The Man of the Forest - Zane Grey (white hot kiss txt) 📗
- Author: Zane Grey
- Performer: -
Book online «The Man of the Forest - Zane Grey (white hot kiss txt) 📗». Author Zane Grey
word for this, though. Sooner or later you WILL wake up an’
forget yourself. Remember.”
“Nell, I’ll bet you do, too,” said Bo, seriously for her.
“It may seem strange to you, but I understand Dale. I feel
what he means. It’s a sort of shock. Nell, we’re not what we
seem. We’re not what we fondly imagine we are. We’ve lived
too long with people — too far away from the earth. You
know the Bible says something like this: ‘Dust thou art and
to dust thou shalt return.’ Where DO we come from?”
Days passed.
Every morning Helen awoke with a wondering question as to
what this day would bring forth, especially with regard to
possible news from her uncle. It must come sometime and she
was anxious for it. Something about this simple, wild camp
life had begun to grip her. She found herself shirking daily
attention to the clothes she had brought West. They needed
it, but she had begun to see how superficial they really
were. On the other hand, campfire tasks had come to be a
pleasure. She had learned a great deal more about them than
had Bo. Worry and dread were always impinging upon the
fringe of her thoughts — always vaguely present, though
seldom annoying. They were like shadows in dreams. She
wanted to get to her uncle’s ranch, to take up the duties of
her new life. But she was not prepared to believe she would
not regret this wild experience. She must get away from that
in order to see it clearly, and she began to have doubts of
herself.
Meanwhile the active and restful outdoor life went on. Bo
leaned more and more toward utter reconciliation to it. Her
eyes had a wonderful flash, like blue lightning; her cheeks
were gold and brown; her hands tanned dark as an Indian’s.
She could vault upon the gray mustang, or, for that matter,
clear over his back. She learned to shoot a rifle accurately
enough to win Dale’s praise, and vowed she would like to
draw a bead upon a grizzly bear or upon Snake Anson.
“Bo, if you met that grizzly Dale said has been prowling
round camp lately you’d run right up a tree,” declared
Helen, one morning, when Bo seemed particularly boastful.
“Don’t fool yourself,” retorted Bo.
“But I’ve seen you run from a mouse!”
“Sister, couldn’t I be afraid of a mouse and not a bear?”
“I don’t see how.”
“Well, bears, lions, outlaws, and other wild beasts are to
be met with here in the West, and my mind’s made up,” said
Bo, in slow-nodding deliberation.
They argued as they had always argued, Helen for reason and
common sense and restraint, Bo on the principle that if she
must fight it was better to get in the first blow.
The morning on which this argument took place Dale was a
long time in catching the horses. When he did come in he
shook his head seriously.
“Some varmint’s been chasin’ the horses,” he said, as he
reached for his saddle. “Did you hear them snortin’ an’
runnin’ last night?”
Neither of the girls had been awakened.
“I missed one of the colts,” went on Dale, “an’ I’m goin’ to
ride across the park.”
Dale’s movements were quick and stern. It was significant
that he chose his heavier rifle, and, mounting, with a sharp
call to Pedro, he rode off without another word to the
girls.
Bo watched him for a moment and then began to saddle the
mustang.
“You won’t follow him?” asked Helen, quickly.
“I sure will,” replied Bo. “He didn’t forbid it.”
“But he certainly did not want us.”
“He might not want you, but I’ll bet he wouldn’t object to
me, whatever’s up,” said Bo, shortly.
“Oh! So you think —” exclaimed Helen, keenly hurt. She bit
her tongue to keep back a hot reply. And it was certain that
a bursting gush of anger flooded over her. Was she, then,
such a coward? Did Dale think this slip of a sister, so wild
and wilful, was a stronger woman than she? A moment’s silent
strife convinced her that no doubt he thought so and no
doubt he was right. Then the anger centered upon herself,
and Helen neither understood nor trusted herself.
The outcome proved an uncontrollable impulse. Helen began to
saddle her horse. She had the task half accomplished when
Bo’s call made her look up.
“Listen!”
Helen heard a ringing, wild bay of the hound.
“That’s Pedro,” she said, with a thrill.
“Sure. He’s running. We never heard him bay like that
before.”
“Where’s Dale?”
“He rode out of sight across there,” replied Bo, pointing.
“And Pedro’s running toward us along that slope. He must be
a mile — two miles from Dale.”
“But Dale will follow.”
“Sure. But he’d need wings to get near that hound now. Pedro
couldn’t have gone across there with him … just
listen.”
The wild note of the hound manifestly stirred Bo to
irrepressible action. Snatching up Dale’s lighter rifle, she
shoved it into her saddle-sheath, and, leaping on the
mustang, she ran him over brush and brook, straight down the
park toward the place Pedro was climbing. For an instant
Helen stood amazed beyond speech. When Bo sailed over a big
log, like a steeple-chaser, then Helen answered to further
unconsidered impulse by frantically getting her saddle
fastened. Without coat or hat she mounted. The nervous horse
bolted almost before she got into the saddle. A strange,
trenchant trembling coursed through all her veins. She
wanted to scream for Bo to wait. Bo was out of sight, but
the deep, muddy tracks in wet places and the path through
the long grass afforded Helen an easy trail to follow. In
fact, her horse needed no guiding. He ran in and out of the
straggling spruces along the edge of the park, and suddenly
wheeled around a corner of trees to come upon the gray
mustang standing still. Bo was looking up and listening.
