CHAPTER III
AN OREAD OF THE ROCKIES
“Another Shepherd, by the name of Garen, at your service,” the stranger replied. “And may I inquire who are you?”
Dawn merely stared at him, overcome by shyness.
“I’d have thought you just the spirit of the lake,” the young man continued whimsically, “except that I saw you come down through the forest. You must be the guardian of the whole mountain, eh? An oread.”
He stopped, for the girl began to shiver. She was wet to the waist, for Piñon had fumbled for a footing before he found the little beach. The stranger snatched up the woolen blazer on which he had been sitting and offered it to her. Dawn managed a “Thank you” and took the wrap, still shyly. She sat down with Shepherd on the hot rock in the sun.
Had she called the sheep herders any bad names? Had she jeered when they threw stones and missed? At remembrance of the fight her indignation mounted again. She burst warmly into explanation.
“It’s the goats. They’re the worst! I like them all right, only they do so much damage. I’ll teach those fellows to break pasture. They’re always letting the bars down and leaving gates open. Folks aren’t satisfied with the range we give them; want to crowd the pastures with cattle, and sheep and goats that cut the cover all up. Ruin the Reservation, that’s what!”
The man noticed that she spoke possessively of the mountain—“the range we give them.”
“You belong to the mountain?” he queried superfluously.
“Damon O’Neill’s daughter,” Dawn said proudly. “But I guess you don’t know either why it makes a forester so mad to see mountain meadows all cut up.”
“I’ve an idea,” the man replied, “but suppose you tell me. I’ve heard that Damon O’Neill and his daughter know more about the mountain than God does.”
He was studying the girl’s profile; strong straight nose, a trifle short; a full-lipped mouth, a full, rebellious chin. A student of natural things, this Shepherd, and Dawn O’Neill was as natural and unspoiled as the mountain itself. And unlike the wild creatures of the forest, she had no fear.
Her golden skin deepened to vivid color below gray eyes that were wide apart and accustomed to looking, and seeing, far away; very clear eyes, rested with looking into green depths, protected with lashes made thick by the sun, and with serious straight brows. Her hair was cropped in rough locks, short at the back and wind-blown about her face. It came to a point on her forehead and silky down grew over her temples.
Garen noted the high, wide cheek-bones, the firm, full jaw, the well-modeled nose that just escaped being too wide; they meant balance, physical endurance and strength, he decided. Her mouth was generously wide, and lovely; as lovely as her laugh. He wondered if she had a mind as naturally fine and strong as the body of which she was so unconscious. She had begun to answer the question which he had already forgotten in his absorption.
“You see, these are the only forests in this dry country; up here on the mountain reservations. And all the streams and rivers are fed from the mountains, so if the slopes are destroyed and the grass and sod all cut up, why, then the run-off of water is something terrible and tears down all at once. Then there’s floods below and hell to pay. And no water left up here to keep feeding the streams till the next rain. Besides”—Dawn had scarcely drawn breath—“it ruins the new forests we’re buildin’ up.” She stopped, conclusively, and Garen Shepherd was impressed with the clarity and brevity of her explanation. She’d been brought up on this.
“So you’re the guardian of the plain as well as of the mountain,” he replied. “I think after all you are a naiad instead of an oread. You are surely my patron deity then, for water is what we pray for, we Irrigation fellows. That should make us friends.”
Dawn turned to face him and for the first time looked directly at her companion. She had been perfectly aware of him, however, had taken him in the moment she accepted his blazer. Now she thrust out her hand suddenly,
“Shake!”
Garen Shepherd got as strong a pressure as any land-office commissioner from a homesteader. His fingers tingled. A pleasant warmth that was not from the sun pervaded him.
“Yes, I guess you fellows understand,” Dawn was saying. “But those men in Washington, they put us up here to take care of the forests and then they let people try to steal ’em right out from under our noses! Forest isn’t just forest,” she explained condescendingly; “it’s streams, and holding spring floods back, and well-water and range for stockmen too.”
“When we get through down below,” Garen Shepherd’s gaze was afar over the mountain top, “there’ll be room for ‘most every one, and water for them too. We’ll catch and hold all you spare us from your mountains and fill the desert with the perfume of alfalfa blossoms and the buzz of honey-bees. Millions of tons of water will be behind that giant dam when it is finished. Think of that!“
The light of a vision was in the engineer’s eyes. Already he could see the desert blossoming with meadows where white-faced cattle stood knee-deep in grama grass. Dawn’s eyes widened. “I would sure admire to see it,” she answered generously.
“You shall.” Shepherd turned eagerly. “Surely you shall. I’ll show you over myself if you will come down sometime. Senator Grange, his daughter, and their party were there last week, and we’re having visitors from different spots in the world all the time.”
“I’ve got to be starting,” Dawn remembered. “My father will be worried if he gets back before I do. And I’ve my lessons.”
“Your lessons?” Garen Shepherd was loth to leave the sun-warmed rock, the talk.
“Yes, I haven’t finished my studies for this spring. You see, I’m going to college next year, and I study every morning after I’ve done my work round the cabin. Damon hears me at night, when he’s not too tired. He’s been my teacher always. Oh, yes, I have been to school. I went a couple of times, but I couldn’t bear it.
“Dad took me the first time when I was six, to a convent. He got as far as the door!” She laughed joyously. “He turned around and saw my face. I didn’t cry, mind you. But I guess I was a coony little thing just the same. I reached out my arms and he stooped down and held out his.”
“And didn’t you stay?”
“I never let go of him, nor he of me. And he’d paid the money down, mind you. But he didn’t stop for that. We started and never stopped till we got up to the Cascada. Next time I didn’t go till I was twelve. That was three years ago last fall; I’ll be sixteen next month. I hated sitting on a hard bench shut up in a room all the time!” She shuddered at the remembrance, but in a moment her laughter came bubbling forth again.
Shepherd thought it the most refreshing laughter he had ever heard, spontaneous and naturally musical.
“That is wonderful. Yet you are going to college next year,” he said, impressed. “How have you managed?”
