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

something!”

 

“Keep quiet,” he admonished.

 

Helen, in the direction Bo pointed, could not see anything

but moon-blanched bare ground, rising close at hand to a

little ridge.

 

“Lie still,” whispered Dale. “I’m goin’ to crawl around to

get a look from another angle. I’ll be right back.”

 

He moved noiselessly backward and disappeared. With him

gone, Helen felt a palpitating of her heart and a prickling

of her skin.

 

“Oh, my! Nell! Look!” whispered Bo, in fright. “I know I saw

something.”

 

On top of the little ridge a round object moved slowly,

getting farther out into the light. Helen watched with

suspended breath. It moved out to be silhouetted against the

sky — apparently a huge, round, bristling animal, frosty in

color. One instant it seemed huge — the next small — then

close at hand — and far away. It swerved to come directly

toward them. Suddenly Helen realized that the beast was not

a dozen yards distant. She was just beginning a new

experience — a real and horrifying terror in which her

blood curdled, her heart gave a tremendous leap and then

stood still, and she wanted to fly, but was rooted to the

spot — when Dale returned to her side.

 

“That’s a pesky porcupine,” he whispered. “Almost crawled

over you. He sure would have stuck you full of quills.”

 

Whereupon he threw a stick at the animal. It bounced

straight up to turn round with startling quickness, and it

gave forth a rattling sound; then it crawled out of sight.

 

“Por — cu — pine!” whispered Bo, pantingly. “It might —

as well — have been — an elephant!”

 

Helen uttered a long, eloquent sigh. She would not have

cared to describe her emotions at sight of a harmless

hedgehog.

 

“Listen!” warned Dale, very low. His big hand closed over

Helen’s gauntleted one. “There you have — the real cry of

the wild.”

 

Sharp and cold on the night air split the cry of a wolf,

distant, yet wonderfully distinct. How wild and mournful and

hungry! How marvelously pure! Helen shuddered through all

her frame with the thrill of its music, the wild and

unutterable and deep emotions it aroused. Again a sound of

this forest had pierced beyond her life, back into the dim

remote past from which she had come.

 

The cry was not repeated. The coyotes were still. And

silence fell, absolutely unbroken.

 

Dale nudged Helen, and then reached over to give Bo a tap.

He was peering keenly ahead and his strained intensity could

be felt. Helen looked with all her might and she saw the

shadowy gray forms of the coyotes skulk away, out of the

moonlight into the gloom of the woods, where they

disappeared. Not only Dale’s intensity, but the very

silence, the wildness of the moment and place, seemed

fraught with wonderful potency. Bo must have felt it, too,

for she was trembling all over, and holding tightly to

Helen, and breathing quick and fast.

 

“A-huh!” muttered Dale, under his breath.

 

Helen caught the relief and certainty in his exclamation,

and she divined, then, something of what the moment must

have been to a hunter.

 

Then her roving, alert glance was arrested by a looming gray

shadow coming out of the forest. It moved, but surely that

huge thing could not be a bear. It passed out of gloom into

silver moonlight. Helen’s heart bounded. For it was a great

frosty-coated bear lumbering along toward the dead horse.

Instinctively Helen’s hand sought the arm of the hunter. It

felt like iron under a rippling surface. The touch eased

away the oppression over her lungs, the tightness of her

throat. What must have been fear left her, and only a

powerful excitement remained. A sharp expulsion of breath

from Bo and a violent jerk of her frame were signs that she

had sighted the grizzly.

 

In the moonlight he looked of immense size, and that wild

park with the gloomy blackness of forest furnished a fit

setting for him. Helen’s quick mind, so taken up with

emotion, still had a thought for the wonder and the meaning

of that scene. She wanted the bear killed, yet that seemed a

pity.

 

He had a wagging, rolling, slow walk which took several

moments to reach his quarry. When at length he reached it he

walked around with sniffs plainly heard and then a cross

growl. Evidently he had discovered that his meal had been

messed over. As a whole the big bear could be seen

distinctly, but only in outline and color. The distance was

perhaps two hundred yards. Then it looked as if he had begun

to tug at the carcass. Indeed, he was dragging it, very

slowly, but surely.

 

“Look at that!” whispered Dale. “If he ain’t strong! …

Reckon I’ll have to stop him.”

 

The grizzly, however, stopped of his own accord, just

outside of the shadow-line of the forest. Then he hunched in

a big frosty heap over his prey and began to tear and rend.

 

“Jess was a mighty good horse,” muttered Dale, grimly; “too

good to make a meal for a hog silvertip.”

 

Then the hunter silently rose to a kneeling position,

swinging the rifle in front of him. He glanced up into the

low branches of the tree overhead.

 

“Girls, there’s no tellin’ what a grizzly will do. If I

yell, you climb up in this tree, an’ do it quick.”

 

With that he leveled the rifle, resting his left elbow on

his knee. The front end of the rifle, reaching out of the

shade, shone silver in the moonlight. Man and weapon became

still as stone. Helen held her breath. But Dale relaxed,

lowering the barrel.

