen made
the quickest mount of her experience and somehow felt a pride in it.
She would tell Bo that. But just then Bo flashed into the woods out of
sight. Helen fairly charged into that green foliage, breaking brush and
branches. She broke through into open forest. Bo was inside, riding down
an aisle between pines and spruces. At that juncture Helen heard Dale's
melodious yell near at hand. Coming into still more open forest, with
rocks here and there, she saw Dale dismounted under a pine, and Pedro
standing with fore paws upon the tree-trunk, and then high up on a
branch a huge tawny colored lion, just like Tom.
Bo's horse slowed up and showed fear, but he kept on as far as Dale's
horse. But Helen's refused to go any nearer. She had difficulty in
halting him. Presently she dismounted and, throwing her bridle over a
stump, she ran on, panting and fearful, yet tingling all over, up to her
sister and Dale.
“Nell, you did pretty good for a tenderfoot,” was Bo's greeting.
“It was a fine chase,” said Dale. “You both rode well. I wish you could
have seen the lion on the ground. He bounded--great long bounds with
his tail up in the air--very funny. An' Pedro almost caught up with him.
That scared me, because he would have killed the hound. Pedro was close
to him when he treed. An' there he is--the yellow deer-killer. He's a
male an' full grown.”
With that Dale pulled his rifle from its saddle-sheath and looked
expectantly at Bo. But she was gazing with great interest and admiration
up at the lion.
“Isn't he just beautiful?” she burst out. “Oh, look at him spit! Just
like a cat! Dale, he looks afraid he might fall off.”
“He sure does. Lions are never sure of their balance in a tree. But I
never saw one make a misstep. He knows he doesn't belong there.”
To Helen the lion looked splendid perched up there. He was long and
round and graceful and tawny. His tongue hung out and his plump sides
heaved, showing what a quick, hard run he had been driven to. What
struck Helen most forcibly about him was something in his face as he
looked down at the hound. He was scared. He realized his peril. It was
not possible for Helen to watch him killed, yet she could not bring
herself to beg Bo not to shoot. Helen confessed she was a tenderfoot.
“Get down, Bo, an' let's see how good a shot you are, said Dale. Bo
slowly withdrew her fascinated gaze from the lion and looked with a
rueful smile at Dale.
“I've changed my mind. I said I would kill him, but now I can't. He
looks so--so different from what I'd imagined.”
Dale's answer was a rare smile of understanding and approval that warmed
Helen's heart toward him. All the same, he was amused. Sheathing the
gun, he mounted his horse.
“Come on, Pedro,” he called. “Come, I tell you,” he added, sharply,
“Well, girls, we treed him, anyhow, an' it was fun. Now we'll ride back
to the deer he killed an' pack a haunch to camp for our own use.”
“Will the lion go back to his--his kill, I think you called it?” asked
Bo.
“I've chased one away from his kill half a dozen times. Lions are not
plentiful here an' they don't get overfed. I reckon the balance is
pretty even.”
This last remark made Helen inquisitive. And as they slowly rode on the
back-trail Dale talked.
“You girls, bein' tender-hearted an' not knowin' the life of the forest,
what's good an' what's bad, think it was a pity the poor deer was
killed by a murderous lion. But you're wrong. As I told you, the lion is
absolutely necessary to the health an' joy of wild life--or deer's wild
life, so to speak. When deer were created or came into existence,
then the lion must have come, too. They can't live without each other.
Wolves, now, are not particularly deer-killers. They live off elk an'
anythin' they can catch. So will lions, for that matter. But I mean
lions follow the deer to an' fro from winter to summer feedin'-grounds.
Where there's no deer you will find no lions. Well, now, if left alone
deer would multiply very fast. In a few years there would be hundreds
where now there's only one. An' in time, as the generations passed,
they'd lose the fear, the alertness, the speed an' strength, the
eternal vigilance that is love of life--they'd lose that an' begin
to deteriorate, an' disease would carry them off. I saw one season of
black-tongue among deer. It killed them off, an' I believe that is one
of the diseases of over-production. The lions, now, are forever on the
trail of the deer. They have learned. Wariness is an instinct born in
the fawn. It makes him keen, quick, active, fearful, an' so he grows up
strong an' healthy to become the smooth, sleek, beautiful, soft-eyed,
an' wild-lookin' deer you girls love to watch. But if it wasn't for
the lions, the deer would not thrive. Only the strongest an' swiftest
survive. That is the meanin' of nature. There is always a perfect
balance kept by nature. It may vary in different years, but on the
whole, in the long years, it averages an even balance.”
