The Strength of the Pines Part 3

The dawn revealed a narrow road along the bank of Deer Creek,--a brown little wanderer which, winding here and there, did not seem to know exactly where it wished to go. It seemed to follow the general direction of the creek bed; it seemed to be a prying, restless little highway, curious about things in general as the wild creatures that sometimes made tracks in its dust, thrusting now into a heavy thicket, now crossing the creek to examine a green and gra.s.sy bank on the opposite side, now taking an adventurous tramp about the shoulder of a hill, circling back for a drink in the creek and hurrying on again. It made singular loops; it darted off at a right and left oblique; it made sudden spurts and turns seemingly without reason or sense, and at last it dimmed away into the fading mists of early morning. Bruce didn't know which direction to take, whether up or down the creek.

He gave the problem a moment's thought. "Take the road up the Divide,"

Barney Wegan had said; and at once Bruce knew that the course lay up the creek, rather than down. A divide means simply the high places between one water-shed and another, and of course Trail's End lay somewhere beyond the source of the stream. The creek itself was apparently a sub-tributary of the Rogue, the great river to the south.

There was something pleasing to his spirit in the sight of the little stream, tumbling and rippling down its rocky bed. He had no vivid memories of seeing many waterways. The river that flowed through the city whence he had come had not been like this at all. It had been a great, slow-moving sheet of water, the banks of which were lined with factories and warehouses. The only lining of the banks of this little stream were white-barked trees, lovely groves with leaves of glossy green. It was a cheery, eager little waterway, and more than once--as he went around a curve in the road--it afforded him glimpses of really striking beauty. Sometimes it was just a shimmer of its waters beneath low-hanging bushes, sometimes a distant cataract, and once or twice a long, still place on which the shadows were still deep.

These sloughs were obviously the result of dams, and at first he could not understand what had been the purpose of dam-building in this lonely region. There seemed to be no factories needing water power, no slow-moving mill wheels. He left the road to investigate. And he chuckled with delight when he knew the truth.

These dams had not been the work of men at all. Rather they were structures laid down by those curious little civil engineers, the beavers. The cottonwood trees had been felled so that the thick branches had lain across the waters, and in their own secret ways the limbs had been matted and caked until no water could pa.s.s through. True, the beavers themselves did not emerge for him to converse with. Perhaps they were busy at their under-water occupations, and possibly the trappers who sooner or later penetrate every wilderness had taken them all away. He looked along the bank for further evidence of the beavers'

work.

Wonderful as the dams were, he found plenty of evidence that the beavers had not always used to advantage the crafty little brains that nature has given them. They had made plenty of mistakes. But these very blunders gave Bruce enough delight almost to pay for the extra work they had occasioned. After all, he considered, human beings in their works are often just as short-sighted. For instance, he found tall trees lying rotting and out of reach, many feet back from the stream. The beavers had evidently felled them in high water, forgetting that the stream dwindled in summer and the trees would be of no use to them. They had been an industrious colony! He found short poles of cottonwood sharpened at the end, as if the little fur bearers had intended them for braces, but which--through some wilderness tragedy--had never been utilized.

But Bruce was in a mood to be delighted, these early morning hours. He was on the way to Linda; a dream was about to come true. The whole adventure was of the most thrilling and joyous antic.i.p.ations. He did not feel the load of his heavy suitcase. It was nothing to his magnificent young strength. And all at once he beheld an amazing change in the appearance of the stream.

It had abruptly changed to a stream of melted, shimmering silver. The waters broke on the rocks with opalescent spray; the whole coloring was suggestive of the vivid tints of a Turner landscape. The waters gleamed; they danced and sparkled as they sped about the boulders of the river bed; the leaves shimmered above them. And it was all because the sun had risen at last above the mountain range and was shining down.

At first Bruce could hardly believe that just sunlight could effect such a transformation. For no other reason than that he couldn't resist doing so, he left his bag on the road and crept down to the water's edge.

He stood very still. It seemed to him that some one had told him, far away and long ago, that if he wished to see miracles he had only to stand very still. Not to move a muscle, so that his vivid shadow would not even waver. It is a trait possessed by all men of the wilderness, but it takes time for city men to learn it. He waited a long time. And all at once the shining surface of a deep pool below him broke with a fountain of glittering spray.

Something that was like light itself flung into the air and down again with a splash. Bruce shouted then. He simply couldn't help it. And all the time there was a strange straining and travail in his brain, as if it were trying to give birth to a memory from long ago. He knew now what had made that glittering arc. Such a common thing,--it was singular that it should yield him such delight. It was a trout, leaping for an insect that had fallen on the waters.

