The Forester's Daughter Part 10

He hesitated. "He was pretty hot, and said things he'll be sorry for when he cools off."

"He told you not to come here any more--advised you to hit the out-going trail--didn't he?"

He flushed with returning shame of it all, but quietly answered: "Yes, he said something about riding east."

"Are you going to do it?"

"Not to-day; but I guess I'd better keep away from here."

She looked at him steadily. "Why?"

"Because you've been very kind to me, and I wouldn't for the world do anything to hurt or embarra.s.s you."

"Don't you mind about me," she responded, bluntly. "What happened this morning wasn't your fault nor mine. Cliff made a mighty coa.r.s.e play, something he'll have to pay for. He knows that right now. He'll be back in a day or two begging my pardon, and he won't get it. Don't you worry about me, not for a minute--I can take care of myself--I grew up that way, and don't you be chased out of the country by anybody. Come, father will be looking for you."

With a feeling that he was involving both the girl and himself in still darker storms, the young fellow yielded to her command, and together they walked along the weed-bordered path, while she continued:

"This isn't the first time Cliff has started in to discipline me; but it's obliged to be the last. He's the kind that think they own a girl just as soon as they get her to wear an engagement ring; but Cliff don't own me. I told him I wouldn't stand for his coa.r.s.e ways, and I won't!"

Wayland tried to bring her back to humor. "You're a kind of 'new woman.'"

She turned a stern look on him. "You bet I am! I was raised a free citizen. No man can make a slave of me. I thought he understood that; but it seems he didn't. He's all right in many ways--one of the best riders in the country--but he's pretty tolerable domineering--I've always known that--still, I never expected him to talk to me like he did to-day. It certainly was raw." She broke off abruptly. "You mustn't let Frank Meeker get the best of you, either," she advised. "He's a mean little weasel if he gets started. I'll bet he put Cliff up to this business."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes, he just as good as told me he'd do it. I know Frank, he's my own cousin, and someways I like him; but he's the limit when he gets going.

You see, he wanted to get even with Cliff and took that way of doing it.

I'll ride up there and give him a little good advice some Sat.u.r.day."

He was no longer amused by her blunt speech, and her dark look saddened him. She seemed so unlike the happy girl he met that first day, and the change in her subtended a big, rough, and pitiless world of men against which she was forced to contend all her life.

Mrs. McFarlane greeted Norcross with cordial word and earnest hand-clasp.

"I'm glad to see you looking so well," she said, with charming sincerity.

"I'm browner, anyway," he answered, and turned to meet McFarlane, a short, black-bearded man, with fine dark eyes and shapely hands--hands that had never done anything more toilsome than to lift a bridle rein or to clutch the handle of a gun. He was the horseman in all his training, and though he owned hundreds of acres of land, he had never so much as held a plow or plied a spade. His manner was that of the cow-boss, the lord of great herds, the claimant of empires of government gra.s.s-land.

Poor as his house looked, he was in reality rich. Narrow-minded in respect to his own interests, he was well in advance of his neighbors on matters relating to the general welfare, a curious mixture of greed and generosity, as most men are, and though he had been made Supervisor at a time when political pull still crippled the Service, he was loyal to the flag. "I'm mighty glad to see you," he heartily began. "We don't often get a man from the sea-level, and when we do we squeeze him dry."

His voice, low, languid, and soft, was most insinuating, and for hours he kept his guest talking of the East and its industries and prejudices; and Berrie and her mother listened with deep admiration, for the youngster had seen a good deal of the old world, and was unusually well read on historical lines of inquiry. He talked well, too, inspired by his attentive audience.

Berrie's eyes, wide and eager, were fixed upon him unwaveringly. He felt her wonder, her admiration, and was inspired to do his best. Something in her absorbed attention led him to speak of things so personal that he wondered at himself for uttering them.

"I've been dilettante all my life," was one of his confessions. "I've traveled; I've studied in a tepid sort of fashion; I went through college without any idea of doing anything with what I got; I had a sort of pride in keeping up with my fellows; and I had no idea of preparing for any work in the world. Then came my breakdown, and my doctor ordered me out here. I came intending to fish and loaf around, but I can't do that. I've got to do something or go back home. I expected to have a chum of mine with me, but his father was injured in an automobile accident, so he went into the office to help out."

As he talked the girl discovered new graces, new allurements in him. His smile, so subtly self-derisive, and his voice so flexible and so quietly eloquent, completed her subjugation. She had no further care concerning Clifford--indeed, she had forgotten him--for the time at least. The other part of her--the highly civilized latent power drawn from her mother--was in action. She lost her air of command, her sense of chieftainship, and sat humbly at the feet of this shining visitor from the East.

At last Mrs. McFarlane rose, and Berea, reluctantly, like a child loath to miss a fairy story, held out her hand to say good night, and the young man saw on her face that look of adoration which marks the birth of sudden love; but his voice was frank and his glance kindly as he said:

"Here I've done all the talking when I wanted you to tell _me_ all sorts of things."

"I can't tell you anything."

"Oh yes, you can; and, besides, I want you to intercede for me with your father and get me into the Service. But we'll talk about that to-morrow.

Good night."

After the women left the room Norcross said:

"I really am in earnest about entering the Forest Service. Landon filled me with enthusiasm about it. Never mind the pay. I'm not in immediate need of money; but I do need an interest in life."

