Piñon had never been so cruelly pressed by the adored being to whom he always responded with all his spirit. The speed of the wolf, the sureness of the great-horned sheep, were called upon now, as Dawn turned from the trail, urging him by difficult short cuts to the summit. The dog asked no lifts but crept with hanging tongue at a steady pace as they mounted higher and higher. Near the summit of Lake Peak he fell behind, but overtook them as they stopped for a moment of enforced rest. At last Dawn saw above her the lookout, built on the summit of a spur of Lake Peak. As her head cleared the tree tops the distant forests came to view.
She gasped with horror. From the northeast a great blaze rolled. With field glass leveled she could see it as though it were just opposite. The acrid smoke was actually in her nostrils and she fancied she could feel the scorch of its breath on her cheek. She left Piñon at the foot of the steps and leaped up to the telephone. McGuire’s ring was two short and one very long. There was no answer for some time. Then McGuire took down the receiver.
Yes, this was McGuire; he kept repeating it over and over. Oh, fire, she said. Fire? He couldn’t see nothing, but he sort of thought he’d smelt smoke all afternoon, but the sky was so hazy anyways. Dawn was wild with the delay.
“My father, isn’t he there? Didn’t he telephone you?” McGuire and all his family had been down in the canyon, fishing and berrying, nearly all day. He couldn’t tell. Just came in. Hadn’t been near the phone. Wait! Here was the ranger now!
“Damon,” Dawn’s tense words came clear and crisp, “it’s a crown fire all right, traveling with the wind. Not very wide; about a quarter of a mile maybe. It’s crossed the divide. It might be stopped by a cross fire between the upper Amarillo and the lake.”
“All right, daughter. Well send a man up to the Amarillo ridge.” He rang off. Dawn gazed through the windows of the lookout station. Two hours dragged by, incredibly long, nerve-racking. She answered a few hurried, frantic calls on the telephone, and the rest of the time her eyes were glued to the field glass. Where were the men working? At the end of an hour she saw that they had started a cross fire not far above Corona meadow, from which she had driven out the goats at the beginning of the summer. She saw their fire creep from the rocky Amarillo ridge to the granite ramparts of the meadow. She saw the flames rise and die smolderingly away, as the men at the far end met and beat them out. But this was such a short stretch compared to the whole!
The sky to the west was still rosy with sunset, and now the blaze to the northeast was reflected against dark skies. Night was coming on, a fiery night. Before her and on the left rose the Coronado Peaks, jeweled patches like rubies showing where snow banks caught the red firelight. Behind Dawn the slope dropped to Lost Lake where she had bathed only two mornings ago. It seemed weeks away.
She watched the scene in helpless distress. It occurred to her to call Benty’s Lodge again. The line was busy. She rang persistently. Some one was probably talking to the little store, telling the news, or just gossiping. After ten minutes Mrs. Benty’s voice came shrilly over the wire.
“Everybody’s gone over to Snow Lake. Perrys and them just left here to see the fire.”
“They’ll see it all right pretty soon, wherever they are!” Dawn exclaimed. “Tell folks, Mrs. Benty, to keep out of the way. Who knows what may happen tonight!” When Dawn turned from the phone the whole sky was lit by the galloping fire. Night had fallen now, but the moon had not yet risen. It was a terrific but magnificent sight. So must the forest have been swept from primeval times by lightning-lit fires, ranging unhindered over the Cordilleran summits, watched with awe and superstition by the red man.
Dawn tore her fascinated gaze away long enough to try the lookout station on the southern watershed. There was no answer. Every one had left to meet at Snow Lake. She rang McGuire’s again. Shep whined, crouching beside her, his ears pricked forward. There was no answer from McGuire’s. Even Mrs. McGuire must be outside, the two babies with her, and that sturdy little nine-year Bonny was probably carrying drinking-water to the men.
There was no change in the wind, no veering of the fiery danger at the north. Dawn could bear it no longer. No use sticking here. She could fight with the men down below. The moon was rising slowly and in a few minutes its radiance would flood the trail. Yet even now the starlight was enough to show the way. She hurried down the rock steps, found Piñon patiently waiting, and with Shep at her heels took the trail down Lake Peak to McGuire’s homestead. It was not as far as the distance to her own cabin, but as the trail led through heavy timber the moon could scarcely pierce, it took longer.
The way seemed interminable, and when at last Piñon burst into McGuire’s meadow Dawn could see a mighty glare in the heavens. Now they could run. She pressed heels into the chestnut pony’s quivering flanks. Through the upland valley they raced up the ridge. On the other side lay the lake, where in June she had swum Piñon across after her encounter with the goat trespassers. Beyond and above lay the meadows. She had circled by the Amarillo ridge to reach them then and had crossed the lake from the far side. Now, from the top of McGuire’s ridge, a terrible panorama spread before her.
With a roar greater than a rushing wind the fire swept through the tree tops, consuming itself utterly in its speed, so that only black ruin and coals smoldering among the seedlings were left in its wake. Ah! Dad had started another blaze above Snow Lake, from the barren escarpment sheering away from the upland meadow, north, in the path of the fire. Could it give battle to that oncoming holocaust? If not, the summit of her beautiful mountain would be ruined. McGuire’s homestead that he had worked so hard to improve would be laid bare. His cabin and barn were right in the path of this demon of the elements.
She saw the two fires meet, roll together. Fire fighting fire. The onward march had been stopped in the north. The fire crew and the tumbling stream that fed Snow Lake halted the spread of flames on their side. She must get down to the dead-line where the men were working to the south. Garen and her father would be there. Beyond the lake the forest narrowed to a vale thick with timber, tall, between two barriers of granite a quarter of a mile apart. Damon had started another blaze at the edge of this boxed vale, and now he and his band fought the vanguard that leaped up among the resinous boles. As she rode she could see them beating at the flames that licked the ground—beating, shoveling dirt, trying to stamp out an area of fifty feet, one hundred, to push the fire over into the path of Snow Lake.
Dawn left Piñon near the lake. “Swim for it, Buddy, if you must”—she spoke to him as though he were a human being—“but come if I whistle. I may need you. All right, Shep, come if you like, but mind you don’t get in the way, boy. Find Damon.”
Now the forest was filled with a heat such as she had never known. Hal James, who had ridden up through the Box Canyon to try to overtake the blaze and join the workers, said that the fire passed him a mile away roaring like an express train through the tops of the trees. He never saw anything so beautiful or so terrible. By the time he reached Snow Lake, however, it was all over, for he had been cut off for two hours.