“How wonderfully you put it!” exclaimed Bo, with all her impulsiveness.
“Oh, I'm glad I didn't kill the lion.”
“What you say somehow hurts me,” said Helen, wistfully, to the hunter.
“I see--I feel how true--how inevitable it is. But it changes my--my
feelings. Almost I'd rather not acquire such knowledge as yours. This
balance of nature--how tragic--how sad!”
“But why?” asked Dale. “You love birds, an' birds are the greatest
killers in the forest.”
“Don't tell me that--don't prove it,” implored Helen. “It is not so much
the love of life in a deer or any creature, and the terrible clinging to
life, that gives me distress. It is suffering. I can't bear to see pain.
I can STAND pain myself, but I can't BEAR to see or think of it.”
“Well,” replied. Dale, thoughtfully, “There you stump me again. I've
lived long in the forest an' when a man's alone he does a heap of
thinkin'. An' always I couldn't understand a reason or a meanin'
for pain. Of all the bafflin' things of life, that is the hardest to
understand an' to forgive--pain!”
That evening, as they sat in restful places round the camp-fire, with
the still twilight fading into night, Dale seriously asked the girls
what the day's chase had meant to them. His manner of asking was
productive of thought. Both girls were silent for a moment.
“Glorious!” was Bo's brief and eloquent reply.
“Why?” asked. Dale, curiously. “You are a girl. You've been used to
home, people, love, comfort, safety, quiet.”
“Maybe that is just why it was glorious,” said Bo, earnestly. “I can
hardly explain. I loved the motion of the horse, the feel of wind in
my face, the smell of the pine, the sight of slope and forest glade and
windfall and rocks, and the black shade under the spruces. My blood
beat and burned. My teeth clicked. My nerves all quivered. My heart
sometimes, at dangerous moments, almost choked me, and all the time it
pounded hard. Now my skin was hot and then it was cold. But I think the
best of that chase for me was that I was on a fast horse, guiding him,
controlling him. He was alive. Oh, how I felt his running!”
“Well, what you say is as natural to me as if I felt it,” said Dale. “I
wondered. You're certainly full of fire, An', Helen, what do you say?”
“Bo has answered you with her feelings,” replied Helen, “I could not do
that and be honest. The fact that Bo wouldn't shoot the lion after we
treed him acquits her. Nevertheless, her answer is purely physical. You
know, Mr. Dale, how you talk about the physical. I should say my sister
was just a young, wild, highly sensitive, hot-blooded female of the
species. She exulted in that chase as an Indian. Her sensations were
inherited ones--certainly not acquired by education. Bo always hated
study. The ride was a revelation to me. I had a good many of Bo's
feelings--though not so strong. But over against them was the opposition
of reason, of consciousness. A new-born side of my nature confronted me,
strange, surprising, violent, irresistible. It was as if another side of
my personality suddenly said: 'Here I am. Reckon with me now!' And there
was no use for the moment to oppose that strange side. I--the thinking
Helen Rayner, was powerless. Oh yes, I had such thoughts even when the
branches were stinging my face and I was thrilling to the bay of the
hound. Once my horse fell and threw me.... You needn't look alarmed.
It was fine. I went into a soft place and was unhurt. But when I was
sailing through the air a thought flashed: this is the end of me! It was
like a dream when you are falling dreadfully. Much of what I felt and
thought on that chase must have been because of what I have studied and
read and taught. The reality of it, the action and flash, were splendid.
But fear of danger, pity for the chased lion, consciousness of foolish
risk, of a reckless disregard for the serious responsibility I have
taken--all these worked in my mind and held back what might have been a
sheer physical, primitive joy of the wild moment.”
Dale listened intently, and after Helen had finished he studied the fire
and thoughtfully poked the red embers with his stick. His face was still
and serene, untroubled and unlined, but to Helen his eyes seemed sad,
pensive, expressive of an unsatisfied yearning and wonder. She had
carefully and earnestly spoken, because she was very curious to hear
what he might say.
“I understand you,” he replied, presently. “An' I'm sure surprised that
I can. I've read my books--an' reread them, but no one ever talked like
that to me. What I make of it is this. You've the same blood in you
that's in Bo. An' blood is stronger than brain. Remember that blood is
life. It would be good for you to have it run an' beat an' burn, as
Bo's did. Your blood did that a thousand years or ten thousand before
intellect was born in your ancestors. Instinct may not be greater than
reason, but it's a million years older. Don't fight your instincts so
hard. If they were not good the God of Creation would not have given
them to you. To-day your mind was full of self-restraint that did not
altogether restrain. You couldn't forget yourself. You couldn't FEEL
only, as Bo did. You couldn't be true to your real nature.”
