The Forester's Daughter: A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range

McFarlane’s faith in his daughter had been tested many times, and yet he was a little loath to have her start off on a trail new to her. He argued against it briefly, but she laughed at his fears. “I can go anywhere you can,” she said. “Stand clear!” With final admonition he stood clear.

“You’ll have to keep off the boggy meadows,” he warned; “these rains will have softened all those muck-holes on the other side; they’ll be bottomless pits; watch out for ’em. Good-by! If you meet Nash hurry him along. Moore is anxious to run those lines. Keep in touch with Landon, and if anybody turns up from the district office say I’ll be back on Friday. Good luck.”

“Same to you. So long.”

Berea led the way, and Norcross fell in behind the pack-horses, feeling as unimportant as a small boy at the heels of a circus parade. His girl captain was so competent, so self-reliant, and so sure that nothing he could say or do assisted in the slightest degree. Her leadership was a curiously close reproduction of her father’s unhurried and graceful action. Her seat in the saddle was as easy as Landon’s, and her eyes were alert to every rock and stream in the road. She was at home here, where the other girl would have been a bewildered child, and his words of praise lifted the shadow from her face.

The sky was cloudy, and a delicious feeling of autumn was in the air – autumn that might turn to winter with a passing cloud, and the forest was dankly gloomy and grimly silent, save from the roaring stream which ran at times foam-white with speed. The high peaks, gray and streaked with new-fallen snow, shone grandly, bleakly through the firs. The radiant beauty of the road from the Springs, the golden glow of four days before was utterly gone, and yet there was exultation in this ride. A distinct pleasure, a delight of another sort, lay in thus daring the majesty of an unknown wind-swept pass.

Wayland called out: “The air feels like Thanksgiving morning, doesn’t it?”

“It is Thanksgiving for me, and I’m going to get a grouse for dinner,” she replied; and in less than an hour the snap of her rifle made good her promise.

After leaving the upper lake she turned to the right and followed the course of a swift and splendid stream, which came churning through a cheerless, mossy swamp of spruce-trees. Inexperienced as he was, Wayland knew that this was not a well-marked trail; but his confidence in his guide was too great to permit of any worry over the pass, and he amused himself by watching the water-robins as they flitted from stone to stone in the torrent, and in calculating just where he would drop a line for trout if he had time to do so, and in recovered serenity enjoyed his ride. Gradually he put aside his perplexities concerning the future, permitting his mind to prefigure nothing but his duties with Landon at Meeker’s Mill.

He was rather glad of the decision to send him there, for it promised absorbing sport. “I shall see how Landon and Belden work out their problem,” he said. He had no fear of Frank Meeker now. “As a forest guard with official duties to perform I can meet that young savage on other and more nearly equal terms,” he assured himself.

The trail grew slippery and in places ran full of water. “But there’s a bottom, somewhere,” Berrie confidently declared, and pushed ahead with resolute mien. It was noon when they rose above timber and entered upon the wide, smooth slopes of the pass. Snow filled the grass here, and the wind, keen, cutting, unhindered, came out of the desolate west with savage fury; but the sun occasionally shone through the clouds with vivid splendor. “It is December now,” shouted Wayland, as he put on his slicker and cowered low to his saddle. “It will be January soon.”

“We will make it Christmas dinner,” she laughed, and her glowing good humor warmed his heart. She was entirely her cheerful self again.

As they rose, the view became magnificent, wintry, sparkling. The great clouds, drifting like ancient warships heavy with armament, sent down chill showers of hail over the frosted gold of the grassy slopes; but when the shadows passed the sunlight descended in silent cataracts deliriously spring-like. The conies squeaked from the rocky ridges, and a brace of eagles circling about a lone crag, as if exulting in their sovereign mastery of the air, screamed in shrill ecstatic duo. The sheer cliffs, on their shadowed sides, were violently purple. Everywhere the landscape exhibited crashing contrasts of primary pigments which bit into consciousness like the flare of a martial band.