To the spectators from Benty’s Lodge and from Perry’s place the spectacle was superb too, but to the workers that galloping demon of speed struck terror. It froze the heart and scorched the brain. Now they had beaten out a stretch of several hundred feet. Dawn beat with the rest, working side by side with a slender Mexican lad who sobbed as he toiled, “Mis bacas, mis bacas.” His cows were somewhere on the range beyond.
A great tree crashed not far beyond and McGuire staggered from beneath its flaming branches, pulling his sixteen-year-old son out of the way barely in time. Damon O’Neill was at the south end of the fire’s path, near Amarillo ridge, trying to close the narrowing gap, to stop the fire there. Unless the fire-fighters could cover the remaining distance to the lake, the fire would leap along an unburned path through McGuire’s homestead.
They were working north, trying to stop the gap between the lake and the mother rock that thrust up around the sheltered meadows above. Dawn was racing through the stretch of yellow pine, down whose slopes she had chased the goats. The firefighters were obliged to fall back. Beyond them their world was roofed with flame, leaping from tree to tree. It would burn itself out, down to the waters of Snow Lake, and if God willed, no farther. Had Damon and the brigade of toilers stopped it at both sides?
Stumbling along the pasture fence, whistling for Piñon, Dawn saw two women coming on a staggering run through the trees. They were the wives of herders. She turned back and headed them toward McGuire’s cabin. They could take refuge in the fields, could hide somewhere, even if the flames had not been stopped on the right flank of attack. The women stumbled on, their shawls pulled over their faces. Dawn turned once more to find Piñon.
Last among the forest creatures to flee the flames was the golden eagle. Now he rested on a crag above the lake. As the roaring heat came nearer he flapped from one tree to another. Now even the haven of the lake seemed menaced. He rose up, his seven-foot spread looming against the fire-lit heavens, winging his way to the blasted pine that stood stark beyond the waterfall. No one saw him but the dog Shep, who barked with passion, though now he had no lambs to defend.
Once upon his favorite lookout, the eagle folded his wings majestically. He would flee no farther. He awaited the oncoming holocaust as though defying it to destroy him or the dead tree which he had made his throne.
The fire-fighters were still divided into two squads, one at either end of the attack. The lake must be their bulwark in the center. On the eastern slope, running wildly along in the path of the oncoming flames, Dawn saw people, well-dressed strangers, fleeing in terror of their lives from the great fire which they had come out to see, to be entertained by. On the far side of the fence, some distance behind them, she saw Jack, and heard his excited shouting; but he could not hear her. The men reached the fence, jumped over, and were almost immediately in the glade that opened into McGuire’s valley and safety.
But Jack had stopped, bewildered, dazed. Now he saw the fire dragon rushing down on him. “The lake, the lake!” Dawn shrieked, and above the roar overhead he appeared to hear her. Plunging through the underbrush. Jack made for the shore of Snow Lake.
“Piñon, Piñon” Dawn shouted. Her frantic whistle pierced the crackling of the fire. She wondered if the pony had become panic-stricken with the smell of smoke and would refuse to move. No, he was a wild horse! A high, familiar nicker close at hand answered her piercing whistle. Piñon trotted up, tail outstretched, head high, his nostrils distended, afraid but faithful. Dawn flung into the saddle, crouching low while they fled before the heat of the flames. She would leap the fence and be behind the lines with Garen and her father, out of the path of danger in a few minutes. They were probably looking for her now.
Through an opening in the trees she saw that the little lake was illumined with unearthly brilliance. Already the fire’s hungry advance guard had in places reached the shore-line. As Piñon sprang down the slope Dawn remembered Jack. Then she saw him, backing out into the water, farther, farther, his hands over his face as he crouched away from the scorching heat. She gasped, called to him then to go out no deeper. But as she raced down to the lake he slipped out of sight.
Probably Jack never heard her call as he struggled to the surface and struck wildly out. His limbs were numbed to all but uselessness by the cold water which seemed to drag him down, pull him under to its black depths. With one leap Piñon, responding to Dawn’s pressure, cleared the little beach and entered the water. In three steps the horse was beyond his depth, swimming. By the time he reached Jack’s side the boy was unconscious, sinking slowly, only his white face and useless hands above the water. Dawn seized the bulging sweater and pulled it towards her just as the water closed over Jack’s face.
It was the feat of an Amazon to lift the dead weight up from the heavy depths, with Piñon milling around beneath her, and her vigor was too spent with fire-fighting. She was almost pulled from the saddle. Get both her arms about him, under his arms, lift him up—that was it. “Keep on, go on, Piñon.”
With the unconscious and demoniacal struggle for life of the drowning, Jack’s arms clutched her shoulders with a grasp, sudden, unexpected, dragging her off the horse, down into the water. Her foot in the stirrup saved Dawn. As she came up she doubled her right fist and caught Jack on the jaw, putting all her strength in the blow. He ceased struggling. The cold water revived and stimulated Dawn, and she was able to pull herself and the boy over Piñon’s back. But the weight was overmuch for him, and he sank so that Jack’s head went under.
She pushed the unconscious boy face downward on Piñon’s outstretched neck, and with one hand twisted in the chestnut pony’s mane, neck and neck she swam by his side to the far shore. Behind them the lake was rimmed with flame, the pine glade a field of giant flambeaux. Before them firelight lit the shore where watchers were waiting with outstretched hands to pull them from the water.
Beyond the lake the bare granite cliffs had stopped the fire’s flight, and at the base of the cliff tired men wiped sweat and tears and grime from their eyes and gratefully threw themselves down on the hot smoking earth.
CHAPTER VIII
TRAPS
Tragedy brooded over the mountain. The air was depressed, heavy with smoke lingering from the fire the night before. Still heavier was the atmosphere of the cabin on the Cascada. For a half hour Damon had been talking with two visitors on the porch. One was James Barnes, the Forest Supervisor, whom Dawn knew, and the other a man whom she had never before seen.
They had been sitting at lunch when the callers arrived. Hinray had slipped out the back door without being noticed. Garen and Dawn had cleared the table and sat down a trifle uneasily. Damon talked on with the Supervisor outside and finally came in, his face unusually grave and worn. The Supervisor and his companion followed.
“No, don’t go, Shepherd.” Damon nodded as Garen lifted an eyebrow of inquiry as to whether they wished to be alone.
The uncomfortable sense of something pending that Dawn had had all morning now came to a sharp reality. What had happened?
“Daughter, this concerns you,” Damon said with obvious effort. Dawn lifted her chin, waiting. The Supervisor took a seat at the table opposite her. Garen stood behind Dawn, and her father sat beside her. The other gentleman, who was introduced as the Assistant Supervisor of the Predatory Animal Bureau for the state, sat down too. His expression was dour.