“Damon knows a great deal of book-learning,” Dawn replied, “and he’s got a notion that it’s books, not schoolrooms, that teach us. So he’s taught me after his own ideas, and we’re nearly ready to pass the examinations. I have to do that to study under some great teachers that Damon has heard about. I’ll be having to take a special course, of course, because there’s only certain studies I’m good in. I’m not interested in the others. Dad started me on geometry last fall, but I burned the book up.” She shrugged defiantly. “So we didn’t get ahead much!”
Shepherd, having caught the infection of Dawn’s spontaneous merriment, laughed till the tears rolled out of his eyes.
Suddenly she leaped to her feet, whistling to Piñon who browsed near. The sorrel came trotting up. Shep leaped to the front of the saddle, and Dawn swung into the seat without putting foot to the stirrup and was clambering away over the rocks without farewell or ceremony. In the mountains one goes when he is ready.
“Here! Hold on,” shouted Shepherd. “I’m coming too. Can’t I ride with you? I go almost all the way.”
“Sure,” she called back. “The trail’s free.” He had to catch his pony, tighten the saddle, grab up his duffle, and hurry to overtake her.
Never had spring seemed more lovely. Never had the mountain been half so beautiful. The aspen groves were like a thousand shining arrows shot into the ground from the sun, each bole a shaft of light held by the gleaming surface of silver bark.
“Some old bear has made its own blaze here.” Shepherd pointed to an unusually large aspen, the satiny bark of which was scarred with the fresh rips of a grizzly’s great claws.
Dawn reined Piñon up sharply. The pony stopped, sniffed the air with widening nostrils, snorted and trembled.
“The grizzly’s been here not long ago,” Dawn said in a low voice. “Piñon smells it.”
The white collie was dashing about in the underbrush, beating this way and that, to pick up the scent.
“A grizzly will sharpen its claws like that,” Dawn murmured, “and when it’s hurt it will sometimes tear the bark to ribbons.”
Suddenly she wheeled Piñon, and cutting through the grove, disappeared into a glade below. Shepherd looked after her in surprise and followed slowly. The glade was blocked at the upper end by a wall of rock, once a waterfall’s course, at the foot of which Dawn stood beside a pile of stones. In the center, Shepherd saw, lay the remains of an old ram’s carcass, half of which had been devoured.
Dawn’s look was one of acute distress. “The bear has eaten poison bait,” she said.
“How do you know it was poisoned?” Shepherd asked.
“I know it was. I—I dragged it down here just two days ago and covered it myself so’s nothing would get it.” She began to weep. “The bear was suffering when it tore the tree and has gone away to die.”
Shepherd took her arm and tried to pull her away from the gruesome sight, but she began to cover the ram with rocks again; so together they piled up a cairn that even another grizzly could not tear down. He did not ask any questions, and when they went back to their horses they mounted silently and trotted quickly away, out of the shimmering beauty of the grove. They emerged into a stand of high yellow pine and cantered over the springing russet carpet, a foot deep in pine needles, for a mile or more. At length, as they breathed their groaning ponies at the top of a sharp hill, Dawn spoke:
“You’re not going to tell, are you?”
“Tell? Tell what? You know, Miss Dawn, you can trust me.”
She nodded, and pointing down through a clearing in the trees, showed him a mountain homesteader’s tidy place. “That’s old McGuire’s homestead. Follow me and I’ll show you something.”
She was off at a wild run, following the ridge above the homestead. When they drew together again, horses and riders were both panting.
“Do you see a big pine through that gap?” Dawn pointed across a canyon to a ridge on the opposite side. A heavy stand of spruce and pine covered the slope, through which patches of white quartz gleamed here and there. “A great big pine that stands out above the others?” She hung breathless on his answer.
“Why, yes,” Shepherd replied. “I seem to see a big one on a crest there. Of course. Now it stands out quite plainly.”
“I knew you would be able to see it,” Dawn said with satisfaction. “Some day I’m going to chop that tree down. It’s a very old tree, and I want you to be there to witness it. Will you?”
“Delighted,” Shepherd grinned. “What has the tree done to you?”
“You don’t believe me, do you? You’re making fun of me?”
“Certainly I believe you. I’ll even help chop the tree!”
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” Dawn asked solemnly. “I’ll help you, and you help me. I’ve promised some other friends of mine to help them. It’s the Pueblo Indians of Picuris. They come up here every spring to the source of their waters. It’s sacred to them, you know, and now it’s all to be taken away from them. It’s on a part of their Reservation, but now a new survey’s been made, ‘way this side.“
“Yes, I’ve heard about that.” Shepherd nodded.
“I’m going to prove the old survey,” said Dawn with determination, “and I’ll need a witness when I chop into the Silverstake Pine—that’s what they called the old boundary pine—for we can’t take the tree into court, and who can tell what may happen to our witness when we are not there? It’s an overgrown blaze we’ll be finding, you see, if I’m right.”
They took the trail again, dropping down into the canyon. Piñon chose his own path without any direction from Dawn, who had tossed the reins loose upon the pony’s neck and sat half turned in the saddle, calling back to Shepherd. He followed as close as his pony could travel upon Piñon’s heels. The sorrel chose the best trails with sure knowledge, but when it came to a choice of direction and Dawn did not at once lay rein to right or left of his neck, Piñon would bob his head like a circus horse, impatiently demanding his mistress’s wishes.
“You must know every foot of the mountain,” Shepherd called. “I wish I knew it as well. I spent all morning trying to find the source of the water in that lake where we were. I wish I knew where it all comes from.”
“We’re right under the source of some of it, Mister,” said Dawn. “It rises up above the pine I just pointed to, and iffen—there, I get that from listening to Hinray so much—if you’re sound of wind and limb I’ll take you up. No wonder you couldn’t find it. No one can. And the water that enters the head of the lake comes over a falls and above that must gush from the mountain itself. No one’s ever found where. It springs from the living rock, Dad says, cold as ice. And I know two places where streams flow underground and disappear!” She offered this as very choice information. She was not disappointed.
“I’d love to see it,” Shepherd exclaimed eagerly. “Will you show me? When can we do it?”
“Reckon maybe we could now,” Dawn replied, glancing at her wrist watch, which she verified by the sun. “We came right smart there for a space. This short cut has brought us right beneath it. It won’t take more than a half hour.”
