The Man of the Forest by Zane Grey (fb2 epub reader .txt) 📕

didn’t exactly scare me.

He did Nell, though. She’s an awful tenderfoot,” replied Bo.

 

“He’s a splendid-looking dog,” said Helen, ignoring her

sister’s sally. “I love dogs. Will he make friends?”

 

“He’s shy an’ wild. You see, when I leave camp he won’t hang

around. He an’ Tom are jealous of each other. I had a pack

of hounds an’ lost all but Pedro on account of Tom. I think

you can make friends with Pedro. Try it.”

 

Whereupon Helen made overtures to Pedro, and not wholly in

vain. The dog was matured, of almost stern aloofness, and

manifestly not used to people. His deep, wine-dark eyes

seemed to search Helen’s soul. They were honest and wise,

with a strange sadness.

 

“He looks intelligent,” observed Helen, as she smoothed the

long, dark ears.

 

“That hound is nigh human,” responded Dale. “Come, an’ while

you eat I’ll tell you about Pedro.”

 

Dale had gotten the hound as a pup from a Mexican

sheep-herder who claimed he was part California bloodhound.

He grew up, becoming attached to Dale. In his younger days

he did not get along well with Dale’s other pets and Dale

gave him to a rancher down in the valley. Pedro was back in

Dale’s camp next day. From that day Dale began to care more

for the hound, but he did not want to keep him, for various

reasons, chief of which was the fact that Pedro was too fine

a dog to be left alone half the time to shift for himself.

That fall Dale had need to go to the farthest village,

Snowdrop, where he left Pedro with a friend. Then Dale rode

to Show Down and Pine, and the camp of the Beemans’ and with

them he trailed some wild horses for a hundred miles, over

into New Mexico. The snow was flying when Dale got back to

his camp in the mountains. And there was Pedro, gaunt and

worn, overjoyed to welcome him home. Roy Beeman visited Dale

that October and told that Dale’s friend in Snowdrop had not

been able to keep Pedro. He broke a chain and scaled a

ten-foot fence to escape. He trailed Dale to Show Down,

where one of Dale’s friends, recognizing the hound, caught

him, and meant to keep him until Dale’s return. But Pedro

refused to eat. It happened that a freighter was going out

to the Beeman camp, and Dale’s friend boxed Pedro up and put

him on the wagon. Pedro broke out of the box, returned to

Show Down, took up Dale’s trail to Pine, and then on to the

Beeman camp. That was as far as Roy could trace the

movements of the hound. But he believed, and so did Dale,

that Pedro had trailed them out on the wild-horse hunt. The

following spring Dale learned more from the herder of a

sheepman at whose camp he and the Beemans; had rested on the

way into New Mexico. It appeared that after Dale had left

this camp Pedro had arrived, and another Mexican herder had

stolen the hound. But Pedro got away.

 

“An’ he was here when I arrived,” concluded Dale, smiling.

“I never wanted to get rid of him after that. He’s turned

out to be the finest dog I ever knew. He knows what I say.

He can almost talk. An’ I swear he can cry. He does whenever

I start off without him.”

 

“How perfectly wonderful!” exclaimed Bo. “Aren’t animals

great? … But I love horses best.”

 

It seemed to Helen that Pedro understood they were talking

about him, for he looked ashamed, and swallowed hard, and

dropped his gaze. She knew something of the truth about the

love of dogs for their owners. This story of Dale’s,

however, was stranger than any she had ever heard.

 

Tom, the cougar, put in an appearance then, and there was

scarcely love in the tawny eyes he bent upon Pedro. But the

hound did not deign to notice him. Tom sidled up to Bo, who

sat on the farther side of the tarpaulin table-cloth, and

manifestly wanted part of her breakfast.

 

“Gee! I love the look of him,” she said. “But when he’s

close he makes my flesh creep.”

 

“Beasts are as queer as people,” observed Dale. “They take

likes an’ dislikes. I believe Tom has taken a shine to you

an’ Pedro begins to be interested in your sister. I can

tell.”

 

“Where’s Bud?” inquired Bo.

 

“He’s asleep or around somewhere. Now, soon as I get the

work done, what would you girls like to do?”

 

“Ride!” declared Bo, eagerly.

 

“Aren’t you sore an’ stiff?”

 

“I am that. But I don’t care. Besides, when I used to go out

to my uncle’s farm near Saint Joe I always found riding to

be a cure for aches.”

 

“Sure is, if you can stand it. An’ what will your sister

like to do?” returned Dale, turning to Helen.

 

“Oh, I’ll rest, and watch you folks — and dream,” replied

Helen.

 

“But after you’ve rested you must be active,” said Dale,

seriously. “You must do things. It doesn’t matter what, just

as long as you don’t sit idle.”

 

“Why?” queried Helen, in surprise. “Why not be idle here in

this beautiful, wild place? just to dream away the hours —

the days! I could do it.”

 

“But you mustn’t. It took me years to learn how bad that was

for me. An’ right now I would love nothin’ more than to

forget my work, my horses an’ pets — everythin’, an’ just

lay around, seein’ an’ feelin’.”

 

“Seeing and feeling? Yes, that must be what I mean. But why

— what is it? There are the beauty and color — the wild,

shaggy slopes — the gray cliffs — the singing wind — the

lulling water — the clouds — the sky. And the silence,

loneliness, sweetness of it all.”

