The camp-robber, perched on a limb, was in considerable of a mental
turmoil. His mentality was never of an extra high grade, and to-day his
intellectual grasp had almost failed him. And the reason was that he had
made an astonishing discovery; and these remote Idaho forests had
suddenly revealed to him a form of life that he hadn’t had any idea
existed.
Of course his true name wasn’t “camp-robber.” In reality he belonged to
that noisy, thievish jay-magpie assemblage that is to be found in almost
all of the great Western forests, and he had a long and jaw-breaking
scientific designation besides. But on the lower East Side it isn’t
necessary to hunt up the name in full of Tony the Dip, because the title
describes him better than the name his mother gave him. It was much the
same with the camp-robber. He got the title from his habits and it
fitted him to perfection.
He was rather a gay old bird with considerable blue and gray in his
feathers, and in his several months of life he had concluded that he
knew these Idaho woods from one end to another. He thought it would be a
long, cold summer day before he would meet a situation that he could not
immediately handle. He knew just how to look twice into a cluster of
leaves and twigs before he lighted among them—lest a certain little
brown-furred cutthroat that was rather unpleasantly known to his family
should be waiting in ambush. He knew how to select a nest-site out of
the reach of a prowling raccoon, and he was as impertinent and saucy
from all this knowledge as words can tell. Yet out of a perfectly clear
ground, so to speak (it wouldn’t be correct to say out of a clear sky
when referring to one who habitually lives in the sky) two utterly
unknown and enormous living creatures had revealed themselves.
The camp-robber had been winging back and forth through the forest and
had flitted down to the spring for a bath. One of the two figures was
standing erect, shaking his fist at the speeding form of Spread Horn,—a
creature from the back of which the camp-robber had almost, if not
quite, gathered vermin. The other was lying down, gazing moodily at an
interesting-looking object that had oozed what had seemed to be dark
blood on the pine needles. In form they resembled bears; yet he didn’t
for an instant think that they were. They were not deer or cougar or
even overgrown raccoons. He perched upon the limb to think it over.
Yet the camp-robber never spends a great deal of time in such a
profitless occupation as thought. At once his instincts began to get
busy inside of him. He was a born kleptomaniac, and he was simply
fascinated by the number of bright and interesting things lying about
the ashes of the dead fire. He began to have all manner of pleasing
conjectures in regard to them. Like many gentlemen-of-fortune in the
Parisian underworld he had a long ancestry of famous criminals; and now
he remembered certain advice his mother had given him when he was a
fledgling in the nest.
“If ever you find a camp of men,” one can imagine the old mother-bird
chirping, as she flicked her tail here and there, “fly right down into
it. You will have more fun than you ever had in your life before.”
These were men: no other supposition remained. The camp-robber squawked
once, in enthusiasm, and sailed down to the ground beside the prone
figure.
The result was rather astonishing. For the second at least Hugh Gaylord
forgot the late tragedy to his last bottle of bourbon. A smile that was
singularly winning and boyish played around his lips.
It was not quite Gaylord’s way to smile at such little things as this.
It usually required a very keen jest from a clever comedian in a musical
comedy to draw a smile from him. Strangest of all, he hadn’t been in the
least in the humor for gaiety since the first day he had come to these
stern, lonely mountains.
He watched the bird with growing astonishment. His surprise was really
no less than that of the camp-robber on first beholding the two men. The
bird hopped here and there among the camp supplies, scratched in the
pine needles for crumbs, and then, with astounding cheek, began to peck
holes in the soap. He had tasted many things in his months of foraging,
but here was something the like of which he had never tasted before. The
truth was that more than one camp, here and there through the forest,
could not yield up such a treat as this. Many of the sparse visitors to
the Upper Salmon mountains regarded the use of soap as they did
Christmas,—something to celebrate once a year.
Hugh had not discerned the fleeting form of the elk in the thickets, and
except for his guide, this bird was the first living thing he had seen
since he had come to Smoky Land. It was not that the forest did not
literally teem with life. The trouble lay in Hugh’s eyes. The living
things of the great forest are always furtive and hidden, and they only
yield their most priceless secrets to those who seek them.