A quarter of an hour later they stood panting upon a summit that seemed the top of the world; yet it was a good deal below timber line, for far opposite they could see at a much higher elevation on the slopes of the Truchas the dark border where the tall timber was halted by the hand of Creation. Above them a lacy fall of water hurled itself musically over rocks so beautiful that they seemed painted. The water fell some thirty feet into a great natural basin fringed with maidenhair fern. It trickled gently over the mossy edge and down the mountain side in a diminutive stream.
“That isn’t all of it?” Garen Shepherd pointed to the tiny trickle.
Dawn was smiling with delight. “Look.” She led the way up to the face of the rock, caught Shepherd’s hand, and ducked beneath the lacy whispering veil of water. The Irrigation Engineer found himself in a cavern of shimmering green light, exquisitely, strangely lovely. Above the tinkling of the waterfall a rumbling murmur became apparent. The murmur grew on the ears until it became a roar. Dawn was pointing.
At their feet a stream, the greater part of the water that came over the falls above, flowed backward into a cavern and disappeared, back into the living rock of the mountain, to flow below the surface on its way to the sea, at what depth no engineer could guess, to water the deep-searching roots of what desert bush, to well to the surface from depths of a hundred, a thousand, feet, at the bidding of man.
Shortly afterward they stood again in the yellow light of the outer day. Dawn was beaded with drops of spray like moonstones.
“No one knows where it goes,” Shepherd said thoughtfully. “Do you know that too, Miss Dawn?”
She shook her head quizzically. “I know where one sunken river comes out.”
“How does this tiny stream feed the Cascada to the south, the lake to the east and the stream that branches through McGuire’s to the west?”
“Why, there’s a million sources, not just one, for each stream. You know that. Come.” Pulling at his hand, she scrambled down the slope, showing him where here and there tiny trickles sought their way down to join a stream below. The deep moss and the felted carpet beneath them, a six-inch humus of rotted leaves and vegetation, was saturated as a sponge with the moisture of spring rains. A thousand little reservoirs had swelled into the cups and basins formed by the roots of trees, purling gently over to feed with economical regularity the boisterous Cascada that would eventually reach the sandy flats of a great river a hundred miles below.
An hour later they were trotting down a mountain road toward the fork of the Cascada.
“I’m staying at Benty’s,” Shepherd told her. “But I expect to leave in the morning. My vacation’s up. I may not get up here again all summer, but if I do I shall surely come over to the Cascada, if I may. And you must be sure to let me know if you come down to the city, for the cars from the dam site go in often.”
They were nearing the fork, where the big stream of the upper valley was joined by the Cascada. A rider on a sorrel horse was waiting there.
“It’s young Perry,” said Shepherd, “lad from Kansas City, staying at Benty’s with his family till their camp is set up. Nice kid.”
He halloed as they rode down toward him. He was lost, bewildered, a trifle uneasy, overawed by the majesty of the peaks that hung, still frigid with snow, over the primeval forest.
“Hey, Shepherd,” he called out in relief, “I got lost! Glad you came along.”
The boy, who appeared to be about seventeen, looked with undisguised interest at Dawn. Shepherd introduced him.
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Perry,” she remembered to say.
“You live up the Cascada?” he inquired easily. “I could follow that without getting lost.” The boy laughed. “I’ll ride up tomorrow if I may.” He bowed with an exaggerated deference.
“Miss Dawn’s a wonderful guide,” Shepherd put in.
“Maybe she’ll show me the mountain,” young Perry responded, looking eagerly toward the mountain girl.
As he rode down the mountain a few moments later, Jack Perry at his heels, Shepherd felt that he had had a perfect experience. The day, the beauty of the mountain side, the girl’s laughter ringing across the mountain lake, the cavern behind the waterfall—he fairly ached with the beauty of it. He felt resentful toward the boy who broke in on his thoughts.
“Some champion, that girl. Wills, Earhart, Ederle, rolled in one, eh? With looks. So these are the Rockies! What are we doing up here? Oh, my Dad’s got in with a bunch that are going to develop. He’s got big interests back of him.
“It’s some country out here, but they’re dead. Dad’s interested in range, opening it up. He’s invested in a cattle bank in the state, and he’s got sheep and goats planted somewhere in these parts already.”
“That so?” Shepherd looked at young Perry with interest. “Gone into the stock business, eh? Has he acquired any range?”
“You mean bought any ranches? No. I imagine the bank’ll take over a plenty,” replied the boy easily. “He’s got a man running his stock for him. Some trouble with fool government regulations.” He shrugged as though those were the least of a developer’s worries.
So that was the way the land lay. Shepherd said nothing but looked thoughtfully at Jack.
“We might as well make the best of it,” the boy confided. “Mother’s got to stay in the West for her health. Might as well make something out of it while we’re here, and open up the country.”
“That was done long ago,” Shepherd said. “Agriculture’s the thing now. I wish we could interest people with money, like your father, in the irrigation developments, agricultural projects, you know.”
Jack looked at him incredulously and burst out laughing. “Agriculture, in a land like this? Why this country’s good for stock and nothing else.”
They had reached Benty’s, and although Garen was annoyed, he could say no more at the time.
CHAPTER IV
DAWN AND THE FOUR-FOOTED
The doctor had said that Mrs. Perry must go to the Rockies. She could not face another winter even in the Middle West. Her lungs were infected, and she needed altitude, ozone, sunshine, rare air. Mrs. Perry was pretty, spoiled, but somehow an appealing person.
She sat now on the veranda of the log cabin that squatted on the eastern slope of Amarillo Canyon. Before her reared the snowy peaks of the Coronado, rising above precipitous and wooded hills.
In front of the lodge a party was getting ready for a ride off over the mountains. Her husband, cigar in mouth, and dressed in the most correct of sports outfits, stood critically surveying the saddling of his horse. It gave him the feeling of a sportsman to run a finger under the cinch and tell young Benty to put a martingale on the obedient little mountain horse so it would not toss its head.