“Supposing I talk with the young lady,” said the Supervisor. He had known Dawn for a long while, having come to the state but a few years after Ranger O’Neill.
The matter was this. Here was a letter from the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Predatory Animal Extinction, setting forth a complaint against her, Dawn O’Neill, on the testimony of one of the Bureau officials; that she had willfully and maliciously interfered with his work: namely, that whenever she found baited traps she had sprung them; that she had released certain small animals and had hidden or demolished poison bait spread in far parts of the range, difficult of access. As these baits were not put out till late in the season, after all cattle had been brought down from the range, the Government’s agent had been unaware of the interference with his work until he visited these places, weeks, sometimes months, later.
Damon O’Neill was looking with painful concentration at his daughter. Could she have done this?
The Supervisor finished speaking. He regarded Dawn seriously. There was absolute silence as she struggled with a stony rage in her heart. The Supervisor coughed. “It is really a serious matter,” he observed, “and one that we would not expect to encounter right in the service. I am told it has been going on for some time, more than a year to certain knowledge and probably still longer.” He read three instances of meddling with traps and poison bait.
Dawn sprang to her feet, but before she could say anything Garen caught her arm firmly and pushed her back into her chair. “I guess I’m the man who did it, Mr. Supervisor,” he asserted boldly. “At least I did on certain occasions, cited here. If this gentleman here was an eyewitness he must have seen me covering up a poison bait this spring. I was afraid that the game birds—some members of the bureau seem to forget that this is a bird refuge, too—might get it. I have found dead quail and turkey that have fed around the bait. A single grain of arsenic is sufficient for them.
“I am willing to make an issue of this,” Garen concluded firmly, “to protest against this method of killing wild animals. Not only because of its cruelty, but because of other, profounder, aspects of their slaughter. The true meaning of this I’ve learned by contact with this splendid forester, Damon O’Neill, and his daughter, Miss Dawn, who has done more for the Service than it can ever repay.”
Garen’s declaration had given no one an opportunity to speak. Dawn was staring at him in amazement. She stood up again and came over behind her father, putting her hands on his shoulders.
“I did it myself,” she said firmly. “Mr. Shepherd can’t lie for me, though I’m much obliged to him. He did help me cover one poison bait. But I sprung the traps, and many more of ’em; all I could find and spring. And I always have hid every bit of poisoned bait I found. I—I’ve been sorry at times—when I saw some one lose cattle that couldn’t afford it. But just the same—” she turned defiantly to the solemn-faced Supervisor of the Predatory Bureau—“it’s not right, killing wild things like that.
“Even though my father says it’s necessary under the circumstances, it’s not right. Shoot them if you will. Oh, I know that I can’t do any good. My little help isn’t going to straighten out all the wrongs of my world any more than what you’re doing is going to help any one in the end. It’s gone beyond that. But just the same I’m not going to sit still and act as if I liked it! Why, there’s too many cattle for the range now.” She spread her hands helplessly, tears in her blazing eyes. “Why kill off the wild creatures? They don’t eat grass! They keep your forests and watersheds healthy.”
The expert on poison chemistry looked pained and bewildered. What was this abandoned, headstrong young person talking about? But the Supervisor had listened with involuntary appreciation. “O’Neill, your daughter is filled with true scientific ardor, I can see.”
“Well, I am to blame for that,” Damon replied quietly. “She has been brought up on the soundest principles of forestry. The French hold the wolf a great friend to the forest. They have not the problems of a stock country over there.”
“I see, I see.” The Supervisor was drumming on the table with his fingers. “Miss Dawn, you love this mountain, don’t you?”
Dawn did not reply. She could not. She flushed painfully. The Supervisor continued.
“You want to stay here, of course. And so you must yield to orders. O’Neill—” He turned to Damon, who, having revolved the matter in his mind, was about to say something. “No, just a moment, please. Let us say nothing more about this. I think that when I have explained to the departmental heads the peculiar feeling that Dawn has for the forest and its wellbeing, for the mountain and all the life on it, that the complaints which have been forwarded to the local office will be withdrawn.
“It is scarcely necessary to remind them of your long and exceptional service, but knowing nothing about the facts, I could make no explanation. You and Dawn had better come down to the District Superintendent’s office and talk it over.”
The forest ranger nodded. “Dawn has worked as hard on this job for the last three years as many a man,” he said gruffly. “She’s preserved more range to fatten more cattle than the beasts you kill could destroy, I venture.”
“That’s pure imagination.” Pickering of the Predatory Bureau spoke for the first time. “If you have no conception of the value of the work, at least you can keep from interfering. We had set traps for a most dangerous lobo, but finally had to put our hunters on his trail. We got him too—” he glared triumphantly—“the outlaw lobo that we’ve been after for years—and the last grizzly on this mountain. Shot yesterday.”
A cry escaped Dawn, and Damon’s big knotty hands shook so that he had to steady them by holding on to the back of a chair. He recovered himself in a moment.
“You may say,” he said directly to his chief, “that my daughter will not interfere with any of the work of the bureau in the future.” He came to his feet, his voice rising. “Let them kill off everything and be damned to them. You know as well as I do, Chief, that one wrong don’t right another. That’s what this country’s suffering from now. Too damn many cattle. And I guess the wild beasts know it. But no one takes the hint. Some day the real predatory animal that walks on two legs, ‘ll get his.“
“By golly, O’Neill, you’re right. Ours is a slow uphill job; but remember, reclamation isn’t accomplished in a year.” He shook hands all around, and departed, Pickering protesting as they rode off that the forest ranger was an impractical fool, a visionary.
Damon was shaking with passion. Dawn stood by the table, the color drained from her face. To these two, children of nature, hating the strife and friction of the outside world, the morning’s visit had been a decided shock. Garen Shepherd broke the silence by coming forward with outstretched hands to Dawn.
“Let me shake hands with you, Dawn, and with you, sir. I’m proud to know you both. You are ornaments to a grand work and should be presented with special medals. And you will be, before the task is finished. Mark my words.”
“That old lemon-face!” came Hinray’s voice from the kitchen door.
Dawn laughed suddenly, a bright spontaneous laugh, clearing away the gloom that had fallen on the cabin as a fresh wind sweeping through clears out smoke. She had laughed this way when Garen first heard her across the lake.
“That’s that!” she shouted. “Oh, Damon, cheer up! I’ll not be shot or put in the reformatory. Thank you, Garen Shepherd,” she whirled on the Irrigation engineer, “thank you for that one grand lie. But do you suppose I’d let anybody else take the credit for a sin I’m proud of?” And while she wrung his hand she laughed again, happy once more, full of exuberant gayety.
