After more days of riding the grassy level of that wonderfully gold
and purple park, and dreamily listening by day to the ever-low and
ever-changing murmur of the waterfall, and by night to the wild, lonely
mourn of a hunting wolf, and climbing to the dizzy heights where the
wind stung sweetly, Helen Rayner lost track of time and forgot her
peril.
Roy Beeman did not return. If occasionally Dale mentioned Roy and his
quest, the girls had little to say beyond a recurrent anxiety for the
old uncle, and then they forgot again. Paradise Park, lived in a little
while at that season of the year, would have claimed any one, and ever
afterward haunted sleeping or waking dreams.
Bo gave up to the wild life, to the horses and rides, to the many pets,
and especially to the cougar, Tom. The big cat followed her everywhere,
played with her, rolling and pawing, kitten-like, and he would lay
his massive head in her lap to purr his content. Bo had little fear of
anything, and here in the wilds she soon lost that.
Another of Dale's pets was a half-grown black bear named Muss. He was
abnormally jealous of little Bud and he had a well-developed hatred
of Tom, otherwise he was a very good-tempered bear, and enjoyed Dale's
impartial regard. Tom, however, chased Muss out of camp whenever Dale's
back was turned, and sometimes Muss stayed away, shifting for himself.
With the advent of Bo, who spent a good deal of time on the animals,
Muss manifestly found the camp more attractive. Whereupon, Dale
predicted trouble between Tom and Muss.
Bo liked nothing better than a rough-and-tumble frolic with the black
bear. Muss was not very big nor very heavy, and in a wrestling bout with
the strong and wiry girl he sometimes came out second best. It spoke
well of him that he seemed to be careful not to hurt Bo. He never bit
or scratched, though he sometimes gave her sounding slaps with his paws.
Whereupon, Bo would clench her gauntleted fists and sail into him in
earnest.
One afternoon before the early supper they always had, Dale and Helen
were watching Bo teasing the bear. She was in her most vixenish mood,
full of life and fight. Tom lay his long length on the grass, watching
with narrow, gleaming eyes.
When Bo and Muss locked in an embrace and went down to roll over and
over, Dale called Helen's attention to the cougar.
“Tom's jealous. It's strange how animals are like people. Pretty soon
I'll have to corral Muss, or there'll be a fight.”
Helen could not see anything wrong with Tom except that he did not look
playful.
During supper-time both bear and cougar disappeared, though this was not
remarked until afterward. Dale whistled and called, but the rival pets
did not return. Next morning Tom was there, curled up snugly at the foot
of Bo's bed, and when she arose he followed her around as usual. But
Muss did not return.
The circumstance made Dale anxious. He left camp, taking Tom with him,
and upon returning stated that he had followed Muss's track as far as
possible, and then had tried to put Tom on the trail, but the cougar
would not or could not follow it. Dale said Tom never liked a bear
trail, anyway, cougars and bears being common enemies. So, whether by
accident or design, Bo lost one of her playmates.
The hunter searched some of the slopes next day and even went up on one
of the mountains. He did not discover any sign of Muss, but he said he
had found something else.
“Bo you girls want some more real excitement?” he asked.
Helen smiled her acquiescence and Bo replied with one of her forceful
speeches.
“Don't mind bein' good an' scared?” he went on.
“You can't scare me,” bantered Bo. But Helen looked doubtful.
“Up in one of the parks I ran across one of my horses--a lame bay you
haven't seen. Well, he had been killed by that old silvertip. The one we
chased. Hadn't been dead over an hour. Blood was still runnin' an' only
a little meat eaten. That bear heard me or saw me an' made off into the
woods. But he'll come back to-night. I'm goin' up there, lay for him,
an' kill him this time. Reckon you'd better go, because I don't want to
leave you here alone at night.”
“Are you going to take Tom?” asked Bo.
“No. The bear might get his scent. An', besides, Tom ain't reliable on
bears. I'll leave Pedro home, too.”
When they had hurried supper, and Dale had gotten in the horses, the sun
had set and the valley was shadowing low down, while the ramparts were
still golden. The long zigzag trail Dale followed up the slope took
nearly an hour to climb, so that when that was surmounted and he led
out of the woods twilight had fallen. A rolling park extended as far as
Helen could see, bordered by forest that in places sent out straggling
stretches of trees. Here and there, like islands, were isolated patches
of timber.
At ten thousand feet elevation the twilight of this clear and cold night
was a rich and rare atmospheric effect. It looked as if it was seen
through perfectly clear smoked glass. Objects were singularly visible,
even at long range, and seemed magnified. In the west, where the
afterglow of sunset lingered over the dark, ragged, spruce-speared
horizon-line, there was such a transparent golden line melting into
vivid star-fired blue that Helen could only gaze and gaze in wondering
admiration.
