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

of ever climbing

out… . What would you do? Would you give up and pine

away and die? Or would you fight for life and whatever joy

it might mean?”

 

“Self-preservation is the first instinct,” replied Helen,

surprised at a strange, deep thrill in the depths of her.

“I’d fight for life, of course.”

 

“Yes. Well, really, when I think seriously I don’t want

anything like that to happen. But, just the same, if it DID

happen I would glory in it.”

 

While they were talking Dale returned with the horses.

 

“Can you bridle an’ saddle your own horse?” he asked.

 

“No. I’m ashamed to say I can’t,” replied Bo.

 

“Time to learn then. Come on. Watch me first when I saddle

mine.”

 

Bo was all eyes while Dale slipped off the bridle from his

horse and then with slow, plain action readjusted it. Next

he smoothed the back of the horse, shook out the blanket,

and, folding it half over, he threw it in place, being

careful to explain to Bo just the right position. He lifted

his saddle in a certain way and put that in place, and then

he tightened the cinches.

 

“Now you try,” he said.

 

According to Helen’s judgment Bo might have been a Western

girl all her days. But Dale shook his head and made her do

it over.

 

“That was better. Of course, the saddle is too heavy for you

to sling it up. You can learn that with a light one. Now put

the bridle on again. Don’t be afraid of your hands. He won’t

bite. Slip the bit in sideways… . There. Now let’s see

you mount.”

 

When Bo got into the saddle Dale continued: “You went up

quick an’ light, but the wrong way. Watch me.”

 

Bo had to mount several times before Dale was satisfied.

Then he told her to ride off a little distance. When Bo had

gotten out of earshot Dale said to Helen: “She’ll take to a

horse like a duck takes to water.” Then, mounting, he rode

out after her.

 

Helen watched them trotting and galloping and running the

horses round the grassy park, and rather regretted she had

not gone with them. Eventually Bo rode back, to dismount and

fling herself down, red-cheeked and radiant, with disheveled

hair, and curls damp on her temples. How alive she seemed!

Helen’s senses thrilled with the grace and charm and

vitality of this surprising sister, and she was aware of a

sheer physical joy in her presence. Bo rested, but she did

not rest long. She was soon off to play with Bud. Then she

coaxed the tame doe to eat out of her hand. She dragged

Helen off for wild flowers, curious and thoughtless by

turns. And at length she fell asleep, quickly, in a way that

reminded Helen of the childhood now gone forever.

 

Dale called them to dinner about four o’clock, as the sun

was reddening the western rampart of the park. Helen

wondered where the day had gone. The hours had flown

swiftly, serenely, bringing her scarcely a thought of her

uncle or dread of her forced detention there or possible

discovery by those outlaws supposed to be hunting for her.

After she realized the passing of those hours she had an

intangible and indescribable feeling of what Dale had meant

about dreaming the hours away. The nature of Paradise Park

was inimical to the kind of thought that had habitually been

hers. She found the new thought absorbing, yet when she

tried to name it she found that, after all, she had only

felt. At the meal hour she was more than usually quiet. She

saw that Dale noticed it and was trying to interest her or

distract her attention. He succeeded, but she did not choose

to let him see that. She strolled away alone to her seat

under the pine. Bo passed her once, and cried,

tantalizingly:

 

“My, Nell, but you’re growing romantic!”

 

Never before in Helen’s life had the beauty of the evening

star seemed so exquisite or the twilight so moving and

shadowy or the darkness so charged with loneliness. It was

their environment — the accompaniment of wild wolf-mourn,

of the murmuring waterfall, of this strange man of the

forest and the unfamiliar elements among which he made his home.

 

Next morning, her energy having returned, Helen shared Bo’s

lesson in bridling and saddling her horse, and in riding.

Bo, however, rode so fast and so hard that for Helen to

share her company was impossible. And Dale, interested and

amused, yet anxious, spent most of his time with Bo. It was

thus that Helen rode all over the park alone. She was

astonished at its size, when from almost any point it looked

so small. The atmosphere deceived her. How clearly she could

see! And she began to judge distance by the size of familiar

things. A horse, looked at across the longest length of the

park, seemed very small indeed. Here and there she rode upon

dark, swift, little brooks, exquisitely clear and

amber-colored and almost hidden from sight by the long

grass. These all ran one way, and united to form a deeper

brook that apparently wound under the cliffs at the west

end, and plunged to an outlet in narrow clefts. When Dale

and Bo came to her once she made inquiry, and she was

surprised to learn from Dale that this brook disappeared in

a hole in the rocks and had an outlet on the other side of

the mountain. Sometime he would take them to the lake it

formed.

 

“Over the mountain?” asked Helen, again remembering that she

must regard herself as a fugitive. “Will it be safe to leave

our hiding-place? I forget so often why we are here.”