“I don't agree with you,” replied Helen, quickly. “I don't have to be an
Indian to be true to myself.”
“Why, yes you do,” said Dale.
“But I couldn't be an Indian,” declared Helen, spiritedly. “I couldn't
FEEL only, as you say Bo did. I couldn't go back in the scale, as you
hint. What would all my education amount to--though goodness knows it's
little enough--if I had no control over primitive feelings that happened
to be born in me?”
“You'll have little or no control over them when the right time comes,”
replied Dale. “Your sheltered life an' education have led you away from
natural instincts. But they're in you an' you'll learn the proof of that
out here.”
“No. Not if I lived a hundred years in the West,” asserted Helen.
“But, child, do you know what you're talkin' about?”
Here Bo let out a blissful peal of laughter.
“Mr. Dale!” exclaimed Helen, almost affronted. She was stirred. “I know
MYSELF, at least.”
“But you do not. You've no idea of yourself. You've education, yes, but
not in nature an' life. An' after all, they are the real things. Answer
me, now--honestly, will you?”
“Certainly, if I can. Some of your questions are hard to answer.”
“Have you ever been starved?” he asked.
“No,” replied Helen.
“Have you ever been lost away from home?”
“No.”
“Have you ever faced death--real stark an' naked death, close an'
terrible?”
“No, indeed.”
“Have you ever wanted to kill any one with your bare hands?”
“Oh, Mr. Dale, you--you amaze me. No!... No!”
“I reckon I know your answer to my last question, but I'll ask it,
anyhow.... Have you ever been so madly in love with a man that you could
not live without him?”
Bo fell off her seat with a high, trilling laugh. “Oh, you two are
great!”
“Thank Heaven, I haven't been,” replied Helen, shortly.
“Then you don't know anythin' about life,” declared Dale, with finality.
Helen was not to be put down by that, dubious and troubled as it made
her.
“Have you experienced all those things?” she queried, stubbornly.
“All but the last one. Love never came my way. How could it? I live
alone. I seldom go to the villages where there are girls. No girl would
ever care for me. I have nothin'.... But, all the same, I understand
love a little, just by comparison with strong feelin's I've lived.”
Helen watched the hunter and marveled at his simplicity. His sad and
penetrating gaze was on the fire, as if in its white heart to read the
secret denied him. He had said that no girl would ever love him. She
imagined he might know considerably less about the nature of girls than
of the forest.
“To come back to myself,” said Helen, wanting to continue the argument.
“You declared I didn't know myself. That I would have no self-control. I
will!”
“I meant the big things of life,” he said, patiently.
“What things?”
“I told you. By askin' what had never happened to you I learned what
will happen.”
“Those experiences to come to ME!” breathed Helen, incredulously.
“Never!”
“Sister Nell, they sure will--particularly the last-named one--the mad
love,” chimed in Bo, mischievously, yet believingly.
Neither Dale nor Helen appeared to hear her interruption.
“Let me put it simpler,” began Dale, evidently racking his brain for
analogy. His perplexity appeared painful to him, because he had a great
faith, a great conviction that he could not make clear. “Here I am,
the natural physical man, livin' in the wilds. An' here you come, the
complex, intellectual woman. Remember, for my argument's sake, that
you're here. An' suppose circumstances forced you to stay here. You'd
fight the elements with me an' work with me to sustain life. There
must be a great change in either you or me, accordin' to the other's
influence. An' can't you see that change must come in you, not because
of anythin' superior in me--I'm really inferior to you--but because of
our environment? You'd lose your complexity. An' in years to come you'd
be a natural physical woman, because you'd live through an' by the
physical.”
“Oh dear, will not education be of help to the Western woman?” queried
Helen, almost in despair.
“Sure it will,” answered Dale, promptly. “What the West needs is women
who can raise an' teach children. But you don't understand me. You don't
get under your skin. I reckon I can't make you see my argument as I feel
it. You take my word for this, though. Sooner or later you WILL wake up
an' forget yourself. Remember.”
“Nell, I'll bet you do, too,” said Bo, seriously for her. “It may seem
strange to you, but I understand Dale. I feel what he means. It's a sort
of shock. Nell, we're not what we seem. We're not what we fondly imagine
we are. We've lived too long with people--too far away from the earth.
You know the Bible says something like this: 'Dust thou art and to dust
thou shalt return.' Where DO we come from?”