Dale spurred his horse into a lope and the spirited mounts of the girls
kept up with him. The ground was rough, with tufts of grass growing
close together, yet the horses did not stumble. Their action and
snorting betrayed excitement. Dale led around several clumps of timber,
up a long grassy swale, and then straight westward across an open flat
toward where the dark-fringed forest-line raised itself wild and clear
against the cold sky. The horses went swiftly, and the wind cut like a
blade of ice. Helen could barely get her breath and she panted as if she
had just climbed a laborsome hill. The stars began to blink out of the
blue, and the gold paled somewhat, and yet twilight lingered. It seemed
long across that flat, but really was short. Coming to a thin line of
trees that led down over a slope to a deeper but still isolated patch
of woods, Dale dismounted and tied his horse. When the girls got off he
haltered their horses also.
“Stick close to me an' put your feet down easy,” he whispered. How tall
and dark he loomed in the fading light! Helen thrilled, as she had often
of late, at the strange, potential force of the man. Stepping softly,
without the least sound, Dale entered this straggly bit of woods, which
appeared to have narrow byways and nooks. Then presently he came to
the top of a well-wooded slope, dark as pitch, apparently. But as Helen
followed she perceived the trees, and they were thin dwarf spruce,
partly dead. The slope was soft and springy, easy to step upon without
noise. Dale went so cautiously that Helen could not hear him, and
sometimes in the gloom she could not see him. Then the chill thrills ran
over her. Bo kept holding on to Helen, which fact hampered Helen as
well as worked somewhat to disprove Bo's boast. At last level ground was
reached. Helen made out a light-gray background crossed by black bars.
Another glance showed this to be the dark tree-trunks against the open
park.
Dale halted, and with a touch brought Helen to a straining pause. He was
listening. It seemed wonderful to watch him bend his head and stand as
silent and motionless as one of the dark trees.
“He's not there yet,” Dale whispered, and he stepped forward very
slowly. Helen and Bo began to come up against thin dead branches that
were invisible and then cracked. Then Dale knelt down, seemed to melt
into the ground.
“You'll have to crawl,” he whispered.
How strange and thrilling that was for Helen, and hard work! The ground
bore twigs and dead branches, which had to be carefully crawled over;
and lying flat, as was necessary, it took prodigious effort to drag her
body inch by inch. Like a huge snake, Dale wormed his way along.
Gradually the wood lightened. They were nearing the edge of the park.
Helen now saw a strip of open with a high, black wall of spruce beyond.
The afterglow flashed or changed, like a dimming northern light, and
then failed. Dale crawled on farther to halt at length between two
tree-trunks at the edge of the wood.
“Come up beside me,” he whispered.
Helen crawled on, and presently Bo was beside her panting, with pale
face and great, staring eyes, plain to be seen in the wan light.
“Moon's comin' up. We're just in time. The old grizzly's not there yet,
but I see coyotes. Look.”
Dale pointed across the open neck of park to a dim blurred patch
standing apart some little distance from the black wall.
“That's the dead horse,” whispered Dale. “An' if you watch close you can
see the coyotes. They're gray an' they move.... Can't you hear them?”
Helen's excited ears, so full of throbs and imaginings, presently
registered low snaps and snarls. Bo gave her arm a squeeze.
“I hear them. They're fighting. Oh, gee!” she panted, and drew a long,
full breath of unutterable excitement.
“Keep quiet now an' watch an' listen,” said the hunter.
Slowly the black, ragged forest-line seemed to grow blacker and lift;
slowly the gray neck of park lightened under some invisible influence;
slowly the stars paled and the sky filled over. Somewhere the moon was
rising. And slowly that vague blurred patch grew a little clearer.
Through the tips of the spruce, now seen to be rather close at hand,
shone a slender, silver crescent moon, darkening, hiding, shining again,
climbing until its exquisite sickle-point topped the trees, and then,
magically, it cleared them, radiant and cold. While the eastern black
wall shaded still blacker, the park blanched and the border-line
opposite began to stand out as trees.
“Look! Look!” cried Bo, very low and fearfully, as she pointed.
“Not so loud,” whispered Dale.
“But I see something!”
“Keep quiet,” he admonished.
Helen, in the direction Bo pointed, could not see anything but
moon-blanched bare ground, rising close at hand to a little ridge.
“Lie still,” whispered Dale. “I'm goin' to crawl around to get a look
from another angle. I'll be right back.”
He moved noiselessly backward and disappeared. With him gone, Helen felt
a palpitating of her heart and a prickling of her skin.