CHAPTER IX
DAM IN THE DESERT
Just above the forks of the Cascada lay a deep pool where rainbow trout hovered, darting from the shade to flash tantalizingly across the sunlit shallows. Sometimes they leaped through the rapids where the tumbling Cascada foamed into the Amarillo. Then anglers bit their nails and swore.
For no one could say, “I caught this fellow up in the Cascada, just by the forks.”
Mr. Perry had thought that was nonsense. Every day for three weeks he whipped the stream ardently, but still had nothing to show for it. He made a strike that dragged him into the rushing fork flat on his face. With his bones aching from the unaccustomed chill he tramped all the way down to his camp, where with chattering teeth he recounted the tussle. Proudly he displayed the hookless line, snapped just above the leader.
“Who says they won’t bite up there? Some fish, boys! Did he pull? And how!”
But the next day Hal Benty found the hook, the fly, and the leader, caught in the willow brush on the far side of the rapids.
“He ought to know Dawn don’t allow nobody to actually fish anythin’ out o’ here.” Young Benty passed sentence and appropriated the fly. This was one of the streams that the forest ranger had stocked with fish from the Government hatcheries that spring.
Hal closed his fly-book hastily. Here was Jack Perry, Junior, coming across the ford right now. Jack pulled up his pony beside Hal just as Hal made ready to whip the branch upstream to the Amarillo.
“Howdy? How’re yuh?” he answered the other boy’s greeting. “Not much luck yet. Only been out an hour. Just thought I’d take a little time off, after fighting fire the last month and herding dudes all summer. How’re yuh feelin’ now?” Jack Perry was a real likable kid. Hal himself was only seventeen, with the mind of a boy of eleven, but he looked twenty-five. People born and reared in that altitude were apt to look older than they really were.
“Oh, I’m all right now,” Jack replied. “I was kind of knocked out for a couple of days after the ducking I got. Swallowed a lot and had a sort of chill.”
“It was sure lucky Dawn happened to see you,” young Benty reminded him.
Jack flushed. “I’ll say! I’m going up there now to thank her again. Haven’t been able to ride up since that night. The doctor made me stay in bed two days.”
“You’re too late. She’s not there,” Hal called over his shoulder, grinning. “Her and her father went to town this morning. Wonder you didn’t see ’em pass. My brother drove ’em down in the car to the train.” Hal went on up the stream.
Jack stood still in the water, his horse content to cool his feet. She’d gone to town. What must they think of him? Not one of the Perry family had been up there since the night of the fire. His father had been over at the store the following morning and telephoned the O’Neill cabin, but neither Dawn nor Damon O’Neill had been at home. Well, his dad had sent a box of chocolates up by a little Mexican boy. That was something.
No one ever learned of the mishap with which the small Mexican had met, losing his box of chocolates in the Cascada. The sodden package recovered with unusual agility and concern, the lad had retired into the bushes, to emerge a half hour later with an expression of wan satisfaction.
Jack turned his horse’s head about. Might as well go back home. His uncomfortable feeling persisted. He’d ride up first thing they got back. He certainly did want to see Dawn. Come to think of it, she really had saved his life. Gee! He’d never forget the sensation when he found there was no bottom under his feet. He had backed right out into the lake, it shelved off so suddenly. And the cold—that choking blanket of water! He didn’t remember much of anything more till he got home.
Jack shook off the dark memory. Here, now, the sunshine was warm and friendly. He rode on down the canyon road, stopping in at the general store, also the post office, where fish stories were swapped and great trout catches pictured and described on the walls. He enjoyed the notoriety of having had so close a call the night of the fire. He had hoped to see that Government chap, Garen Shepherd, again. A nice fellow, college chap too. Funny he was content with this hard-labor, out-of-door thing.
But at the store Jack heard talk only of the fire and similar fires. Old man Benty was full of fact and fictions, which he dispensed as he weighed sugar and passed out cigarettes. What had started it? The electrical storm a week ago. It had lit twenty-three fires in different spots on the mountain range.
Nobody could blame Hal for goin’ to sleep over on the northeast slope, for he’d fought fires for forty-eight hours with practically no sleep at all; and he’d been working as patrol man and “smoke-chaser” for the forest service all summer. There was a fire still burning over beyond the Coronado Peaks that nobody couldn’t get at. Burned for weeks. Surface fire, just above timber line.
“O’Neill said this morning how they’ve already put out six hundred fires in the state this year. But that’s higher than usual, owin’ to drouth. Remember the great Minnesota fire?” Old Man Benty had nearly as many facts and figures as Hinray. “It lasted eleven hours and cost fifteen million dollars. It burned four thousand homes, five thousand barns, and cost five hundred lives. Yes, sir! That’s what a fire kin do if let loose. This one could ’a’ swep‘ right on to Albukirk, I reckon. And those boys that was standin’ watch for Hal thought the sparks in the moss didn’t matter!”
Jack found that Garen Shepherd had gone back too. He had driven down to the station with Dawn and her father. Jack felt a pang akin to jealousy. He had been mildly infatuated with Dawn all summer and had played about with her because he had to have a companion. But now he felt all at once that this was different. As he rode back to the cabin camp he was moved to more gratitude than he had ever felt.
Faintly it dawned on him that he might be somehow remiss. Dawn might think him a slacker not to have joined the men and boys who fought the fire. He and his father’s friends had gone to look at the great spectacle as though it had been one of the entertainments provided by the Forest Service and were to be enjoyed as part of the summer’s vacation. He had a vague feeling that perhaps it would have served him right to drown. Yes, that was so, he concluded wretchedly, as he came in sight of home.
He owed Dawn his life. He had said that before. They had all said it, jovially; but now he realized it. All that was decent in the boy was strongest at that moment. He could hardly wait for her to come back. As he trotted up the slope to the lodge he reflected that meanwhile he’d have to be nice to Norine Masters. Her father was one of his dad’s partners. He succeeded so well in being agreeable to Norine that by afternoon he had already been teased into secret shame for the emotion he had felt for the mountain girl that morning.
Dawn had not wanted to leave the mountain. Her father had been called down to relieve the district forester’s office, and it was decided that she might as well go with him now. Garen decided that he would cut his vacation short and take a few days at another time. He would ride down with them. They reached the city that evening, and Garen went on to the dam the next morning.
On the third day Dawn sat with her father in the district forester’s office. The Supervisor talked with his eyes gazing through the windows off to the mountains. “In the face of your record, O’Neill, and of Miss Dawn’s unsalaried services, the very mention of these protests seems unfair. But, you understand, I was obliged to look into them. Although I may say I very much disliked having to pay you a visit accompanied by any member of the—ah—other branch of the service, I thought it would be better than to discuss the matter coldly by letter.
