Dorn Of The Mountains Page 11

  “Are you dead?” came the gay voice.

  “Almost. Oh, my back’s broken,” replied Helen. The desire to move seemed clamped in a vise, and, even if that came, she believed the effort would be impossible.

  “Roy called us,” said Bo. “He said hurry. I thought I’d die just sitting up, and I’d give you a million dollars to lace my boots. Wait, Sister, till you try to pull on one of those stiff boots!”

  With heroic and violent spirit Helen sat up to find that in the act her aches and pains appeared beyond number. Reaching for her boots, she found them cold and stiff. Helen unlaced one, opening it wide enough to get her sore foot down into it. But her foot appeared swollen and the boot appeared shrunken. She could not get it half on, although she expended what little strength seemed left to her aching arms. She groaned.

  Bo laughed wickedly. Her hair was tousled, her eyes dancing, her cheeks red.

  “Be game,” she said. “Stand up like a real Western girl and pull your boot on.”

  Whether Bo’s scorn or her advice made the task easier did not occur to Helen, the fact was that she got into her boots. Walking and moving a little appeared to loosen the stiff joints and ease that tired feeling. The water of the stream where the girls washed was colder than any ice Helen had ever felt. It almost paralyzed her hands. Bo mumbled, and blew like a porpoise. They had to run to the fire before being able to comb their hair. The air was wonderfully keen. The dawn was clear, bright, with a red glow in the east where the sun was about to rise.

  “All ready, girls?” called Roy. “Reckon you can help yourselves. Milt ain’t comin’ in very fast with the hosses. I’ll rustle off to help him. We’ve got a hard day before us. Yesterday wasn’t nowhere to what today’ll be.”

  “But the sun’s going to shine!” implored Bo.

  “Wal, you bet,” rejoined Roy as he strode off.

  Helen and Bo ate breakfast fast and had the camp to themselves for perhaps half an hour, then the horses came thudding down with Dorn and Roy riding bareback.

  By the time all was in readiness to start, the sun was up melting the frost and ice so that a dazzling bright mist full of rainbows shone under the trees.

  Dorn looked Ranger over and tried the cinches of Bo’s horse. “What’s your choice…a long ride behind the packs with me…or a short cut over the hills with Roy?” he asked.

  “I choose the lesser of two rides,” replied Helen, smiling.

  “Reckon that’ll be easiest, but you’ll know you’ve had a ride,” said Dorn significantly.

  “What was that we had yesterday?” asked Bo archly.

  “Only thirty miles, but cold an’ wet. Today will be fine for ridin’?”

  “Milt, I’ll take a blanket an’ some grub in case you don’t meet us to night,” said Roy. “An’ I reckon we’ll split up here where I’ll have to strike out in thet short cut.”

  Bo mounted without a helping hand, but Helen’s limbs were so stiff that she could not get astride the high Ranger without assistance. The hunter headed up the slope of the cañon which on that side was not steep. It was brown pine forest with here and there a clump of dark silver-pointed evergreens that Roy called spruce. By the time this slope was surmounted, Helen’s aches were not so bad. The saddle appeared to fit her better and the gait of the horse was not so unfamiliar. She reflected, however, that she always had done pretty well uphill. Here it was beautiful forestland, uneven and wilder. They rode for a time along the rim, with the white rushing stream in plain sight far below, with its melodious roar ever thrumming in the ear.

  Dorn reined in and peered down at the pine mat. “Fresh deer sign all along here,” he said, pointing.

  “Wal, I seen thet long ago,” rejoined Roy.

  Helen’s scrutiny was rewarded by descrying several tiny depressions in the pine needles, dark in color and sharply defined.

  “We may never get a better chance,” said Dorn. “Those deer are workin’ up our way. Get your rifle out.”

  Travel was resumed then, with Roy a little in advance of the pack train. Presently he dismounted, threw his bridle, and cautiously peered ahead. Then, turning, he waved his sombrero; the pack animals halted in a bunch. Dorn beckoned for the girls to follow and rode up to Roy’s horse. This point, Helen saw, was at the top of an intersecting cañon. Dorn dismounted, without drawing his rifle from its saddle sheath, and approached Roy.

