Dorn Of The Mountains (14 page)

“Look at that,” whispered Dorn. “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, hunched in a big frosty heap over his prey, he began to tear and rend.

“Jess was a mighty good horse,” muttered Dorn 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 Dorn 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 that shadow she could make out the gleam of his clear-cut profile, stern and cold.

A streak of fire and 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 clenching of his jaws in rage. But there was no other sound. Then again Dorn’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 hoarse 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 Dorn, 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 Dorn.

“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 Dorn, 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. Dorn 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 your horse 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 Dorn’s horse. The wild park lay, clear and bright, in the moonlight, with strange silvery radiance on the grass. 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 passionless stars, so solemn, so far away, the beckoning fringe of forestland, at once mysterious and friendly, and the fleet horses, running with soft rhythmic
thuds
over the grass, 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.

Dorn’s horse, a little in advance, sailed over a ditch. Ranger made a splendid leap, but he alighted among some grassy 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 grass under her face, and then the strong hands that lifted her. Dorn 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 grass here…. You can’t be hurt!” said Dorn 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 Dorn. “It feels awful, but it’s nothin’.”

Helen got a little air that was like hot pinpoints 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.”

Dorn 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.

On the next morning Helen was awakened by what she imagined had been a dream of someone shouting. With a start she sat up. The sunshine showed pink and gold on the ragged spruce line of the mountain ruins. 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 Dorn’s voice.

“Nell! Nell! Wake up!” called Bo wildly. “Oh, someone’s come! Horses and men!”

Helen got to her knees and peered out over Bo’s shoulder. Dorn, standing tall and striking beside the campfire, was waving his sombrero. Way 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.

Dorn wheeled to see the girls peeping out. “It’s time you’re up!” he called. “Your Uncle Al is here.”

For an instant after Helen sank back out of Dorn’s sight, she sat there perfectly motionlessly, so struck was she by the singular tone of Dorn’s voice. She imagined that he regretted what this visiting cavalcade of horse men meant—they had come to take her to her ranch in Pine. Helen’s heart suddenly began to beat fast, but thickly, as if muffled within her breast.

“Hurry now, girls!” called Dorn.

Bo was already out, kneeling on the flat stone at the little brook, splashing water in a great hurry. Helen’s hands trembled so that she could scarcely lace her boots or brush her hair, and she was long behind Bo in making herself presentable. When Helen stepped out, a short powerfully built man in coarse garb and heavy boots stood holding Bo’s hands.

“Wal, wal! You favor the Rayners,” he was saying. “I remember your Dad an’ a fine feller he was.”

Beside them stood Dorn and Roy, and beyond was a group of horses and riders.

“Uncle, here comes Nell,” said Bo softly.

“
Aw!
” The old cattleman breathed hard as he turned.

Helen hurried. She had not expected to remember this uncle, but one look into the brown beaming face, with the blue eyes flashing, yet sad, and she recognized him, at the same instant recalling her mother.

He held out his arms to receive her.

“Nell Auchincloss all over again!” he exclaimed in deep voice, as he kissed her. “I’d have knowed you anywhere!”

“Uncle Al!” murmured Helen. “I remember you…though I was only four.”

“Wal, wal, thet’s fine,” he replied. “I remember you straddled my knee once, an’ your hair was brighter…an’ curly. It ain’t neither now…. Sixteen years! An’ you’re twenty now? What a fine broad-shouldered girl you are! An’, Nell, you’re the handsomest Auchincloss I ever seen!”

Helen found herself blushing, and withdrew her hands from his as Roy stepped forward to pay his respects. He stood bareheaded, lean and tall, with neither his clear eyes nor his still face, or the proffered hand expressing anything of the proven quality of fidelity, of achievement that Helen sensed in him.

“Howdy Miss Helen…. Howdy Bo,” he said. “You-all both look fine an’ brown…. I reckon I was shore slow rustlin’ your Uncle Al up here. But I was figgerin’ you’d like Milt’s camp for a while.”

“We shore did,” replied Bo archly.

“
Aw!
” breathed Auchincloss heavily. “Lemme set down.” He drew the girls to the rustic seat Dorn had built for them under the big pine.

“Oh! You must be tired! How…how are you?” asked Helen anxiously.

“Tired! Wal, if I am, it’s jest this here minnit. When Joe Beeman rode in on me with thet news of you…wal, I jest forgot I was a worn-out old hoss. Haven’t felt so good in years…. Mebbe two such young an’ pretty nieces will make a new man of me.”

“Uncle Al, you look strong and well to me,” said Bo, “and young, too, an’….”

“
Haw! Haw!
Thet’ll do,” interrupted Al. “I see through you. What you’ll do to Uncle Al will be aplenty…. Yes, girls, I’m feelin’ fine. But strange…strange! Mebbe thet’s my joy at seein’ you safe…safe when I feared so thet damned greaser Beasley….”

In Helen’s grave gaze his face changed swiftly—and all the several years of toil and battle and privation showed, with something that was not age, or resignation, yet as tragic as both.

