Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 473
“Thet’s a hackamore,” he said, indicating the knot. “He’s never had a bridle, an’ never will have one, I reckon.”
“You don’t ride him?” queried Helen.
“Sometimes I do,” replied Roy, with a smile. “Would you girls like to try him?”
“Excuse me,” answered Helen.
“Gee!” ejaculated Bo. “He looks like a devil. But I’d tackle him — if you think I could.”
The wild leaven of the West had found quick root in Bo Rayner.
“Wal, I’m sorry, but I reckon I’ll not let you — for a spell,” replied Roy, dryly.
“He pitches somethin’ powerful bad.”
“Pitches. You mean bucks?”
“I reckon.”
In the next half-hour Helen saw more and learned more about how horses of the open range were handled than she had ever heard of. Excepting Ranger, and Roy’s bay, and the white pony Bo rode, the rest of the horses had actually to be roped and hauled into camp to be saddled and packed. It was a job for fearless, strong men, and one that called for patience as well as arms of iron. So that for Helen Rayner the thing succeeding the confidence she had placed in these men was respect. To an observing woman that half-hour told much.
When all was in readiness for a start Dale mounted, and said, significantly: “Roy, I’ll look for you about sundown. I hope no sooner.”
“Wal, it’d be bad if I had to rustle along soon with bad news. Let’s hope for the best. We’ve been shore lucky so far. Now you take to the pine-mats in the woods an’ hide your trail.”
Dale turned away. Then the girls bade Roy good-by, and followed. Soon Roy and his buckskin-colored mustang were lost to sight round a clump of trees.
The unhampered horses led the way; the pack-animals trotted after them; the riders were close behind. All traveled at a jog-trot. And this gait made the packs bob up and down and from side to side. The sun felt warm at Helen’s back and the wind lost its frosty coldness, that almost appeared damp, for a dry, sweet fragrance. Dale drove up the shallow valley that showed timber on the levels above and a black border of timber some few miles ahead. It did not take long to reach the edge of the forest.
Helen wondered why the big pines grew so far on that plain and no farther. Probably the growth had to do with snow, but, as the ground was level, she could not see why the edge of the woods should come just there.
They rode into the forest.
To Helen it seemed a strange, critical entrance into another world, which she was destined to know and to love. The pines were big, brown-barked, seamed, and knotted, with no typical conformation except a majesty and beauty. They grew far apart. Few small pines and little underbrush flourished beneath them. The floor of this forest appeared remarkable in that it consisted of patches of high silvery grass and wide brown areas of pine-needles. These manifestly were what Roy had meant by pine-mats. Here and there a fallen monarch lay riven or rotting. Helen was presently struck with the silence of the forest and the strange fact that the horses seldom made any sound at all, and when they did it was a cracking of dead twig or thud of hoof on log. Likewise she became aware of a springy nature of the ground. And then she saw that the pine-mats gave like rubber cushions under the hoofs of the horses, and after they had passed sprang back to place again, leaving no track. Helen could not see a sign of a trail they left behind. Indeed, it would take a sharp eye to follow Dale through that forest. This knowledge was infinitely comforting to Helen, and for the first time since the flight had begun she felt a lessening of the weight upon mind and heart. It left her free for some of the appreciation she might have had in this wonderful ride under happier circumstances.
Bo, however, seemed too young, too wild, too intense to mind what the circumstances were. She responded to reality. Helen began to suspect that the girl would welcome any adventure, and Helen knew surely now that Bo was a true Auchincloss. For three long days Helen had felt a constraint with which heretofore she had been unfamiliar; for the last hours it had been submerged under dread. But it must be, she concluded, blood like her sister’s, pounding at her veins to be set free to race and to burn.
Bo loved action. She had an eye for beauty, but she was not contemplative. She was now helping Dale drive the horses and hold them in rather close formation. She rode well, and as yet showed no symptoms of fatigue or pain. Helen began to be aware of both, but not enough yet to limit her interest.