 

“Can’t see the sights very well,” he whispered, shaking his

head. “Remember, now — if I yell you climb!”

 

Again he aimed and slowly grew rigid. Helen could not take

her fascinated eyes off him. He knelt, bareheaded, and in

the shadow she could make out the gleam of his clear-cut

profile, stern and cold.

 

A streak of fire and a heavy report startled her. Then she

heard the bullet hit. Shifting her glance, she saw the bear

lurch with convulsive action, rearing on his hind legs. Loud

clicking snaps must have been a clashing of his jaws in

rage. But there was no other sound. Then again Dale’s heavy

gun boomed. Helen heard again that singular spatting thud of

striking lead. The bear went down with a flop as if he had

been dealt a terrific blow. But just as quickly he was up on

all-fours and began to whirl with hoarse, savage bawls of

agony and fury. His action quickly carried him out of the

moonlight into the shadow, where he disappeared. There the

bawls gave place to gnashing snarls, and crashings in the

brush, and snapping of branches, as he made his way into the

forest.

 

“Sure he’s mad,” said Dale, rising to his feet. “An’ I

reckon hard hit. But I won’t follow him to-night.”

 

Both the girls got up, and Helen found she was shaky on her

feet and very cold.

 

“Oh-h, wasn’t — it — won-wonder-ful!” cried Bo.

 

“Are you scared? Your teeth are chatterin’,” queried Dale.

 

“I’m — cold.”

 

“Well, it sure is cold, all right,” he responded. “Now the

fun’s over, you’ll feel it… . Nell, you’re froze, too?”

 

Helen nodded. She was, indeed, as cold as she had ever been

before. But that did not prevent a strange warmness along

her veins and a quickened pulse, the cause of which she did

not conjecture.

 

“Let’s rustle,” said Dale, and led the way out of the wood

and skirted its edge around to the slope. There they climbed

to the flat, and went through the straggling line of trees

to where the horses were tethered.

 

Up here the wind began to blow, not hard through the forest,

but still strong and steady out in the open, and bitterly

cold. Dale helped Bo to mount, and then Helen.

 

“I’m — numb,” she said. “I’ll fall off — sure.”

 

“No. You’ll be warm in a jiffy,” he replied, “because we’ll

ride some goin’ back. Let Ranger pick the way an’ you hang

on.”

 

With Ranger’s first jump Helen’s blood began to run. Out he

shot, his lean, dark head beside Dale’s horse. The wild park

lay clear and bright in the moonlight, with strange, silvery

radiance on the grass. The patches of timber, like spired

black islands in a moon-blanched lake, seemed to harbor

shadows, and places for bears to hide, ready to spring out.

As Helen neared each little grove her pulses shook and her

heart beat. Half a mile of rapid riding burned out the cold.

And all seemed glorious — the sailing moon, white in a

dark-blue sky, the white, passionless stars, so solemn, so

far away, the beckoning fringe of forestland at once

mysterious and friendly, and the fleet horses, running with

soft, rhythmic thuds over the grass, leaping the ditches and

the hollows, making the bitter wind sting and cut. Coming up

that park the ride had been long; going back was as short as

it was thrilling. In Helen, experiences gathered realization

slowly, and it was this swift ride, the horses neck and

neck, and all the wildness and beauty, that completed the

slow, insidious work of years. The tears of excitement froze

on her cheeks and her heart heaved full. All that pertained

to this night got into her blood. It was only to feel, to

live now, but it could be understood and remembered forever

afterward.

 

Dale’s horse, a little in advance, sailed over a ditch.

Ranger made a splendid leap, but he alighted among some

grassy tufts and fell. Helen shot over his head. She struck

lengthwise, her arms stretched, and slid hard to a shocking

impact that stunned her.

 

Bo’s scream rang in her ears; she felt the wet grass under

her face and then the strong hands that lifted her. Dale

loomed over her, bending down to look into her face; Bo was

clutching her with frantic hands. And Helen could only gasp.

Her breast seemed caved in. The need to breathe was torture.

 

“Nell! — you’re not hurt. You fell light, like a feather.

All grass here… . You can’t be hurt!” said Dale,

sharply.

 

His anxious voice penetrated beyond her hearing, and his

strong hands went swiftly over her arms and shoulders,

feeling for broken bones.

 

“Just had the wind knocked out of you,” went on Dale. “It

feels awful, but it’s nothin’.”

 

Helen got a little air, that was like hot pin-points in her

lungs, and then a deeper breath, and then full, gasping

respiration.

 

“I guess — I’m not hurt — not a bit,” she choked out.

 

“You sure had a header. Never saw a prettier spill. Ranger

doesn’t do that often. I reckon we were travelin’ too fast.

But it was fun, don’t you think?”

 

It was Bo who answered. “Oh, glorious! … But, gee! I was

scared.”

 

Dale still held Helen’s hands. She released them while

looking up at him. The moment was realization for her of

what for days had been a vague, sweet uncertainty, becoming

near and strange, disturbing and present. This accident had

been a sudden, violent end to the wonderful ride. But its

effect, the knowledge of what had got into her blood, would

never change. And inseparable from it was this man of the

forest.