"Will the lion go back to his—his kill, I think you called it?" asked Bo.

"I've chased one away from his kill half a dozen times. Lions are not plentiful here an' they don't get overfed. I reckon the balance is pretty even."

This last remark made Helen inquisitive. And as they slowly rode on the back-trail Dale talked.

"You girls, bein' tender-hearted an' not knowin' the life of the forest, what's good an' what's bad, think it was a pity the poor deer was killed by a murderous lion. But you're wrong. As I told you, the lion is absolutely necessary to the health an' joy of wild life—or deer's wild life, so to speak. When deer were created or came into existence, then the lion must have come, too. They can't live without each other. Wolves, now, are not particularly deer-killers. They live off elk an' anythin' they can catch. So will lions, for that matter. But I mean lions follow the deer to an' fro from winter to summer feedin'-grounds. Where there's no deer you will find no lions. Well, now, if left alone deer would multiply very fast. In a few years there would be hundreds where now there's only one. An' in time, as the generations passed, they'd lose the fear, the alertness, the speed an' strength, the eternal vigilance that is love of life—they'd lose that an' begin to deteriorate, an' disease would carry them off. I saw one season of black-tongue among deer. It killed them off, an' I believe that is one of the diseases of over-production. The lions, now, are forever on the trail of the deer. They have learned. Wariness is an instinct born in the fawn. It makes him keen, quick, active, fearful, an' so he grows up strong an' healthy to become the smooth, sleek, beautiful, soft-eyed, an' wild-lookin' deer you girls love to watch. But if it wasn't for the lions, the deer would not thrive. Only the strongest an' swiftest survive. That is the meanin' of nature. There is always a perfect balance kept by nature. It may vary in different years, but on the whole, in the long years, it averages an even balance."

"How wonderfully you put it!" exclaimed Bo, with all her impulsiveness. "Oh, I'm glad I didn't kill the lion."

"What you say somehow hurts me," said Helen, wistfully, to the hunter. "I see—I feel how true—how inevitable it is. But it changes my—my feelings. Almost I'd rather not acquire such knowledge as yours. This balance of nature—how tragic—how sad!"

"But why?" asked Dale. "You love birds, an' birds are the greatest killers in the forest."

"Don't tell me that—don't prove it," implored Helen. "It is not so much the love of life in a deer or any creature, and the terrible clinging to life, that gives me distress. It is suffering. I can't bear to see pain. I can STAND pain myself, but I can't BEAR to see or think of it."

"Well," replied. Dale, thoughtfully, "There you stump me again. I've lived long in the forest an' when a man's alone he does a heap of thinkin'. An' always I couldn't understand a reason or a meanin' for pain. Of all the bafflin' things of life, that is the hardest to understand an' to forgive—pain!"

That evening, as they sat in restful places round the camp-fire, with the still twilight fading into night, Dale seriously asked the girls what the day's chase had meant to them. His manner of asking was productive of thought. Both girls were silent for a moment.

"Glorious!" was Bo's brief and eloquent reply.

"Why?" asked. Dale, curiously. "You are a girl. You've been used to home, people, love, comfort, safety, quiet."

"Maybe that is just why it was glorious," said Bo, earnestly. "I can hardly explain. I loved the motion of the horse, the feel of wind in my face, the smell of the pine, the sight of slope and forest glade and windfall and rocks, and the black shade under the spruces. My blood beat and burned. My teeth clicked. My nerves all quivered. My heart sometimes, at dangerous moments, almost choked me, and all the time it pounded hard. Now my skin was hot and then it was cold. But I think the best of that chase for me was that I was on a fast horse, guiding him, controlling him. He was alive. Oh, how I felt his running!"

"Well, what you say is as natural to me as if I felt it," said Dale. "I wondered. You're certainly full of fire, An', Helen, what do you say?"

"Bo has answered you with her feelings," replied Helen, "I could not do that and be honest. The fact that Bo wouldn't shoot the lion after we treed him acquits her. Nevertheless, her answer is purely physical. You know, Mr. Dale, how you talk about the physical. I should say my sister was just a young, wild, highly sensitive, hot-blooded female of the species. She exulted in that chase as an Indian. Her sensations were inherited ones—certainly not acquired by education. Bo always hated study. The ride was a revelation to me. I had a good many of Bo's feelings—though not so strong. But over against them was the opposition of reason, of consciousness. A new-born side of my nature confronted me, strange, surprising, violent, irresistible. It was as if another side of my personality suddenly said: 'Here I am. Reckon with me now!' And there was no use for the moment to oppose that strange side. I—the thinking Helen Rayner, was powerless. Oh yes, I had such thoughts even when the branches were stinging my face and I was thrilling to the bay of the hound. Once my horse fell and threw me.... You needn't look alarmed. It was fine. I went into a soft place and was unhurt. But when I was sailing through the air a thought flashed: this is the end of me! It was like a dream when you are falling dreadfully. Much of what I felt and thought on that chase must have been because of what I have studied and read and taught. The reality of it, the action and flash, were splendid. But fear of danger, pity for the chased lion, consciousness of foolish risk, of a reckless disregard for the serious responsibility I have taken—all these worked in my mind and held back what might have been a sheer physical, primitive joy of the wild moment."

Dale listened intently, and after Helen had finished he studied the fire and thoughtfully poked the red embers with his stick. His face was still and serene, untroubled and unlined, but to Helen his eyes seemed sad, pensive, expressive of an unsatisfied yearning and wonder. She had carefully and earnestly spoken, because she was very curious to hear what he might say.

"I understand you," he replied, presently. "An' I'm sure surprised that I can. I've read my books—an' reread them, but no one ever talked like that to me. What I make of it is this. You've the same blood in you that's in Bo. An' blood is stronger than brain. Remember that blood is life. It would be good for you to have it run an' beat an' burn, as Bo's did. Your blood did that a thousand years or ten thousand before intellect was born in your ancestors. Instinct may not be greater than reason, but it's a million years older. Don't fight your instincts so hard. If they were not good the God of Creation would not have given them to you. To-day your mind was full of self-restraint that did not altogether restrain. You couldn't forget yourself. You couldn't FEEL only, as Bo did. You couldn't be true to your real nature."

"I don't agree with you," replied Helen, quickly. "I don't have to be an Indian to be true to myself."

"Why, yes you do," said Dale.

"But I couldn't be an Indian," declared Helen, spiritedly. "I couldn't FEEL only, as you say Bo did. I couldn't go back in the scale, as you hint. What would all my education amount to—though goodness knows it's little enough—if I had no control over primitive feelings that happened to be born in me?"

"You'll have little or no control over them when the right time comes," replied Dale. "Your sheltered life an' education have led you away from natural instincts. But they're in you an' you'll learn the proof of that out here."

"No. Not if I lived a hundred years in the West," asserted Helen.

"But, child, do you know what you're talkin' about?"

Here Bo let out a blissful peal of laughter.

"Mr. Dale!" exclaimed Helen, almost affronted. She was stirred. "I know MYSELF, at least."

"But you do not. You've no idea of yourself. You've education, yes, but not in nature an' life. An' after all, they are the real things. Answer me, now—honestly, will you?"

"Certainly, if I can. Some of your questions are hard to answer."

"Have you ever been starved?" he asked.

"No," replied Helen.