John Perry was a self-made man who believed firmly in development. He had developed the dump grounds south of the suburb in which he had lived, and why not the mountains? He had developed his business in Kansas City successfully enough to catch the attention of the big fellows higher up. Twelve-per cent. interest had, several years before, attracted his capital to the banks of the cattle state. But lately his investment hadn’t been doing so well. Since Mrs. Perry had been ordered west he had embraced the opportunity to take charge of his business personally, and had entered a bank of the metropolis of the state as president.
Young Jack was thoroughly enjoying the experience. An instinctive wholesomeness, the natural response of youth to outdoor pleasures, had survived the would-be fast pace set by his school crowd at home. Now he was artfully exhibiting his horsemanship before the group on the veranda, pulling viciously at his mild pony’s mouth, causing her to rear, on which he would pull her back smartly on her haunches, her front feet helplessly pawing the air.
“He’s a natural horseman,” Mrs. Perry observed with pride. “Do be careful of that brute, Jack.”
“Where are they going? The Rio Cascada! I’m no wiser than I was before.” Mrs. Perry laughed and shrugged, wondering if there would be any one left that evening with energy enough for a hand of auction. After an hour’s preparation the party was off, cantering up the canyon road.
The horses’ flying feet struck pebbles that bounded rattling down to the rocky gorge of the river beneath. As the road wound upward they slowed to a steady walk. Dean Benty, Old Man Benty’s son, rode ahead with Jack. Mr. Perry rode beside a large powerful-looking man, who slouched in his expensive but carelessly worn clothes. Perry was waving his arms about and arguing earnestly.
“It’s not been touched. Virgin, you might say. Needs development, that’s all, Gershwin. The country’s all right. Nothing to this hard times talk. They could get back all they’ve put into the cattle business if they’d just open up these mountain ranges to the full. There’s been more rainfall the last few years than formerly. Ask the forest service men; they know. What’s that?
“No-o. Not much range left down below. That’s true. Most of it’s been taken up. But up here—why look at it! Range for the world and to spare!” Mr. Perry saw no flaw in his arguments.
“Difficulty is in getting in. Only a certain amount of range supposed to be leased to each stockman, and under certain conditions. Although my bank has done so much for the state, extending loans to the cattlemen, I personally could get only a small per cent. of the cattle, from that Bar A ranch that I’ve been trying to save, up here for grazing!
“If you hadn’t got that motion by the committee to open up the Indian Reservation”—Mr. Perry had worked himself up into a state of indignation—“we’d have been up against it. The goats and the sheep we had to put over through Gonzales, an old homesteader up here, an old reliable. And that with the Indian Reservation shut away from the rest of us. Say, isn’t that an outrage!
“Why, they haven’t even cattle enough to fill a corner of it. Sure. I know you supported that bill all along. Going through next month for sure, you say? Fine.”
Gershwin, the big man, conversed chiefly in nods and monosyllabic grunts.
“Temporary injunction,” he observed, “opening reservation range to public. First come, first served. Think it’ll go through all right. They’re not sure of the boundaries anyway.”
They had come to the fork of the Cascada. Here the trail crossed the stream, and so did the horses. By clinging ignominiously to his horse’s neck Mr. Perry managed to do likewise.
“Don’t hang on that way, Dad,” shouted Jack from the other bank. “They’ll think you’re a tenderfoot.”
“He is,” Mr. Gershwin emitted succinctly.
When the crossing had been successfully accomplished Mr. Perry drew alongside Gershwin, who, in spite of his size, rode as easily and well as, one felt, he did anything that he attempted.
“We may have some trouble with these forest service fellows,” Perry said jocularly, although with a trace of concern in his manner. “Sticklers for regulations, you know.”
“I was born down yonder in Texas.” Gershwin thrust a spatulate thumb over his shoulder, indicating that he knew the ways of the country.
They were cantering along a level stretch of the trail that led up to the forest supervisor’s cabin. They could see Damon O’Neill from some distance, standing in his doorway with another man.
Damon looked down and saw them coming. He recognized in Gershwin a man born to the saddle, but Perry, by his insecure seat, he assumed to be one of the new city boarders down at Mountain Lodge. He turned to the tall Westerner at his side and resumed the conversation.
“I’m awfully sorry, James,” he said regretfully; “I want the worst way to see you pull through. But your range down below is sure gone, old man. It’s been grazed to the limit for twenty years; you know that. If you try to pull out of the hole by borrowing, expanding your herd, and renting more range, where will you be next winter?
“Even if you let your grass crop lie idle all summer, the range is cut up so bad, so little root or seed left, it’s going to take several years for grass to take hold. It ought to lie fallow till the roots have clamped some of that desert soil down again. You’ll get little hay off your range next fall. Certainly not enough for two thousand head.”
“I’ll sell enough of the two-year-olds and the old ones in the fall to make out if you’ll lease me an extra piece of mountain range for late fall,” James urged, his deep-set eyes burning anxiously under his shaggy brows. “A summer here’ll condition ’em into A-1 grade.”
Damon slowly shook his head. “You’d have to go in that much deeper to buy winter feed for the balance. It’s for your own good, James, I’m advising you. I can’t understand the Cattleman’s Loan offering to carry you for any more. I know the other banks are simply extending their old loans where necessary. Go slow till your range recuperates, till I can get further mountain pasture for you. As an owner of improved ranch property you’re entitled to preference.
“Let’s see—” Damon crossed to his map on the wall, consulting certain areas—“you’ve just brought your stock up from the oak-brush forage, eh? Salted them? Well, they can stay on the aspen-fir location till July 10. The season was so late this year we couldn’t let them up earlier. On July 10 you can move them up into the spruce-fir belt. Keep your salt away from the streams, James. And try to draw your stock up to the west slopes with it. The forage will be well developed up there by that time.
“Who’ve you got to herd for you till then?”
James flushed. “I’ll have to ride up every week myself, Mr. O’Neill. I’ve got a couple of kids, but I rightly need them down below, and I had to let two old hands and my foreman go this spring; the biz was too broke. It keeps me busy moving the other thousand around down below. I’ve lost a lot this spring too. About ten head already.
“Looks like the old Custer lobo got a few. Killed two mother cows and et the calves before they wuz born.” He spoke bitterly.
