The Man of the Forest - Zane Grey (white hot kiss txt) 📗

did

she ever leave home for the West? Her solicitude for Bo had

been forgotten. Nevertheless, any marked change in the

topography of the country was registered, perhaps

photographed on her memory by the torturing vividness of her

experience.

 

The forest grew more level and denser. Shadows of twilight

or gloom lay under the trees. Presently Dale and Roy,

disappeared, going downhill, and likewise Bo. Then Helen’s

ears suddenly filled with a roar of rapid water. Ranger

trotted faster. Soon Helen came to the edge of a great

valley, black and gray, so full of obscurity that she could

not see across or down into it. But she knew there was a

rushing river at the bottom. The sound was deep, continuous,

a heavy, murmuring roar, singularly musical. The trail was

steep. Helen had not lost all feeling, as she had believed

and hoped. Her poor, mistreated body still responded

excruciatingly to concussions, jars, wrenches, and all the

other horrible movements making up a horse-trot.

 

For long Helen did not look up. When she did so there lay a

green, willow-bordered, treeless space at the bottom of the

valley, through which a brown-white stream rushed with

steady, ear-filling roar.

 

Dale and Roy drove the pack-animals across the stream, and

followed, going deep to the flanks of their horses. Bo rode

into the foaming water as if she had been used to it all her

days. A slip, a fall, would have meant that Bo must drown in

that mountain torrent.

 

Ranger trotted straight to the edge, and there, obedient to

Helen’s clutch on the bridle, he halted. The stream was

fifty feet wide, shallow on the near side, deep on the

opposite, with fast current and big waves. Helen was simply

too frightened to follow.

 

“Let him come!” yelled Dale. “Stick on now! … Ranger!”

 

The big black plunged in, making the water fly. That stream

was nothing for him, though it seemed impassable to Helen.

She had not the strength left to lift her stirrups and the

water surged over them. Ranger, in two more plunges,

surmounted the bank, and then, trotting across the green to

where the other horses stood steaming under some pines, he

gave a great heave and halted.

 

Roy reached up to help her off.

 

“Thirty miles, Miss Helen,” he said, and the way he spoke

was a compliment.

 

He had to lift her off and help her to the tree where Bo

leaned. Dale had ripped off a saddle and was spreading

saddle-blankets on the ground under the pine.

 

“Nell — you swore — you loved me!” was Bo’s mournful

greeting. The girl was pale, drawn, blue-lipped, and she

could not stand up.

 

“Bo, I never did — or I’d never have brought you to this —

wretch that I am!” cried Helen. “Oh, what a horrible ride!”

 

Rain was falling, the trees were dripping, the sky was

lowering. All the ground was soaking wet, with pools and

puddles everywhere. Helen could imagine nothing but a

heartless, dreary, cold prospect. Just then home was vivid

and poignant in her thoughts. Indeed, so utterly miserable

was she that the exquisite relief of sitting down, of a

cessation of movement, of a release from that infernal

perpetual-trotting horse, seemed only a mockery. It could

not be true that the time had come for rest.

 

Evidently this place had been a camp site for hunters or

sheep-herders, for there were remains of a fire. Dale lifted

the burnt end of a log and brought it down hard upon the

ground, splitting off pieces. Several times he did this. It

was amazing to see his strength, his facility, as he split

off handfuls of splinters. He collected a bundle of them,

and, laying them down, he bent over them. Roy wielded the ax

on another log, and each stroke split off a long strip. Then

a tiny column of smoke drifted up over Dale’s shoulder as he

leaned, bareheaded, sheltering the splinters with his hat. A

blaze leaped up. Roy came with an armful of strips all white

and dry, out of the inside of a log. Crosswise these were

laid over the blaze, and it began to roar. Then piece by

piece the men built up a frame upon which they added heavier

woods, branches and stumps and logs, erecting a pyramid

through which flames and smoke roared upward. It had not

taken two minutes. Already Helen felt the warmth on her icy

face. She held up her bare, numb hands.

 

Both Dale and Roy were wet through to the skin, yet they did

not tarry beside the fire. They relieved the horses. A lasso

went up between two pines, and a tarpaulin over it, V-shaped

and pegged down at the four ends. The packs containing the

baggage of the girls and the supplies and bedding were

placed under this shelter.

 

Helen thought this might have taken five minutes more. In

this short space of time the fire had leaped and flamed

until it was huge and hot. Rain was falling steadily all

around, but over and near that roaring blaze, ten feet high,

no water fell. It evaporated. The ground began to steam and

to dry. Helen suffered at first while the heat was driving

out the cold. But presently the pain ceased.

 

“Nell, I never knew before how good a fire could feel,”

declared Bo.

 

And therein lay more food for Helen’s reflection.

 

In ten minutes Helen was dry and hot. Darkness came down

upon the dreary, sodden forest, but that great campfire

made it a different world from the one Helen had

anticipated. It blazed and roared, cracked like a pistol,

hissed and sputtered, shot sparks everywhere, and sent aloft

a dense, yellow, whirling column of smoke. It began to have

a heart of gold.

 

Dale took a long pole and raked out a pile of red embers

upon which the coffee-pot and oven soon began to steam.

 

“Roy, I promised the girls turkey to-night,” said the

hunter.