"Have you ever been lost away from home?"

"No."

"Have you ever faced death—real stark an' naked death, close an' terrible?"

"No, indeed."

"Have you ever wanted to kill any one with your bare hands?"

"Oh, Mr. Dale, you—you amaze me. No!... No!"

"I reckon I know your answer to my last question, but I'll ask it, anyhow.... Have you ever been so madly in love with a man that you could not live without him?"

Bo fell off her seat with a high, trilling laugh. "Oh, you two are great!"

"Thank Heaven, I haven't been," replied Helen, shortly.

"Then you don't know anythin' about life," declared Dale, with finality.

Helen was not to be put down by that, dubious and troubled as it made her.

"Have you experienced all those things?" she queried, stubbornly.

"All but the last one. Love never came my way. How could it? I live alone. I seldom go to the villages where there are girls. No girl would ever care for me. I have nothin'.... But, all the same, I understand love a little, just by comparison with strong feelin's I've lived."

Helen watched the hunter and marveled at his simplicity. His sad and penetrating gaze was on the fire, as if in its white heart to read the secret denied him. He had said that no girl would ever love him. She imagined he might know considerably less about the nature of girls than of the forest.

"To come back to myself," said Helen, wanting to continue the argument. "You declared I didn't know myself. That I would have no self-control. I will!"

"I meant the big things of life," he said, patiently.

"What things?"

"I told you. By askin' what had never happened to you I learned what will happen."

"Those experiences to come to ME!" breathed Helen, incredulously. "Never!"

"Sister Nell, they sure will—particularly the last-named one—the mad love," chimed in Bo, mischievously, yet believingly.

Neither Dale nor Helen appeared to hear her interruption.

"Let me put it simpler," began Dale, evidently racking his brain for analogy. His perplexity appeared painful to him, because he had a great faith, a great conviction that he could not make clear. "Here I am, the natural physical man, livin' in the wilds. An' here you come, the complex, intellectual woman. Remember, for my argument's sake, that you're here. An' suppose circumstances forced you to stay here. You'd fight the elements with me an' work with me to sustain life. There must be a great change in either you or me, accordin' to the other's influence. An' can't you see that change must come in you, not because of anythin' superior in me—I'm really inferior to you—but because of our environment? You'd lose your complexity. An' in years to come you'd be a natural physical woman, because you'd live through an' by the physical."

"Oh dear, will not education be of help to the Western woman?" queried Helen, almost in despair.

"Sure it will," answered Dale, promptly. "What the West needs is women who can raise an' teach children. But you don't understand me. You don't get under your skin. I reckon I can't make you see my argument as I feel it. You take my word for this, though. Sooner or later you WILL wake up an' forget yourself. Remember."

"Nell, I'll bet you do, too," said Bo, seriously for her. "It may seem strange to you, but I understand Dale. I feel what he means. It's a sort of shock. Nell, we're not what we seem. We're not what we fondly imagine we are. We've lived too long with people—too far away from the earth. You know the Bible says something like this: 'Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.' Where DO we come from?"



CHAPTER XII

Days passed.

Every morning Helen awoke with a wondering question as to what this day would bring forth, especially with regard to possible news from her uncle. It must come sometime and she was anxious for it. Something about this simple, wild camp life had begun to grip her. She found herself shirking daily attention to the clothes she had brought West. They needed it, but she had begun to see how superficial they really were. On the other hand, camp-fire tasks had come to be a pleasure. She had learned a great deal more about them than had Bo. Worry and dread were always impinging upon the fringe of her thoughts—always vaguely present, though seldom annoying. They were like shadows in dreams. She wanted to get to her uncle's ranch, to take up the duties of her new life. But she was not prepared to believe she would not regret this wild experience. She must get away from that in order to see it clearly, and she began to have doubts of herself.

Meanwhile the active and restful outdoor life went on. Bo leaned more and more toward utter reconciliation to it. Her eyes had a wonderful flash, like blue lightning; her cheeks were gold and brown; her hands tanned dark as an Indian's.

She could vault upon the gray mustang, or, for that matter, clear over his back. She learned to shoot a rifle accurately enough to win Dale's praise, and vowed she would like to draw a bead upon a grizzly bear or upon Snake Anson.

"Bo, if you met that grizzly Dale said has been prowling round camp lately you'd run right up a tree," declared Helen, one morning, when Bo seemed particularly boastful.

"Don't fool yourself," retorted Bo.

"But I've seen you run from a mouse!"

"Sister, couldn't I be afraid of a mouse and not a bear?"

"I don't see how."

"Well, bears, lions, outlaws, and other wild beasts are to be met with here in the West, and my mind's made up," said Bo, in slow-nodding deliberation.

They argued as they had always argued, Helen for reason and common sense and restraint, Bo on the principle that if she must fight it was better to get in the first blow.

The morning on which this argument took place Dale was a long time in catching the horses. When he did come in he shook his head seriously.

"Some varmint's been chasin' the horses," he said, as he reached for his saddle. "Did you hear them snortin' an' runnin' last night?"

Neither of the girls had been awakened.

"I missed one of the colts," went on Dale, "an' I'm goin' to ride across the park."

Dale's movements were quick and stern. It was significant that he chose his heavier rifle, and, mounting, with a sharp call to Pedro, he rode off without another word to the girls.

Bo watched him for a moment and then began to saddle the mustang.

"You won't follow him?" asked Helen, quickly.

"I sure will," replied Bo. "He didn't forbid it."

"But he certainly did not want us."

"He might not want you, but I'll bet he wouldn't object to me, whatever's up," said Bo, shortly.

"Oh! So you think—" exclaimed Helen, keenly hurt. She bit her tongue to keep back a hot reply. And it was certain that a bursting gush of anger flooded over her. Was she, then, such a coward? Did Dale think this slip of a sister, so wild and wilful, was a stronger woman than she? A moment's silent strife convinced her that no doubt he thought so and no doubt he was right. Then the anger centered upon herself, and Helen neither understood nor trusted herself.

The outcome proved an uncontrollable impulse. Helen began to saddle her horse. She had the task half accomplished when Bo's call made her look up.

"Listen!"

Helen heard a ringing, wild bay of the hound.

"That's Pedro," she said, with a thrill.

"Sure. He's running. We never heard him bay like that before."

"Where's Dale?"

"He rode out of sight across there," replied Bo, pointing. "And Pedro's running toward us along that slope. He must be a mile—two miles from Dale."

"But Dale will follow."

"Sure. But he'd need wings to get near that hound now. Pedro couldn't have gone across there with him... just listen."

The wild note of the hound manifestly stirred Bo to irrepressible action. Snatching up Dale's lighter rifle, she shoved it into her saddle-sheath, and, leaping on the mustang, she ran him over brush and brook, straight down the park toward the place Pedro was climbing. For an instant Helen stood amazed beyond speech. When Bo sailed over a big log, like a steeple-chaser, then Helen answered to further unconsidered impulse by frantically getting her saddle fastened. Without coat or hat she mounted. The nervous horse bolted almost before she got into the saddle. A strange, trenchant trembling coursed through all her veins. She wanted to scream for Bo to wait. Bo was out of sight, but the deep, muddy tracks in wet places and the path through the long grass afforded Helen an easy trail to follow. In fact, her horse needed no guiding. He ran in and out of the straggling spruces along the edge of the park, and suddenly wheeled around a corner of trees to come upon the gray mustang standing still. Bo was looking up and listening.