  “Buck an’ two deers,” he said, low-voiced. “An’ they’ve winded us, but don’t see us yet…. Girls, ride up closer.”

  Following the direction indicated by Dorn’s long arm, Helen looked down the slope. It was open, tall pines here and there, and clumps of silver spruce, and aspens shining like gold in the morning sunlight. Presently Bo exclaimed: “Oh, look! I see! I see!” Then Helen’s roving glance passed something different from green and gold and brown. Shifting back to it, she saw a magnificent stag, with noble spreading antlers, standing like a statue, his head up in alert and wild posture. His color was gray. Beside him grazed two other deer of slighter and more graceful build, without horns.

  “It’s downhill,” whispered Dorn. “An’ you’re goin’ to overshoot.”

  Then Helen saw that Roy had his rifle leveled. “Oh, don’t!” she cried.

  Dorn’s remark evidently nettled Roy. He lowered the rifle.

  “Milt, it’s me lookin’ over this gun. How can you stand there an’ tell me I was goin’ to shoot high? I had a dead bead on him.”

  “Boy, you didn’t allow for downhill…. Hurry. He’s seen us now.”

  Roy leveled the rifle, and, taking aim as before, he fired. The buck stood perfectly motionless as if he had indeed been stone. The does, however, jumped with a start and gazed in fright in every direction.

  “Told you! I seen where your bullet hit thet pine…half a foot over his shoulder. Try again an’ aim at his legs.”

  Roy now took a quicker aim and pulled trigger. A puff of dust right at the feet of the buck showed where Roy’s lead had struck this time. With a single bound, wonderful to see, the big deer was out of sight behind trees and brush. The does leaped after him.

  “Dog-gone the luck!” ejaculated Roy, red in the face, as he worked the lever of his rifle. “Never could shoot downhill no-how!”

  His rueful apology to the girls for missing brought a merry laugh from Bo.

  “Not for worlds would I have had you kill that beautiful deer!” she exclaimed.

  “We won’t have venison steak off him, that’s certain,” remarked Dorn dryly. “An’ maybe none off any deer if Roy does the shootin’!”

  They resumed travel, sheering off to the right, and keeping to the edge of the intersecting cañon. At length they rode down to the bottom where a tiny brook babbled through willows, and they followed this for a mile or so down to where it flowed into the larger stream. A dim trail overgrown with grass showed at this point.

  “Here’s where we part,” said Dorn. “You’ll beat me into my camp, but I’ll get there sometime after dark.”

  “Hey, Milt, I forgot about thet darned pet cougar of yours an’ the rest of your menagerie. Reckon they won’t scare the girls? Especially old Tom?”

  “You won’t see Tom till I get home,” replied Dorn.

  “Ain’t he corralled or tied up?”

  “No. He has the run of the place.”

  “Wal, good bye then an’ rustle along.”

  Dorn nodded to the girls, and, turning his horse, he drove the pack train before him up the open space between the stream and the wooded slope.

  Roy stepped off his horse with that single action that appeared such a feat to Helen.

  “Guess I’d better cinch up,” he said as he threw a stirrup up over the pommel of his saddle. “You girls are goin’ to see wild country.”

  “Who’s old Tom?” queried Bo curiously.

  “Why, he’s Milt’s pet cougar.”

  “Cougar? That’s a panther…a mountain lion, didn’t he say?”

  “Shore is. Tom is a beauty. An’
if he takes a likin’ to you, he’ll love you, play with you, maul you half to death.”

  Bo was all eyes. “Dorn has other pets, too?” she questioned eagerly.

  “I never was up to his camp but what it was overrun with birds an’ squirrels an’ varmints of all kinds as tame…as tame as cows. Too darn’ tame, Milt says. But I can’t figger thet parque of his.”

  “What’s a parque?” asked Helen as she shifted her foot to let him tighten the cinches on her saddle.

  “Thet’s Mexican for park, I guess,” he replied. “These mountains are full of parks, an’, say, I don’t ever want to see no prettier places till I get to heaven…. There Ranger, old boy, thet’s tight.”

  He slapped the horse affectionately, and, turning to his own, he stepped and swung his long length up.

  “It ain’t deep crossin’ here. Come on!” he called, and spurred his bay.

  The stream here was wide and it looked deep, but turned out to be deceptive.