“However, I am happy to state that the subject is closed.” He brought his gaze back to Dawn, smiling, and laid a letter in her lap. She read it with a radiant smile and handed it over to Damon. With grave dignity the ranger read the statement of the Supervisor. Then he thrust out his hand. “Thank you, sir,” he said huskily. Damon had not realized how distressed he had been by this charge against Dawn. It had filled the whole horizon and at night crowded his fancies with all sorts of horrid possibilities.
Now they would always be together on their mountain, as they always had been. The Supervisor wanted Ranger O’Neill to stay in the office for a week, which would free him to get into the field. He wanted to ride over the northern forests with his assistant. Damon was glad to serve and pleased with the confidence and honor shown in entrusting some special work to his care.
Dawn stayed too, of course, putting in a more or less lonely week. The evenings were delightful, however. She and Damon, hanging on each other’s arms like sweethearts, saw the sights and ate ice-cream and more ice-cream. But by day it was dull. Dawn was not resourceful in the unaccustomed life of even the quaint old Spanish town. She was too timid to call on any of the people who had visited them in the mountains, eaten at their table, taken refuge before their fire.
She missed Garen and wished that he had not gone. She thought of Jack and looked forward to getting back up on the mountain, when she would see him again. They’d had good times riding over the mountains together. It had never occurred to Dawn that any demonstration should be made because of her dragging Jack out of the lake. She herself felt no injury at not having seen any of the Perry family after the fire, as she knew that Jack was sick abed.
Now she wandered about the streets, unable to sit still, and listened to people talking. “Damon,” she said, “everywhere down here I see cattlemen standing talking. And in the hotel lobby all I hear is hard times. I thought we were getting through the summer fine, even if it is hotter than usual.”
“On the mountain, yes,” he replied; “but we’ve been so busy with fires and the work up there that we forget sometimes what’s going on down here. Things look rather bad, I guess. I’m mighty glad we aren’t dependent on the range for a livin’. And I’m glad too that we’ve money in the bank.”
“Money in the bank,” Dawn echoed. “I’ll need a lot when I go to school this winter, won’t I, Dad?”
Money had little actual meaning for them in the present, but its existence in the safest bank in the state gave Damon a great and abiding sense of protection. Protection for Dawn; there was the money, a bird in the hand, for after all, a mine—a mine—well—he would grin to himself a trifle sheepishly.
It seemed ages before the week came to an end. They were to go back to the mountains Sunday morning. But on Friday Damon was called down to the state office in the big city of the railroad, to go over some reports. They sat in the train, choking with the dry powdery dust that blew in from the desert-dry mesas, themselves parched with the unaccustomed heat and dryness. Damon bought the morning paper.
On the front page he read that the Southern State Cattleman’s Bank had closed its doors and was refusing payment. That was disquieting. Still, it was a small bank, entirely state capital, owned largely by big stockmen in a cattle county. The big state and Federal loan banks would probably not feel the depression. He saw among the “personals” that Mr. John Perry and family had come down from the mountains to be in town for a while. Mr. Perry had been called back on business. On another page there was a statement by Mr. Perry that there was no likelihood of any financial depression in the northern part of the state.
Down in the city, however, Damon heard talk, hints, forebodings of hard times to be weathered that fall. There had not been a drop of rain all summer. People spoke hopefully of the new dam.
The heat of the day was incredible. It was impossible to stay out on the streets. Damon decided that it would be nice for Dawn to go up to the Perry’s home for the afternoon. The courts and deep verandas of the hotel were fairly cool, but there was no face she knew. The downtown streets were like a furnace. Dawn shrank from the treeless glare, but she walked with her father up the street to the offices where he would have to spend the afternoon. Damon gave her the address of the Perry house and showed her where to wait for a trolley.
But she walked, her sun-brown arms swinging bare in the sleeveless dress bought the day after she came down from the Cascada. The wide streets were now canopied by great cottonwoods, that noble tree of the lowlands, which Dawn regarded with pleasure and reverence. How well they did themselves in this dry air! Their shade was an oasis in the desert. Her feet seemed small and light in their new sandals. Jack would be glad to see her.
In this alien world at the mountain’s foot she turned to Jack as to an old friend. She was lonely, awkward, ill at ease. But with a friend she would once more feel herself. It seemed strange to walk on a level. All the houses seemed to be leaning over her. Her legs all but ached from having no hill to climb. Where was the house anyway? She came on the place at last, a gaudy stucco meant to be pure Spanish, with a red-tiled roof. It looked very grand to Dawn. She went up the steps timidly. No one was on the wide, screened veranda, dazzling with yellow wicker and chintz. The screen door was locked; so she couldn’t reach the bell to the house door. She rattled the screen, knocked, and after a while a Mexican maid came.
“What you want?” inquired the girl indolently.
“Mr. Jack Perry. Is he at home?” Dawn pressed her face to the shiny copper screen, through which she could scarcely see.
No, he was out. The maid turned as if to close the front door behind her. “But Mrs. Perry?” Dawn spoke quickly. “Or Mr. Perry?” Weren’t they at home, and when was Jack coming back?
“Mrs. Perry she is on the bed, rest. Can not be disturbed by nada, nadie. Mr. Perry he make siesta too,” droned the Mexican girl.
Dawn stood forlornly on the steps in the hot sun. She could not see through the close wire screening whether the girl had closed the front door or not. The cool, darkened porch, the welcome she had expected, seemed denied her. She waited, chin up, feeling rebuffed. There came quick steps, the screen door was pulled open, and a man hurried out. It was Mr. Perry himself. He started down the steps to the car waiting at the curb but turned as he saw the girl and hesitated.
Dawn spoke.
“Oh, yes, yes. Miss O’Neill, the ranger’s daughter. Of course, of course.” He was hurried, seeming to remember her with an effort. “Ah, yes. Down in the city, eh? Just walk in, won’t you? Make yourself at home.” As though vaguely aware that there was something that he might do in the way of hospitality, he waved his hand toward the porch. “Go right in, go right in!” Muttering something about having to get back to the bank, he hurried on out to his car.
Dawn stepped inside, seating herself on one of the wide, flowered chairs. It was refuge for the moment from the heat and from depression. The Mexican girl stood in the doorway. When Mrs. Perry woke, Dawn told her, please say that the girl she had met in the mountains was downstairs. Mr. Perry had told her to come in and wait.
She sat silently for a long time. The afternoon waxed and waned with breathless heat. How good a drink from a bubbling spring would taste! Her eyes closed. Dawn could see the drinking-hole on the Cascada just below their cabin. The Mexican girl came out again after a while. “Mrs. Perry waked up but say she can not come down. She have bad headache. Too bad.” The girl shrugged with resignation.