"There he is!" cried Bo, as the hound bayed ringingly, closer to them this time, and she spurred away.

Helen's horse followed without urging. He was excited. His ears were up. Something was in the wind. Helen had never ridden along this broken end of the park, and Bo was not easy to keep up with. She led across bogs, brooks, swales, rocky little ridges, through stretches of timber and groves of aspen so thick Helen could scarcely squeeze through. Then Bo came out into a large open offshoot of the park, right under the mountain slope, and here she sat, her horse watching and listening. Helen rode up to her, imagining once that she had heard the hound.

"Look! Look!" Bo's scream made her mustang stand almost straight up.

Helen gazed up to see a big brown bear with a frosted coat go lumbering across an opening on the slope.

"It's a grizzly! He'll kill Pedro! Oh, where is Dale!" cried Bo, with intense excitement.

"Bo! That bear is running down! We—we must get—out of his road," panted Helen, in breathless alarm.

"Dale hasn't had time to be close.... Oh, I wish he'd come! I don't know what to do."

"Ride back. At least wait for him."

Just then Pedro spoke differently, in savage barks, and following that came a loud growl and crashings in the brush. These sounds appeared to be not far up the slope.

"Nell! Do you hear? Pedro's fighting the bear," burst out Bo. Her face paled, her eyes flashed like blue steel. "The bear 'll kill him!"

"Oh, that would be dreadful!" replied Helen, in distress. "But what on earth can we do?"

"HEL-LO, DALE!" called Bo, at the highest pitch of her piercing voice.

No answer came. A heavy crash of brush, a rolling of stones, another growl from the slope told Helen that the hound had brought the bear to bay.

"Nell, I'm going up," said Bo, deliberately.

"No-no! Are you mad?" returned Helen.

"The bear will kill Pedro."

"He might kill you."

"You ride that way and yell for Dale," rejoined Bo.

"What will—you do?" gasped Helen.

"I'll shoot at the bear—scare him off. If he chases me he can't catch me coming downhill. Dale said that."

"You're crazy!" cried Helen, as Bo looked up the slope, searching for open ground. Then she pulled the rifle from its sheath.

But Bo did not hear or did not care. She spurred the mustang, and he, wild to run, flung grass and dirt from his heels. What Helen would have done then she never knew, but the fact was that her horse bolted after the mustang. In an instant, seemingly, Bo had disappeared in the gold and green of the forest slope. Helen's mount climbed on a run, snorting and heaving, through aspens, brush, and timber, to come out into a narrow, long opening extending lengthwise up the slope.

A sudden prolonged crash ahead alarmed Helen and halted her horse. She saw a shaking of aspens. Then a huge brown beast leaped as a cat out of the woods. It was a bear of enormous size. Helen's heart stopped—her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. The bear turned. His mouth was open, red and dripping. He looked shaggy, gray. He let out a terrible bawl. Helen's every muscle froze stiff. Her horse plunged high and sidewise, wheeling almost in the air, neighing his terror. Like a stone she dropped from the saddle. She did not see the horse break into the woods, but she heard him. Her gaze never left the bear even while she was falling, and it seemed she alighted in an upright position with her back against a bush. It upheld her. The bear wagged his huge head from side to side. Then, as the hound barked close at hand, he turned to run heavily uphill and out of the opening.

The instant of his disappearance was one of collapse for Helen. Frozen with horror, she had been unable to move or feel or think. All at once she was a quivering mass of cold, helpless flesh, wet with perspiration, sick with a shuddering, retching, internal convulsion, her mind liberated from paralyzing shock. The moment was as horrible as that in which the bear had bawled his frightful rage. A stark, icy, black emotion seemed in possession of her. She could not lift a hand, yet all of her body appeared shaking. There was a fluttering, a strangling in her throat. The crushing weight that surrounded her heart eased before she recovered use of her limbs. Then, the naked and terrible thing was gone, like a nightmare giving way to consciousness. What blessed relief! Helen wildly gazed about her. The bear and hound were out of sight, and so was her horse. She stood up very dizzy and weak. Thought of Bo then seemed to revive her, to shock different life and feeling throughout all her cold extremities. She listened.

She heard a thudding of hoofs down the slope, then Dale's clear, strong call. She answered. It appeared long before he burst out of the woods, riding hard and leading her horse. In that time she recovered fully, and when he reached her, to put a sudden halt upon the fiery Ranger, she caught the bridle he threw and swiftly mounted her horse. The feel of the saddle seemed different. Dale's piercing gray glance thrilled her strangely.

"You're white. Are you hurt?" he said.

"No. I was scared."

"But he threw you?"

"Yes, he certainly threw me."

"What happened?"

"We heard the hound and we rode along the timber. Then we saw the bear—a monster—white—coated—"

"I know. It's a grizzly. He killed the colt—your pet. Hurry now. What about Bo?"

"Pedro was fighting the bear. Bo said he'd be killed. She rode right up here. My horse followed. I couldn't have stopped him. But we lost Bo. Right there the bear came out. He roared. My horse threw me and ran off. Pedro's barking saved me—my life, I think. Oh! that was awful! Then the bear went up—there.... And you came."

"Bo's followin' the hound!" ejaculated Dale. And, lifting his hands to his mouth, he sent out a stentorian yell that rolled up the slope, rang against the cliffs, pealed and broke and died away. Then he waited, listening. From far up the slope came a faint, wild cry, high-pitched and sweet, to create strange echoes, floating away to die in the ravines.

"She's after him!" declared Dale, grimly.

"Bo's got your rifle," said Helen. "Oh, we must hurry."

"You go back," ordered Dale, wheeling his horse.

"No!" Helen felt that word leave her lips with the force of a bullet.

Dale spurred Ranger and took to the open slope. Helen kept at his heels until timber was reached. Here a steep trail led up. Dale dismounted.

"Horse tracks—bear tracks—dog tracks," he said, bending over. "We'll have to walk up here. It'll save our horses an' maybe time, too."

"Is Bo riding up there?" asked Helen, eying the steep ascent.

"She sure is." With that Dale started up, leading his horse. Helen followed. It was rough and hard work. She was lightly clad, yet soon she was hot, laboring, and her heart began to hurt. When Dale halted to rest Helen was just ready to drop. The baying of the hound, though infrequent, inspirited her. But presently that sound was lost. Dale said bear and hound had gone over the ridge and as soon as the top was gained he would hear them again.

"Look there," he said, presently, pointing to fresh tracks, larger than those made by Bo's mustang. "Elk tracks. We've scared a big bull an' he's right ahead of us. Look sharp an' you'll see him."

Helen never climbed so hard and fast before, and when they reached the ridge-top she was all tuckered out. It was all she could do to get on her horse. Dale led along the crest of this wooded ridge toward the western end, which was considerably higher. In places open rocky ground split the green timber. Dale pointed toward a promontory.

Helen saw a splendid elk silhouetted against the sky. He was a light gray over all his hindquarters, with shoulders and head black. His ponderous, wide-spread antlers towered over him, adding to the wildness of his magnificent poise as he stood there, looking down into the valley, no doubt listening for the bay of the hound. When he heard Dale's horse he gave one bound, gracefully and wonderfully carrying his antlers, to disappear in the green.