A man never sees clearly when his brain is misted and blurred from the
fumes of strong drink; besides, Hugh had not yet gone a half-mile from
camp. He was a tenderfoot in the raw, and the forest creatures had been
able to discern his heavy tread in plenty of time to get out of sight.
He had been disgusted and annoyed by the discomforts of camp life, and
he was eager to return to his own kind; his stock of liquor had been
running low and without it he did not believe he could exist; he spoke
loudly and his spirit was dead within him: and thus the forest had
remained a closed book. His choice of a companion had not been
particularly fortunate either. Pete had good blood in him, the blood of
as brave and hardy a race as ever lived, but degeneracy was upon him and
his people. He had been employed as Hugh’s guide, but he had found it
much more convenient to stay in camp and drink Hugh’s whisky.
The Indian guide would have been a familiar type to any one of the
hardy, farseeing frontiersmen that occasionally ranged through the
forest, but Hugh himself would have wakened some wonder. He was still
obviously a man of cities. He wore the outdoor clothes of a gentleman,
which is but rarely the outdoor garb of the frontier. They were stained
with dirt and their careful crease was destroyed; yet they marked him as
a tenderfoot.
The truth was that the Colonel’s experiment had seemingly failed: the
few days that Hugh had already spent in the far Rockies had wrought no
change in him. He had not found Broken Fang—the great cougar that had
already won a name through a thousand square miles of Idaho forest—and
he was ready to admit to himself, at least, that he had made no real
effort to find him. He had fished once, succeeding in breaking a number
of expensive gut leaders and high-grade flies in the brush along the
stream. The remainder of the time he had lain in camp, wishing he hadn’t
come. Fortunately the two weeks were nearly over.
The guide brought his wandering mind back to the disaster of his liquor.
“I know where you can buy quart—take place that one I spilled,” the
Indian said.
Hugh’s face brightened. “Lead me to it.”
“Just over ridge. Sheep camp there—only one this part of mountains.
Herder’ll have extra quart or two.”
Hugh looked at his watch. “We can get over and back by dark?”
“Maybe soon after. Going to be pretty dusky right away.”
The man spoke true. The twilight was falling over Smoky Land. The sun
was set, the tall pines seemed to darken above them, the dusk grew and
deepened between the distant trunks. The immeasurable silence of the
mountain night, broken by such little sounds as only accentuate the
hush, was deepening about them.
Hugh had no answer at first. For once no words were at his lips, and it
was a good and portentous sign. He stood listening. Perhaps because the
visit of the camp-robber had been an impulse to his imagination, perhaps
only because the effect of his last drink was dying within him, some
little portion at least of the age-old magic of the wilderness twilight
was going home to him. Now that his guide’s voice died away, he was a
little startled by the vastness of the silence.
Far and wide through the forest the wild creatures were starting forth
on their night’s business. But they moved with stealth. Hugh had an
instant’s dim realization that thickets moved and rustled in the
ultimate reaches of hearing; that dim shadows wavered so far distant
that he could not be sure of them. The wilderness forces were coming to
life.
He lifted his face. As usual in the twilight hour, the faintest breath
of wind came slipping, light as a deer-tread itself, from the further
mountains. He saw the two long ridges that enclosed his particular part
of the plateau, and the last light of day gleamed on their tall, white,
snow-laden peaks. These were the high Rockies; sentinel mountains grand
and austere.
These mountains looked just at hand in the daylight, but now in the
gathering gloom they seemed to be receding into the infinite distance.
The attention of Hugh Gaylord was not usually held by mere scenic
beauty, but to-night, for a lone, long instant, he felt vaguely stirred.
Then a faint, sharp sound reached him through the growing silence. It
came from an amazing distance, and but for the fact that all his senses
had been unusually alert he would not have discerned it at all. All that
was left of it was a faint prick in the eardrums,—a noise that a beetle
might make in the leaves.
“Did you hear something?” he asked his guide doubtfully.
“Yes,” the Indian replied. “Little noise. Know who made it?”
“A shot?”
“Yes. Maybe ’nother hunter, but they don’t often come here. Over toward
sheep camp. But gotto hurry heap—get whisky—come back while plenty
light to see.”
Hugh nodded, and they headed up the ridge.