Dawn had come in quietly and had been straightening the papers on her father’s desk, sorting the mail. Now she spoke up quickly.
“Let me help herd Mr. James’ mountain bunch, Damon, if he’s willing.”
James looked with surprise at the girl, clad in the riding-breeches, shirt, and mountain boots of the men of the service. The forest ranger smiled at the stockman’s amazement.
“She’s as good a cow-hand, James, as she is assistant ranger. I’m willing, if you are. She usually rides over that range once a week anyway. If you want she can help your boy move the stock in units.”
“There’s a hundred to a salt-unit,” answered James a bit dubiously.
“All right. Dawn knows as well as any of us just how long a given meadow can support how many head of stock. She’ll salt them to stay put for a month, two weeks, whatever the range’ll stand.”
The ranchman’s face cleared. With a look of surprise and relief he turned to Dawn, slowly extending a hand.
“Well, young woman,” he drawled, “that sure would be pretty of you, if you mean it. It would sure set my mind at ease. Cattle has pesky tastes and appetites. Sometimes seems they just naturally craves poison. And they sure can demolish young leaves before the time comes.”
“Dawn is usually all for keeping the stock moving,” her father smiled. “I never heard her offer to tend cattle before.”
A swift attack of conscience had struck Dawn like summer lightning. Impulsively her sympathies went out to the man who had suffered from the animals of her mountain. She was partly to blame, springing traps, and all. What could she do? She must make amends.
The four who had been riding up the trail now pushed through the trees into the open space surrounding the cabin. They forded the eager little stream leaping before the ranger’s door and rode up to the stoop. James said a hasty farewell and rode off. Gershwin and Perry sat their horses, but Jack and Dean Benty dismounted.
Dean introduced his party to the ranger, Jack jumped up on the porch and held out his hand to Dawn. “Good morning, Miss O’Neill. You see, I did find my way up here.”
He was very smiling, sure of himself, spick and span. Dawn did not like his manner. She let go his hand and leaned back indifferently against the wall. Fresh pink and white thing. Did he have bear’s grease on his hair? No, most likely that perfumed stuff.
Their fathers were talking. Damon O’Neill listened gravely to the suave tones of John Perry. Surely they were at liberty to ride anywhere they wished. This was public domain. He was sorry he could not accompany them, but that would be impossible. He waved to the littered desk which could be seen from the door. A ranger’s duties were many, and as he was acting at present in the capacity of assistant supervisor there was correspondence to which he must attend. Range management was keeping him very busy just now.
Well, that was one of the very things they were wanting to talk to him about. Damon knew that very well; he had heard of Gershwin, of course. And John Perry was the new banker? He had banked with his bank for years.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Perry,” said Damon sincerely. “You big banking men have a great responsibility on you this year. I guess they’re all depending on the banks and on the forests.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” agreed Perry. “Wonderful country you’ve got up here. Wonderful. Don’t know why they call this a dry country, with almost fifty per cent. of the area in forests like this. Water enough, grass enough, to feed all the world, I’d think.”
Gershwin was, as usual, saying nothing. Time enough for talk. Orders would be received today or tomorrow notifying the forest supervisor of this section that the Indian Reservation was to be thrown open to the public, and by that time the rest of his cattle and sheep would be on the range. But he had other things in mind as well. Perry was talking to the ranger.
“No, much of the region is wild and very rocky,” O’Neill was explaining—“almost inaccessible. For that reason there are several million feet of mature timber that have not yet been taken out. The cost of getting them to a railroad would be almost prohibitive.
“The old silver mines? No one seems to have located them since the Indians abandoned their early workings when the Spanish came. Pasture? Well, there is no more left open at this season of the year. There will be some open, under regulation, for fall.”
Jack Perry spoke to the ranger. Couldn’t his daughter go with them this morning as guide? Dean Benty had to get back to haul wood for his father. Would she be willing? Although she had told herself in the first five minutes that she despised Jack Perry, Dawn agreed to go.
Either she could take them the way she had ridden yesterday, or they could cross the Cascada right here, go up through the forest straight west, above timber line, and see the whole country beyond spread before them. Her tone made the latter course seem more alluring; so they chose it. In three minutes Dawn was ready, a new blue kerchief knotted about her throat, a suède leather coat tied to her saddle. The white collie barked his delight at the prospect of running with them, but Damon called him back and he came with instant obedience, though he sat watching Dawn and Piñon till they were out of sight.
The trail led at once into the deep forest. There was a foot of springy tanbark beneath their horses’ feet. Before Damon and Hinray covered the trail it had been slippery with mud at this time of year. The forest closed about them and the trail grew steeper and steeper. They were in a dark green twilight, through which an occasional shaft of sunshine pierced.
There was no sign of wild life or game in these primeval depths, although in a thicket not thirty feet from the trail a pair of mule deer fawns froze motionless, their large beautiful ears pricked forward. The horses had gone about a quarter of a mile when Dawn stopped to rest. There was a hard climb ahead. A ten minutes’ rest, and they were at it again. Within five minutes they had entered the densest forest that the men had ever seen and were climbing almost at a seventy-five-degree angle.
The horses groaned, all but Piñon, and even he was shining with sweat and lathered where the cinch pinched his belly.
“Good heavens,” Perry gasped with awe, “think of all this timber going to waste!”
“Cut it,” Dawn replied crisply, “and most of the valley below would wash down to the sea.”
They emerged suddenly into the open and found themselves on a rocky tilted slope. With difficulty they picked their way across the sky table, which looked as though it had been strewn with giant stone building-blocks in all kinds of rectangular shapes. They were brought to a halt at the head of a sheer escarpment that dropped five hundred feet or more to a meadow of parklike beauty. Gershwin took off his hat, as though compelled, unconsciously, to uncover before a power so infinitely beyond his own.
The valleys below them were dotted with cattle. At their right rose a peak that still harbored in its shadows a glacial bank of blue-white snow. Occasionally a cold breath blew down across their faces, alternating with the sun-heated air.
“Whose cattle?” Gershwin inquired.
“Most of them, I think, belong to a Mexican homesteader, Gonzales,” Dawn replied. “Let the horses have their heads going down,” she warned.