Again on a bare patch of ground Dale pointed down. Helen saw big round tracks, toeing in a little, that gave her a chill. She knew these were grizzly tracks.

Hard riding was not possible on this ridge crest, a fact that gave Helen time to catch her breath. At length, coming out upon the very summit of the mountain, Dale heard the hound. Helen's eyes feasted afar upon a wild scene of rugged grandeur, before she looked down on this western slope at her feet to see bare, gradual descent, leading down to sparsely wooded bench and on to deep-green canuon.

"Ride hard now!" yelled Dale. "I see Bo, an' I'll have to ride to catch her."

Dale spurred down the slope. Helen rode in his tracks and, though she plunged so fast that she felt her hair stand up with fright, she saw him draw away from her. Sometimes her horse slid on his haunches for a few yards, and at these hazardous moments she got her feet out of the stirrups so as to fall free from him if he went down. She let him choose the way, while she gazed ahead at Dale, and then farther on, in the hope of seeing Bo. At last she was rewarded. Far Down the wooded bench she saw a gray flash of the little mustang and a bright glint of Bo's hair. Her heart swelled. Dale would soon overhaul Bo and come between her and peril. And on the instant, though Helen was unconscious of it then, a remarkable change came over her spirit. Fear left her. And a hot, exalting, incomprehensible something took possession of her.

She let the horse run, and when he had plunged to the foot of that slope of soft ground he broke out across the open bench at a pace that made the wind bite Helen's cheeks and roar in her ears. She lost sight of Dale. It gave her a strange, grim exultance. She bent her eager gaze to find the tracks of his horse, and she found them. Also she made out the tracks of Bo's mustang and the bear and the hound. Her horse, scenting game, perhaps, and afraid to be left alone, settled into a fleet and powerful stride, sailing over logs and brush. That open bench had looked short, but it was long, and Helen rode down the gradual descent at breakneck speed. She would not be left behind. She had awakened to a heedlessness of risk. Something burned steadily within her. A grim, hard anger of joy! When she saw, far down another open, gradual descent, that Dale had passed Bo and that Bo was riding the little mustang as never before, then Helen flamed with a madness to catch her, to beat her in that wonderful chase, to show her and Dale what there really was in the depths of Helen Rayner.

Her ambition was to be short-lived, she divined from the lay of the land ahead, but the ride she lived then for a flying mile was something that would always blanch her cheeks and prick her skin in remembrance.

The open ground was only too short. That thundering pace soon brought Helen's horse to the timber. Here it took all her strength to check his headlong flight over deadfalls and between small jack-pines. Helen lost sight of Bo, and she realized it would take all her wits to keep from getting lost. She had to follow the trail, and in some places it was hard to see from horseback.

Besides, her horse was mettlesome, thoroughly aroused, and he wanted a free rein and his own way. Helen tried that, only to lose the trail and to get sundry knocks from trees and branches. She could not hear the hound, nor Dale. The pines were small, close together, and tough. They were hard to bend. Helen hurt her hands, scratched her face, barked her knees. The horse formed a habit suddenly of deciding to go the way he liked instead of the way Helen guided him, and when he plunged between saplings too close to permit easy passage it was exceedingly hard on her. That did not make any difference to Helen. Once worked into a frenzy, her blood stayed at high pressure. She did not argue with herself about a need of desperate hurry. Even a blow on the head that nearly blinded her did not in the least retard her. The horse could hardly be held, and not at all in the few open places.

At last Helen reached another slope. Coming out upon canuon rim, she heard Dale's clear call, far down, and Bo's answering peal, high and piercing, with its note of exultant wildness. Helen also heard the bear and the hound fighting at the bottom of this canuon.

Here Helen again missed the tracks made by Dale and Bo. The descent looked impassable. She rode back along the rim, then forward. Finally she found where the ground had been plowed deep by hoofs, down over little banks. Helen's horse balked at these jumps. When she goaded him over them she went forward on his neck. It seemed like riding straight downhill. The mad spirit of that chase grew more stingingly keen to Helen as the obstacles grew. Then, once more the bay of the hound and the bawl of the bear made a demon of her horse. He snorted a shrill defiance. He plunged with fore hoofs in the air. He slid and broke a way down the steep, soft banks, through the thick brush and thick clusters of saplings, sending loose rocks and earth into avalanches ahead of him. He fell over one bank, but a thicket of aspens upheld him so that he rebounded and gained his feet. The sounds of fight ceased, but Dale's thrilling call floated up on the pine-scented air.

Before Helen realized it she was at the foot of the slope, in a narrow canuon-bed, full of rocks and trees, with a soft roar of running water filling her ears. Tracks were everywhere, and when she came to the first open place she saw where the grizzly had plunged off a sandy bar into the water. Here he had fought Pedro. Signs of that battle were easy to read. Helen saw where his huge tracks, still wet, led up the opposite sandy bank.

Then down-stream Helen did some more reckless and splendid riding. On level ground the horse was great. Once he leaped clear across the brook. Every plunge, every turn Helen expected to come upon Dale and Bo facing the bear. The canuon narrowed, the stream-bed deepened. She had to slow down to get through the trees and rocks. Quite unexpectedly she rode pell-mell upon Dale and Bo and the panting Pedro. Her horse plunged to a halt, answering the shrill neighs of the other horses.

Dale gazed in admiring amazement at Helen.

"Say, did you meet the bear again?" he queried, blankly.

"No. Didn't—you—kill him?" panted Helen, slowly sagging in her saddle.

"He got away in the rocks. Rough country down here."

Helen slid off her horse and fell with a little panting cry of relief. She saw that she was bloody, dirty, disheveled, and wringing wet with perspiration. Her riding habit was torn into tatters. Every muscle seemed to burn and sting, and all her bones seemed broken. But it was worth all this to meet Dale's penetrating glance, to see Bo's utter, incredulous astonishment.

"Nell—Rayner!" gasped Bo.

"If—my horse 'd been—any good—in the woods," panted Helen, "I'd not lost—so much time—riding down this mountain. And I'd caught you—beat you."

"Girl, did you RIDE down this last slope?" queried Dale.

"I sure did," replied Helen, smiling.

"We walked every step of the way, and was lucky to get down at that," responded Dale, gravely. "No horse should have been ridden down there. Why, he must have slid down."

"We slid—yes. But I stayed on him."

Bo's incredulity changed to wondering, speechless admiration. And Dale's rare smile changed his gravity.

"I'm sorry. It was rash of me. I thought you'd go back.... But all's well that ends well.... Helen, did you wake up to-day?"

She dropped her eyes, not caring to meet the questioning gaze upon her.

"Maybe—a little," she replied, and she covered her face with her hands. Remembrance of his questions—of his assurance that she did not know the real meaning of life—of her stubborn antagonism—made her somehow ashamed. But it was not for long.

"The chase was great," she said. "I did not know myself. You were right."

"In how many ways did you find me right?" he asked.

"I think all—but one," she replied, with a laugh and a shudder. "I'm near starved NOW—I was so furious at Bo that I could have choked her. I faced that horrible brute.... Oh, I know what it is to fear death!... I was lost twice on the ride—absolutely lost. That's all."

Bo found her tongue. "The last thing was for you to fall wildly in love, wasn't it?"

