Dorn Of The Mountains Page 9

  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 all 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 packs of all sizes. These evidently contained food supplies. The bucket looked as if a horse had rolled over it, pack and all. Dorn filled it at the spring. Upon returning to the campfire, he poured water into a wash basin 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 campfire 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 schoolteacher and used to boys, and she sensed a boyish simplicity or vigor, a freshness in this hunter. She believed, however, that it was a mental and spiritual force in Dorn that 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 enormous 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 some up in this woods. Do you suppose we’ll sleep right here…right 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 Dorn 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. Dorn attended them with a pleasant light upon his still face.

  “Tomorrow 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.”

  “Nummm,” murmured Bo greedily. “I’ve heard of wild turkey.”

  When they had finished, Dorn 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 flames. 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.

  Dorn 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 campfire light, that she, too, had failed to catch whatever it was Dorn meant.

  “Bunch of coyotes comin’,” he explained.

  Suddenly the quietness split to a chorus of snappy high-strung strange barks. They sounded wild, yet they held something of a friendly or inquisitive note. Presently gray forms could be descried just at the edge of the circle of light. Soft rustlings of stealthy feet surrounded the camp, and then barks and yelps broke out all around. It was a restless and sneaking pack of animals, thought Helen, and she was glad after the chorus ended, and, with a few desultory spiteful yelps, the coyotes went away.

  Silence again settled down. If it had not been for the anxiety always present in Helen’s mind, she would have thought this silence sweet and unfamiliarly beautiful.

  “Ah! Listen to that fellow,” spoke up Dorn. His voice was thrilling.

  Again the girls strained their ears. That was not necessary, for presently, clear and cold out of the silence, pealed a mournful howl, long drawn, strange and full and wild.

  “Oh! What’s that?” whispered Bo.

  “That’s a big gray wolf…a timber wolf, or loafer as he’s sometimes called,” replied Dorn. “He’s high on some rocky ridge back there. He scents us an’ he doesn’t like it…. There he goes again. Listen. Ah, he’s hungry.”

  While Helen listened to this exceedingly wild cry—so wild that it made her flesh creep and the most indescribable sensations of loneliness come over her—she kept her glance upon Dorn.

  “You love him?” she murmured involuntarily, quite without understanding the motive of her query.

  Assuredly Dorn had never had that question asked of him before, and it seemed to Helen, as he pondered, that he had never even asked it of himself.

  “I reckon so,” he replied presently.

  “But wolves kill deer…and little fawns…and everything helpless in the forest,” expostulated Bo.

  The hunter nodded his head.

  “Why then can you love him?” repeated Helen.

  “Come to think of it, I reckon it’s because of lots of reasons,” returned Dorn. “He kills clean. He eats no carrion. He’s no coward. He fights. He dies game…. An’ he likes to be alone.”

  “Kills clean. What do you mean by that?”

  “A cougar now, he mangles a deer. An’ a silvertip, when killin’ a cow or colt, he makes a mess of it. But a wolf kills clean, with sharp snaps.”

  “What are a cougar and a silvertip?”

  “Cougar means mountain lion or panther, an’ a silvertip is a grizzly bear.”

  “Oh, they’re all cruel!” exclaimed Helen, shrinking.

  “I reckon. Often I’ve shot wolves for relayin’ a deer.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sometimes two or more wolves will run a deer, an’, while one of them rests, the other will drive the deer around to his pardner, who’ll take up the chase. That way they run the deer down. Cruel it is. But Nature. An’ no worse than snow an’ ice that starve deer, or a
fox that kills turkey chicks breakin’ out of the egg, or ravens that pick the eyes out of newborn lambs an’ wait till they die. An’ for that matter men are crueler than beasts of prey, for men add to Nature, an’ have more than instincts.”

  Helen was silenced, as well as shocked. She had not only learned a new and striking point in natural history, but a clear intimation of the reason why she had vaguely imagined or divined a remarkable character in this man. A hunter was one who killed animals for their fur, for their meat or horns, or for some lust for blood—that was Helen’s definition of a hunter, and she believed it was held by the majority of people living in settled states. But the majority might be wrong. A hunter might be vastly different, and vastly more than a tracker and slayer of game. The mountain world of forest was a mystery to almost all men. Perhaps Dorn knew its secrets, its life, its terror, its beauty, its sadness and joy, and, if so, how full, how wonderful must be his mind! He spoke of men as no better than wolves. Could a lonely life in the wilderness teach a man that? Bitterness, envy, jealousy, spite, greed, and hate—these had no place in this hunter’s heart. It was not Helen’s shrewdness, but a woman’s intuition that divined that.

