Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 478
“What can I do?” she asked Bo, almost helplessly.
“Why, rest, you silly!” retorted Bo. “You walk like an old, crippled woman with only one leg.”
Helen hoped the comparison was undeserved, but the advice was sound. The blankets spread out on the grass looked inviting and they felt comfortably warm in the sunshine. The breeze was slow, languorous, fragrant, and it brought the low hum of the murmuring waterfall, like a melody of bees. Helen made a pillow and lay down to rest. The green pine-needles, so thin and fine in their crisscross network, showed clearly against the blue sky. She looked in vain for birds. Then her gaze went wonderingly to the lofty fringed rim of the great amphitheater, and as she studied it she began to grasp its remoteness, how far away it was in the rarefied atmosphere. A black eagle, sweeping along, looked of tiny size, and yet he was far under the heights above. How pleasant she fancied it to be up there! And drowsy fancy lulled her to sleep.
Helen slept all afternoon, and upon awakening, toward sunset, found Bo curled beside her. Dale had thoughtfully covered them with a blanket; also he had built a camp-fire. The air was growing keen and cold.
Later, when they had put their coats on and made comfortable seats beside the fire, Dale came over, apparently to visit them.
“I reckon you can’t sleep all the time,” he said. “An’ bein’ city girls, you’ll get lonesome.”
“Lonesome!” echoed Helen. The idea of her being lonesome here had not occurred to her.
“I’ve thought that all out,” went on Dale, as he sat down, Indian fashion, before the blaze. “It’s natural you’d find time drag up here, bein’ used to lots of people an’ goin’s-on, an’ work, an’ all girls like.”
“I’d never be lonesome here,” replied Helen, with her direct force.
Dale did not betray surprise, but he showed that his mistake was something to ponder over.
“Excuse me,” he said, presently, as his gray eyes held hers. “That’s how I had it. As I remember girls — an’ it doesn’t seem long since I left home — most of them would die of lonesomeness up here.” Then he addressed himself to Bo. “How about you? You see, I figured you’d be the one that liked it, an’ your sister the one who wouldn’t.”
“I won’t get lonesome very soon,” replied Bo.
“I’m glad. It worried me some — not ever havin’ girls as company before. An’ in a day or so, when you’re rested, I’ll help you pass the time.”
Bo’s eyes were full of flashing interest, and Helen asked him, “How?”
It was a sincere expression of her curiosity and not doubtful or ironic challenge of an educated woman to a man of the forest. But as a challenge he took it.
“How!” he repeated, and a strange smile flitted across his face. “Why, by givin’ you rides an’ climbs to beautiful places. An’ then, if you’re interested,’ to show you how little so-called civilized people know of nature.”
Helen realized then that whatever his calling, hunter or wanderer or hermit, he was not uneducated, even if he appeared illiterate.
“I’ll be happy to learn from you,” she said.
“Me, too!” chimed in Bo. “You can’t tell too much to any one from Missouri.”
He smiled, and that warmed Helen to him, for then he seemed less removed from other people. About this hunter there began to be something of the very nature of which he spoke — a stillness, aloofness, an unbreakable tranquillity, a cold, clear spirit like that in the mountain air, a physical something not unlike the tamed wildness of his pets or the strength of the pines.
“I’ll bet I can tell you more ‘n you’ll ever remember,” he said.
“What ‘ll you bet?” retorted Bo.
“Well, more roast turkey against — say somethin’ nice when you’re safe an’ home to your uncle Al’s, runnin’ his ranch.”
“Agreed. Nell, you hear?”
Helen nodded her head.