  “Wal, girls, here beginneth the second lesson,” he drawled cheerily. “Ride one behind the other…stick close to me…do what I do…an’ holler when you want to rest or if somethin’ goes bad.”

  With that he spurred into the thicket. Bo went next, and Helen followed. The willows dragged at her so hard that she was unable to watch Roy, and the result was that a low-sweeping branch of a tree knocked her hard in the head. It hurt and startled her, and roused her mettle. Roy was keeping to the easy trot that covered ground so well, and he led up a slope to the open pine forest. Here the ride for several miles was straight, level, and open. Helen liked the forest today. It was brown and green, with patches of gold where the sun struck. She saw her first birds, big blue grouse that whirred up from under her horse, and little checkered gray quail that appeared awkward on the wing. Several times Roy pointed out deer flashing gray across some forest aisle, and often, when he pointed, Helen was not quick enough to see.

  Helen realized that this ride would make up for the hideous one of yesterday. So far she had been only barely conscious of sore places and aching bones. These she would bear with. She loved the wild and the beautiful, both of which increased manifestly with every mile. The sun was warm, the air fragrant and cool, the sky blue as azure and so deep that she imagined she could look far up into it.

  Suddenly Roy reined in so sharply that he pulled Bay up short. “Look!” he called sharply.

  Bo screamed.

  “Not thet way! Here! Aw, he’s gone.”

  “Nell! It was a bear! I saw it. Oh, not like circus bears at all!”

  Helen had missed her opportunity.

  “Reckon he was a grizzly, an’ I’m just as well pleased thet he loped off,” said Roy. Altering his course somewhat, he led to an old rotten log that the bear had been digging in. “After grubs there…see his track. He was a whopper, shore enough.”

  They rode on, out to a high point that overlooked cañon and range, gorge and ridge, green and black as far as Helen could see. The ranges were bold and long, climbing to the central uplift where a number of fringed peaks raised their heads to the vast bare dome of Old Baldy. Far as vision could see to the right lay one rolling forest of pine, beautiful and serene. Somewhere down beyond must have lain the desert, but it was not in sight.

  “I see turkeys way down there,” said Roy, backing away. “We’ll go down around an’ mebbe I’ll get a shot.”

  Descent beyond a rocky point was made through thick brush. This slope consisted of wide benches covered with copses and scattered pines and many oaks. Helen was delighted to see the familiar trees, although these were different from Missouri oaks. Rugged and gnarled, but not tall, these trees spread wide branches, the leaves of which were yellowing. Roy led into a grassy glade, and, leaping off his horse, rifle in hand, he prepared to shoot at something. Again Bo cried out, but this time it was with delight. Then Helen saw an immense flock of turkeys, apparently like the turkeys she knew at home, but these had bronze and checks of white, and they looked wild. There must have been a hundred in the flock, most of them hens. A few gobblers on the far side began the flight, running swiftly off. Helen plainly heard the thud of their feet. Roy shot once—twice—three times. Then rose a great commotion and thumping, and a loud roar of many wings. Dust and leaves whirling in the air were left where the turkeys had been.

  “Wal, I got two,” said Roy, and he strode forward to pick up his game. Returning, he tied two shiny plump gobblers back of his saddle and remounted his horse. “We’ll have turkey to night, if Milt gets to camp in time.”

  The ride was resumed. Helen never would have tired riding through those oak groves, brown and sear and yellow, with leaves and acorns falling.

  “Bears have been workin’ in here already,” said Roy. “I see tracks all over. They eat acorns in the fall. An’ mebbe we’ll run into one yet.”

  The farther down he led the wilder and thicker grew the trees, so that dodging bunches was no light task. Ranger did not seem to care how close he passed a tree or under a limb, so that he missed them himself. But Helen thereby got some additional bruises. Particularly hard was it, when passing a tree, to get her knee out of the way in time.

  Roy halted next at what appeared a large green pond full of vegetation and in places covered with a thick scum. But it had a current and an outlet, proving it to be a huge spring. Roy pointed down at a muddy place.