 

“It’s a driftin’ back. What I love to do an’ yet fear most.

It’s what makes a lone hunter of a man. An’ it can grow so

strong that it binds a man to the wilds.”

 

“How strange!” murmured Helen. “But that could never bind

ME. Why, I must live and fulfil my mission, my work in the

civilized world.”

 

It seemed to Helen that Dale almost imperceptibly shrank at

her earnest words.

 

“The ways of Nature are strange,” he said. “I look at it

different. Nature’s just as keen to wean you back to a

savage state as you are to be civilized. An’ if Nature won,

you would carry out her design all the better.”

 

This hunter’s talk shocked Helen and yet stimulated her

mind.

 

“Me — a savage? Oh no!” she exclaimed. “But, if that were

possible, what would Nature’s design be?”

 

“You spoke of your mission in life,” he replied. “A woman’s

mission is to have children. The female of any species has

only one mission — to reproduce its kind. An’ Nature has

only one mission — toward greater strength, virility,

efficiency — absolute perfection, which is unattainable.”

 

“What of mental and spiritual development of man and woman?”

asked Helen.

 

“Both are direct obstacles to the design of Nature. Nature

is physical. To create for limitless endurance for eternal

life. That must be Nature’s inscrutable design. An’ why she

must fail.”

 

“But the soul!” whispered Helen.

 

“Ah! When you speak of the soul an’ I speak of life we mean

the same. You an’ I will have some talks while you’re here.

I must brush up my thoughts.”

 

“So must I, it seems,” said Helen, with a slow smile. She

had been rendered grave and thoughtful. “But I guess I’ll

risk dreaming under the pines.”

 

Bo had been watching them with her keen blue eyes.

 

“Nell, it’d take a thousand years to make a savage of you,”

she said. “But a week will do for me.”

 

“Bo, you were one before you left Saint Joe,” replied Helen.

“Don’t you remember that school-teacher Barnes who said you

were a wildcat and an Indian mixed? He spanked you with a

ruler.”

 

“Never! He missed me,” retorted Bo, with red in her cheeks.

“Nell, I wish you’d not tell things about me when I was a

kid.”

 

“That was only two years ago,” expostulated Helen, in mild

surprise.

 

“Suppose it was. I was a kid all right. I’ll bet you—” Bo

broke up abruptly, and, tossing her head, she gave Tom a pat

and then ran away around the corner of cliff wall.

 

Helen followed leisurely.

 

“Say, Nell,” said Bo, when Helen arrived at their little

green ledge-pole hut, “do you know that hunter fellow will

upset some of your theories?”

 

“Maybe. I’ll admit he amazes me — and affronts me, too, I’m

afraid,” replied Helen. “What surprises me is that in spite

of his evident lack of schooling he’s not raw or crude. He’s

elemental.”

 

“Sister dear, wake up. The man’s wonderful. You can learn

more from him than you ever learned in your life. So can I.

I always hated books, anyway.”

 

When, a little later, Dale approached carrying some bridles,

the hound Pedro trotted at his heels.

 

“I reckon you’d better ride the horse you had,” he said to

Bo.

 

“Whatever you say. But I hope you let me ride them all, by

and by.”

 

“Sure. I’ve a mustang out there you’ll like. But he pitches

a little,” he rejoined, and turned away toward the park. The

hound looked after him and then at Helen.

 

“Come, Pedro. Stay with me,” called Helen.

 

Dale, hearing her, motioned the hound back. Obediently Pedro

trotted to her, still shy and soberly watchful, as if not

sure of her intentions, but with something of friendliness

about him now. Helen found a soft, restful seat in the sun

facing the park, and there composed herself for what she

felt would be slow, sweet, idle hours. Pedro curled down

beside her. The tall form of Dale stalked across the park,

out toward the straggling horses. Again she saw a deer

grazing among them. How erect and motionless it stood

watching Dale! Presently it bounded away toward the edge of

the forest. Some of the horses whistled and ran, kicking

heels high in the air. The shrill whistles rang clear in the

stillness.

 

“Gee! Look at them go!” exclaimed Bo, gleefully, coming up

to where Helen sat. Bo threw herself down upon the fragrant

pine-needles and stretched herself languorously, like a lazy

kitten. There was something feline in her lithe, graceful

outline. She lay flat and looked up through the pines.

 

“Wouldn’t it be great, now,” she murmured, dreamily, half to

herself, “if that Las Vegas cowboy would happen somehow to

come, and then an earthquake would shut us up here in this

Paradise valley so we’d never get out?”

 

“Bo! What would mother say to such talk as that?” gasped

Helen.

 

“But, Nell, wouldn’t it be great?”

 

“It would be terrible.”

 

“Oh, there never was any romance in you, Nell Rayner,”

replied Bo. “That very thing has actually happened out here

in this wonderful country of wild places. You need not tell

me! Sure it’s happened. With the cliff-dwellers and the

Indians and then white people. Every place I look makes me

feel that. Nell, you’d have to see people in the moon

through a telescope before you’d believe that.”

 

“I’m practical and sensible, thank goodness!”

 

“But, for the sake of argument,” protested Bo, with flashing

eyes, “suppose it MIGHT happen. Just to please me, suppose

we DID get shut up here with Dale and that cowboy we saw

from the train. Shut in without any hope