“All right. We’ll leave it to Nell,” began Dale, half seriously. “Now I’ll tell you, first, for the fun of passin’ time we’ll ride an’ race my horses out in the park. An’ we’ll fish in the brooks an’ hunt in the woods. There’s an old silvertip around that you can see me kill. An’ we’ll climb to the peaks an’ see wonderful sights.... So much for that. Now, if you really want to learn — or if you only want me to tell you — well, that’s no matter. Only I’ll win the bet!... You’ll see how this park lies in the crater of a volcano an’ was once full of water — an’ how the snow blows in on one side in winter, a hundred feet deep, when there’s none on the other. An’ the trees — how they grow an’ live an’ fight one another an’ depend on one another, an’ protect the forest from storm-winds. An’ how they hold the water that is the fountains of the great rivers. An’ how the creatures an’ things that live in them or on them are good for them, an’ neither could live without the other. An’ then I’ll show you my pets tame an’ untamed, an’ tell you how it’s man that makes any creature wild — how easy they are to tame — an’ how they learn to love you. An’ there’s the life of the forest, the strife of it — how the bear lives, an’ the cats, an’ the wolves, an’ the deer. You’ll see how cruel nature is how savage an’ wild the wolf or cougar tears down the deer — how a wolf loves fresh, hot blood, an’ how a cougar unrolls the skin of a deer back from his neck. An’ you’ll see that this cruelty of nature — this work of the wolf an’ cougar — is what makes the deer so beautiful an’ healthy an’ swift an’ sensitive. Without his deadly foes the deer would deteriorate an’ die out. An’ you’ll see how this principle works out among all creatures of the forest. Strife! It’s the meanin’ of all creation, an’ the salvation. If you’re quick to see, you’ll learn that the nature here in the wilds is the same as that of men — only men are no longer cannibals. Trees fight to live — birds fight — animals fight — men fight. They all live off one another. An’ it’s this fightin’ that brings them all closer an’ closer to bein’ perfect. But nothin’ will ever be perfect.”
“But how about religion?” interrupted Helen, earnestly.
“Nature has a religion, an’ it’s to live — to grow — to reproduce, each of its kind.”
“But that is not God or the immortality of the soul,” declared Helen.
“Well, it’s as close to God an’ immortality as nature ever gets.”
“Oh, you would rob me of my religion!”
“No, I just talk as I see life,” replied Dale, reflectively, as he poked a stick into the red embers of the fire. “Maybe I have a religion. I don’t know. But it’s not the kind you have — not the Bible kind. That kind doesn’t keep the men in Pine an’ Snowdrop an’ all over — sheepmen an’ ranchers an’ farmers an’ travelers, such as I’ve known — the religion they profess doesn’t keep them from lyin’, cheatin’, stealin’, an’ killin’. I reckon no man who lives as I do — which perhaps is my religion — will lie or cheat or steal or kill, unless it’s to kill in self-defense or like I’d do if Snake Anson would ride up here now. My religion, maybe, is love of life — wild life as it was in the beginnin’ — an’ the wind that blows secrets from everywhere, an’ the water that sings all day an’ night, an’ the stars that shine constant, an’ the trees that speak somehow, an’ the rocks that aren’t dead. I’m never alone here or on the trails. There’s somethin’ unseen, but always with me. An’ that’s It! Call it God if you like. But what stalls me is — where was that Spirit when this earth was a ball of fiery gas? Where will that Spirit be when all life is frozen out or burned out on this globe an’ it hangs dead in space like the moon? That time will come. There’s no waste in nature. Not the littlest atom is destroyed. It changes, that’s all, as you see this pine wood go up in smoke an’ feel somethin’ that’s heat come out of it. Where does that go? It’s not lost. Nothin’ is lost. So, the beautiful an’ savin’ thought is, maybe all rock an’ wood, water an’ blood an’ flesh, are resolved back into the elements, to come to life somewhere again sometime.”
“Oh, what you say is wonderful, but it’s terrible!” exclaimed Helen. He had struck deep into her soul.
“Terrible? I reckon,” he replied, sadly.
Then ensued a little interval of silence.
“Milt Dale, I lose the bet,” declared Bo, with earnestness behind her frivolity.
“I’d forgotten that. Reckon I talked a lot,” he said, apologetically. “You see, I don’t get much chance to talk, except to myself or Tom. Years ago, when I found the habit of silence settlin’ down on me, I took to thinkin’ out loud an’ talkin’ to anythin’.”
“I could listen to you all night,” returned Bo, dreamily.
“Do you read — do you have books?” inquired Helen, suddenly.
“Yes, I read tolerable well; a good deal better than I talk or write,” he replied. “I went to school till I was fifteen. Always hated study, but liked to read. Years ago an old friend of mine down here at Pine — Widow Cass — she gave me a lot of old books. An’ I packed them up here. Winter’s the time I read.”