McFarlane stared at him with kindly perplexity. "I don't know exactly what you can do, but I'll work you in somehow. You ought to work under a man like Settle, one that could put you through a training in the rudiments of the game. I'll see what can be done."

"Thank you for that half promise," said Wayland, and he went to his bed happier than at any moment since leaving home.

Berrie, on her part, did not a.n.a.lyze her feeling for Wayland, she only knew that he was as different from the men she knew as a hawk from a sage-hen, and that he appealed to her in a higher way than any other had done. His talk filled her with visions of great cities, and with thoughts of books, for though she was profoundly loyal to her mountain valley, she held other, more secret admirations. She was, in fact, compounded of two opposing tendencies. Her quiet little mother longing--in secret--for the placid, refined life of her native Kentucky town, had dowered her daughter with some part of her desire. She had always hated the slovenly, wasteful, and purposeless life of the cattle-rancher, and though she still patiently bore with her husband's shortcomings, she covertly hoped that Berea might find some other and more civilized lover than Clifford Belden. She understood her daughter too well to attempt to dictate her action; she merely said to her, as they were alone for a few moments: "I don't wonder your father is interested in Mr. Norcross, he's very intelligent--and very considerate."

"Too considerate," said Berrie, shortly; "he makes other men seem like bears or pigs."

Mrs. McFarlane said no more, but she knew that Cliff was, for the time, among the bears.

V

THE GOLDEN PATHWAY

Young Norcross soon became vitally engaged with the problems which confronted McFarlane, and his possible enrolment as a guard filled him with a sense of proprietorship in the forest, which made him quite content with Bear Tooth. He set to work at once to acquire a better knowledge of the extent and boundaries of the reservation. It was, indeed, a n.o.ble possession. Containing nearly eight hundred thousand acres of woodland, and reaching to the summits of the snow-lined peaks to the east, south, and west, it appealed to him with silent majesty. It drew upon his patriotism. Remembering how the timber of his own state had been slashed and burned, he began to feel a sense of personal responsibility. He had but to ride into it a few miles in order to appreciate in some degree its grandeur, considered merely as the source of a hundred swift streams, whose waters enriched the valleys lying below.

He bought a horse of his own--although Berrie insisted upon his retaining Pete--and sent for a saddle of the army type, and from sheer desire to keep entirely clear of the cowboy equipment procured puttees like those worn by cavalry officers, and when he presented himself completely uniformed, he looked not unlike a slender, young lieutenant of the cavalry on field duty, and in Berrie's eyes was wondrous alluring.

He took quarters at the hotel, but spent a larger part of each day in Berrie's company--a fact which was duly reported to Clifford Belden.

Hardly a day pa.s.sed without his taking at least one meal at the Supervisor's home.

As he met the rangers one by one, he perceived by their outfits, as well as by their speech, that they were sharply divided upon old lines and new. The experts, the men of college training, were quite ready to be known as Uncle Sam's men. They held a pride in their duties, a respect for their superiors, and an understanding of the governmental policy which gave them dignity and a quiet authority. They were less policemen than trusted agents of a federal department. Nevertheless, there was much to admire in the older men, who possessed a self-reliance, a knowledge of nature, and a certain rough grace which made them interesting companions, and rendered them effective teachers of camping and trailing, and while they were secretly a little contemptuous of the "schoolboys"; they were all quite ready to ask for expert aid when knotty problems arose. It was no longer a question of grazing, it was a question of lumbering and reforestration.

Nash, who took an almost brotherly interest in his apprentice, warningly said: "You want to go well clothed and well shod. You'll have to meet all kinds of weather. Every man in the service, I don't care what his technical job is, should be schooled in taking care of himself in the forest and on the trail. I often meet surveyors and civil engineers--experts--who are helpless as children in camp, and when I want them to go into the hills and do field work, they are almost useless. The old-style ranger has his virtues. Settle is just the kind of instructor you young fellows need."

Berrie also had keen eyes for his outfit and his training, and under her direction he learned to pack a horse, set a tent, build a fire in the rain, and other duties.

"You want to remember that you carry your bed and board with you," she said, "and you must be prepared to camp anywhere and at any time."

The girl's skill in these particulars was marvelous to him, and added to the admiration he already felt for her. Her hand was as deft, as sure, as the best of them, and her knowledge of cayuse psychology more profound than any of the men excepting her father.

One day, toward the end of his second week in the village, the Supervisor said: "Well, now, if you're ready to experiment I'll send you over to Settle, the ranger, on the Horseshoe. He's a little lame on his pen-hand side, and you may be able to help him out. Maybe I'll ride over there with you. I want to line out some timber sales on the west side of Ptarmigan."

This commission delighted Norcross greatly. "I'm ready, sir, this moment," he answered, saluting soldier-wise.

That night, as he sat in the saddle-littered, boot-haunted front room of Nash's little shack, his host said, quaintly: "Don't think you are inheriting a soft snap, son. The ranger's job was a man's job in the old days when it was a mere matter of patrolling; but it's worse and more of it to-day. A ranger must be ready and willing to build bridges, fight fire, scale logs, chop a hole through a windfall, use a pick in a ditch, build his own house, cook, launder, and do any other old trick that comes along. But you'll know more about all this at the end of ten days than I can tell you in a year."