Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 479
“What of mental and spiritual development of man and woman?” asked Helen.
“Both are direct obstacles to the design of Nature. Nature is physical. To create for limitless endurance for eternal life. That must be Nature’s inscrutable design. An’ why she must fail.”
“But the soul!” whispered Helen.
“Ah! When you speak of the soul an’ I speak of life we mean the same. You an’ I will have some talks while you’re here. I must brush up my thoughts.”
“So must I, it seems,” said Helen, with a slow smile. She had been rendered grave and thoughtful. “But I guess I’ll risk dreaming under the pines.”
Bo had been watching them with her keen blue eyes.
“Nell, it’d take a thousand years to make a savage of you,” she said. “But a week will do for me.”
“Bo, you were one before you left Saint Joe,” replied Helen. “Don’t you remember that school-teacher Barnes who said you were a wildcat and an Indian mixed? He spanked you with a ruler.”
“Never! He missed me,” retorted Bo, with red in her cheeks. “Nell, I wish you’d not tell things about me when I was a kid.”
“That was only two years ago,” expostulated Helen, in mild surprise.
“Suppose it was. I was a kid all right. I’ll bet you—” Bo broke up abruptly, and, tossing her head, she gave Tom a pat and then ran away around the corner of cliff wall.
Helen followed leisurely.
“Say, Nell,” said Bo, when Helen arrived at their little green ledge-pole hut, “do you know that hunter fellow will upset some of your theories?”
“Maybe. I’ll admit he amazes me — and affronts me, too, I’m afraid,” replied Helen. “What surprises me is that in spite of his evident lack of schooling he’s not raw or crude. He’s elemental.”
“Sister dear, wake up. The man’s wonderful. You can learn more from him than you ever learned in your life. So can I. I always hated books, anyway.”
When, a little later, Dale approached carrying some bridles, the hound Pedro trotted at his heels.
“I reckon you’d better ride the horse you had,” he said to Bo.
“Whatever you say. But I hope you let me ride them all, by and by.”
“Sure. I’ve a mustang out there you’ll like. But he pitches a little,” he rejoined, and turned away toward the park. The hound looked after him and then at Helen.
“Come, Pedro. Stay with me,” called Helen.
Dale, hearing her, motioned the hound back. Obediently Pedro trotted to her, still shy and soberly watchful, as if not sure of her intentions, but with something of friendliness about him now. Helen found a soft, restful seat in the sun facing the park, and there composed herself for what she felt would be slow, sweet, idle hours. Pedro curled down beside her. The tall form of Dale stalked across the park, out toward the straggling horses. Again she saw a deer grazing among them. How erect and motionless it stood watching Dale! Presently it bounded away toward the edge of the forest. Some of the horses whistled and ran, kicking heels high in the air. The shrill whistles rang clear in the stillness.
“Gee! Look at them go!” exclaimed Bo, gleefully, coming up to where Helen sat. Bo threw herself down upon the fragrant pine-needles and stretched herself languorously, like a lazy kitten. There was something feline in her lithe, graceful outline. She lay flat and looked up through the pines.
“Wouldn’t it be great, now,” she murmured, dreamily, half to herself, “if that Las Vegas cowboy would happen somehow to come, and then an earthquake would shut us up here in this Paradise valley so we’d never get out?”
“Bo! What would mother say to such talk as that?” gasped Helen.
“But, Nell, wouldn’t it be great?”
“It would be terrible.”
“Oh, there never was any romance in you, Nell Rayner,” replied Bo. “That very thing has actually happened out here in this wonderful country of wild places. You need not tell me! Sure it’s happened. With the cliff-dwellers and the Indians and then white people. Every place I look makes me feel that. Nell, you’d have to see people in the moon through a telescope before you’d believe that.”
“I’m practical and sensible, thank goodness!”
“But, for the sake of argument,” protested Bo, with flashing eyes, “suppose it MIGHT happen. Just to please me, suppose we DID get shut up here with Dale and that cowboy we saw from the train. Shut in without any hope of ever climbing out.... What would you do? Would you give up and pine away and die? Or would you fight for life and whatever joy it might mean?”
“Self-preservation is the first instinct,” replied Helen, surprised at a strange, deep thrill in the depths of her. “I’d fight for life, of course.”
“Yes. Well, really, when I think seriously I don’t want anything like that to happen. But, just the same, if it DID happen I would glory in it.”
While they were talking Dale returned with the horses.
“Can you bridle an’ saddle your own horse?” he asked.
“No. I’m ashamed to say I can’t,” replied Bo.
“Time to learn then. Come on. Watch me first when I saddle mine.”
Bo was all eyes while Dale slipped off the bridle from his horse and then with slow, plain action readjusted it. Next he smoothed the back of the horse, shook out the blanket, and, folding it half over, he threw it in place, being careful to explain to Bo just the right position. He lifted his saddle in a certain way and put that in place, and then he tightened the cinches.
“Now you try,” he said.