"According to Dale, I must add that to my new experiences of to-day—before I can know real life," replied Helen, demurely.

The hunter turned away. "Let us go," he said, soberly.



CHAPTER XIII

After more days of riding the grassy level of that wonderfully gold and purple park, and dreamily listening by day to the ever-low and ever-changing murmur of the waterfall, and by night to the wild, lonely mourn of a hunting wolf, and climbing to the dizzy heights where the wind stung sweetly, Helen Rayner lost track of time and forgot her peril.

Roy Beeman did not return. If occasionally Dale mentioned Roy and his quest, the girls had little to say beyond a recurrent anxiety for the old uncle, and then they forgot again. Paradise Park, lived in a little while at that season of the year, would have claimed any one, and ever afterward haunted sleeping or waking dreams.

Bo gave up to the wild life, to the horses and rides, to the many pets, and especially to the cougar, Tom. The big cat followed her everywhere, played with her, rolling and pawing, kitten-like, and he would lay his massive head in her lap to purr his content. Bo had little fear of anything, and here in the wilds she soon lost that.

Another of Dale's pets was a half-grown black bear named Muss. He was abnormally jealous of little Bud and he had a well-developed hatred of Tom, otherwise he was a very good-tempered bear, and enjoyed Dale's impartial regard. Tom, however, chased Muss out of camp whenever Dale's back was turned, and sometimes Muss stayed away, shifting for himself. With the advent of Bo, who spent a good deal of time on the animals, Muss manifestly found the camp more attractive. Whereupon, Dale predicted trouble between Tom and Muss.

Bo liked nothing better than a rough-and-tumble frolic with the black bear. Muss was not very big nor very heavy, and in a wrestling bout with the strong and wiry girl he sometimes came out second best. It spoke well of him that he seemed to be careful not to hurt Bo. He never bit or scratched, though he sometimes gave her sounding slaps with his paws. Whereupon, Bo would clench her gauntleted fists and sail into him in earnest.

One afternoon before the early supper they always had, Dale and Helen were watching Bo teasing the bear. She was in her most vixenish mood, full of life and fight. Tom lay his long length on the grass, watching with narrow, gleaming eyes.

When Bo and Muss locked in an embrace and went down to roll over and over, Dale called Helen's attention to the cougar.

"Tom's jealous. It's strange how animals are like people. Pretty soon I'll have to corral Muss, or there'll be a fight."

Helen could not see anything wrong with Tom except that he did not look playful.

During supper-time both bear and cougar disappeared, though this was not remarked until afterward. Dale whistled and called, but the rival pets did not return. Next morning Tom was there, curled up snugly at the foot of Bo's bed, and when she arose he followed her around as usual. But Muss did not return.

The circumstance made Dale anxious. He left camp, taking Tom with him, and upon returning stated that he had followed Muss's track as far as possible, and then had tried to put Tom on the trail, but the cougar would not or could not follow it. Dale said Tom never liked a bear trail, anyway, cougars and bears being common enemies. So, whether by accident or design, Bo lost one of her playmates.

The hunter searched some of the slopes next day and even went up on one of the mountains. He did not discover any sign of Muss, but he said he had found something else.

"Bo you girls want some more real excitement?" he asked.

Helen smiled her acquiescence and Bo replied with one of her forceful speeches.

"Don't mind bein' good an' scared?" he went on.

"You can't scare me," bantered Bo. But Helen looked doubtful.

"Up in one of the parks I ran across one of my horses—a lame bay you haven't seen. Well, he had been killed by that old silvertip. The one we chased. Hadn't been dead over an hour. Blood was still runnin' an' only a little meat eaten. That bear heard me or saw me an' made off into the woods. But he'll come back to-night. I'm goin' up there, lay for him, an' kill him this time. Reckon you'd better go, because I don't want to leave you here alone at night."

"Are you going to take Tom?" asked Bo.

"No. The bear might get his scent. An', besides, Tom ain't reliable on bears. I'll leave Pedro home, too."

When they had hurried supper, and Dale had gotten in the horses, the sun had set and the valley was shadowing low down, while the ramparts were still golden. The long zigzag trail Dale followed up the slope took nearly an hour to climb, so that when that was surmounted and he led out of the woods twilight had fallen. A rolling park extended as far as Helen could see, bordered by forest that in places sent out straggling stretches of trees. Here and there, like islands, were isolated patches of timber.

At ten thousand feet elevation the twilight of this clear and cold night was a rich and rare atmospheric effect. It looked as if it was seen through perfectly clear smoked glass. Objects were singularly visible, even at long range, and seemed magnified. In the west, where the afterglow of sunset lingered over the dark, ragged, spruce-speared horizon-line, there was such a transparent golden line melting into vivid star-fired blue that Helen could only gaze and gaze in wondering admiration.

Dale spurred his horse into a lope and the spirited mounts of the girls kept up with him. The ground was rough, with tufts of grass growing close together, yet the horses did not stumble. Their action and snorting betrayed excitement. Dale led around several clumps of timber, up a long grassy swale, and then straight westward across an open flat toward where the dark-fringed forest-line raised itself wild and clear against the cold sky. The horses went swiftly, and the wind cut like a blade of ice. Helen could barely get her breath and she panted as if she had just climbed a laborsome hill. The stars began to blink out of the blue, and the gold paled somewhat, and yet twilight lingered. It seemed long across that flat, but really was short. Coming to a thin line of trees that led down over a slope to a deeper but still isolated patch of woods, Dale dismounted and tied his horse. When the girls got off he haltered their horses also.

"Stick close to me an' put your feet down easy," he whispered. How tall and dark he loomed in the fading light! Helen thrilled, as she had often of late, at the strange, potential force of the man. Stepping softly, without the least sound, Dale entered this straggly bit of woods, which appeared to have narrow byways and nooks. Then presently he came to the top of a well-wooded slope, dark as pitch, apparently. But as Helen followed she perceived the trees, and they were thin dwarf spruce, partly dead. The slope was soft and springy, easy to step upon without noise. Dale went so cautiously that Helen could not hear him, and sometimes in the gloom she could not see him. Then the chill thrills ran over her. Bo kept holding on to Helen, which fact hampered Helen as well as worked somewhat to disprove Bo's boast. At last level ground was reached. Helen made out a light-gray background crossed by black bars. Another glance showed this to be the dark tree-trunks against the open park.

Dale halted, and with a touch brought Helen to a straining pause. He was listening. It seemed wonderful to watch him bend his head and stand as silent and motionless as one of the dark trees.

"He's not there yet," Dale whispered, and he stepped forward very slowly. Helen and Bo began to come up against thin dead branches that were invisible and then cracked. Then Dale knelt down, seemed to melt into the ground.

"You'll have to crawl," he whispered.

How strange and thrilling that was for Helen, and hard work! The ground bore twigs and dead branches, which had to be carefully crawled over; and lying flat, as was necessary, it took prodigious effort to drag her body inch by inch. Like a huge snake, Dale wormed his way along.

Gradually the wood lightened. They were nearing the edge of the park. Helen now saw a strip of open with a high, black wall of spruce beyond. The afterglow flashed or changed, like a dimming northern light, and then failed. Dale crawled on farther to halt at length between two tree-trunks at the edge of the wood.

"Come up beside me," he whispered.