  Dorn rose to his feet and, turning his ear to the north, listened once more.

  “Are you expecting Roy still?” inquired Helen.

  “No, it ain’t likely he’ll turn up to night,” replied Dorn, and then he strode over to put a hand on the pine tree that soared above where the girls lay. His action and the way he looked up at the treetop and then at adjacent trees held more of that significance that so interested Helen.

  “I reckon he’s stood there some five hundred years an’ will stand through to night,” muttered Dorn.

  This pine was the monarch of that widespread group.

  “Listen again,” said Dorn.

  Bo was asleep. And Helen, listening, at once caught a low distant roar.

  “Wind. It’s goin’ to storm,” explained Dorn. “You’ll hear somethin’ worthwhile. But don’t be scared. Reckon we’ll be safe. Pines blow down often. But this fellow will stand any fall wind that ever was…. Better slip under the blankets so I can pull the tarp up.”

  Helen slid down, just as she was, fully dressed except for boots, which she and Bo had removed, and she laid her head close to Bo’s upon the saddle that served as pillow. Dorn pulled the tarpaulin up and folded it back just below their heads.

  “When it rains, you’ll wake, an’ then just pull the tarp up over you,” he said.

  “Will it rain?” Helen asked. But she was thinking that this moment was the strangest that had ever happened to her. By the light of the campfire she saw Dorn’s face, just as usual, still, darkly serene, expressing no thought. He was kind, but he was not thinking of these sisters as girls, alone with him in a pitch-black forest, helpless and defenseless. He did not seem to be thinking at all. But Helen had never before in her life been so keenly susceptible to experience.

  “I’ll be close by an’ keep the fire goin’ all night,” he said.

  She heard him stride off into the darkness. Presently there came a dragging, bumping sound, then a crash of a log dropped upon the fire. A cloud of sparks shot up, and many pattered down to hiss upon the damp ground. Smoke again curled upward along the great seamed tree trunk, and flames sputtered and crackled.

  Helen listened again for the roar of wind. It seemed to come on a breath of air that fanned her cheek and softly blew Bo’s curls, and it was stronger. But it died out presently only to come again, and still stronger. Helen realized then that the sound was that of an approaching storm. Her heavy eyelids almost refused to stay open, and she knew, if she let them close, she would instantly drop to sleep. And she wanted to hear the storm wind in the pines.

  A few drops of cold rain fell upon her face, thrilling her with the proof that no roof stood between her and the elements. Then a breeze bore the smell of burned wood into her face, and somehow her quick mind flew to girlhood days, when she burned brush and leaves with her little brothers. The memory faded. The roar that had seemed distant was now back in the forest, coming swiftly, increasing in volume. Like a stream in flood it bore down. Helen grew amazed, startled. How rushing, oncoming, and heavy this storm wind! She likened its approach to the tread of an army. Then the roar filled the forest, yet it was back there behind her. Not a pine needle quivered in the light of the campfire. But the air seemed to be oppressed with a terrible charge. The roar augmented till it was no longer a roar, but an onsweeping crash, like an ocean torrent engulfing the earth. Bo awoke to cling to Helen in fright. The deafening storm blast was upon them. Helen felt the saddle pillow was under her head. The giant pine had trembled to its very roots. That mighty fury of wind was all aloft, in the treetops. And for a long moment it bowed the forest under its tremendous power. Then the deafening crash passed to roar, and that swept on and on, lessening in volume, deepening in low detonation, at last to die in the distance.

  No sooner had it died than back to the north another low roar rose and ceased and rose again. Helen lay there, whispering to Bo, and heard again the great wave of wind come and crash and cease. That was the way of this storm wind of the mountain forest.

  A soft patter of rain on the tarpaulin warned Helen to remember Dorn’s directions, and, pulling up the heavy covering, she arranged it hood-like over the saddle. Then with Bo close and warm beside her she closed eyes that shut as if waxed tight, and the sense of the black forest and the wind and rain faded. Last of all sensations was the smell of smoke that blew under the tarpaulin.