A wonderful forest without birds did not seem real to her. Of all living creatures in nature Helen liked birds best, and she knew many and could imitate the songs of a few. But here under the stately pines there were no birds. Squirrels, however, began to be seen here and there, and in the course of an hour’s travel became abundant. The only one with which she was familiar was the chipmunk. All the others, from the slim bright blacks to the striped russets and the white-tailed grays, were totally new to her. They appeared tame and curious. The reds barked and scolded at the passing cavalcade; the blacks glided to some safe branch, there to watch; the grays paid no especial heed to this invasion of their domain.
Once Dale, halting his horse, pointed with long arm, and Helen, following the direction, descried several gray deer standing in a glade, motionless, with long ears up. They made a wild and beautiful picture. Suddenly they bounded away with remarkable springy strides.
The forest on the whole held to the level, open character, but there were swales and stream-beds breaking up its regular conformity. Toward noon, however, it gradually changed, a fact that Helen believed she might have observed sooner had she been more keen. The general lay of the land began to ascend, and the trees to grow denser.
She made another discovery. Ever since she had entered the forest she had become aware of a fullness in her head and a something affecting her nostrils. She imagined, with regret, that she had taken cold. But presently her head cleared somewhat and she realized that the thick pine odor of the forest had clogged her nostrils as if with a sweet pitch. The smell was overpowering and disagreeable because of its strength. Also her throat and lungs seemed to burn.
When she began to lose interest in the forest and her surroundings it was because of aches and pains which would no longer be denied recognition. Thereafter she was not permitted to forget them and they grew worse. One, especially, was a pain beyond all her experience. It lay in the muscles of her side, above her hip, and it grew to be a treacherous thing, for it was not persistent. It came and went. After it did come, with a terrible flash, it could be borne by shifting or easing the body. But it gave no warning. When she expected it she was mistaken; when she dared to breathe again, then, with piercing swiftness, it returned like a blade in her side. This, then, was one of the riding-pains that made a victim of a tenderfoot on a long ride. It was almost too much to be borne. The beauty of the forest, the living creatures to be seen scurrying away, the time, distance — everything faded before that stablike pain. To her infinite relief she found that it was the trot that caused this torture. When Ranger walked she did not have to suffer it. Therefore she held him to a walk as long as she dared or until Dale and Bo were almost out of sight; then she loped him ahead until he had caught up.
So the hours passed, the sun got around low, sending golden shafts under the trees, and the forest gradually changed to a brighter, but a thicker, color. This slowly darkened. Sunset was not far away.
She heard the horses splashing in water, and soon she rode up to see the tiny streams of crystal water running swiftly over beds of green moss. She crossed a number of these and followed along the last one into a more open place in the forest where the pines were huge, towering, and far apart. A low, gray bluff of stone rose to the right, perhaps one-third as high as the trees. From somewhere came the rushing sound of running water.
“Big Spring,” announced Dale. “We camp here. You girls have done well.”
Another glance proved to Helen that all those little streams poured from under this gray bluff.
“I’m dying for a drink,” cried Bo with her customary hyperbole.
“I reckon you’ll never forget your first drink here,” remarked Dale.
Bo essayed to dismount, and finally fell off, and when she did get to the ground her legs appeared to refuse their natural function, and she fell flat. Dale helped her up.
“What’s wrong with me, anyhow?” she demanded, in great amaze.
“Just stiff, I reckon,” replied Dale, as he led her a few awkward steps.
“Bo, have you any hurts?” queried Helen, who still sat her horse, loath to try dismounting, yet wanting to beyond all words.
Bo gave her an eloquent glance.
“Nell, did you have one in your side, like a wicked, long darning-needle, punching deep when you weren’t ready?”
“That one I’ll never get over!” exclaimed Helen, softly. Then, profiting by Bo’s experience, she dismounted cautiously, and managed to keep upright. Her legs felt like wooden things.
Presently the girls went toward the spring.
“Drink slow,” called out Dale.
Big Spring had its source somewhere deep under the gray, weathered bluff, from which came a hollow subterranean gurgle and roar of water. Its fountainhead must have been a great well rushing up through the cold stone.