Helen crawled on, and presently Bo was beside her panting, with pale face and great, staring eyes, plain to be seen in the wan light.

"Moon's comin' up. We're just in time. The old grizzly's not there yet, but I see coyotes. Look."

Dale pointed across the open neck of park to a dim blurred patch standing apart some little distance from the black wall.

"That's the dead horse," whispered Dale. "An' if you watch close you can see the coyotes. They're gray an' they move.... Can't you hear them?"

Helen's excited ears, so full of throbs and imaginings, presently registered low snaps and snarls. Bo gave her arm a squeeze.

"I hear them. They're fighting. Oh, gee!" she panted, and drew a long, full breath of unutterable excitement.

"Keep quiet now an' watch an' listen," said the hunter.

Slowly the black, ragged forest-line seemed to grow blacker and lift; slowly the gray neck of park lightened under some invisible influence; slowly the stars paled and the sky filled over. Somewhere the moon was rising. And slowly that vague blurred patch grew a little clearer.

Through the tips of the spruce, now seen to be rather close at hand, shone a slender, silver crescent moon, darkening, hiding, shining again, climbing until its exquisite sickle-point topped the trees, and then, magically, it cleared them, radiant and cold. While the eastern black wall shaded still blacker, the park blanched and the border-line opposite began to stand out as trees.

"Look! Look!" cried Bo, very low and fearfully, as she pointed.

"Not so loud," whispered Dale.

"But I see something!"

"Keep quiet," he admonished.

Helen, in the direction Bo pointed, could not see anything but moon-blanched bare ground, rising close at hand to a little ridge.

"Lie still," whispered Dale. "I'm goin' to crawl around to get a look from another angle. I'll be right back."

He moved noiselessly backward and disappeared. With him gone, Helen felt a palpitating of her heart and a prickling of her skin.

"Oh, my! Nell! Look!" whispered Bo, in fright. "I know I saw something."

On top of the little ridge a round object moved slowly, getting farther out into the light. Helen watched with suspended breath. It moved out to be silhouetted against the sky—apparently a huge, round, bristling animal, frosty in color. One instant it seemed huge—the next small—then close at hand—and far away. It swerved to come directly toward them. Suddenly Helen realized that the beast was not a dozen yards distant. She was just beginning a new experience—a real and horrifying terror in which her blood curdled, her heart gave a tremendous leap and then stood still, and she wanted to fly, but was rooted to the spot—when Dale returned to her side.

"That's a pesky porcupine," he whispered. "Almost crawled over you. He sure would have stuck you full of quills."

Whereupon he threw a stick at the animal. It bounced straight up to turn round with startling quickness, and it gave forth a rattling sound; then it crawled out of sight.

"Por—cu—pine!" whispered Bo, pantingly. "It might—as well—have been—an elephant!"

Helen uttered a long, eloquent sigh. She would not have cared to describe her emotions at sight of a harmless hedgehog.

"Listen!" warned Dale, very low. His big hand closed over Helen's gauntleted one. "There you have—the real cry of the wild."

Sharp and cold on the night air split the cry of a wolf, distant, yet wonderfully distinct. How wild and mournful and hungry! How marvelously pure! Helen shuddered through all her frame with the thrill of its music, the wild and unutterable and deep emotions it aroused. Again a sound of this forest had pierced beyond her life, back into the dim remote past from which she had come.

The cry was not repeated. The coyotes were still. And silence fell, absolutely unbroken.

Dale nudged Helen, and then reached over to give Bo a tap. He was peering keenly ahead and his strained intensity could be felt. Helen looked with all her might and she saw the shadowy gray forms of the coyotes skulk away, out of the moonlight into the gloom of the woods, where they disappeared. Not only Dale's intensity, but the very silence, the wildness of the moment and place, seemed fraught with wonderful potency. Bo must have felt it, too, for she was trembling all over, and holding tightly to Helen, and breathing quick and fast.

"A-huh!" muttered Dale, under his breath.

Helen caught the relief and certainty in his exclamation, and she divined, then, something of what the moment must have been to a hunter.

Then her roving, alert glance was arrested by a looming gray shadow coming out of the forest. It moved, but surely that huge thing could not be a bear. It passed out of gloom into silver moonlight. Helen's heart bounded. For it was a great frosty-coated bear lumbering along toward the dead horse. Instinctively Helen's hand sought the arm of the hunter. It felt like iron under a rippling surface. The touch eased away the oppression over her lungs, the tightness of her throat. What must have been fear left her, and only a powerful excitement remained. A sharp expulsion of breath from Bo and a violent jerk of her frame were signs that she had sighted the grizzly.

In the moonlight he looked of immense size, and that wild park with the gloomy blackness of forest furnished a fit setting for him. Helen's quick mind, so taken up with emotion, still had a thought for the wonder and the meaning of that scene. She wanted the bear killed, yet that seemed a pity.

He had a wagging, rolling, slow walk which took several moments to reach his quarry. When at length he reached it he walked around with sniffs plainly heard and then a cross growl. Evidently he had discovered that his meal had been messed over. As a whole the big bear could be seen distinctly, but only in outline and color. The distance was perhaps two hundred yards. Then it looked as if he had begun to tug at the carcass. Indeed, he was dragging it, very slowly, but surely.

"Look at that!" whispered Dale. "If he ain't strong!... Reckon I'll have to stop him."

The grizzly, however, stopped of his own accord, just outside of the shadow-line of the forest. Then he hunched in a big frosty heap over his prey and began to tear and rend.

"Jess was a mighty good horse," muttered Dale, grimly; "too good to make a meal for a hog silvertip."

Then the hunter silently rose to a kneeling position, swinging the rifle in front of him. He glanced up into the low branches of the tree overhead.

"Girls, there's no tellin' what a grizzly will do. If I yell, you climb up in this tree, an' do it quick."

With that he leveled the rifle, resting his left elbow on his knee. The front end of the rifle, reaching out of the shade, shone silver in the moonlight. Man and weapon became still as stone. Helen held her breath. But Dale relaxed, lowering the barrel.

"Can't see the sights very well," he whispered, shaking his head. "Remember, now—if I yell you climb!"

Again he aimed and slowly grew rigid. Helen could not take her fascinated eyes off him. He knelt, bareheaded, and in the shadow she could make out the gleam of his clear-cut profile, stern and cold.

A streak of fire and a heavy report startled her. Then she heard the bullet hit. Shifting her glance, she saw the bear lurch with convulsive action, rearing on his hind legs. Loud clicking snaps must have been a clashing of his jaws in rage. But there was no other sound. Then again Dale's heavy gun boomed. Helen heard again that singular spatting thud of striking lead. The bear went down with a flop as if he had been dealt a terrific blow. But just as quickly he was up on all-fours and began to whirl with hoarse, savage bawls of agony and fury. His action quickly carried him out of the moonlight into the shadow, where he disappeared. There the bawls gave place to gnashing snarls, and crashings in the brush, and snapping of branches, as he made his way into the forest.

"Sure he's mad," said Dale, rising to his feet. "An' I reckon hard hit. But I won't follow him to-night."

Both the girls got up, and Helen found she was shaky on her feet and very cold.

"Oh-h, wasn't—it—won-wonder-ful!" cried Bo.

"Are you scared? Your teeth are chatterin'," queried Dale.