It was strange that he had such a sense of familiarity with trout. True, he had heard Barney Wegan tell of them. He had listened to many tales of the way they seized a fly, how the reel would spin, and how they would fight to absolute exhaustion before they would yield to the landing net.

"The King among fish," Barney had called them. Yet the tales seemingly had meant little to him then. His interest in them had been superficial only; and they had seemed as distant and remote as the marsupials of Australia. But it wasn't this way now. He had a sense of long and close acquaintance, of an interest such as men have in their own townsmen.

He went on, and the forest world opened before him. Once a flock of grouse--a hen and a dozen half-grown chickens--scurried away through the underbrush at the sound of his step. One instant, and he had a clear view of the entire covey. The next, and they had vanished like so many puffs of smoke. He had a delicious game of hide-and-seek with them through the coverts, but he was out-cla.s.sed in every particular. He knew that the birds were all within forty feet of him, each of them pressed flat to the brown earth, but in this maze of light and shadow he could not detect their outline. Nature has been kind to the grouse family in the way of protective coloration. He had to give up the search and continue up the creek for further adventure.

Once a pair of mallards winged by on a straight course above his head.

Their sudden appearance rather surprised him. These beautiful game birds are usually habitants of the lower lakes and marshes, not rippling mountain streams. He didn't know that a certain number of these winged people nested every year along the Rogue River, far below, and made rapturous excursions up and down its tributaries. Mallards do not have to have aroplanes to cover distance quickly. They are the very masters of the arial lanes, and in all probability this pair had come forty miles already that morning. Where they would be at dark no man could guess. Their wings whistled down to him, and it seemed to him that the drake stretched down his bright green head for a better look. Then he spurted ahead, faster than ever.

Once, at a distance, Bruce caught a glimpse of a pair of peculiar, little, sawed-off, plump-breasted ducks that wagged their tails, as if in signals, in a still place above a dam. He made a wide circle, intending to wheel back to the creekside for a closer inspection of the singular flirtation of those bobbing, fan-like tails. He rather thought he could outwit these little people, at least. But when he turned back to the water's edge they were nowhere to be seen.

If he had had more experience with the creatures of the wild he could have explained this mysterious disappearance. These little ducks--"ruddies" the sportsmen call them--have advantages other than an extra joint in their tails. One of them seems to be a total and unprincipled indifference to the available supply of oxygen. When they wish to go out of sight they simply duck beneath the water and stay apparently as long as they desire. Of course they have to come up some time--but usually it is just the tip of a bill--like the top of a river-bottom weed, thrust above the surface. Bruce gaped in amazement, but he chuckled again when he discovered his birds farther up the creek, just as far distant from him as ever.

The sun rose higher, and he began to feel its power. But it was a kindly heat. The temperature was much higher than was commonly met in the summers of the city, but there was little moisture in the air to make it oppressive. The sweat came out on his bronze face, but he never felt better in his life. There was but one great need, and that was breakfast.

A man of his physique feels hunger quickly. The sensation increased in intensity, and the suitcase grew correspondingly heavy. And all at once he stopped short in the road. The impulse along his nerves to his leg muscles was checked, like an electric current at the closing of a switch, and an instinct of unknown origin struggled for expression within him.

In an instant he had it. He didn't know whence it came. It was nothing he had read or that any one had told him. It seemed to be rather the result of some experience in his own immediate life, an occurrence of so long ago that he had forgotten it. He suddenly knew where he could find his breakfast. There was no need of toiling farther on an empty stomach in this verdant season of the year. He set his suitcase down, and with the confidence of a man who hears the dinner call in his own home, he struck off into the thickets beside the creek bed. Instinct--and really, after all, instinct is nothing but memory--led his steps true.

He glanced here and there, not even wondering at the singular fact that he did not know exactly what manner of food he was seeking. In a moment he came to a growth of thorn-covered bushes, a thicket that only the she-bear knew how to penetrate. But it was enough for Bruce just to stand at its edges. The bushes were bent down with a load of delicious berries.

He wasn't in the least surprised. He had known that he would find them.

Always, at this season of the year, the woods were rich with them; one only had to slip quickly through the back door--while the mother's eye was elsewhere--to find enough of them not only to pack the stomach full but to stain and discolor most of the face. It seemed a familiar thing to be plucking the juicy berries and cramming them into his mouth, impervious as the old she-bear to the remonstrance of the thorns. But it seemed to him that he reached them easier than he expected. Either the bushes were not so tall as he remembered them, or--since his first knowledge of them--his own stature had increased.