Jack sat awkwardly. Dawn knew very well that he must be stiff. But he said nothing about it. “I give him credit for that,” she thought.
Jack followed close on her heels as Piñon led the way down the ledge to where the escarpment sloped into another upland meadow. It stretched as far as the eye could see.
“You say you haven’t enough range,” exclaimed Perry, Senior. “What’s wrong with this?”
“It’s not ready yet for grazing,” Dawn explained eagerly. “See, the ground is soft, and these flowers are not good graze. The forage cover is just breaking the ground—the bluegrass, the oats, the wheat you see here—and the browse plants are only in bud.
“We have to have deferred grazing here, because the cover needs reseeding. This range had been open for grazing for years, long before the Forest Service was established twenty years ago, and it’s been burned over again and again by lightning fires. It slopes right down into the valleys; so it’s an important drainage area into the Rio Grande.”
“Help, help!” Jack laughed. “School’s over for the year. You sound like a book. This is vacation, fun!”
Dawn looked at him witheringly. He must be feeble-minded. “I never went to school,” she said, “but three months in my life. This is my business and my fun too.”
Perry laughed outright. Mr. Gershwin grinned, and Jack echoed him sheepishly.
“What is the scrub hillside way down at the foot of this range?” asked Gershwin.
“Juniper, Mister, likely. But I can’t tell whether it’s monosperma or occidentals from California. They both grow round seven to eight thousand altitude. Both are durable light woods, used for fencing and—”
“You’d make a good witness, young lady!” Gershwin smiled. “Point is, it’s not good forage, eh?” Gershwin was beginning to understand the meaning of scientific grazing. He was not above learning from this young girl.
“No, sir. Not very. Take the oak-brush type range of the foothills; not much vegetation there, it’s been overgrazed so long. Snowberry, service berry, squaw apple, sagebrush, and a few wheat grasses, all hardy plants, with needle grass, butterweed, and bluebells.
“But in the aspen-fir”—she waved her hand—“lots of vegetation. I’ll spare you the names, but there’s all kinds of berries, flowers—see the sweet cicely, the wild roses and geraniums, the honeysuckle and clematis above?
“Last comes the spruce-fir range, up around our cabin, about nine thousand feet. There you find more herbaceous growth in the open parks and less bush browse.”
Jack was reduced to awed silence during this conversation. He had been filled with the importance of Mr. Gershwin anyway, and here was the big man listening respectfully to a girl, a mountain girl, and asking her questions.
Then he contributed a brilliant idea. “Let’s eat. Have you all forgotten we carried grub!”
“No”—Dawn ignored such a thing as a pang of hunger—“you’ll have to wait until we get down to water. There’s a little stream down in that canyon if it hasn’t dried up since the last fire here.
“Let your horse’s reins loose on his neck, can’t you?” she reminded Jack sharply, as they started down the trail that would lead them into the canyon. “You’ll be sailing right out over this precipice if you don’t stop pulling his mouth on the wrong side.”
Mr. Perry hastily and meekly dropped the tightly clutched reins he held. They did not speak again till they reached the bottom of the canyon. Dawn saw a covey of brilliant grouse in the piñon scrub but did not call attention to them. Jack produced from the various saddlebags the lunch Mrs. Benty had put up, and they sat down on the rocks to eat.
Afterward the men stretched themselves out with cigars, but Jack and Dawn wandered down the stream; at every turn it changed, now deep and swift, now shallow and sunny, with little flower-rimmed beaches.
“You’re a wonderful girl, do you know it?” Jack blurted suddenly. He really felt that she was wonderful. His weaker nature was impressed with her strength of mind, her independence and character.
Unconsciously Dawn was relenting to a certain sweetness in Jack; and then, he was young. She yearned unconsciously for the companionship of other young creatures. A look of blond delicacy about Jack stirred a motherliness within her, whereas with her father she had striven always to be a companion.
Jack had a nice expression, she thought. But he had seemed cocksure of himself with everything till it came to the mountain. She chuckled to herself.
What was she laughing at? he wondered uneasily. Jack had been spoiled in school by girls of a different mettle from this mountain girl. It had been too easy for him. The girls he knew were active, clever enough. But in the daughter of the mountain ranger there was a serenity, an absence of any attempt to charm or amuse, that was new. He could never have analyzed the vivid force of her, but he felt it as some strong electric current is felt.
Mr. Perry and Mr. Gershwin were hallooing to them, and they hurried back. The men had heard shots on the mountain side above and the baying of dogs.
“There must be a hunt on,” Dawn cried. “The Government hunters are after lion. They were rounding up this mountain to get the old Custer lobo too. Come on!” She was resaddling Piñon, whose back had been cooling while they ate lunch. “We’ve got to get out of here, and we may catch a glimpse of them.”
The men were delighted. This was something better than Perry had hoped for. They clambered up out of the canyon over a slope covered with russet pine needles, sparsely wooded and almost free of underbrush. The baying of the hounds came nearer.
Shots were closing in round the base of the hill. Dawn halted her party. “Get off. We’ll have to sit tight right here,” she told them, “if we don’t want to be blown to kingdom come by a stray shot. We’ve got right in the way of the hunt somehow.”
She led the horses quickly down behind an abutment of rock, where the men crouched in safety, peering excitedly over the top. Piñon nickered suddenly and began to tremble violently. Head up, tail out, he ran up to where Dawn lay stretched with her chin on her hands. Without warning, and so swiftly that his yellow length was gone before they could speak, a mountain lion came bounding through the trees. With a leap he sailed through the air and over the escarpment of rock, within fifteen feet of them. Swift as he was, they saw for a clear moment his grace, his cruel head. His tawny flanks, his long tail, were stretched their utmost. Then he was out of sight, but they could hear the falling of stones down into the canyon as his great weight struck. Evidently he had lit on a shelf of loose shaly rock.
“Driven into the open,” Dawn murmured. The words had hardly escaped her when a second shadow hurtled from the slight cover before them, a shadow that for a moment loomed but a few feet away, a grayish ghost with bared fangs and wide yellow eyes—and was gone.
Jack’s face was blank with incredulity and amazement. His father and Gershwin had flattened themselves against the rock, a shade paler, thrilled.