  When she opened her eyes, she remembered everything as if only a moment had elapsed. But it was daylight, although gray and cloudy. The pines were dripping mist. A fire crackled cheerily and blew curled smoke upward and a savory odor of hot coffee hung in the air. Horses were standing nearby, biting and kicking at each other. Bo was sound asleep. Dorn appeared busy around the campfire. As Helen watched the hunter, she saw him pause in his task, turn his ear to listen, and then look expectantly. And at that juncture a shout pealed from the forest. Helen recognized Roy’s voice. Then she heard a splashing of water, and hoof beats coming closer. With that the buckskin mustang trotted into camp carrying Roy.

  “Bad mornin’ for ducks but good for us!” he called.

  “Howdy, Roy,” greeted Dorn, and his gladness was unmistakable. “I was lookin’ for you.”

  Roy appeared to slide off the mustang without effort, and his swift hands slapped the straps as he unsaddled. Buckskin was wet with sweat and foam mixed with rain. He heaved and steam rose from him.

  “Must have rode hard,” observed Dorn.

  “I shore did,” replied Roy. Then he espied Helen, who had sat up, with hands to her hair, and eyes staring at him. “ ‘Mornin’, miss. It’s good news.”

  “Thank heaven,” murmured Helen, and then she shook Bo. That young lady awoke but was loath to give up slumber. “Bo! Bo! Wake up. Mister Roy is back.”

  Whereupon Bo sat up, disheveled and sleepy-eyed.

  “Oh-h, but I ache!” she moaned. But her eyes took in the camp scene to the effect that she added: “Is breakfast ready?”

  “Almost. An’ flapjacks this mornin’,” replied Dorn.

  Bo manifested active symptoms of health in the manner with which she laced her boots. Helen got their traveling bag and with this they repaired to a flat stone beside the spring, not, however, out of earshot of the men.

  “How long are you goin’ to hang around camp before tellin’ me?” inquired Dorn.

  “Jest as I figgered, Milt,” replied Roy. “Thet rider who passed you was a messenger to Anson. He an’ his gang got on our trail quick. About ten o’clock I seen them comin’. Then I lit out for the woods. I stayed off in the woods close enough to see where they come in. An’ shore they lost your trail. Then they spread through the woods workin’ off to the south, thinkin’ of course thet you would circle around to Pine on the south side of Old Baldy. There ain’t a hoss tracker in Snake Anson’s gang, thet’s shore.
Wal, I follered them for an hour till they’d rustled some miles off our trail. Then I went back to where you struck into the woods. An’ I waited there all afternoon till dark, expectin’ mebbe they’d back trail. But they didn’t. I rode on a ways an’ camped in the woods till jest before daylight.”

  “So far so good,” declared Dorn.

  “Shore. There’s enough rough country south of Baldy an’ along the two or three trails Anson an’ his outfit will camp, you bet.”

  “It ain’t to be thought of,” muttered Dorn, at some idea that had struck him.

  “What ain’t?”

  “Goin’ around the north side of Baldy.”

  “It shore ain’t,” rejoined Roy bluntly.

  “Then I’ve got to hide tracks certain…rustle to my camp an’ stay there till you say it’s safe to risk takin’ the girls to Pine?”

  “Milt, you’re talkin’ the wisdom of the prophets.”

  “I ain’t so sure we can hide tracks altogether. If Anson had any eyes for the woods, he’d not have lost me so soon.”

  “No. But you see he’s figgerin’ to cross your trail.”

  “If I could get fifteen or twenty mile farther on an’ hide tracks certain, I’d feel safe from pursuit anyway,” said the hunter reflectively.

  “Shore is easy,” responded Roy quickly. “I jest met up with some greaser sheepherders drivin’ a big flock. They’ve come up from the south an’ are goin’ to fatten up at those Turkey Parques. Then they’ll drive back south an’ go on to Phoenix. Wal, you break camp quick an’ make a plain trail out to thet sheep trail as if you was travelin’ south. But, instead, you ride around ahead of thet flock of sheep. They’ll keep to the open parks an’ the trails through them necks of woods out here. An’ passin’ over your tracks they’ll sure hide ’em.”

  “But supposin’ Anson circles an’ hits this camp. He’ll track me easy out of that sheep trail. What then?”