According to Helen’s judgment Bo might have been a Western girl all her days. But Dale shook his head and made her do it over.
“That was better. Of course, the saddle is too heavy for you to sling it up. You can learn that with a light one. Now put the bridle on again. Don’t be afraid of your hands. He won’t bite. Slip the bit in sideways.... There. Now let’s see you mount.”
When Bo got into the saddle Dale continued: “You went up quick an’ light, but the wrong way. Watch me.”
Bo had to mount several times before Dale was satisfied. Then he told her to ride off a little distance. When Bo had gotten out of earshot Dale said to Helen: “She’ll take to a horse like a duck takes to water.” Then, mounting, he rode out after her.
Helen watched them trotting and galloping and running the horses round the grassy park, and rather regretted she had not gone with them. Eventually Bo rode back, to dismount and fling herself down, red-cheeked and radiant, with disheveled hair, and curls damp on her temples. How alive she seemed! Helen’s senses thrilled with the grace and charm and vitality of this surprising sister, and she was aware of a sheer physical joy in her presence. Bo rested, but she did not rest long. She was soon off to play with Bud. Then she coaxed the tame doe to eat out of her hand. She dragged Helen off for wild flowers, curious and thoughtless by turns. And at length she fell asleep, quickly, in a way that reminded Helen of the childhood now gone forever.
Dale called them to dinner about four o’clock, as the sun was reddening the western rampart of the park. Helen wondered where the day had gone. The hours had flown swiftly, serenely, bringing her scarcely a thought of her uncle or dread of her forced detention there or possible discovery by those outlaws supposed to be hunting for her. After she realized the passing of those hours she had an intangible and indescribable feeling of what Dale had meant about dreaming the hours away. The nature of Paradise Park was inimical to the kind of thought that had habitually been hers. She found the new thought absorbing, yet when she tried to name it she found that, after all, she had only felt. At the meal hour she was more than usually quiet. She saw that Dale noticed it and was trying to interest her or distract her attention. He succeeded, but she did not choose to let him see that. She strolled away alone to her seat under the pine. Bo passed her once, and cried, tantalizingly:
“My, Nell, but you’re growing romantic!”
Never before in Helen’s life had the beauty of the evening star seemed so exquisite or the twilight so moving and shadowy or the darkness so charged with loneliness. It was their environment — the accompaniment of wild wolf-mourn, of the murmuring waterfall, of this strange man of the forest and the unfamiliar elements among which he made his home.
Next morning, her energy having returned, Helen shared Bo’s lesson in bridling and saddling her horse, and in riding. Bo, however, rode so fast and so hard that for Helen to share her company was impossible. And Dale, interested and amused, yet anxious, spent most of his time with Bo. It was thus that Helen rode all over the park alone. She was astonished at its size, when from almost any point it looked so small. The atmosphere deceived her. How clearly she could see! And she began to judge distance by the size of familiar things. A horse, looked at across the longest length of the park, seemed very small indeed. Here and there she rode upon dark, swift, little brooks, exquisitely clear and amber-colored and almost hidden from sight by the long grass. These all ran one way, and united to form a deeper brook that apparently wound under the cliffs at the west end, and plunged to an outlet in narrow clefts. When Dale and Bo came to her once she made inquiry, and she was surprised to learn from Dale that this brook disappeared in a hole in the rocks and had an outlet on the other side of the mountain. Sometime he would take them to the lake it formed.
“Over the mountain?” asked Helen, again remembering that she must regard herself as a fugitive. “Will it be safe to leave our hiding-place? I forget so often why we are here.”
“We would be better hidden over there than here,” replied Dale. “The valley on that side is accessible only from that ridge. An’ don’t worry about bein’ found. I told you Roy Beeman is watchin’ Anson an’ his gang. Roy will keep between them an’ us.”
Helen was reassured, yet there must always linger in the background of her mind a sense of dread. In spite of this, she determined to make the most of her opportunity. Bo was a stimulus. And so Helen spent the rest of that day riding and tagging after her sister.
The next day was less hard on Helen. Activity, rest, eating, and sleeping took on a wonderful new meaning to her. She had really never known them as strange joys. She rode, she walked, she climbed a little, she dozed under her pine-tree, she worked helping Dale at camp-fire tasks, and when night came she said she did not know herself. That fact haunted her in vague, deep dreams. Upon awakening she forgot her resolve to study herself. That day passed. And then several more went swiftly before she adapted herself to a situation she had reason to believe might last for weeks and even months.
It was afternoon that Helen loved best of all the time of the day. The sunrise was fresh, beautiful; the morning was windy, fragrant; the sunset was rosy, glorious; the twilight was sad, changing; and night seemed infinitely sweet with its stars and silence and sleep. But the afternoon, when nothing changed, when all was serene, when time seemed to halt, that was her choice, and her solace.