“Oh, my! Nell! Look!” whispered Bo, in fright. “I know I saw something.”
On top of the little ridge a round object moved slowly, getting farther
out into the light. Helen watched with suspended breath. It moved out
to be silhouetted against the sky--apparently a huge, round, bristling
animal, frosty in color. One instant it seemed huge--the next
small--then close at hand--and far away. It swerved to come directly
toward them. Suddenly Helen realized that the beast was not a dozen
yards distant. She was just beginning a new experience--a real
and horrifying terror in which her blood curdled, her heart gave a
tremendous leap and then stood still, and she wanted to fly, but was
rooted to the spot--when Dale returned to her side.
“That's a pesky porcupine,” he whispered. “Almost crawled over you. He
sure would have stuck you full of quills.”
Whereupon he threw a stick at the animal. It bounced straight up to turn
round with startling quickness, and it gave forth a rattling sound; then
it crawled out of sight.
“Por--cu--pine!” whispered Bo, pantingly. “It might--as well--have
been--an elephant!”
Helen uttered a long, eloquent sigh. She would not have cared to
describe her emotions at sight of a harmless hedgehog.
“Listen!” warned Dale, very low. His big hand closed over Helen's
gauntleted one. “There you have--the real cry of the wild.”
Sharp and cold on the night air split the cry of a wolf, distant, yet
wonderfully distinct. How wild and mournful and hungry! How marvelously
pure! Helen shuddered through all her frame with the thrill of its
music, the wild and unutterable and deep emotions it aroused. Again
a sound of this forest had pierced beyond her life, back into the dim
remote past from which she had come.
The cry was not repeated. The coyotes were still. And silence fell,
absolutely unbroken.
Dale nudged Helen, and then reached over to give Bo a tap. He was
peering keenly ahead and his strained intensity could be felt. Helen
looked with all her might and she saw the shadowy gray forms of the
coyotes skulk away, out of the moonlight into the gloom of the woods,
where they disappeared. Not only Dale's intensity, but the very silence,
the wildness of the moment and place, seemed fraught with wonderful
potency. Bo must have felt it, too, for she was trembling all over, and
holding tightly to Helen, and breathing quick and fast.
“A-huh!” muttered Dale, under his breath.
Helen caught the relief and certainty in his exclamation, and she
divined, then, something of what the moment must have been to a hunter.
Then her roving, alert glance was arrested by a looming gray shadow
coming out of the forest. It moved, but surely that huge thing could not
be a bear. It passed out of gloom into silver moonlight. Helen's heart
bounded. For it was a great frosty-coated bear lumbering along toward
the dead horse. Instinctively Helen's hand sought the arm of the hunter.
It felt like iron under a rippling surface. The touch eased away the
oppression over her lungs, the tightness of her throat. What must have
been fear left her, and only a powerful excitement remained. A sharp
expulsion of breath from Bo and a violent jerk of her frame were signs
that she had sighted the grizzly.
In the moonlight he looked of immense size, and that wild park with
the gloomy blackness of forest furnished a fit setting for him. Helen's
quick mind, so taken up with emotion, still had a thought for the wonder
and the meaning of that scene. She wanted the bear killed, yet that
seemed a pity.
He had a wagging, rolling, slow walk which took several moments to reach
his quarry. When at length he reached it he walked around with sniffs
plainly heard and then a cross growl. Evidently he had discovered that
his meal had been messed over. As a whole the big bear could be seen
distinctly, but only in outline and color. The distance was perhaps two
hundred yards. Then it looked as if he had begun to tug at the carcass.
Indeed, he was dragging it, very slowly, but surely.
“Look at that!” whispered Dale. “If he ain't strong!... Reckon I'll have
to stop him.”
The grizzly, however, stopped of his own accord, just outside of the
shadow-line of the forest. Then he hunched in a big frosty heap over his
prey and began to tear and rend.
“Jess was a mighty good horse,” muttered Dale, grimly; “too good to make
a meal for a hog silvertip.”
Then the hunter silently rose to a kneeling position, swinging the
rifle in front of him. He glanced up into the low branches of the tree
overhead.
“Girls, there's no tellin' what a grizzly will do. If I yell, you climb
up in this tree, an' do it quick.”
With that he leveled the rifle, resting his left elbow on his knee. The
front end of the rifle, reaching out of the shade, shone silver in the
moonlight. Man and weapon became still as stone. Helen held her breath.
But Dale relaxed, lowering the barrel.
“Can't see the sights very well,” he whispered, shaking his head.
“Remember, now--if I yell you climb!”
Again he aimed and slowly grew rigid. Helen could not take her
fascinated eyes off him. He knelt, bareheaded, and in the shadow she
could make out the gleam of his clear-cut profile, stern and cold.
