The Forester's Daughter Part 26

Wayland, hearing their voices, called out, with feeble humor: "Will some one please turn on the steam in my room?"

Berrie uttered a happy word. "How do you feel this morning?" she asked.

"Not precisely like a pugilist--well, yes, I believe I do--like the fellow who got second money."

"How is the b.u.mp?" inquired Nash, thrusting his head inside the door.

"Reduced to the size of a golf-ball as near as I can judge of it. I doubt if I can wear a hat; but I'm feeling fine. I'm going to get up."

Berrie was greatly relieved. "I'm so glad! Do you feel like riding down the hill?"

"Sure thing! I'm hungry, and as soon as I am fed I'm ready to start."

Berrie joined the surveyor at the fire.

"If you'll round up our horses, Mr. Nash, I'll rustle breakfast and we'll get going," she said.

Nash, enthralled, lingered while she twisted her hair into place, then went out to bring in the ponies.

Wayland came out a little uncertainly, but looking very well. "I think I shall discourage my friends from coming to this region for their health,"

he said, ruefully. "If I were a novelist now all this would be grist for my mill."

Beneath his joking he was profoundly chagrined. He had hoped by this time to be as sinewy, as alert as Nash, instead of which here he sat, shivering over the fire like a sick girl, his head swollen, his blood sluggish; but this discouragement only increased Berea's tenderness--a tenderness which melted all his reserve.

"I'm not worth all your care," he said to her, with poignant glance.

The sun rose clear and warm, and the fire, the coffee, put new courage into him as well as into the others, and while the morning was yet early and the forest chill and damp with rain, the surveyor brought up the horses and started packing the outfit.

In this Berrie again took part, doing her half of the work quite as dextrously as Nash himself. Indeed, the forester was noticeably confused and not quite up to his usual level of adroit ease.

At last both packs were on, and as they stood together for a moment, Nash said: "This has been a great experience--one I shall remember as long as I live."

She stirred uneasily under his frank admiration. "I'm mightily obliged to you," she replied, as heartily as she could command.

"Don't thank me, I'm indebted to you. There is so little in my life of such companionship as you and Norcross give me."

"You'll find it lonesome over at the station, I'm afraid," said she. "But Moore intends to put a crew of tie-cutters in over there--that will help some." She smiled.

"I'm not partial to the society of tie-jacks."

"If you ride hard you may find that Moore girl in camp. She was there when we left." There was a sparkle of mischief in her glance.

"I'm not interested in the Moore girl," he retorted.

"Do you know her?"

"I've seen her at the post-office once or twice; _she_ is not my kind."

She gave him her hand. "Well, good-by. I'm all right now that Wayland can ride."

He held her hand an instant. "I believe I'll ride back with you as far as the camp."

"You'd better go on. Father is waiting for you. I'll send the men along."

There was dismissal in her voice, and yet she recognized as never before the fine qualities that were his. "Please don't say anything of this to others, and tell my father not to worry about us. We'll pull in all right."

He helped Norcross mount his horse, and as he put the lead rope into Berrie's hand, he said: with much feeling: "Good luck to you. I shall remember this night all the rest of my life."

"I hate to be going to the rear," called Wayland, whose bare, bandaged head made him look like a wounded young officer. "But I guess it's better for me to lay off for a week or two and recover my tone."

And so they parted, the surveyor riding his determined way up the naked mountainside toward the clouds, while Berrie and her ward plunged at once into the dark and dripping forest below. "If you can stand the grief,"

she said, "we'll go clear through."

Wayland had his misgivings, but did not say so. His confidence in his guide was complete. She would do her part, that was certain. Several times she was forced to dismount and blaze out a new path in order to avoid some bog; but she sternly refused his aid. "You must not get off,"

she warned; "stay where you are. I can do this work better alone."

They were again in that green, gloomy, and silent zone of the range, where giant spruces grow, and springs, oozing from the rocks, trickle over the trail. It was very beautiful, but menacing, by reason of its apparently endless thickets cut by stony ridges. It was here she met the two young men, Downing and Travis, bringing forward the surveying outfit, but she paused only to say: "Push along steadily. You are needed on the other side."

After leaving the men, and with a knowledge that the remaining leagues of the trail were solitary, Norcross grew fearful. "The fall of a horse, an accident to that brave girl, and we would be helpless," he thought. "I wish Nash had returned with us." Once his blood chilled with horror as he watched his guide striking out across the marge of a gra.s.sy lake. This meadow, as he divined, was really a carpet of sod floating above a bottomless pool of muck, for it shook beneath her horse's feet.

"Come on, it's all right," she called back, cheerily. "We'll soon pick up the other trail."

He wondered how she knew, for to him each hill was precisely like another, each thicket a maze.

Her caution was all for him. She tried each dangerous slough first, and thus was able to advise him which way was safest. His head throbbed with pain and his knees were weary, but he rode on, manifesting such cheer as he could, resolving not to complain at any cost; but his self-respect ebbed steadily, leaving him in bitter, silent dejection.

At last they came into open ground on a high ridge, and were gladdened by the valley outspread below them, for it was still radiant with color, though not as brilliant as before the rain. It had been dimmed, but not darkened. And yet it seemed that a month had pa.s.sed since their ecstatic ride upward through the golden forest, and Wayland said as much while they stood for a moment surveying the majestic park with its wall of guardian peaks.

But Berrie replied: "It seems only a few hours to me."

From this point the traveling was good, and they descended rapidly, zigzagging from side to side of a long, sweeping ridge. By noon they were once more down amid the aspens, basking in a world of sad gold leaves and delicious September sunshine.

At one o'clock, on the bank of a clear stream, the girl halted. "I reckon we'd better camp awhile. You look tired, and I am hungry."

He gratefully acquiesced in this stop, for his knees were trembling with the strain of the stirrups; but he would not permit her to ease him down from his saddle. Turning a wan glance upon her, he bitterly asked: "Must I always play the weakling before you? I am ashamed of myself. Ride on and leave me to rot here in the gra.s.s. I'm not worth keeping alive."

"You must not talk like that," she gently admonished him. "You're not to blame."

"Yes, I am. I should never have ventured into this man's country."

"I'm glad you did," she answered, as if she were comforting a child. "For if you hadn't I should never have known you."

"That would have been no loss--to you," he bitterly responded.

She unsaddled one pack-animal and spread some blankets on the gra.s.s. "Lie down and rest while I boil some coffee," she commanded; and he obeyed, too tired to make pretension toward a.s.sisting.

Lying so, feeling the magic of the sun, hearing the music of the water, and watching the girl, he regained a serener mood, and when she came back with his food he thanked her for it with a glance before which her eyes fell. "I don't see why you are so kind to me, I really believe you _like_ to do things for me." Her head drooped to hide her face, and he went on: "Why do you care for me? Tell me!"

"I don't know," she murmured. Then she added, with a flash of bravery: "But I do."