“It’s the great lobo.” Dawn nodded to herself with shocked calm. “They said they were going to get him if it took all summer. They’ve got twenty men and fifteen dogs and rounded them in a lion to boot.”
Her color had gone. Gershwin looked at her curiously. “Ain’t scared, girlie, surely?” His tone was kindly but bantering.
She looked at him swiftly, contemptuously. She mistrusted him, yet she liked him. His wide-set grayish eyes, with strange yellow lights about the pupils—why, they were like the lobo’s! A wolf’s eyes, and his cunning; that was it. Now Dawn understood Gershwin. She laughed back at him.
“You know better’n that,” she said.
“Gee, I want to get in on that hunting,” Jack sputtered, coming out from between the rocks where he had taken refuge.
“I expect you could if you wanted,” Dawn replied indifferently. “I expect Mr. Gershwin could manage that too.” He probably couldn’t shoot anyway; it wouldn’t make any difference.
“Great guns!” Mr. Perry’s teeth were chattering. “Those are the fellows that kill the sheep and cattle, eh? Why, they say a few years ago these predatory animals cost the state over two hundred thousand a year.”
“Gee, there’s the banker talking at a time like this!” interrupted Jack plaintively.
“Well, it costs fifteen hundred dollars to let one lion live a year,” insisted his father. “Much as a man would eat. Think of it. That’s gotta be stopped.”
“Don’t worry, Mister,” Dawn observed with grim impertinence, as she gathered Piñon’s reins and flung into the saddle. “Before long there won’t be any great game outside a museum. Except deer. Fifty thousand big wild animals have been killed in less than five years. Makin’ the world safe for mutton- and beef-eaters. Come on.”
“I want to chat with this young lady a bit,” said Gershwin, as he mounted heavily and followed after Dawn.
“Why, I’ve got friends who’d give a fortune just to get a look-in on one of these hunts,” Mr. Perry exclaimed, pressing along after them.
“Bring ’em on,” Gershwin rumbled. “I read that the skins alone have put two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the U. S. Treasury in the last few years. Used to be the Government paid us a bounty for ’em when I was a lad.”
“Well, I always did believe in private enterprise for developing rather than the Government,” Perry replied with a wink. “The Government makes us pay its price for the timber we buy up here.”
There was no chance for Gershwin to catch up with Dawn; she led them by a short cut that brought them out into the canyon of the Amarillo at some distance below Benty’s place. Gershwin caught up with her as they reached the road.
“I believe you’re tryin’ to run away from me, young lady,” he drawled, with a half-humorous glint in his eyes. “There’s so much up here we don’t half know about. It’s a revelation to get with folks like you and your father.” It was not without reason that Gershwin had become one of the suavest lobbyists of his political era. Dawn expanded, warmed unsuspiciously to one who thus showed appreciation for the mountain.
“Funny there’s no minerals up here in these rocks,” Gershwin rumbled along. “Plenty in the other ranges, and copper in the deserts. Funny they never found anything up here.”
“No one’s ever tried,” Dawn flashed. “Gold’s where you find it, you know.”
“I was just wondering, Miss Dawn, if there was anything to this rumor that there was silver-bearing quartz on the Indian Reservation?” It was worth trying out, to question the girl, he thought. Gonzales and others had shown him samples of first-rate ore from these mountains, but no one had been able to locate a body of ore. Maybe he could get something out of this girl. He’d make it his business to acquire the proper locations and claims no matter on what reservation ore was found. The girl’s face was perfectly noncommittal, however.
“It would make a great difference to the Indians,” Gershwin continued aloud. “The Government’s bound to protect the interests of its wards, you know.”
“And you bet it’ll do it too, Mister,” she retorted, “as far as the Forest Service is concerned.”
“Mm-m. What would you say, I wonder, if I told you—?” They were walking at a lazy amble up the road, Jack and his father following about a quarter of a mile behind, and Mr. Gershwin glanced sidewise at Dawn out of oblique eyes.
“What, Mister? Shoot!” Dawn turned her steady gaze on him and the wolf-like eyes turned aside.
“That your father”—he dwelt on the words—“had a claim staked on the Indian Reservation—what properly should be, and will be, the Indian Reservation when the correct survey is made.”
“I’d say you were a liar!” Dawn blazed. She pulled Piñon up on his haunches and looked straight at the big man slouching in the saddle. “It’s not on Indian ground; never was, and we’ll prove it! Though if it were it would be safe enough with us.
“But all that range you’re aimin’ to open up is Indian ground and always has been. They’re just tryin’ to give everybody a crooked deal.” Her voice shook; she was trembling with passion. A slap on Piñon’s flanks was enough to send him off racing up the road.
A pebble from his flying hoofs struck Gershwin in the cheek, its sharp edge drawing a fleck of blood. He brushed it off as a giant brushes a gnat. He was smiling.
CHAPTER V
THE WITNESS TREE
Dawn had never been spanked. Damon O’Neill had evaded that bitter duty. She had never even been beaten at anything she undertook, and was like a bull pup that has never lost a fight and thinks the world is his. Damon was proud of her daring; he envied it, but he feared for it. The experience of his young manhood had put a mark on him. Though of physical courage he had plenty and to spare, he was cautious and taciturn.
Damon was not afraid to trust Dawn to the mountain; he feared to trust her to the world. The world had not treated him any too well. Yet he knew that the day would come when Dawn too must undergo her trial. For that reason he welcomed the coming of the Perrys to the mountain. For more than a month now young Perry had been a visitor to the ranger’s cabin, his daughter’s constant companion in her comings and goings.
Dawn bullied Jack shamelessly. She made sport of him, teasing, harrying, showing him up. He took it all amiably enough, just as Shep took a poke in the belly from her teasing foot while he lay with his four paws up in the air.
“You’re so good at figures, Jack,” she bantered as they lolled on the cabin steps one afternoon, “and I don’t pretend to like ’em. What’s the rate of precipitation down into the Cascada when a cloudburst deposits an inch of water in ten minutes?”
They were watching Hinray laboriously trace red rings on a map to indicate to the Range Supervisor where the fire hazards were in their section.