"I'm—cold."

"Well, it sure is cold, all right," he responded. "Now the fun's over, you'll feel it.... Nell, you're froze, too?"

Helen nodded. She was, indeed, as cold as she had ever been before. But that did not prevent a strange warmness along her veins and a quickened pulse, the cause of which she did not conjecture.

"Let's rustle," said Dale, and led the way out of the wood and skirted its edge around to the slope. There they climbed to the flat, and went through the straggling line of trees to where the horses were tethered.

Up here the wind began to blow, not hard through the forest, but still strong and steady out in the open, and bitterly cold. Dale helped Bo to mount, and then Helen.

"I'm—numb," she said. "I'll fall off—sure."

"No. You'll be warm in a jiffy," he replied, "because we'll ride some goin' back. Let Ranger pick the way an' you hang on."

With Ranger's first jump Helen's blood began to run. Out he shot, his lean, dark head beside Dale's horse. The wild park lay clear and bright in the moonlight, with strange, silvery radiance on the grass. The patches of timber, like spired black islands in a moon-blanched lake, seemed to harbor shadows, and places for bears to hide, ready to spring out. As Helen neared each little grove her pulses shook and her heart beat. Half a mile of rapid riding burned out the cold. And all seemed glorious—the sailing moon, white in a dark-blue sky, the white, passionless stars, so solemn, so far away, the beckoning fringe of forest-land at once mysterious and friendly, and the fleet horses, running with soft, rhythmic thuds over the grass, leaping the ditches and the hollows, making the bitter wind sting and cut. Coming up that park the ride had been long; going back was as short as it was thrilling. In Helen, experiences gathered realization slowly, and it was this swift ride, the horses neck and neck, and all the wildness and beauty, that completed the slow, insidious work of years. The tears of excitement froze on her cheeks and her heart heaved full. All that pertained to this night got into her blood. It was only to feel, to live now, but it could be understood and remembered forever afterward.

Dale's horse, a little in advance, sailed over a ditch. Ranger made a splendid leap, but he alighted among some grassy tufts and fell. Helen shot over his head. She struck lengthwise, her arms stretched, and slid hard to a shocking impact that stunned her.

Bo's scream rang in her ears; she felt the wet grass under her face and then the strong hands that lifted her. Dale loomed over her, bending down to look into her face; Bo was clutching her with frantic hands. And Helen could only gasp. Her breast seemed caved in. The need to breathe was torture.

"Nell!—you're not hurt. You fell light, like a feather. All grass here.... You can't be hurt!" said Dale, sharply.

His anxious voice penetrated beyond her hearing, and his strong hands went swiftly over her arms and shoulders, feeling for broken bones.

"Just had the wind knocked out of you," went on Dale. "It feels awful, but it's nothin'."

Helen got a little air, that was like hot pin-points in her lungs, and then a deeper breath, and then full, gasping respiration.

"I guess—I'm not hurt—not a bit," she choked out.

"You sure had a header. Never saw a prettier spill. Ranger doesn't do that often. I reckon we were travelin' too fast. But it was fun, don't you think?"

It was Bo who answered. "Oh, glorious!... But, gee! I was scared."

Dale still held Helen's hands. She released them while looking up at him. The moment was realization for her of what for days had been a vague, sweet uncertainty, becoming near and strange, disturbing and present. This accident had been a sudden, violent end to the wonderful ride. But its effect, the knowledge of what had got into her blood, would never change. And inseparable from it was this man of the forest.



CHAPTER XIV

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dale wheeled to see the girls peeping out.

"It's time you're up!" he called. "Your uncle Al is here."

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

"Hurry now, girls," called Dale.

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

"Wal, wal! You favor the Rayners," he was saying, "I remember your dad, an' a fine feller he was."

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

"Uncle, here comes Nell," said Bo, softly.

"Aw!" The old cattle-man breathed hard as he turned.

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

He held out his arms to receive her.

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

"Uncle Al!" murmured Helen. "I remember you—though I was only four."

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

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

"Howdy, Miss Helen? Howdy, Bo?" he said. "You all both look fine an' brown.... I reckon I was shore slow rustlin' your uncle Al up here. But I was figgerin' you'd like Milt's camp for a while."

"We sure did," replied Bo, archly.

"Aw!" breathed Auchincloss, heavily. "Lemme set down."

He drew the girls to the rustic seat Dale had built for them under the big pine.

"Oh, you must be tired! How—how are you?" asked Helen, anxiously.

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

"Uncle Al, you look strong and well to me," said Bo. "And young, too, and—"

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

In Helen's grave gaze his face changed swiftly—and all the serried years of toil and battle and privation showed, with something that was not age, nor resignation, yet as tragic as both.

"Wal, never mind him—now," he added, slowly, and the warmer light returned to his face. "Dale—come here."

The hunter stepped closer.

"I reckon I owe you more 'n I can ever pay," said Auchincloss, with an arm around each niece.

"No, Al, you don't owe me anythin'," returned Dale, thoughtfully, as he looked away.

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

"Thanks, Al," replied Dale, with his fleeting smile, and he met the proffered hand. "Now, will you be makin' camp here?"

"Wal, no. I'll rest a little, an' you can pack the girls' outfit—then we'll go. Sure you're goin' with us?"

"I'll call the girls to breakfast," replied Dale, and he moved away without answering Auchincloss's query.

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

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

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

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

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

"Jeff, throw the packs an' saddles fer a rest," was Al's order to his foreman.

"Nell, reckon you'll have fun bossin' thet outfit," chuckled Al. "None of 'em's got a wife. Lot of scalawags they are; no women would have them!"

"Uncle, I hope I'll never have to be their boss," replied Helen.

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

With that he turned to Bo, and, after studying her pretty face, he asked, in apparently severe tone, "Did you send a cowboy named Carmichael to ask me for a job?"

Bo looked quite startled.

"Carmichael! Why, Uncle, I never heard that name before," replied Bo, bewilderedly.

"A-huh! Reckoned the young rascal was lyin'," said Auchincloss. "But I liked the fellar's looks an' so let him stay."

Then the rancher turned to the group of lounging riders.

"Las Vegas, come here," he ordered, in a loud voice.

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

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

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

"Shore, boss, I can't help thet," drawled the cowboy. "It's good old Texas stock."

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

"Texas! You fellars from the Pan Handle are always hollerin' Texas. I never seen thet Texans had any one else beat—say from Missouri," returned Al, testily.

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

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

Whereupon Carmichael's easy manner vanished.

"Now, boss, shore my memory's pore," he said. "I only says—"

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

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

"Well, didn't you?" demanded Al.

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

"Yes, sir, I did," suddenly replied the cowboy.

"A-huh! All right, here's my niece. Now see thet she speaks the good word."

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

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

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

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

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

"He—he was the first person—out West—to speak kindly to us," she said, facing her uncle.

"Wal, thet's a pretty good word, but it ain't enough," responded Al.

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

"He—he looks as if he might ride a horse well," ventured Bo.

"Best hossman I ever seen," agreed Al, heartily.

"And—and shoot?" added Bo, hopefully.

"Bo, he packs thet gun low, like Jim Wilson an' all them Texas gun-fighters. Reckon thet ain't no good word."

"Then—I'll vouch for him," said Bo, with finality.