Helen and Bo lay flat on a mossy bank, seeing their faces as they bent over, and they sipped a mouthful, by Dale’s advice, and because they were so hot and parched and burning they wanted to tarry a moment with a precious opportunity.
The water was so cold that it sent a shock over Helen, made her teeth ache, and a singular, revivifying current steal all through her, wonderful in its cool absorption of that dry heat of flesh, irresistible in its appeal to thirst. Helen raised her head to look at this water. It was colorless as she had found it tasteless.
“Nell — drink!” panted Bo. “Think of our — old spring — in the orchard — full of pollywogs!”
And then Helen drank thirstily, with closed eyes, while a memory of home stirred from Bo’s gift of poignant speech.
CHAPTER VII
THE FIRST CAMP duty Dale performed was to throw a pack off one of the horses, and, opening it, he took out tarpaulin and blankets, which he arranged on the ground under a pine-tree.
“You girls rest,” he said, briefly.
“Can’t we help?” asked Helen, though she could scarcely stand.
“You’ll be welcome to do all you like after you’re broke in.”
“Broke in!” ejaculated Bo, with a little laugh. “I’m all broke UP now.”
“Bo, it looks as if Mr. Dale expects us to have quite a stay with him in the woods.”
“It does,” replied Bo, as slowly she sat down upon the blankets, stretched out with a long sigh, and laid her head on a saddle. “Nell, didn’t he say not to call him Mister?”
Dale was throwing the packs off the other horses.
Helen lay down beside Bo, and then for once in her life she experienced the sweetness of rest.
“Well, sister, what do you intend to call him?” queried Helen, curiously.
“Milt, of course,” replied Bo.
Helen had to laugh despite her weariness and aches.
“I suppose, then, when your Las Vegas cowboy comes along you will call him what he called you.”
Bo blushed, which was a rather unusual thing for her.
“I will if I like,” she retorted. “Nell, ever since I could remember you’ve raved about the West. Now you’re OUT West, right in it good and deep. So wake up!”
That was Bo’s blunt and characteristic way of advising the elimination of Helen’s superficialities. It sank deep. Helen had no retort. Her ambition, as far as the West was concerned, had most assuredly not been for such a wild, unheard-of jaunt as this. But possibly the West — a living from day to day — was one succession of adventures, trials, tests, troubles, and achievements. To make a place for others to live comfortably some day! That might be Bo’s meaning, embodied in her forceful hint. But Helen was too tired to think it out then. She found it interesting and vaguely pleasant to watch Dale.
He hobbled the horses and turned them loose. Then with ax in hand he approached a short, dead tree, standing among a few white-barked aspens. Dale appeared to advantage swinging the ax. With his coat off, displaying his wide shoulders, straight back, and long, powerful arms, he looked a young giant. He was lithe and supple, brawny but not bulky. The ax rang on the hard wood, reverberating through the forest. A few strokes sufficed to bring down the stub. Then he split it up. Helen was curious to see how he kindled a fire. First he ripped splinters out of the heart of the log, and laid them with coarser pieces on the ground. Then from a saddlebag which hung on a near-by branch he took flint and steel and a piece of what Helen supposed was rag or buckskin, upon which powder had been rubbed. At any rate, the first strike of the steel brought sparks, a blaze, and burning splinters. Instantly the flame leaped a foot high. He put on larger pieces of wood crosswise, and the fire roared.
That done, he stood erect, and, facing the north, he listened. Helen remembered now that she had seen him do the same thing twice before since the arrival at Big Spring. It was Roy for whom he was listening and watching. The sun had set and across the open space the tips of the pines were losing their brightness.
The camp utensils, which the hunter emptied out of a sack, gave forth a jangle of iron and tin. Next he unrolled a large pack, the contents of which appeared to be numerous sacks of all sizes. These evidently contained food supplies. The bucket looked as if a horse had rolled over it, pack and all. Dale filled it at the spring. Upon returning to the camp-fire he poured water into a washbasin, and, getting down to his knees, proceeded to wash his hands thoroughly. The act seemed a habit, for Helen saw that while he was doing it he gazed off into the woods and listened. Then he dried his hands over the fire, and, turning to the spread-out pack, he began preparations for the meal.