The youth would have lingered in spite of the cold; but the girl kept steadily on, knowing well that the hardest part of their journey was still before them, and he, though longing to ride by her side, and to enjoy the views with her, was forced to remain in the rear in order to hurry the reluctant pack-animals forward. They had now reached a point twelve thousand feet above the sea, and range beyond range, to the west and south, rose into sight like stupendous waves of a purple-green sea. To the east the park lay level as a floor and carpeted in tawny velvet.

It was nearly two o’clock when they began to drop down behind the rocky ridges of the eastern slope, and soon, in the bottom of a warm and sheltered hollow just at timber-line, Berrie drew her horse to a stand and slipped from the saddle. “We’ll rest here an hour,” she said, “and cook our grouse; or are you too hungry to wait?”

“I can wait,” he answered, dramatically. “But it seems as if I had never eaten.”

“Well, then, we’ll save the grouse till to-morrow; but I’ll make some coffee. You bring some water while I start a fire.”

And so, while the tired horses cropped the russet grass, she boiled some coffee and laid out some bread and meat, while he sat by watching her and absorbing the beauty of the scene, the charm of the hour. “It is exactly like a warm afternoon in April,” he said, “and here are some of the spring flowers.”

“There now, sit by and eat,” she said, with humor; and in perfectly restored tranquillity they ate and drank, with no thought of critics or of rivals. They were alone, and content to be so.

It was deliciously sweet and restful there in that sunny hollow on the breast of the mountain. The wind swept through the worn branches of the dwarfed spruce with immemorial wistfulness; but these young souls heard it only as a far-off song. Side by side on the soft Alpine clover they rested and talked, looking away at the shining peaks, and down over the dark-green billows of fir beneath them. Half the forest was under their eyes at the moment, and the man said: “Is it not magnificent! It makes me proud of my country. Just think, all this glorious spread of hill and valley is under your father’s direction. I may say under your direction, for I notice he does just about what you tell him to do.”

“You’ve noticed that?” she laughed. “If I were a man I’d rather be Supervisor of this forest than Congressman.”

“So would I,” he agreed. “Nash says you are the Supervisor. I wonder if your father realizes how efficient you are? Does he ever sorrow over your not being a boy?”

Her eyes shone with mirth. “Not that I can notice. He ’pears contented.”

“You’re a good deal like a son to him, I imagine. You can do about all that a boy can do, anyhow – more than I could ever do. Does he realize how much you have to do with the management of his forest? I’ve never seen your like. I really believe you could carry on the work as well as he.”

She flushed with pleasure. “You seem to think I’m a district forester in disguise.”

“I have eyes, Miss Supervisor, and also ears – which leads me to ask: Why don’t you clean out that saloon gang? Landon is sure there’s crooked work going on at that mill – certainly that open bar is a disgraceful and corrupting thing.”

Her face clouded. “We’ve tried to cut out that saloon, but it can’t be done. You see, it’s on a patented claim – the claim was bogus, of course, and we’ve made complaint, but the matter is hung up, and that gives ’em a chance to go on.”

“Well, let’s not talk of that. It’s too delicious an hour for any question of business. It is a moment for poetry. I wish I could write what I feel this moment. Why don’t we camp here and watch the sun go down and the moon rise? From our lofty vantage-ground the coming of dawn would be an epic.”

“We mustn’t think of that,” she protested. “We must be going.”

“Not yet. The hour is too perfect. It may never come again. The wind in the pines, the sunshine, the conies crying from their rocks, the butterflies on the clover – my heart aches with the beauty of it. It’s been a wonderful trip. Even that staggering walk in the rain had its splendid quality. I couldn’t see the poetry in it then; but I do now. These few days have made us comrades, haven’t they – comrades of the trail? You have been very considerate of me.” He took her hand. “I’ve never seen such hands. They are like steel, and yet they are feminine.”

She drew her hands away. “I’m ashamed of my hands – they are so big and rough and dingy.”

“They’re brown, of course, and calloused – a little – but they are not big, and they are beautifully modeled.” He looked at her speculatively. “I am wondering how you would look in conventional dress.”