 

“Mebbe tomorrow, if the wind shifts. This ‘s turkey

country.”

 

“Roy, a potato will do me!” exclaimed Bo. “Never again will I ask

for cake and pie! I never appreciated good things to eat. And

I’ve been a little pig, always. I never — never knew what it was

to be hungry —until now.”

 

Dale glanced up quickly.

 

“Lass, it’s worth learnin’,” he said.

 

Helen’s thought was too deep for words. In such brief space

had she been transformed from misery to comfort!

 

The rain kept on falling, though it appeared to grow softer

as night settled down black. The wind died away and the

forest was still, except for the steady roar of the stream.

A folded tarpaulin was laid between the pine and the fire,

well in the light and warmth, and upon it the men set

steaming pots and plates and cups, the fragrance from which

was strong and inviting.

 

“Fetch the saddle-blanket an’ set with your backs to the

fire,” said Roy.

 

Later, when the girls were tucked away snugly in their

blankets and sheltered from the rain, Helen remained awake

after Bo had fallen asleep. The big blaze made the

improvised tent as bright as day. She could see the smoke,

the trunk of the big pine towering aloft, and a blank space

of sky. The stream hummed a song, seemingly musical at

times, and then discordant and dull, now low, now roaring,

and always rushing, gurgling, babbling, flowing, chafing in

its hurry.

 

Presently the hunter and his friend returned from hobbling

the horses, and beside the fire they conversed in low tones.

 

“Wal, thet trail we made to-day will be hid, I reckon,” said

Roy, with satisfaction.

 

“What wasn’t sheeped over would be washed out. We’ve had

luck. An’ now I ain’t worryin’,” returned Dale.

 

“Worryin’? Then it’s the first I ever knowed you to do.”

 

“Man, I never had a job like this,” protested the hunter.

 

“Wal, thet’s so.”

 

“Now, Roy, when old Al Auchincloss finds out about this

deal, as he’s bound to when you or the boys get back to

Pine, he’s goin’ to roar.”

 

“Do you reckon folks will side with him against Beasley?”

 

“Some of them. But Al, like as not, will tell folks to go

where it’s hot. He’ll bunch his men an’ strike for the

mountains to find his nieces.”

 

“Wal, all you’ve got to do is to keep the girls hid till I

can guide him up to your camp. Or, failin’ thet, till you

can slip the girls down to Pine.”

 

“No one but you an’ your brothers ever seen my senaca. But

it could be found easy enough.”

 

“Anson might blunder on it. But thet ain’t likely.”

 

“Why ain’t it?”

 

“Because I’ll stick to thet sheep-thief’s tracks like a wolf

after a bleedin’ deer. An’ if he ever gets near your camp

I’ll ride in ahead of him.”

 

“Good!” declared Dale. “I was calculatin’ you’d go down to

Pine, sooner or later.”

 

“Not unless Anson goes. I told John thet in case there was

no fight on the stage to make a bee-line back to Pine. He

was to tell Al an’ offer his services along with Joe an’

Hal.”

 

“One way or another, then, there’s bound to be blood spilled

over this.”

 

“Shore! An’ high time. I jest hope I get a look down my old

‘forty-four’ at thet Beasley.”

 

“In that case I hope you hold straighter than times I’ve

seen you.”

 

“Milt Dale, I’m a good shot,” declared Roy, stoutly.

 

“You’re no good on movin’ targets.”

 

“Wal, mebbe so. But I’m not lookin’ for a movin’ target when

I meet up with Beasley. I’m a hossman, not a hunter. You’re

used to shootin’ flies off deer’s horns, jest for practice.”

 

“Roy, can we make my camp by tomorrow night?” queried Dale,

more seriously.

 

“We will, if each of us has to carry one of the girls. But

they’ll do it or die. Dale, did you ever see a gamer girl

than thet kid Bo?”

 

“Me! Where’d I ever see any girls?” ejaculated Dale. “I

remember some when I was a boy, but I was only fourteen

then. Never had much use for girls.”

 

“I’d like to have a wife like that Bo,” declared Roy,

fervidly.

 

There ensued a moment’s silence.

 

“Roy, you’re a Mormon an’ you already got a wife,” was

Dale’s reply.

 

“Now, Milt, have you lived so long in the woods thet you

never heard of a Mormon with two wives?” returned Roy, and

then he laughed heartily.

 

“I never could stomach what I did hear pertainin’ to more

than one wife for a man.”

 

“Wal, my friend, you go an’ get yourself ONE. An’ see then

if you wouldn’t like to have TWO.”

 

“I reckon one ‘d be more than enough for Milt Dale.”

 

“Milt, old man, let me tell you thet I always envied you

your freedom,” said Roy, earnestly. “But it ain’t life.”

 

“You mean life is love of a woman?”

 

“No. Thet’s only part. I mean a son — a boy thet’s like you

— thet you feel will go on with your life after you’re

gone.”

 

“I’ve thought of that — thought it all out, watchin’ the

birds an’ animals mate in the woods… . If I have no son

I’ll never live hereafter.”

 

“Wal,” replied Roy, hesitatingly, “I don’t go in so deep as

thet. I mean a son goes on with your blood an’ your work.”

 

“Exactly… An’, Roy, I envy you what you ve got, because

it’s out of all bounds