Conversation lagged after that, except for desultory remarks, and presently Dale bade the girls good night and left them. Helen watched his tall form vanish in the gloom under the pines, and after he had disappeared she still stared.
“Nell!” called Bo, shrilly. “I’ve called you three times. I want to go to bed.”
“Oh! I — I was thinking,” rejoined Helen, half embarrassed, half wondering at herself. “I didn’t hear you.”
“I should smile you didn’t,” retorted Bo. “Wish you could just have seen your eyes. Nell, do you want me to tell you something?
“Why — yes,” said Helen, rather feebly. She did not at all, when Bo talked like that.
“You’re going to fall in love with that wild hunter,” declared Bo in a voice that rang like a bell.
Helen was not only amazed, but enraged. She caught her breath preparatory to giving this incorrigible sister a piece of her mind. Bo went calmly on.
“I can feel it in my bones.”
“Bo, you’re a little fool — a sentimental, romancing, gushy little fool!” retorted Helen. “All you seem to hold in your head is some rot about love. To hear you talk one would think there’s nothing else in the world but love.”
Bo’s eyes were bright, shrewd, affectionate, and laughing as she bent their steady gaze upon Helen.
“Nell, that’s just it. There IS nothing else!”
CHAPTER X
THE NIGHT OF sleep was so short that it was difficult for Helen to believe that hours had passed. Bo appeared livelier this morning, with less complaint of aches.
“Nell, you’ve got color!” exclaimed Bo. “And your eyes are bright. Isn’t the morning perfectly lovely?... Couldn’t you get drunk on that air? I smell flowers. And oh! I’m hungry!”
“Bo, our host will soon have need of his hunting abilities if your appetite holds,” said Helen, as she tried to keep her hair out of her eyes while she laced her boots.
“Look! there’s a big dog — a hound.”
Helen looked as Bo directed, and saw a hound of unusually large proportions, black and tan in color, with long, drooping ears. Curiously he trotted nearer to the door of their hut and then stopped to gaze at them. His head was noble, his eyes shone dark and sad. He seemed neither friendly nor unfriendly.
“Hello, doggie! Come right in — we won’t hurt you,” called Bo, but without enthusiasm.
This made Helen laugh. “Bo, you’re simply delicious,” she said. “You’re afraid of that dog.”
“Sure. Wonder if he’s Dale’s. Of course he must be.”
Presently the hound trotted away out of sight. When the girls presented themselves at the camp-fire they espied their curious canine visitor lying down. His ears were so long that half of them lay on the ground.
“I sent Pedro over to wake you girls up,” said Dale, after greeting them. “Did he scare you?”
“Pedro. So that’s his name. No, he didn’t exactly scare me. He did Nell, though. She’s an awful tenderfoot,” replied Bo.
“He’s a splendid-looking dog,” said Helen, ignoring her sister’s sally. “I love dogs. Will he make friends?”
“He’s shy an’ wild. You see, when I leave camp he won’t hang around. He an’ Tom are jealous of each other. I had a pack of hounds an’ lost all but Pedro on account of Tom. I think you can make friends with Pedro. Try it.”
Whereupon Helen made overtures to Pedro, and not wholly in vain. The dog was matured, of almost stern aloofness, and manifestly not used to people. His deep, wine-dark eyes seemed to search Helen’s soul. They were honest and wise, with a strange sadness.
“He looks intelligent,” observed Helen, as she smoothed the long, dark ears.
“That hound is nigh human,” responded Dale. “Come, an’ while you eat I’ll tell you about Pedro.”