 

“We would be better hidden over there than here,” replied

Dale. “The valley on that side is accessible only from that

ridge. An’ don’t worry about bein’ found. I told you Roy

Beeman is watchin’ Anson an’ his gang. Roy will keep between

them an’ us.”

 

Helen was reassured, yet there must always linger in the

background of her mind a sense of dread. In spite of this,

she determined to make the most of her opportunity. Bo was a

stimulus. And so Helen spent the rest of that day riding and

tagging after her sister.

 

The next day was less hard on Helen. Activity, rest, eating,

and sleeping took on a wonderful new meaning to her. She had

really never known them as strange joys. She rode, she

walked, she climbed a little, she dozed under her pine-tree,

she worked helping Dale at campfire tasks, and when night

came she said she did not know herself. That fact haunted

her in vague, deep dreams. Upon awakening she forgot her

resolve to study herself. That day passed. And then several

more went swiftly before she adapted herself to a situation

she had reason to believe might last for weeks and even months.

 

It was afternoon that Helen loved best of all the time of

the day. The sunrise was fresh, beautiful; the morning was

windy, fragrant; the sunset was rosy, glorious; the twilight

was sad, changing; and night seemed infinitely sweet with

its stars and silence and sleep. But the afternoon, when

nothing changed, when all was serene, when time seemed to

halt, that was her choice, and her solace.

 

One afternoon she had camp all to herself. Bo was riding.

Dale had climbed the mountain to see if he could find any

trace of tracks or see any smoke from campfire. Bud was

nowhere to be seen, nor any of the other pets. Tom had gone

off to some sunny ledge where he could bask in the sun,

after the habit of the wilder brothers of his species. Pedro

had not been seen for a night and a day, a fact that Helen

had noted with concern. However, she had forgotten him, and

therefore was the more surprised to see him coming limping

into camp on three legs.

 

“Why, Pedro! You have been fighting. Come here,” she called.

 

The hound did not look guilty. He limped to her and held up

his right fore paw. The action was unmistakable. Helen

examined the injured member and presently found a piece of

what looked like mussel-shell embedded deeply between the

toes. The wound was swollen, bloody, and evidently very

painful. Pedro whined. Helen had to exert all the strength

of her fingers to pull it out. Then Pedro howled. But

immediately he showed his gratitude by licking her hand.

Helen bathed his paw and bound it up.

 

When Dale returned she related the incident and, showing the

piece of shell, she asked: “Where did that come from? Are

there shells in the mountains?”

 

“Once this country was under the sea,” replied Dale. “I’ve

found things that ‘d make you wonder.”

 

“Under the sea!” ejaculated Helen. It was one thing to have

read of such a strange fact, but a vastly different one to

realize it here among these lofty peaks. Dale was always

showing her something or telling her something that

astounded her.

 

“Look here,” he said one day. “What do you make of that

little bunch of aspens?”

 

They were on the farther side of the park and were resting

under a pine-tree. The forest here encroached upon the park

with its straggling lines of spruce and groves of aspen. The

little clump of aspens did not differ from hundreds Helen

had seen.

 

“I don’t make anything particularly of it,” replied Helen,

dubiously. “Just a tiny grove of aspens — some very small,

some larger, but none very big. But it’s pretty with its

green and yellow leaves fluttering and quivering.”

 

“It doesn’t make you think of a fight?”

 

“Fight? No, it certainly does not,” replied Helen.

 

“Well, it’s as good an example of fight, of strife, of

selfishness, as you will find in the forest,” he said. “Now

come over, you an’ Bo, an’ let me show you what I mean.”

 

“Come on, Nell,” cried Bo, with enthusiasm. “He’ll open our

eyes some more.”

 

Nothing loath, Helen went with them to the little clump of

aspens.

 

“About a hundred altogether,” said Dale. “They’re pretty

well shaded by the spruces, but they get the sunlight from

east an’ south. These little trees all came from the same

seedlings. They’re all the same age. Four of them stand,

say, ten feet or more high an’ they’re as large around as my

wrist. Here’s one that’s largest. See how full-foliaged he

is — how he stands over most of the others, but not so much

over these four next to him. They all stand close together,

very close, you see. Most of them are no larger than my

thumb. Look how few branches they have, an’ none low down.

Look at how few leaves. Do you see how all the branches

stand out toward the east an’ south — how the leaves, of

course, face the same way? See how one branch of one tree

bends aside one from another tree. That’s a fight for the

sunlight. Here are one — two — three dead trees. Look, I

can snap them off. An’ now look down under them. Here are

little trees five feet high — four feet high — down to

these only a foot high. Look how pale, delicate, fragile,

unhealthy! They get so little sunshine. They were born with

the other trees, but did not get an equal start. Position

gives the advantage, perhaps.”

 

Dale led the girls around the little grove, illustrating his

words by action. He seemed deeply in earnest.

 

“You understand it’s a fight for water an’ sun.