“I think I’ll be going.” Dawn rose with dignity, picking up the twisted handkerchief that served as purse. A car was coming down the street and she paused irresolutely. It slowed, stopped suddenly before the door with a grinding of brakes, and Jack himself jumped out, turning to help a slender girl, a slip of a girl in a wide floppy hat under which peeped corn-colored curls. Her little blue dress, sleeveless too, was no bigger than a child’s. Two boys followed, and they came up the walk, all chattering at once.
Dawn wavered in panic. Her instant thought was flight. But they were at the steps. She plunged through the front door into the house, down the hall ahead, through a dark doorway. Before her the kitchen opened, a door into the back yard. She hurried by the Mexican maid, sitting wide-eyed at her pan of peas, and out. Voices behind her, Jack’s voice. Well, let him follow. But she wouldn’t stay.
It was all right, of course, but she just wanted to get away. She’d been there long enough anyway. She turned and ran, down a tiny lane, behind an old adobe wall, into a quaint crooked street of old Mexican houses, where hollyhocks and zinnias throve in the sun like lizards. Here all was peaceful and familiar.
It was six o’clock before she found her way back to the hotel. Damon was already waiting on the veranda. She had walked off her hurt and was able to say yes when Damon asked if she had had a good time. They went into dinner at once, an experience which they always found delightful. As they awaited the inevitable ice-cream a familiar figure walked into the dining-room. It was Garen Shepherd. He looked about, saw them, and came straight over to their table.
Dawn’s eyes grew bluer, her color deepened; she felt a sense of happiness and gratitude. Here was a friend. Where had he come from? Garen had seen in the paper that they were still in Santa Fe and was on his way up there himself when he’d noticed their names on the register of this hotel. He sat down with them and they lingered through the meal. Garen seemed to know a good deal more about the financial condition of the state than Damon did.
The paper that evening carried on the front page the news that two more banks in the southern part of the state had failed. It was the opinion, however, that the northern part of the state would pull out of the admitted depression. A statement was quoted from Mr. John Perry to the effect that the depression would be short-lived and that another year would show a great development and expansion, a chance for investment.
“No investment for me. I’ll keep mine in the bank,” said Damon.
As the three sat in the cool patio after dinner Garen received a telegram. He read it regretfully and handed it to Dawn. Just when he was having such a nice time! He must get back to the dam in the morning. Then Garen had a brilliant idea. Chief Engineer Stearn, of the dam, and his wife were in town and were leaving that night. Early in the morning they would reach the station from which one motored out to the dam. He would return with them. Wouldn’t Dawn like to go and make that trip to the dam? He would show her over the whole thing. They might not get such another opportunity.
Damon looked at Dawn questioningly. Would she like it? She would. She had always wanted to see the dam. Garen seemed so eager to have her go. He would speak to his chief and Mrs. Stearn at once and arrange matters. And so for the first time since she could remember Dawn slept that night in a sleeping car, whirling over the desert in a sun-heated steel case hot to the touch. She lay for a long time staring into the darkness, listening to the song of the wheels and the roar of the engine. When the cool air of early dawn rushed over the desert she fell asleep; two hours later she woke as refreshed as though she had slept ten hours.
Powerful motor cars met them. Dawn sat in a luxurious seat with Garen and the charming motherly woman who was the chief engineer’s wife. They whirled over a desert delicately opalescent in the early light. Suddenly, without warning, the great lake behind the dam lifted into view—a sheet of the sky laid down like a vast mirage.
“It’s the nearest to the ocean I’ve ever been,” Dawn said. This was where the water from her mountains came! Her heart ached for the lofty wooded summits so far away. Water, water, in a fantastic desert of carven mesas, painted spires, incredible flats, vast crouching foothills like creation in the making. Now they were whirling down a canyon, a tree-bordered gorge below the great man-built lake that lay behind the dam.
In a house whose cool elegance reflected its silver-haired mistress, they ate an exquisite breakfast—fruit, iced coffee with real cream, thin, delicate bacon, and rolls that were a confection to the healthy palate accustomed to coarse whole wheat. The distinguished engineer and his wife showed Garen Shepherd flattering attention and paid his word marked deference. They treated him as though he were an important person.
Mrs. Stearn drew out the girl charmingly. “You were born in Washington, my dear? And so was I.” Think of it, there they were in a land where the arctic regions and the tropics were both to be found. “We’re in the desert, and you in the Alps,” said Mrs. Stearn.
Dawn was to make the trip over the dam before ten o’clock, for the sun would be too hot after that. They were at an altitude several thousand feet below that to which she was accustomed, yet Dawn climbed like a mountain goat up the great works that looked like an Egyptian temple. At last she stood on the broad summit, to look at lake and sky of such intense blue that the eyes ached from gazing.
“It’s full of fish,” said Garen, who stood beside her. “The best black bass fishing in the world. I’ll let you fish for my fish almost any time, and that was more than you would let me do in your river!”
Dawn laughed, and with the laugh vanished the hidden pain that had hung like lead within her ever since Government officials had stepped into the morning sunlight of their cabin door, all the heavy-heartedness that the Perry home had so shaken up yesterday. There was no room for hurt any more. The world was a sparkling place of kindness.
“All this water is from your mountains and from the foothills,” Garen was saying. “Look, Dawn, already the dam has saved the spring downpour from these poor denuded dunes. It will supply irrigation water to thousands of farms and grow melons sweet as honey, peaches big as grapefruit, and when the old Rio Grande rises and comes rolling down….”
“It will catch all the silt,” Dawn interrupted teasingly.
“With rare observation the young lady has put her finger straight on the sore spot of all engineers,” said Mr. Stearn, standing beside her. “Far too much of the desert already lies at the bottom of this lake. It will have to be dredged some day, Shepherd. But mind your mountain up above, young lady—” he shook a jovial finger at her—“for if I find any black or red earth at the bottom I’ll know you haven’t been tending your business.”
“I’ll not neglect it for anything,” Dawn replied. “I’ll go back right now and watch my shrubs and trees grow themselves. I’ll leave you valley folks to grow grapes as big as a bushel basket and corn eighteen feet high!”
During the heat of the day Dawn and Mrs. Stearn stayed indoors, sipping iced drinks. Major Stearn, as Dawn learned that the engineer-in-chief was called, and Garen, joined them at sunset. After dark they ate dinner on a veranda under the stars. A cool air breathed over the desert that had scorched at noon. Dawn’s train left at midnight. Her father would meet her at the station in the morning.