“Do you mean – ” She hesitated. “I’d look like a gawk in one of those low-necked outfits. I’d never dare – and those tight skirts would sure cripple me.”

“Oh no, they wouldn’t. You’d have to modify your stride a little; but you’d negotiate it. You’re equal to anything.”

“You’re making fun of me!”

“No, I’m not. I’m in earnest. You’re the kind of American girl that can go anywhere and do anything. My sisters would mortgage their share of the golden streets for your abounding health – and so would I.”

“You are all right now,” she smiled. “You don’t look or talk as you did.”

“It’s this sunlight.” He lifted a spread hand as if to clutch and hold something. “I feel it soaking into me like some magical oil. No more moping and whining for me. I’ve proved that hardship is good for me.”

“Don’t crow till you’re out of the woods. It’s a long ride down the hill, and going down is harder on the tenderfoot than going up.”

“I’m no longer a tenderfoot. All I need is another trip like this with you and I shall be a master trailer.”

All this was very sweet to her, and though she knew they should be going, she lingered. Childishly reckless of the sinking sun, she played with the wild flowers at her side and listened to his voice in complete content. He was right. The hour was too beautiful to be shortened, although she saw no reason why others equally delightful might not come to them both. He was more of the lover than he had ever been before, that she knew, and in the light of his eyes all that was not girlish and charming melted away. She forgot her heavy shoes, her rough hands and sun-tanned face, and listened with wondering joy and pride to his words, which were of a fineness such as she had never heard spoken – only books contained such unusual and exquisite phrases.

A cloud passing across the sun flung down a shadow of portentous chill and darkness. She started to her feet with startled recollection of the place and the hour.

“We must be going – at once!” she commanded.

“Not yet,” he pleaded. “It’s only a cloud. The sun is coming out again. I have perfect confidence in your woodcraft. Why not spend another night on the trail? It may be our last trip together.”

He tempted her strongly, so frank and boyish and lovable were his glances and his words. But she was vaguely afraid of herself, and though the long ride at the moment seemed hard and dull, the thought of her mother waiting decided her action.

“No, no!” she responded, firmly. “We’ve wasted too much time already. We must ride.”

He looked up at her with challenging glance. “Suppose I refuse – suppose I decide to stay here?”

Upon her, as he talked, a sweet hesitation fell, a dream which held more of happiness than she had ever known. “It is a long, hard ride,” she thought, “and another night on the trail will not matter.” And so the moments passed on velvet feet, and still she lingered, reluctant to break the spell.

Suddenly, into their idyllic drowse of content, so sweet, so youthful, and so pure of heart, broke the sound of a horse’s hurrying, clashing, steel-shod feet, and looking up Berrie saw a mounted man coming down the mountainside with furious, reckless haste.

“It is Cliff!” she cried out. “He’s on our trail!” And into her face came a look of alarm. Her lips paled, her eyes widened. “He’s mad – he’s dangerous! Leave him to me,” she added, in a low, tense voice.

XI
THE DEATH-GRAPPLE

There was something so sinister in the rider’s disregard of stone and tree and pace, something so menacing in the forward thrust of his body, that Berrie was able to divine his wrath, and was smitten into irresolution – all her hardy, boyish self-reliance swallowed up in the weakness of the woman. She forgot the pistol at her belt, and awaited the assault with rigid pose.

As Belden neared them Norcross also perceived that the rider’s face was distorted with passion, and that his glance was not directed upon Berrie, but upon himself, and he braced himself for the attack.

Leaving his saddle with one flying leap, which the cowboy practises at play, Belden hurled himself upon his rival with the fury of a panther.

The slender youth went down before the big rancher as though struck by a catapult; and the force of his fall against the stony earth stunned him so that he lay beneath his enemy as helpless as a child.

Belden snarled between his teeth: “I told you I’d kill you, and I will.”

But this was not to be. Berea suddenly recovered her native force. With a cry of pain, of anger, she flung herself on the maddened man’s back. Her hands encircled his neck like a collar of bronze. Hardened by incessant use of the cinch and the rope, her fingers sank into the sinews of his great throat, shutting off both blood and breath.

