The Man of the Forest Part 36

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 pa.s.sed 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 carca.s.s.

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 hoa.r.s.e, 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 gra.s.s. 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, pa.s.sionless stars, so solemn, so far away, the beckoning fringe of forest-land at once mysterious and friendly, and the fleet horses, running with soft, rhythmic thuds over the gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.sy 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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.

CHAPTER XIV

On the next morning Helen was awakened by what she imagined had been a dream of some one shouting. With a start she sat up. The sunshine showed pink and gold on the ragged spruce line of the mountain rims. Bo was on her knees, braiding her hair with shaking hands, and at the same time trying to peep out.

And the echoes of a ringing cry were cracking back from the cliffs. That had been Dale's voice.

"Nell! Nell! Wake up!" called Bo, wildly. "Oh, some one's come! Horses and men!"

Helen got to her knees and peered out over Bo's shoulder. Dale, standing tall and striking beside the campfire, was waving his sombrero. Away down the open edge of the park came a string of pack-burros with mounted men behind. In the foremost rider Helen recognized Roy Beeman.

"That first one's Roy!" she exclaimed. "I'd never forget him on a horse.... Bo, it must mean Uncle Al's come!"

"Sure! We're born lucky. Here we are safe and sound--and all this grand camp trip.... Look at the cowboys.... LOOK! Oh, maybe this isn't great!"

babbled Bo.