“There he is!” cried Bo, as the hound bayed ringingly,
closer to them this time, and she spurred away.
Helen’s horse followed without urging. He was excited. His
ears were up. Something was in the wind. Helen had never
ridden along this broken end of the park, and Bo was not
easy to keep up with. She led across bogs, brooks, swales,
rocky little ridges, through stretches of timber and groves
of aspen so thick Helen could scarcely squeeze through. Then
Bo came out into a large open offshoot of the park, right
under the mountain slope, and here she sat, her horse
watching and listening. Helen rode up to her, imagining once
that she had heard the hound.
“Look! Look!” Bo’s scream made her mustang stand almost
straight up.
Helen gazed up to see a big brown bear with a frosted coat
go lumbering across an opening on the slope.
“It’s a grizzly! He’ll kill Pedro! Oh, where is Dale!” cried
Bo, with intense excitement.
“Bo! That bear is running down! We — we must get — out of
his road,” panted Helen, in breathless alarm.
“Dale hasn’t had time to be close… . Oh, I wish he’d
come! I don’t know what to do.”
“Ride back. At least wait for him.”
Just then Pedro spoke differently, in savage barks, and
following that came a loud growl and crashings in the brush.
These sounds appeared to be not far up the slope.
“Nell! Do you hear? Pedro’s fighting the bear,” burst out
Bo. Her face paled, her eyes flashed like blue steel. “The
bear ‘ll kill him!”
“Oh, that would be dreadful!” replied Helen, in distress.
“But what on earth can we do?”
“HEL-LO, DALE!” called Bo, at the highest pitch of her
piercing voice.
No answer came. A heavy crash of brush, a rolling of stones,
another growl from the slope told Helen that the hound had
brought the bear to bay.
“Nell, I’m going up,” said Bo, deliberately.
“No-no! Are you mad?” returned Helen.
“The bear will kill Pedro.”
“He might kill you.”
“You ride that way and yell for Dale,” rejoined Bo.
“What will — you do?” gasped Helen.
“I’ll shoot at the bear — scare him off. If he chases me he
can’t catch me coming downhill. Dale said that.”
“You’re crazy!” cried Helen, as Bo looked up the slope,
searching for open ground. Then she pulled the rifle from
its sheath.
But Bo did not hear or did not care. She spurred the
mustang, and he, wild to run, flung grass and dirt from his
heels. What Helen would have done then she never knew, but
the fact was that her horse bolted after the mustang. In an
instant, seemingly, Bo had disappeared in the gold and green
of the forest slope. Helen’s mount climbed on a run,
snorting and heaving, through aspens, brush, and timber, to
come out into a narrow, long opening extending lengthwise up
the slope.
A sudden prolonged crash ahead alarmed Helen and halted her
horse. She saw a shaking of aspens. Then a huge brown beast
leaped as a cat out of the woods. It was a bear of enormous
size. Helen’s heart stopped — her tongue clove to the roof
of her mouth. The bear turned. His mouth was open, red and
dripping. He looked shaggy, gray. He let out a terrible
bawl. Helen’s every muscle froze stiff. Her horse plunged
high and sidewise, wheeling almost in the air, neighing his
terror. Like a stone she dropped from the saddle. She did
not see the horse break into the woods, but she heard him.
Her gaze never left the bear even while she was falling, and
it seemed she alighted in an upright position with her back
against a bush. It upheld her. The bear wagged his huge head
from side to side. Then, as the hound barked close at hand,
he turned to run heavily uphill and out of the opening.
The instant of his disappearance was one of collapse for
Helen. Frozen with horror, she had been unable to move or
feel or think. All at once she was a quivering mass of cold,
helpless flesh, wet with perspiration, sick with a
shuddering, retching, internal convulsion, her mind
liberated from paralyzing shock. The moment was as horrible
as that in which the bear had bawled his frightful rage. A
stark, icy, black emotion seemed in possession of her. She
could not lift a hand, yet all of her body appeared shaking.
There was a fluttering, a strangling in her throat. The
crushing weight that surrounded her heart eased before she
recovered use of her limbs. Then, the naked and terrible
thing was gone, like a nightmare giving way to
consciousness. What blessed relief! Helen wildly gazed about
her. The bear and hound were out of sight, and so was her
horse. She stood up very dizzy and weak. Thought of Bo then
seemed to revive her, to shock different life and feeling
throughout all her cold extremities. She listened.
She heard a thudding of hoofs down the slope, then Dale’s
clear, strong call. She answered. It appeared long before he
burst out of the woods, riding hard and leading her horse.
In that time she recovered fully, and when he reached her,
to put a sudden halt upon the fiery Ranger, she caught the
bridle he threw and swiftly mounted her horse. The feel of
the saddle seemed different. Dale’s piercing
Comments (0)