“Let go!” she commanded, with deadly intensity. “Let go, or I’ll choke the life out of you! Let go, I say!”

He raised a hand to beat her off, but she was too strong, too desperate to be driven away. She was as blind to pain as a mother eagle, and bent above him so closely that he could not bring the full weight of his fist to bear. With one determined hand still clutching his throat, she ran the fingers of her other hand into his hair and twisted his head upward with a power which he could not resist. And so, looking into his upturned, ferocious eyes, she repeated with remorseless fury: “Let go, I say!”

His swollen face grew rigid, his mouth gaped, his tongue protruded, and at last, releasing his hold on his victim, he rose, flinging Berrie off with a final desperate effort. “I’ll kill you, too!” he gasped.

Up to this moment the girl had felt no fear of herself; but now she resorted to other weapons. Snatching her pistol from its holster, she leveled it at his forehead. “Stop!” she said; and something in her voice froze him into calm. He was not a fiend; he was not a deliberate assassin; he was only a jealous, despairing, insane lover, and as he looked into the face he knew so well, and realized that nothing but hate and deadly resolution lit the eyes he had so often kissed, his heart gave way, and, dropping his head, he said: “Kill me if you want to. I’ve nothing left to live for.”

There was something unreal, appalling in this sudden reversion to weakness, and Berrie could not credit his remorse. “Give me your gun,” she said.

He surrendered it to her and she threw it aside; then turned to Wayland, who was lying white and still with face upturned to the sky. With a moan of anguish she bent above him and called upon his name. He did not stir, and when she lifted his head to her lap his hair, streaming with blood, stained her dress. She kissed him and called again to him, then turned with accusing frenzy to Belden: “You’ve killed him! Do you hear? You’ve killed him!”

The agony, the fury of hate in her voice reached the heart of the conquered man. He raised his head and stared at her with mingled fear and remorse. And so across that limp body these two souls, so lately lovers, looked into each other’s eyes as though nothing but words of hate and loathing had ever passed between them. The girl saw in him only a savage, vengeful, bloodthirsty beast; the man confronted in her an accusing angel.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” he muttered.

“Yes, you did! You meant it. You crushed his life out with your big hands – and now I’m going to kill you for it!”

A fierce calm had come upon her. Some far-off ancestral deep of passion called for blood revenge. She lifted the weapon with steady hand and pointed it at his heart.

His fear passed as his wrath had passed. His head drooped, his glance wavered. “Shoot!” he commanded, sullenly. “I’d sooner die than live – now.”

His words, his tone, brought back to her a vision of the man he had seemed when she first met and admired him. Her hand fell, the woman in her reasserted itself. A wave of weakness, of indecision, of passionate grief overwhelmed her. “Oh, Cliff!” she moaned. “Why did you do it? He was so gentle and sweet.”

He did not answer. His glance wandered to his horse, serenely cropping the grass in utter disregard of this tumultuous human drama; but the wind, less insensate than the brute, swept through the grove of dwarfed, distorted pines with a desolate, sympathetic moan which filled the man’s heart with a new and exalted sorrow. “You’re right,” he said. “I was crazy. I deserve killing.”

But Berrie was now too deep in her own desolation to care what he said or did. She kissed the cold lips of the still youth, murmuring passionately: “I don’t care to live without you – I shall go with you!”

Belden’s hand was on her wrist before she could raise her weapon. “Don’t, for God’s sake, don’t do that! He may not be dead.”

She responded but dully to the suggestion. “No, no. He’s gone. His breath is gone.”

“Maybe not. Let me see.”

Again she bent to the quiet face on which the sunlight fell with mocking splendor. It seemed all a dream till she felt once more the stain of his blood upon her hands. It was all so incredibly sudden. Only just now he was exulting over the warmth and beauty of the day – and now —

How beautiful he was. He seemed asleep. The conies crying from their runways suddenly took on poignant pathos. They appeared to be grieving with her; but the eagles spoke of revenge.

A sharp cry, a note of joy sprang from her lips. “He is alive! I saw his eyelids quiver – quick! Bring some water.”