A streak of fire and a heavy report startled her. Then she heard the
bullet hit. Shifting her glance, she saw the bear lurch with convulsive
action, rearing on his hind legs. Loud clicking snaps must have been a
clashing of his jaws in rage. But there was no other sound. Then again
Dale's heavy gun boomed. Helen heard again that singular spatting thud
of striking lead. The bear went down with a flop as if he had been dealt
a terrific blow. But just as quickly he was up on all-fours and began
to whirl with hoarse, savage bawls of agony and fury. His action quickly
carried him out of the moonlight into the shadow, where he disappeared.
There the bawls gave place to gnashing snarls, and crashings in the
brush, and snapping of branches, as he made his way into the forest.
“Sure he's mad,” said Dale, rising to his feet. “An' I reckon hard hit.
But I won't follow him to-night.”
Both the girls got up, and Helen found she was shaky on her feet and
very cold.
“Oh-h, wasn't--it--won-wonder-ful!” cried Bo.
“Are you scared? Your teeth are chatterin',” queried Dale.
“I'm--cold.”
“Well, it sure is cold, all right,” he responded. “Now the fun's over,
you'll feel it.... Nell, you're froze, too?”
Helen nodded. She was, indeed, as cold as she had ever been before. But
that did not prevent a strange warmness along her veins and a quickened
pulse, the cause of which she did not conjecture.
“Let's rustle,” said Dale, and led the way out of the wood and skirted
its edge around to the slope. There they climbed to the flat, and went
through the straggling line of trees to where the horses were tethered.
Up here the wind began to blow, not hard through the forest, but still
strong and steady out in the open, and bitterly cold. Dale helped Bo to
mount, and then Helen.
“I'm--numb,” she said. “I'll fall off--sure.”
“No. You'll be warm in a jiffy,” he replied, “because we'll ride some
goin' back. Let Ranger pick the way an' you hang on.”
With Ranger's first jump Helen's blood began to run. Out he shot, his
lean, dark head beside Dale's horse. The wild park lay clear and bright
in the moonlight, with strange, silvery radiance on the grass. The
patches of timber, like spired black islands in a moon-blanched lake,
seemed to harbor shadows, and places for bears to hide, ready to spring
out. As Helen neared each little grove her pulses shook and her heart
beat. Half a mile of rapid riding burned out the cold. And all seemed
glorious--the sailing moon, white in a dark-blue sky, the white,
passionless stars, so solemn, so far away, the beckoning fringe of
forest-land at once mysterious and friendly, and the fleet horses,
running with soft, rhythmic thuds over the grass, leaping the ditches
and the hollows, making the bitter wind sting and cut. Coming up
that park the ride had been long; going back was as short as it was
thrilling. In Helen, experiences gathered realization slowly, and it
was this swift ride, the horses neck and neck, and all the wildness and
beauty, that completed the slow, insidious work of years. The tears
of excitement froze on her cheeks and her heart heaved full. All that
pertained to this night got into her blood. It was only to feel, to live
now, but it could be understood and remembered forever afterward.
Dale's horse, a little in advance, sailed over a ditch. Ranger made a
splendid leap, but he alighted among some grassy tufts and fell. Helen
shot over his head. She struck lengthwise, her arms stretched, and slid
hard to a shocking impact that stunned her.
Bo's scream rang in her ears; she felt the wet grass under her face and
then the strong hands that lifted her. Dale loomed over her, bending
down to look into her face; Bo was clutching her with frantic hands. And
Helen could only gasp. Her breast seemed caved in. The need to breathe
was torture.
“Nell!--you're not hurt. You fell light, like a feather. All grass
here.... You can't be hurt!” said Dale, sharply.
His anxious voice penetrated beyond her hearing, and his strong hands
went swiftly over her arms and shoulders, feeling for broken bones.
“Just had the wind knocked out of you,” went on Dale. “It feels awful,
but it's nothin'.”
Helen got a little air, that was like hot pin-points in her lungs, and
then a deeper breath, and then full, gasping respiration.
“I guess--I'm not hurt--not a bit,” she choked out.
“You sure had a header. Never saw a prettier spill. Ranger doesn't do
that often. I reckon we were travelin' too fast. But it was fun, don't
you think?”
It was Bo who answered. “Oh, glorious!... But, gee! I was scared.”
Dale still held Helen's hands. She released them while looking up at
him. The moment was realization for her of what for days had been a
vague, sweet uncertainty, becoming near and strange, disturbing and
present. This accident had been a sudden, violent end to the wonderful
ride. But its effect, the knowledge of what had got into her blood,
would never change. And inseparable from it was this man of the forest.