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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

campfire 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 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 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 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 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?

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