“Wal, never mind him…now,” he added slowly, and the warmer light returned to his face. “Dorn…come here.”

The hunter stepped closer.

“I reckon I owe you more’n I can ever pay,” said Auchincloss, with an arm around each niece.

“No, Al, you don’t owe me anythin’,” returned Dorn thoughtfully as he looked away.

“Ahuh!” grunted Al. “You hear him, girls…. Now listen, you wild hunter. An’ you girls listen…. Milt, I never thought you much good, ’cept for the wilds. But I reckon I’ll have to swallow thet. I do. Comin’ to me as you did…an’ after bein’ drove off…keepin’ your council an’ savin’ my girls from thet hold-up, wal, it’s the biggest deal any man ever did for me…. An’ I’m ashamed of my hard feelin’s an’ here’s my hand.”

“Thanks, Al,” replied Dorn with his fleeting smile, and he met the proffered hand. “Now, will you be makin’ camp here?”

“Wal, no. I’ll rest a bit, an’ you can pack the girls’ outfit…then we’ll go. Sure you’re goin’ with us?”

“I’ll call the girls to breakfast,” replied Dorn, and he moved away without answering Auchincloss’s query.

Helen divined that Dorn did not mean to go down to Pine with them, and the knowledge gave her a blank feeling of surprise. Had she expected him to go?

“Come here, Jeff,” called Al to one of his men.

A short, bowlegged horse man with dusty garb and sun bleached face hobbled forth from the group. He was not young, but he had a boyish grin and bright little eyes. Awkwardly he doffed his slouch sombrero.

“Jeff, shake hands with my nieces,” said Al. “This’s Helen, an’ your boss from now on. An’ this’s Bo…fer short. Her name was Nancy, but, when she lay a baby in her cradle, I called her Bo-Peep an’ the name’s stuck…. Girls, this here’s my foreman, Jeff Mulvey, who’s been with me twenty years.”

The introduction caused embarrassment to all three principals, particularly to Jeff.

“Jeff, throw the packs an’ saddles fer a rest,” was Al’s order to his foreman.

“Nell, reckon you’ll have fun bossin’ thet outfit.” Al chuckled. “None of ’ems got a wife. Lot of scallywags they are, no woman would have them!”

“Uncle, I hope I’ll never have to be their boss,” replied Helen.

“Wal, you’re goin’ to be, right off,” declared Al. “They ain’t a bad lot, after all…. An’ I got a likely new man.”

With that, he turned to Bo, and, after studying her pretty face, he asked in apparently severe tone.

“Did you send a cowboy named Carmichael to ask me for a job?”

Bo looked quite startled. “Carmichael! Why, Uncle, I never heard that name before,” replied Bo bewilderedly.

“Ahuh! Reckoned the young rascal was lyin’,” said Auchincloss. “But I liked the fellar’s looks an’ so let him stay.” Then the rancher turned to the group of lounging riders. “Las Vegas, come here,” he ordered in a loud voice.

Helen thrilled at sight of a tall superbly built cowboy reluctantly detaching himself from the group. He had a redbronze face, young like a boy’s. Helen recognized it, and the flowing red scarf, and the swinging gun, and the slow, spur-
clinking
gait. No other than Bo’s Las Vegas cowboy admirer!

Then Helen flashed a look at Bo, which look gave her a delicious almost irresistible desire to laugh. That young lady also recognized the reluctant individual approaching with flushed and downcast face. Helen recorded her first experience of Bo’s utter discomfiture. Bo turned white—then red as a rose.

“Say, my niece said she never heard of the name Carmichael,” declared Al severely, as the cowboy halted before him. Helen knew her uncle had the repute of dealing hard with his men, but here she was reassured and pleased at the twinkle in his eye.

“Shore, boss, I can’t help thet,” drawled the cowboy. “It’s good old Texas stock.”

He did not appear shame-faced now, but just as cool, easy, clear-eyed, and lazy as the day Helen had liked his warm young face and intent gaze.

“Texas! You fellows from the Panhandle are always hollerin’ Texas. I never seen thet Texans had anyone else beat…say from Missouri,” returned Al testily.

Carmichael maintained a discreet silence, and carefully avoided looking at the girls.

“Wal, I reckon we’ll all call you Las Vegas, anyway,” continued the rancher. “Didn’t you say my niece sent you to me for a job?”

Whereupon Carmichael’s easy manner vanished. “Now, boss, shore my memory’s pore,” he said. “I only says….”

“Don’t tell me thet. My memory’s not p-o-r-e,” replied Al, mimicking the drawl. “What you said was thet my niece would speak a good word for you.”

Here Carmichael stole a timid glance at Bo, the result of which was to render him utterly crestfallen. Not improbably he had taken Bo’s expression to mean something it did not, for Helen read it as a mingling of consternation and fright. Her eyes were big and blazing; a red spot was growing in each cheek as she gathered strength from his confusion.