CHAPTER X
MONEY IN THE BANK
Damon had never mentioned to Dawn the incident of the poisoned bait. He understood his daughter too well. It would have been punishment to her. It had wounded him deeply that she should have been reprimanded. He was only human, and after the matter had passed, his feeling of their being in the wrong was tinged with resentment.
In his world there were the mountain and the Service. In Dawn’s world there was only the mountain. The Service was a servant and she a hand-maiden to the mountain. If the servant was in the wrong she would disregard him.
“But they’re not entirely in the wrong, darlin’,” Damon protested. “We have to effect a balance for the unnatural conditions man makes. Keeping down the beasts is cruelty that’s for the good of the whole, and that patterns after the grand scheme of Nature too.”
Dawn flung out her arms impetuously. “All right, all right. We won’t argue about it, Damon, we won’t argue,” she cried irritably. “But they’re wiping out the creatures, and that’s just the beginning. When the creatures go, it’ll all be desert.”
“Well, now,” Damon soothed as he puffed at his pipe, “think of what the bird refuges have done this year. Think of the antelope and deer, and cheer up. That’s some help, isn’t it?”
Apparently it was. “Damon—!” Dawn’s eyes flashed with her usual spirit—“do you know I saw the grosbeak and the chestnut-backed bluebird in the willows about the dam, and yesterday there were mocking-birds down in San Mateo. The mountain bluebirds that had almost gone last year were thick, and the blue piñon jays calling ‘peenyoney, peenyoney’ as they picked off all the nuts. Poor things. They had flown before the fire. And do you know, Dad, I saw the biggest eagle I ever saw the day after we came back from down below.” Dawn was sewing up her stockings. Damon’s she darned with a beautiful weaving of wools taught her by Hinray. “This bird was a golden eagle, I’m sure, from his shining golden brown color as he soared in the sun. He must have been nine feet from tip to tip.”
Damon whistled. “And I brought her up to be truthful! Go on, go on, my gal. You’ll be a writer yet.”
“Well,” Dawn went on, undeterred, “he soared round and round over one spot. I was above McGuire’s and I looked across the valley to where you can catch a glint of the waterfalls if you stand in just the right place—that’s where I took Garen—and I saw the eagle.
“Once before I saw that eagle, when I was just a kid. I remember it swooping down over me as I was picking flowers in the meadow while you surveyed below. Suddenly I thought the sun went under a cloud, but something made me look up, and here was the cloud between me and the sun, dropping down to earth. I was frozen still. It swept so close I could see its beak and eyes. Then with a great whirring of wings it stopped and shot straight back up into the air again.”
“He might have taken you away,” Damon observed thoughtfully. “I’d never thought of that danger, thank goodness. I know that bird too,” he nodded, pulling at his pipe. “He’s the oldest on the mountains, I imagine. He is a huge creature.”
“Well, what I had meant to tell about was this,” Dawn went on. “After circling, the eagle dropped like a stone and disappeared just about where the falls were. I wanted to see where he had landed, because maybe there’s an eyrie there, and with all my hunting I’ve never found an eagle’s eyrie this far up, though I know there are some. But it was too late when I got over to the other side; he was perched above me on an old tree, a dead tree.”
“That’s the fellow,” Damon replied. “He likes the old dead tree. They often do. He’s too old for mating, but he’s feathered many a nest of eaglets in the past, that old bird, and I’ll wager could tell tales if he could talk—of the trappers in these woods and the old scouts and Indian fighters.—What about some grub?”
As they ate, Hal Benty rode up with mail and papers. He sat on his horse by the stoop awhile, chatting.
“Perrys’re comin’ back,” he said just as he was leaving. “They’re bringin’ a bunch with ’em for some fall hunting. Pa says it seems as if those fellows was never too busy nor too much taken up to hunt. They’ll be here tomorrow, if they ain’t already in this afternoon.”
“I’m going to ask Mr. Perry about the rumors in the paper of the banks in the city,” said Damon. “I’m mighty glad we’ve got our money in a state bank. Things don’t seem to be getting any better. That reminds me, honey. What school is it to be for the second year? You know we want to get the application in this fall.”
“I know, I know, Damon. Let’s decide it this evening or tomorrow.” She began to laugh, to tease Shep, and putting a record on her phonograph, essayed a one-step, very stiffly.
“Them dances is turrible!” There was Hinray looking in the door. He was always appearing unexpectedly. “Why’n’t you do the Hota or the Tekalotita that you learned down to the Pecos dances? They’re somp’n to look at. But you got to have a flower in yore teeth. Wait!” He disappeared, returning a moment later from the river with a sprig of wild roses.
Dawn was in a gale of merriment. The idea of holding the flowers in her teeth was convulsing, but when Hinray put on a Spanish record she seized them and flung into the stamping abandon of the old folk dance preserved by the descendants of the conquistadores who dwelt in the little town at the foot of the mountain.
She was stamping the dust out of the floor when the music stopped amid more handclapping and otra vezes than an audience of only three could achieve. The door was filled with people—Jack, a young woman, an older man.
Jack was smiling in his disarming and confident way as he jumped in and seized Dawn’s hand. She yielded with nothing of resentment. She’d been afraid that Jack would never come back to the mountain. He’d been almost her first playmate. For you couldn’t think of Hal that way; he wasn’t understanding enough. Sometimes she had regretted that she had run away that day in the city. Perhaps if she’d stayed she’d have had a nice time. But she couldn’t face all those others.
At times she’d felt that Jack meant to ignore her; that it couldn’t be accidental, and that if he returned he should be ignored. But what reason could he have for not being nice! Of course, she was just acting like a baby. Now here he was and they’d have a grand ride. Dawn was radiant with the surprise. The party were out to take a ride and wanted her to guide them.
Jack felt very much at home at the O’Neill cabin. He was troubled with no misgivings. He was glad to be back, and when he was in the mountains he wanted to see Dawn, and that was all there was to it. Norine Masters had gone back home now, but in town—well, maybe it was just as well that Dawn had got away that day, after all.
“Sorry we missed you when you were in town,” he offered casually. “Dad is so busy he hardly knows what he’s doing, and Mother was down with the heat. I wasn’t sure it was you. You should have waited.”
The Kansas City guests were charmed with the aspen-log cabin, with the view, with the trout in the Cascada, with everything. They wanted to ride through the dark forest, up the tanbark trail to Lake Peak, to look down on Lost Lake and up to the snow-capped Coronados. Tomorrow they were to go on the hunt. Turkey. Oh, too early for turkey? What a pity!