Suddenly Helen thought of the man and all that his actions implied. At Magdalena, on the stage-ride, and last night, she had trusted this stranger, a hunter of the White Mountains, who appeared ready to befriend her. And she had felt an exceeding gratitude. Still, she had looked at him impersonally. But it began to dawn upon her that chance had thrown her in the company of a remarkable man. That impression baffled her. It did not spring from the fact that he was brave and kind to help a young woman in peril, or that he appeared deft and quick at camp-fire chores. Most Western men were brave, her uncle had told her, and many were roughly kind, and all of them could cook. This hunter was physically a wonderful specimen of manhood, with something leonine about his stature. But that did not give rise to her impression. Helen had been a school-teacher and used to boys, and she sensed a boyish simplicity or vigor or freshness in this hunter. She believed, however, that it was a mental and spiritual force in Dale which had drawn her to think of it.
“Nell, I’ve spoken to you three times,” protested Bo, petulantly. “What ‘re you mooning over?”
“I’m pretty tired — and far away, Bo,” replied Helen. “What did you say?”
“I said I had an e-normous appetite.”
“Really. That’s not remarkable for you. I’m too tired to eat. And afraid to shut my eyes. They’d never come open. When did we sleep last, Bo?”
“Second night before we left home,” declared Bo.
“Four nights! Oh, we’ve slept some.”
“I’ll bet I make mine up in this woods. Do you suppose we’ll sleep right here — under this tree — with no covering?”
“It looks so,” replied Helen, dubiously.
“How perfectly lovely!” exclaimed Bo, in delight. “We’ll see the stars through the pines.”
“Seems to be clouding over. Wouldn’t it be awful if we had a storm?”
“Why, I don’t know,” answered Bo, thoughtfully. “It must storm out West.”
Again Helen felt a quality of inevitableness in Bo. It was something that had appeared only practical in the humdrum home life in St. Joseph. All of a sudden Helen received a flash of wondering thought — a thrilling consciousness that she and Bo had begun to develop in a new and wild environment. How strange, and fearful, perhaps, to watch that growth! Bo, being younger, more impressionable, with elemental rather than intellectual instincts, would grow stronger more swiftly. Helen wondered if she could yield to her own leaning to the primitive. But how could anyone with a thoughtful and grasping mind yield that way? It was the savage who did not think.
Helen saw Dale stand erect once more and gaze into the forest.
“Reckon Roy ain’t comin’,” he soliloquized. “An’ that’s good.” Then he turned to the girls. “Supper’s ready.”
The girls responded with a spirit greater than their activity. And they ate like famished children that had been lost in the woods. Dale attended them with a pleasant light upon his still face.
“To-morrow night we’ll have meat,” he said.
“What kind?” asked Bo.
“Wild turkey or deer. Maybe both, if you like. But it’s well to take wild meat slow. An’ turkey — that ‘ll melt in your mouth.”
“Uummm!” murmured Bo, greedily. “I’ve heard of wild turkey.”
When they had finished Dale ate his meal, listening to the talk of the girls, and occasionally replying briefly to some query of Bo’s. It was twilight when he began to wash the pots and pans, and almost dark by the time his duties appeared ended. Then he replenished the campfire and sat down on a log to gaze into the fire. The girls leaned comfortably propped against the saddles.
“Nell, I’ll keel over in a minute,” said Bo. “And I oughtn’t — right on such a big supper.”
“I don’t see how I can sleep, and I know I can’t stay awake,” rejoined Helen.
Dale lifted his head alertly.
“Listen.”
The girls grew tense and still. Helen could not hear a sound, unless it was a low thud of hoof out in the gloom. The forest seemed sleeping. She knew from Bo’s eyes, wide and shining in the camp-fire light, that she, too, had failed to catch whatever it was Dale meant.