“Wal, didn’t you?” demanded Al.

From the glance the old rancher shot from the cowboy to the others of his employ it seemed to Helen that they were having fun at Carmichael’s expense.

“Yes, sir, I did,” suddenly replied the cowboy.

“Ahuh! All right, here’s my niece. Now see thet she speaks the good word.”

Carmichael looked at Bo and Bo looked at him. Their glances were strange, wondering, and they grew shy. Bo dropped hers. The cowboy apparently forgot what had been demanded of him.

Helen put a hand on the old rancher’s arm.

“Uncle, what happened was my fault,” she said. “The train stopped at Las Vegas. This young man saw us at the open window. He must have guessed we were lonely, homesick girls, getting lost in the West. For he spoke to us…nice and friendly. He knew of you. And he asked, in what I took for fun, if we thought you would give him a job. And I replied, just to tease Bo, that she would surely speak a good word for him.”

“
Haw! Haw!
So thet’s it,” replied Al, and he turned to Bo with merry eyes. “Wal, I kept this here Las Vegas Carmichael on his say-so. Come in with your good word, unless you want to see him lose his job.”

Bo did not grasp her uncle’s bantering because she was seriously gazing at the cowboy. But she had grasped something.

“He…he was the first person…out West…to speak kind to us,” she said, facing her uncle.

“Wal, thet’s a pretty good word, but it ain’t enough,” responded Al.

Subdued laughter came from the listening group. Carmichael shifted from side to side.

“He…he looks as if he might ride a horse well,” ventured Bo.

“Best horse man I ever seen,” agreed Al heartily.

“And…and shoot?” added Bo hopefully.

“Bo, he packs thet gun low, like Jim Wilson, an’ all them Texas gunfighters. Reckon thet ain’t no good word.”

“Then…I’ll vouch for him,” said Bo with finality.

“That settles it.” Auchincloss turned to the cowboy. “Las Vegas, you’re a stranger to us. But you’re welcome to a place in the outfit an’ I hope you won’t never disappoint me.”

Auchincloss’s tone, passing from jest to earnest, betrayed to Helen the old rancher’s need of new and true men, and hinted of trying days to come.

Carmichael stood before Bo, sombrero in hands, rolling it around and around, manifestly bursting with words he could not speak. And the girl looked very young and sweet with her flushed face and shining eyes. Helen saw in the moment more than that little byplay of confusion.

“Miss…Miss Rayner…I shore…am obliged,” he stammered presently.

“You’re very welcome,” she replied softly.

“I…I got on the next train,” he added.

When he said that, Bo was looking straight at him, but she seemed not to have heard.

“What’s your name?” suddenly she asked.

“Carmichael.”

“I heard that. But didn’t Uncle call you Las Vegas?”

“Shore. But it wasn’t my fault. That cowpunchin’ outfit saddled it on me, right off. They don’t know no better. Shore, I jest won’t answer to that handle…. Now…Miss Bo…my real name is Tom.”

“I simply could not call you…any name but Las Vegas,” replied Bo very sweetly.

“But…beggin’ your pawdon…I…I don’t like thet,” blustered Carmichael.

“People often get called names…they don’t like,” she said with deep intent.

The cowboy blushed scarlet. Helen, as well as he, got Bo’s inference to that last audacious epithet he had boldly called out as the train was leaving Las Vegas. She also sensed something of the disorder in store for Mr. Carmichael. Just then the embarrassed young man was saved by Dorn’s call to the girls to come to breakfast.

That meal, the last for Helen in Paradise Park, gave rise to a strange and inexplicable restraint. She had little to say. Bo was in the highest spirits, teasing the pets, joking with her uncle and Roy, and even poking fun at Dorn. The hunter seemed somewhat somber; Roy was his usual dry genial self. And Auchincloss, who sat nearby, was an interested spectator. When Tom put in an appearance, lounging with his feline grace into the camp, as if he knew he was a privileged pet, then the rancher could scarcely contain himself.

“Dorn, it’s thet damn’ cougar!” he ejaculated.

“Sure, that’s Tom.”

“He ought to be corralled or chained. I’ve no use for cougars,” protested Al.

“Tom is as tame an’ safe as a kitten.”

“Ahuh! Wal, you tell thet to the girls if you like. But not me! I’m an old hoss, I am.”

“Uncle, Tom sleeps curled up at the foot of my bed,” said Bo.

“
Aw
…what?”

“Honest Injun,” she responded. “Nell, isn’t it so?”

Helen smilingly nodded her corroboration. Then Bo called Tom to her, and made him lie with his head on his stretched paws, right beside her, and beg for bits to eat.

“Wal! I’d never have believed thet!” exclaimed Al, shaking his big head. “Dorn, it’s one on me. I’ve had them big cats foller me on the trails, through the woods, moonlight an’ dark. An’ I’ve heard ’em let out that awful cry. They ain’t any wild sound on earth that can beat a cougar’s. Does this Tom ever let out one of them wails?”