Dawn glanced at Damon. Should she go? He nodded; he had desk work at home. Jack was beside her on the ride, which would bring them home after sundown. It was when they had started down the trail that Mr. Harmon, gazing on the little lake that lay like a vanity mirror in an emerald case below them, said, shivering, “That must have been some plunge you had the night of the fire, Jack, in ice water. Who was it they said rode in with a horse after you?”
“It was this girl here,” Jack replied in embarrassment. The mountaineers had told the tale to the Harmons. “Oh, I thought I had explained when you were introduced. It was Dawn. I don’t know what I would have done without her. I never did have a chance to see you afterward and thank you, Dawn. I came up—I surely did appreciate—”
“Don’t mention it,” Dawn interrupted coolly. “A little thing like that!” There was a twinkle in her eye. Mrs. Harmon burst out laughing and exchanged significant glances with her husband. Jack joined rather ruefully in the merriment at his expense, tried to say something, but couldn’t.
Mrs. Harmon was an excellent horsewoman, Dawn discovered, warming to her. “I’m coming out here again,” Mrs. Harmon told her, “and if you ever come through Kansas City please let me know and come and stay at my house. I’ll give you the best horse I can find to ride. It won’t be like your Piñon here, though.”
How moist it was up under the trees! Yet they’d had no rain for weeks.
“There’ll be a terrific rain before the week is out,” Dawn prophesied. “It is due the mountain, and when it comes, look out. Seems as if the whole state is just waiting for a deluge, for something to burst.”
Mr. Harmon looked at her curiously. “I love thunder and lightning,” Mrs. Harmon said quickly, shaking her head at her husband.
“You’ve never heard it before,” Dawn assured her, “until you’ve heard it in the mountains.”
Jack rode as near Dawn as the trail would allow. He felt a change in her manner toward him, and as though he knew he was losing something, tried to regain the old footing, the something that he’d rather drop than have taken away from him. But he could not regain it, try as he would. Nor could Dawn.
Her pleasure in having him back faded, and with it faded also the hurt attached to the thought of his home. Yet in the going a loss was left, a vacancy that even the glory of her mountain did not quite satisfy or fill, a loss of faith in humankind. It was one of the first encounters that Damon had feared for her; he knew too well the hurts that friendship can experience.
When Dawn parted from the crowd at the ford near her cabin Jack rode close to Piñon and said cheerfully, “I’ll be up first thing in the morning, Dawn. The bunch are hunting, but I’m not going. I’ll break loose and be over. So long.”
Damon had put the potatoes on and was reading his mail. He looked worried and hot. “Here’s a note from Shepherd. He’ll be up the end of the week.” He tossed it to Dawn. “The state is in a bad way.” He was reading a two-day-old paper with detached interest. “Goodness, the bank at Tucumcari has gone, and three in other sections of the state. That is the tenth in the last ten days. Yet here are statements from Perry, among others, saying that though the situation is hard for the smaller cities, there is no danger for the state banks.
“I guess things must be all right,” Damon tossed the paper down, “or Perry wouldn’t be up here at this time. That’s a big banker from Chicago, or Kansas City, that he’s got at his place now. I’m glad we’ve got money in the bank, my sweet.”
Damon left the next morning for a survey of the burned-over area on the northeast slope. One gain only had been accomplished; the dead wood and rubbish, the worst sort of fire trap, had been completely burned off, leaving the upper slope free for a fresh start. The lower slope was denuded. Centuries later it might again accumulate enough soil to sustain a forest growth. Now, however, there was not a sprig left to keep the soil from washing down into the desert.
James’s canyon would be dry except for flood waters. The ranchman had written Damon for information on how to make application for a farming homestead under the new dam project. It was a distressing trip over the mountains. The fire, Damon discovered, had smoldered its way, worm-like, through the humus for days. It was not surprising that the boys had not seen it. It had taken two days to travel a half mile, and in one hour after the wind rose it had swept through eight miles. So swiftly had one part burned, leaping from the crown of one tree to another at forty to fifty feet from the ground, that the growth beneath had merely shriveled, and with rain would spring up again from the roots.
Still, it was a depressing sight, and Damon was glad to get back to the upper Amarillo and the untouched woods again. It was nine o’clock when he lifted a weary leg from the saddle and stepped off on to the cabin porch. Dawn met him, took Little Sorrel’s bridle, unsaddled and turned her loose, then hurried to place Damon’s dinner before him. Cup after cup of steaming coffee he drank in contented silence, then pushed back his chair and held out his arms.
Dawn settled down, disposing her long legs over the arm of the chair. She had stayed at the cabin all day, working about the place. Jack had come over, but hadn’t been there more than an hour when his folks had sent for him. He said he would phone her back, but she hadn’t heard from him, and just about an hour ago one of the Bentys had come by and said that the whole crowd had left. Gone back to town on the evening train. Mr. Perry had been called on business. Dawn handed Damon the morning paper. Jim Benty had brought it up to them.
The banks had crashed! The whole state had been stricken by a sweeping financial disaster. The loans extended to the stockmen and renewed through the past four years had been called in at last, the resources of the state were exhausted, and this morning the First State Bank and the Federal Cattlemen’s Loan had had to close their doors. Yesterday there had been a run on one of the savings banks, which had paid out to the last penny, and the president had given his guarantee to his depositors that he would in time make good to them every cent, and that he would in some way safeguard all his investors.
But the Cattlemen’s Loan! Perry up here hunting with this damnable thing imminent! Had he wanted to be out of the way when it happened? Or was he trying to get help from the Kansas banker? The paper said that although the Cattlemen’s Loan had been the last to go under, its resources had already been exhausted.
Damon read and reread the front page. Then he threw it down, smiling bitterly.
“Money in the bank,” he said. “Money in the bank, oh, yes! Your money, Dawn. Yours! My God, that young—”
“Don’t say it, Daddy; don’t say it!” Her firm fingers were on his lips. “Perhaps it isn’t gone. Wait till tomorrow, darling. And—I don’t care, Damon. Honest, I don’t. We’ve got our home, we’ve got Piñon and Little Sorrel, our jobs. And, Dad, look! We’ve still got a chance at the Silverstake Mine. See.” She thrust the paper before him again, pointing to a small boxed item.
Congress had refused the bill to open up the Indian Reservation for public grazing or any public uses whatsoever. But a statement made by the Indian Office said that the survey made by the Land Office would have to be the accepted boundary. That would mean that the Indians would be cut off from the Sacred Source which they loved so much, and it would also impair their title to the use below of their own water. It left Damon’s claim on the public domain.
“Daddy, tomorrow I’ll ride over there.” Damon nodded. Nothing made much difference anyhow. She might as well look for the old pine tree again, if she wanted to.