Dale had gotten the hound as a pup from a Mexican sheep-herder who claimed he was part California bloodhound. He grew up, becoming attached to Dale. In his younger days he did not get along well with Dale’s other pets and Dale gave him to a rancher down in the valley. Pedro was back in Dale’s camp next day. From that day Dale began to care more for the hound, but he did not want to keep him, for various reasons, chief of which was the fact that Pedro was too fine a dog to be left alone half the time to shift for himself. That fall Dale had need to go to the farthest village, Snowdrop, where he left Pedro with a friend. Then Dale rode to Show Down and Pine, and the camp of the Beemans’ and with them he trailed some wild horses for a hundred miles, over into New Mexico. The snow was flying when Dale got back to his camp in the mountains. And there was Pedro, gaunt and worn, overjoyed to welcome him home. Roy Beeman visited Dale that October and told that Dale’s friend in Snowdrop had not been able to keep Pedro. He broke a chain and scaled a ten-foot fence to escape. He trailed Dale to Show Down, where one of Dale’s friends, recognizing the hound, caught him, and meant to keep him until Dale’s return. But Pedro refused to eat. It happened that a freighter was going out to the Beeman camp, and Dale’s friend boxed Pedro up and put him on the wagon. Pedro broke out of the box, returned to Show Down, took up Dale’s trail to Pine, and then on to the Beeman camp. That was as far as Roy could trace the movements of the hound. But he believed, and so did Dale, that Pedro had trailed them out on the wild-horse hunt. The following spring Dale learned more from the herder of a sheepman at whose camp he and the Beemans; had rested on the way into New Mexico. It appeared that after Dale had left this camp Pedro had arrived, and another Mexican herder had stolen the hound. But Pedro got away.
“An’ he was here when I arrived,” concluded Dale, smiling. “I never wanted to get rid of him after that. He’s turned out to be the finest dog I ever knew. He knows what I say. He can almost talk. An’ I swear he can cry. He does whenever I start off without him.”
“How perfectly wonderful!” exclaimed Bo. “Aren’t animals great?... But I love horses best.”
It seemed to Helen that Pedro understood they were talking about him, for he looked ashamed, and swallowed hard, and dropped his gaze. She knew something of the truth about the love of dogs for their owners. This story of Dale’s, however, was stranger than any she had ever heard.
Tom, the cougar, put in an appearance then, and there was scarcely love in the tawny eyes he bent upon Pedro. But the hound did not deign to notice him. Tom sidled up to Bo, who sat on the farther side of the tarpaulin table-cloth, and manifestly wanted part of her breakfast.
“Gee! I love the look of him,” she said. “But when he’s close he makes my flesh creep.”
“Beasts are as queer as people,” observed Dale. “They take likes an’ dislikes. I believe Tom has taken a shine to you an’ Pedro begins to be interested in your sister. I can tell.”
“Where’s Bud?” inquired Bo.
“He’s asleep or around somewhere. Now, soon as I get the work done, what would you girls like to do?”
“Ride!” declared Bo, eagerly.
“Aren’t you sore an’ stiff?”
“I am that. But I don’t care. Besides, when I used to go out to my uncle’s farm near Saint Joe I always found riding to be a cure for aches.”
“Sure is, if you can stand it. An’ what will your sister like to do?” returned Dale, turning to Helen.
“Oh, I’ll rest, and watch you folks — and dream,” replied Helen.
“But after you’ve rested you must be active,” said Dale, seriously. “You must do things. It doesn’t matter what, just as long as you don’t sit idle.”
“Why?” queried Helen, in surprise. “Why not be idle here in this beautiful, wild place? just to dream away the hours — the days! I could do it.”
“But you mustn’t. It took me years to learn how bad that was for me. An’ right now I would love nothin’ more than to forget my work, my horses an’ pets — everythin’, an’ just lay around, seein’ an’ feelin’.”
“Seeing and feeling? Yes, that must be what I mean. But why — what is it? There are the beauty and color — the wild, shaggy slopes — the gray cliffs — the singing wind — the lulling water — the clouds — the sky. And the silence, loneliness, sweetness of it all.”
“It’s a driftin’ back. What I love to do an’ yet fear most. It’s what makes a lone hunter of a man. An’ it can grow so strong that it binds a man to the wilds.”
“How strange!” murmured Helen. “But that could never bind ME. Why, I must live and fulfil my mission, my work in the civilized world.”
It seemed to Helen that Dale almost imperceptibly shrank at her earnest words.
“The ways of Nature are strange,” he said. “I look at it different. Nature’s just as keen to wean you back to a savage state as you are to be civilized. An’ if Nature won, you would carry out her design all the better.”
This hunter’s talk shocked Helen and yet stimulated her mind.
“Me — a savage? Oh no!” she exclaimed. “But, if that were possible, what would Nature’s design be?”
“You spoke of your mission in life,” he replied. “A woman’s mission is to have children. The female of any species has only one mission — to reproduce its kind. An’ Nature has only one mission — toward greater strength, virility, efficiency — absolute perfection, which is unattainable.”