“Ask him instead what makes Chiny a near treeless waste?” Hinray cackled spitefully. “Ask him w’y and w’ere Joseph said, ‘Every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.’ And w’y the Prophet Ezekiel balled out the shepherds of Israel?
“‘Woe unto ye,’ he says, says he, ‘shepherds of Israel. Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye tread down with yore feet the residoo of yore pastures?’”
“What are you balling me out for?” Jack complained. “Is it my fault nothing grows on your ranges any more but cattle, and they’re dying? Whose fault is it anyway?”
“Well, the old-timers is mostly to blame, and that’s a fact,” said Hinray sternly. “They just spread out in the public domain and grazed it all to death. Then when they got confined down to their own pastures they just naturally let them git wore out too.”
“They’d like to make a Sahara of the whole state,” exclaimed Dawn hotly. “Who was that French author Damon was reading out of last winter? He said that the Sahara used to be well watered and well wooded, but it was made a desert by the folly of man. Many parts of the Arabian and African deserts, he said, too, would be covered by forests if man and domestic animals were banished from them for a while. He says trees spring all round the watercourses, just like they do down on the ranges here, Hinray; you know. And grasses grow there, but the cattle of the Bedouins chew ’em off before ever they can seed.”
“It’s sure the truth!” said Hinray. “Git me the Bible, Dawn.”
She darted into the cabin and came out with the worn old book. Hinray opened at a marked spot and read. “Second Kings, Chapter Three: ‘Mesha, King of Moab, was a sheepmaster, and rendered unto the King of Israel an hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand rams with wool.’ How’s that for a sizable herd? But wait!
“First Chronicles tells how Solomon, when he finished the Temple, sacrificed twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand head of sheep. So, Mister”—Hinray turned on Jack—“you see what expansion brought that country to!”
“Help, help!” Jack shouted. “Here endeth the second lesson! Hinray reads the almanac and quotes it to me from cover to cover, and then you both quote the Bible. But how is it,” he added with a warming spark of interest, “that the wild animals get off scot-free of these charges? Don’t they eat their share of the range too? Or is that why the Rocky Mountain sheep got killed off, because they were too tough for mutton and they crowded the range?”
“Now you’re talkin’ sense, boy,” Hinray nodded approvingly. “You got yore bean workin’. Fact is, though, wild animals ain’t destructive. Their grazin’ habits is conservative. Nature and experience must ’a’ learned ’em.”
Hinray had finished his work and was smoking his pipe, leaning back against the cabin. Jack was no longer listening; he was idly absorbed in watching Dawn. He could sit for an hour and just watch her. Dawn was listening intently as she restrung her Indian leggings with new deer-hide thongs.
“The Injins never saw the buffalo returnin’ south,” Hinray droned on. “They used to think that they passed underground, or that a new lot come out o’ the south every spring. Fact is, they went back by a different route every autumn from the way they came up. No, they never harmed the range none, and there was more buffalo, too, than they ever will be cattle. An’ better eatin’. Men sure was foolish them days.—Looky here, Dawn, there’s a bad spot, a sure trap for lightnin’ fire. Show yore paw, will you?”
Hinray hung his unfinished map on the wall and was making ready to depart. There was fire in the forest, and Damon was putting down a rather bad blaze of uncertain origin. Dawn had been riding range on Hal James’s cattle for the past two days and was resting today. Taking care of James’s stock was an effort to make up, in part at least, for her responsibility in increasing his losses from wolves and bear.
Undoubtedly it was her fault, she felt, that his stock had fallen prey to the wild animals of her mountain. Pretty hard, she realized, with all the range troubles below. She herded his cattle with wisdom and skill, and with passionate fidelity to a task which was also a service to the mountain. She rode early and late, spending hours at a time in the saddle. Jack had gone with her several times. He rode much better now.
James’s cattle had thriven amazingly. They were fine stock and had fattened on the excellent pasture. Nor had the range suffered; as the season advanced Dawn had helped the herders move them up higher and higher into the mountains till now they were in the high parks on the upper Amarillo.
The weeks had dragged on and nothing had been heard of any action on the Reservation survey. The question was whether the new survey was to stand, or that made according to Ranger O’Neill’s interpretation of the old boundaries. While the question whether the Reservation range should be opened was held in abeyance through the summer months, Gershwin’s cattle fattened along with Gonzales’ stock on the homesteader’s leased range. It was range that he was entitled to if the cattle were his. But they were not.
Damon O’Neill was not blind to this, but there was nothing that he could do about it if his superiors could not. He would obey orders and save his scalp. It was unthinkable, but there were ways in which he might be removed! He would antagonize no one as he went about his duties.
Mr. Perry had arranged with the Predatory Animal Bureau to go on one of their hunts, and had brought down a cat, much to his delight. But he could not make a party of it and bring his friends out to share in the sport. He’d have to arrange that for himself, he was told, so he went ahead, preparing for a big hunting party that fall.
Damon and Dawn had twice ridden over to the great tree which Dawn had been so sure was the Silverstake pine, inspecting it, debating whether or not it was the boundary of the ancient grant. Damon’s survey brought the boundary some hundred feet north of the tree and there he had erected a stone witness, in default of a tree. Yet the lie of the land, and some doubt as to the interpretation of the old description of the grant, made him wonder. Damon’s reverence for the forest and for the rules of its administration was such that he would not have felled the suspected tree. Those things went so slowly. He had no idea how to press them.
But there were women down in the capital who did. White women who had become interested in the welfare of the Pueblo Indians; in their land and water rights. A bad summer for the pueblos of the Rio Grande had left many of them almost without crops. Before ever it reached their ditches the little water remaining to them was diverted by white settlers, Mexican squatters, homesteaders of both races.
But a voice had gone up out of the wilderness, and the power of press and of public sympathy had brought the matter of this new invasion of Indian rights very nearly to a head. Whose water was this? Whose land?
Meanwhile deep in the forest some great tree lifted its branches to the blue sky and bore silent witness of the source of water and the hidden wealth of the Rockies. Graven upon its heart wood was the testimony as to who should be owner of their treasure. Dawn was sure that she would find the witness tree.