One afternoon she had camp all to herself. Bo was riding. Dale had climbed the mountain to see if he could find any trace of tracks or see any smoke from camp-fire. Bud was nowhere to be seen, nor any of the other pets. Tom had gone off to some sunny ledge where he could bask in the sun, after the habit of the wilder brothers of his species. Pedro had not been seen for a night and a day, a fact that Helen had noted with concern. However, she had forgotten him, and therefore was the more surprised to see him coming limping into camp on three legs.
“Why, Pedro! You have been fighting. Come here,” she called.
The hound did not look guilty. He limped to her and held up his right fore paw. The action was unmistakable. Helen examined the injured member and presently found a piece of what looked like mussel-shell embedded deeply between the toes. The wound was swollen, bloody, and evidently very painful. Pedro whined. Helen had to exert all the strength of her fingers to pull it out. Then Pedro howled. But immediately he showed his gratitude by licking her hand. Helen bathed his paw and bound it up.
When Dale returned she related the incident and, showing the piece of shell, she asked: “Where did that come from? Are there shells in the mountains?”
“Once this country was under the sea,” replied Dale. “I’ve found things that ‘d make you wonder.”
“Under the sea!” ejaculated Helen. It was one thing to have read of such a strange fact, but a vastly different one to realize it here among these lofty peaks. Dale was always showing her something or telling her something that astounded her.
“Look here,” he said one day. “What do you make of that little bunch of aspens?”
They were on the farther side of the park and were resting under a pine-tree. The forest here encroached upon the park with its straggling lines of spruce and groves of aspen. The little clump of aspens did not differ from hundreds Helen had seen.
“I don’t make anything particularly of it,” replied Helen, dubiously. “Just a tiny grove of aspens — some very small, some larger, but none very big. But it’s pretty with its green and yellow leaves fluttering and quivering.”
“It doesn’t make you think of a fight?”
“Fight? No, it certainly does not,” replied Helen.
“Well, it’s as good an example of fight, of strife, of selfishness, as you will find in the forest,” he said. “Now come over, you an’ Bo, an’ let me show you what I mean.”
“Come on, Nell,” cried Bo, with enthusiasm. “He’ll open our eyes some more.”
Nothing loath, Helen went with them to the little clump of aspens.
“About a hundred altogether,” said Dale. “They’re pretty well shaded by the spruces, but they get the sunlight from east an’ south. These little trees all came from the same seedlings. They’re all the same age. Four of them stand, say, ten feet or more high an’ they’re as large around as my wrist. Here’s one that’s largest. See how full-foliaged he is — how he stands over most of the others, but not so much over these four next to him. They all stand close together, very close, you see. Most of them are no larger than my thumb. Look how few branches they have, an’ none low down. Look at how few leaves. Do you see how all the branches stand out toward the east an’ south — how the leaves, of course, face the same way? See how one branch of one tree bends aside one from another tree. That’s a fight for the sunlight. Here are one — two — three dead trees. Look, I can snap them off. An’ now look down under them. Here are little trees five feet high — four feet high — down to these only a foot high. Look how pale, delicate, fragile, unhealthy! They get so little sunshine. They were born with the other trees, but did not get an equal start. Position gives the advantage, perhaps.”
Dale led the girls around the little grove, illustrating his words by action. He seemed deeply in earnest.
“You understand it’s a fight for water an’ sun. But mostly sun, because, if the leaves can absorb the sun, the tree an’ roots will grow to grasp the needed moisture. Shade is death — slow death to the life of trees. These little aspens are fightin’ for place in the sunlight. It is a merciless battle. They push an’ bend one another’s branches aside an’ choke them. Only perhaps half of these aspens will survive, to make one of the larger clumps, such as that one of full-grown trees over there. One season will give advantage to this saplin’ an’ next year to that one. A few seasons’ advantage to one assures its dominance over the others. But it is never sure of holdin’ that dominance. An ‘if wind or storm or a strong-growin’ rival does not overthrow it, then sooner or later old age will. For there is absolute and continual fight. What is true of these aspens is true of all the trees in the forest an’ of all plant life in the forest. What is most wonderful to me is the tenacity of life.”
And next day Dale showed them an even more striking example of this mystery of nature.
He guided them on horseback up one of the thick, verdant-wooded slopes, calling their attention at various times to the different growths, until they emerged on the summit of the ridge where the timber grew scant and dwarfed. At the edge of timber-line he showed a gnarled and knotted spruce-tree, twisted out of all semblance to a beautiful spruce, bent and storm-blasted, with almost bare branches, all reaching one’ way. The tree was a specter. It stood alone. It had little green upon it. There seemed something tragic about its contortions. But it was alive and strong. It had no rivals to take sun or moisture. Its enemies were the snow and wind and cold of the heights.
Helen felt, as the realization came to her, the knowledge Dale wished to impart, that it was as sad as wonderful, and as mysterious as it was inspiring. At that moment there were both the sting and sweetness of life — the pain and the joy — in Helen’s heart. These strange facts were going to teach her — to transform her. And even if they hurt, she welcomed them.
CHAPTER XI
“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.