The man leaped to his feet, and, running down to the pool, filled his sombrero with icy water. He was as eager now to save his rival as he had been mad to destroy him. “Let me help,” he pleaded. But she would not permit him to touch the body.

Again, while splashing the water upon his face, the girl called upon her love to return. “He hears me!” she exulted to her enemy. “He is breathing now. He is opening his eyes.”

The wounded man did, indeed, open his eyes, but his look was a blank, uncomprehending stare, which plunged her back into despair. “He don’t know me!” she said, with piteous accent. She now perceived the source of the blood upon her arm. It came from a wound in the boy’s head which had been dashed upon a stone.

The sight of this wound brought back the blaze of accusing anger to her eyes. “See what you did!” she said, with cold malignity. Then by sudden shift she bent to the sweet face in her arms and kissed it passionately. “Open your eyes, darling. You must not die! I won’t let you die! Can’t you hear me? Don’t you know where you are?”

He opened his eyes once more, quietly, and looked up into her face with a faint, drowsy smile. He could not yet locate himself in space and time, but he knew her and was comforted. He wondered why he should be looking up into a sunny sky. He heard the wind and the sound of a horse cropping grass, and the voice of the girl penetratingly sweet as that of a young mother calling her baby back to life, and slowly his benumbed brain began to resolve the mystery.

Belden, forgotten, ignored as completely as the conies, sat with choking throat and smarting eyes. For him the world was only dust and ashes – a ruin which his own barbaric spirit had brought upon itself.

Slowly the youth’s eyes took on expression. “Are we still on the hill?” he asked.

“Yes, dearest,” she assured him. Then to Belden, “He knows where he is!”

Wayland again struggled with reality. “What has happened to me?”

“You fell and hurt your head.”

He turned slightly and observed the other man looking down at her with dark and tragic glance. “Hello, Belden,” he said, feebly. “How came you here?” Then noting Berrie’s look, he added: “I remember. He tried to kill me.” He again searched his antagonist’s face. “Why didn’t you finish the job?”

The girl tried to turn his thought aside. “It’s all right now, darling. He won’t make any more trouble. Don’t mind him. I don’t care for anybody now you are coming back to me.”

Wayland wonderingly regarded the face of the girl. “And you – are you hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt. I am perfectly happy now.” She turned to Belden with quick, authoritative command. “Unsaddle the horses and set up the tent. We won’t be able to leave here to-night.”

He rose with instant obedience, glad of a chance to serve her, and soon had the tent pegged to its place and the bedding unrolled. Together they lifted the wounded youth and laid him upon his blankets beneath the low canvas roof which seemed heavenly helpful to Berea.

“There!” she said, caressingly. “Now you are safe, no matter whether it rains or not.”

He smiled. “It seems I’m to have my way after all. I hope I shall be able to see the sun rise. I’ve sort of lost my interest in the sunset.”

“Now, Cliff,” she said, as soon as the camp was in order and a fire started, “I reckon you’d better ride on. I haven’t any further use for you.”

“Don’t say that, Berrie,” he pleaded. “I can’t leave you here alone with a sick man. Let me stay and help.”

She looked at him for a long time before she replied. “I shall never be able to look at you again without hating you,” she said. “I shall always remember you as you looked when you were killing that boy. So you’d better ride on and keep a-riding. I’m going to forget all this just as soon as I can, and it don’t help me any to have you around. I never want to see you or hear your name again.”

“You don’t mean that, Berrie!”

“Yes, I do,” she asserted, bitterly. “I mean just that. So saddle up and pull out. All I ask of you is to say nothing about what has happened here. You’d better leave the state. If Wayland should get worse it might go hard with you.”

He accepted his banishment. “All right. If you feel that way I’ll ride. But I’d like to do something for you before I go. I’ll pile up some wood – ”

“No. I’ll take care of that.” And without another word of farewell she turned away and re-entered the tent.

Mounting his horse with painful slowness, as though suddenly grown old, the reprieved assassin rode away up the mountain, his head low, his eyes upon the ground.