When he had eaten the last berry he could possibly hold, he went to the creek to drink. He lay down beside a still pool, and the water was cold to his lips. Then he rose at the sound of an approaching motor car behind him.

The driver--evidently a cattleman--stopped his car and looked at Bruce with some curiosity. He marked the perfectly fitting suit of dark flannel, the trim, expensive shoes that were already dust-stained, the silken shirt on which a juicy berry had been crushed. "Howdy," the man said after the western fashion. He was evidently simply feeling companionable and was looking for a moment's chat. It is a desire that often becomes very urgent and most real after enough lonely days in the wilderness.

"How do you do," Bruce replied. "How far to Martin's store?"

The man filled his pipe with great care before he answered. "Jump in the car," he replied at last, "and I'll show you. I'm going up that way myself."

VI

Martin's was a typical little mountain store, containing a small sample of almost everything under the sun and built at the forks in the road.

The ranchman let Bruce off at the store; then turned up the right-hand road that led to certain bunch-gra.s.s lands to the east. Bruce entered slowly, and the little group of loungers gazed at him with frank curiosity.

Only one of them was of a type sufficiently distinguished so that Bruce's own curiosity was aroused. This was a huge, dark man who stood alone almost at the rear of the building,--a veritable giant with savage, bloodhound lips and deep-sunken eyes. There was a quality in his posture that attracted Bruce's attention at once. No one could look at him and doubt that he was a power in these mountain realms. He seemed perfectly secure in his great strength and wholly cognizant of the hate and fear, and at the same time, the strange sort of admiration with which the others regarded him.

He was dressed much as the other mountain men who had a.s.sembled in the store. He wore a flannel shirt over his gorilla chest, and corduroy trousers stuffed into high, many-seamed riding boots. A dark felt hat was crushed on to his huge head. But there was an aloofness about the man; and Bruce realized at once he had taken no part in the friendly gossip that had been interrupted by his entrance.

The dark eyes were full upon Bruce's face. He felt them--just as if they had the power of actual physical impact--the instant that he was inside the door. Nor was it the ordinary look of careless speculation or friendly interest. Mountain men have not been taught it is not good manners to stare, but no traveler who falls swiftly into the spirit of the forest ordinarily resents their open inspection. But this look was different. It was such that no man, to whom self-respect is dear, could possibly disregard. It spoke clearly as words.

Bruce flushed, and his blood made a curious little leap. He slowly turned. His gaze moved until it rested full upon the man's eyes. It seemed to Bruce that the room grew instantly quiet. The merchant no longer tied up his bundles at the counter. The watching mountain men that he beheld out of the corners of his eyes all seemed to be standing in peculiar fixed att.i.tudes, waiting for some sort of explosion. It took all of Bruce's strength to hold that gaze. The moment was charged with a mysterious suspense.

The stranger's face changed too. He did not flush, however. His lips curled ever so slightly, revealing an instant's glimpse of strong, rather well-kept teeth. His eyes were narrowing too; and they seemed to come to life with singular sparkles and glowings between the lids.

"Well?" he suddenly demanded. Every man in the room--except one--started. The one exception was Bruce himself. He was holding hard on his nerve control, and he only continued to stare coldly.

"Are you the merchant?" Bruce asked.

"No, I ain't," the other replied. "You usually look for the merchant behind the counter."

There was no smile on the faces of the waiting mountain men, usually to be expected when one of their number achieves repartee on a tenderfoot.

Nevertheless, the tension was broken. Bruce turned to the merchant.

"I would like to have you tell me," he said quite clearly, "the way to Mrs. Ross's cabin."

The merchant seemed to wait a long time before replying. His eye stole to the giant's face, found the lips curled in a smile; then he flushed.

"Take the left-hand road," he said with a trace of defiance in his tone.

"It soon becomes a trail, but keep right on going up it. At the fork in the trail you'll find her cabin."

"How far is it, please?"

"Two hours' walk; you can make it easy by four o'clock."

"Thank you." His eyes glanced over the stock of goods and he selected a few edibles to give him strength for the walk. "I'll leave my suitcase here if I may," he said, "and will call for it later." He turned to go.

"Wait just a minute," a voice spoke behind him. It was a commanding tone--implying the expectation of obedience. Bruce half turned. "Simon wants to talk to you," the merchant explained.

"I'll walk with you a way and show you the road," Simon continued. The room seemed deathly quiet as the two men went out together.