  “Bear wallow. He heard us comin’. Look at thet little track. Cub track. An’ look at these scratches on this tree, higher’n my head. An old she-bear stood up an’ scratched them.” Roy sat his saddle and reached up to touch fresh marks on the tree. “Woods’s full of big bears,” he said, grinning. “An’ I take it particular kind of this old she rustlin’ off with her cub. She-bears with cubs are dangerous.”

  The next place to stir Helen to enthusiasm was the glen at the bottom of this cañon. Beech trees, maples, aspens overtopped by lofty pines made dense shade over a brook where trout splashed in the brown swirling current and leaves drifted down, and stray flecks of golden sunlight lightened the gloom. Here was hard riding to and fro across the brook, between huge mossy boulders, and between aspens so close together that Helen could scarcely squeeze her knees through.

  Once more Roy climbed, out of that cañon, over a ridge into another, down long wooded slopes and through scrub oak thickets, on and on till the sun stood straight overhead. Then he halted for a short rest, unsaddled the horses to let them roll, and gave the girls some cold lunch that he packed. He strolled off with his gun and, upon returning, resaddled and gave the word to start.

  That was the last of rest and easy traveling for the girls. The forest that he struck into seemed ribbed like a washboard with deep ravines so steep of slope as to make precarious travel. Mostly he kept to the bottom where dry washes afforded a kind of trail. But it was necessary to cross those ravines when they were too long to be headed, and this crossing was work.

  The locust thickets, characteristic of these slopes, were thorny and closely knit. They tore and scratched and stung both horses and riders. Ranger appeared to be the most intelligent of the horses and suffered less. Bo’s white mustang dragged her through more than one brambly place. On the other hand, some of these steep slopes were comparatively free of underbrush. Great firs and pines loomed up on all sides. The earth was soft and the hoofs sank deep. Toward the bottom of a descent Ranger would brace his front hoofs, and then slide down on his haunches. This mode facilitated travel, but it frightened Helen. The climb out, then, on the other side had to be done on foot.

  After half a dozen slopes surmounted in this way Helen’s strength was spent and her breath was gone. She felt light-headed. She could not get enough air. Her feet felt like lead and her riding coat was a burden. A hundred times, hot and wet and throbbing, she was compelled to stop. Always she had been a splendid walker and climber. And here, to break up the long ride, she was glad to be on her feet. But she could only drag one foot up after the other. Then, when her nose began to bleed, she realized t
hat it was the elevation that was causing all the trouble. Her heart, however, did not hurt her, although she was conscious of an oppression on her breast.

  At length Roy led into a ravine so deep and wide and full of forest verdure that it appeared impossible to cross. Just the same he started down, after a little way dismounting. Helen found that leading Ranger down was worse than riding him. He came fast and he would step right in her tracks. She was not quick enough to get away from him. Twice he stepped on her foot and again his broad chest hit her shoulder and threw her flat. When he began to slide, near the bottom, Helen had to run for her life.

  “Oh, Nell! Isn’t…this…great?” panted Bo from somewhere ahead.

  “Bo…your…mind’s…gone,” panted Helen in reply.

  Roy tried several places to climb out and failed in each. Leading down the ravine for 100 yards or more, he essayed another attempt. Here there had been a slide and in part the earth was bare. When he had worked up this, he halted above and called: “Bad place! Keep on the upside of the hosses!”

  This appeared easier said than done. Helen could not watch Bo, because Ranger would not wait. He pulled at the bridle and snorted.

  “Faster you come the better!” called Roy.

  Helen could not see the sense of that, but she tried. Roy and Bo had dug a deep trail, zigzag, up that treacherous slide. Helen made the mistake of starting to follow in their tracks, and, when she realized this, Ranger was climbing fast, almost dragging her, and it was too late to get above. Helen began to labor. She slid down right in front of Ranger. The intelligent animal, with a snort, plunged out of the trail to keep from stepping on her. Then he was above her.

  “Look out down there!” yelled Roy in warning. “Get on the upside!”

  But that did not appear possible. The earth began to slide under Ranger and that impeded Helen’s progress. He got in advance of her, straining on the bridle.

  “Let go!” yelled Roy.

  Helen dropped the bridle just as a heavy slide began to move with Ranger. He snorted fiercely, and, rearing high in a mighty plunge, he gained solid ground. Helen was buried to her knees, but, extricating herself, she crawled to a safe point and rested before climbing farther.