"Thet settles it." Auchincloss turned to the cowboy. "Las Vegas, you're a stranger to us. But you're welcome to a place in the outfit an' I hope you won't never disappoint us."

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

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

"Miss—Miss Rayner—I shore—am obliged," he stammered, presently.

"You're very welcome," she replied, softly. "I—I got on the next train," he added.

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

"What's your name?" suddenly she asked.

"Carmichael."

"I heard that. But didn't uncle call you Las Vegas?"

"Shore. But it wasn't my fault. Thet cow-punchin' outfit saddled it on me, right off. They Don't know no better. Shore I jest won't answer to thet handle.... Now—Miss Bo—my real name is Tom."

"I simply could not call you—any name but Las Vegas," replied Bo, very sweetly.

"But—beggin' your pardon—I—I don't like thet," blustered Carmichael.

"People often get called names—they don't like," she said, with deep intent.

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

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

"Dale, it's thet damn cougar!" he ejaculated.

"Sure, that's Tom."

"He ought to be corralled or chained. I've no use for cougars," protested Al.

"Tom is as tame an' safe as a kitten."

"A-huh! Wal, you tell thet to the girls if you like. But not me! I'm an old hoss, I am."

"Uncle Al, Tom sleeps curled up at the foot of my bed," said Bo.

"Aw—what?"

"Honest Injun," she responded. "Well, isn't it so?"

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

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

"Sometimes at night," replied Dale.

"Wal, excuse me. Hope you don't fetch the yaller rascal down to Pine."

"I won't."

"What'll you do with this menagerie?"

Dale regarded the rancher attentively. "Reckon, Al, I'll take care of them."

"But you're goin' down to my ranch."

"What for?"

Al scratched his head and gazed perplexedly at the hunter. "Wal, ain't it customary to visit friends?"

"Thanks, Al. Next time I ride down Pine way—in the spring, perhaps—I'll run over an' see how you are."

"Spring!" ejaculated Auchincloss. Then he shook his head sadly and a far-away look filmed his eyes. "Reckon you'd call some late."

"Al, you'll get well now. These, girls—now—they'll cure you. Reckon I never saw you look so good."

Auchincloss did not press his point farther at that time, but after the meal, when the other men came to see Dale's camp and pets, Helen's quick ears caught the renewal of the subject.

"I'm askin' you—will you come?" Auchincloss said, low and eagerly.

"No. I wouldn't fit in down there," replied Dale.

"Milt, talk sense. You can't go on forever huntin' bear an' tamin' cats," protested the old rancher.

"Why not?" asked the hunter, thoughtfully.

Auchincloss stood up and, shaking himself as if to ward off his testy temper, he put a hand on Dale's arm.

"One reason is you're needed in Pine."

"How? Who needs me?"

"I do. I'm playin' out fast. An' Beasley's my enemy. The ranch an' all I got will go to Nell. Thet ranch will have to be run by a man an' HELD by a man. Do you savvy? It's a big job. An' I'm offerin' to make you my foreman right now."

"Al, you sort of take my breath," replied Dale. "An' I'm sure grateful. But the fact is, even if I could handle the job, I—I don't believe I'd want to."

"Make yourself want to, then. Thet 'd soon come. You'd get interested. This country will develop. I seen thet years ago. The government is goin' to chase the Apaches out of here. Soon homesteaders will be flockin' in. Big future, Dale. You want to get in now. An'—"

Here Auchincloss hesitated, then spoke lower:

"An' take your chance with the girl!... I'll be on your side."

A slight vibrating start ran over Dale's stalwart form.

"Al—you're plumb dotty!" he exclaimed.

"Dotty! Me? Dotty!" ejaculated Auchincloss. Then he swore. "In a minit I'll tell you what you are."

"But, Al, that talk's so—so—like an old fool's."

"Huh! An' why so?"

"Because that—wonderful girl would never look at me," Dale replied, simply.

"I seen her lookin' already," declared Al, bluntly.

Dale shook his head as if arguing with the old rancher was hopeless.

"Never mind thet," went on Al. "Mebbe I am a dotty old fool—'specially for takin' a shine to you. But I say again—will you come down to Pine and be my foreman?"

"No," replied Dale.

"Milt, I've no son—an' I'm—afraid of Beasley." This was uttered in an agitated whisper.

"Al, you make me ashamed," said Dale, hoarsely. "I can't come. I've no nerve."

"You've no what?"

"Al, I don't know what's wrong with me. But I'm afraid I'd find out if I came down there."

"A-huh! It's the girl!"

"I don't know, but I'm afraid so. An' I won't come."

"Aw yes, you will—"

Helen rose with beating heart and tingling ears, and moved away out of hearing. She had listened too long to what had not been intended for her ears, yet she could not be sorry. She walked a few rods along the brook, out from under the pines, and, standing in the open edge of the park, she felt the beautiful scene still her agitation. The following moments, then, were the happiest she had spent in Paradise Park, and the profoundest of her whole life.

Presently her uncle called her.

"Nell, this here hunter wants to give you thet black hoss. An' I say you take him."

"Ranger deserves better care than I can give him," said Dale. "He runs free in the woods most of the time. I'd be obliged if she'd have him. An' the hound, Pedro, too."

Bo swept a saucy glance from Dale to her sister.

"Sure she'll have Ranger. Just offer him to ME!"

Dale stood there expectantly, holding a blanket in his hand, ready to saddle the horse. Carmichael walked around Ranger with that appraising eye so keen in cowboys.

"Las Vegas, do you know anything about horses?" asked Bo.

"Me! Wal, if you ever buy or trade a hoss you shore have me there," replied Carmichael.

"What do you think of Ranger?" went on Bo.

"Shore I'd buy him sudden, if I could."

"Mr. Las Vegas, you're too late," asserted Helen, as she advanced to lay a hand on the horse.

"Ranger is mine."

Dale smoothed out the blanket and, folding it, he threw it over the horse; and then with one powerful swing he set the saddle in place.

"Thank you very much for him," said Helen, softly.

"You're welcome, an' I'm sure glad," responded Dale, and then, after a few deft, strong pulls at the straps, he continued. "There, he's ready for you."

With that he laid an arm over the saddle, and faced Helen as she stood patting and smoothing Ranger. Helen, strong and calm now, in feminine possession of her secret and his, as well as her composure, looked frankly and steadily at Dale. He seemed composed, too, yet the bronze of his fine face was a trifle pale.

"But I can't thank you—I'll never be able to repay you—for your service to me and my sister," said Helen.

"I reckon you needn't try," Dale returned. "An' my service, as you call it, has been good for me."

"Are you going down to Pine with us?"

"No."

"But you will come soon?"

"Not very soon, I reckon," he replied, and averted his gaze.

"When?"

"Hardly before spring."

"Spring?... That is a long time. Won't you come to see me sooner than that?"

"If I can get down to Pine."

"You're the first friend I've made in the West," said Helen, earnestly.

"You'll make many more—an' I reckon soon forget him you called the man of the forest."

"I never forget any of my friends. And you've been the—the biggest friend I ever had."

"I'll be proud to remember."

"But will you remember—will you promise to come to Pine?"

"I reckon."

"Thank you. All's well, then.... My friend, goodby."

"Good-by," he said, clasping her hand. His glance was clear, warm, beautiful, yet it was sad.

Auchincloss's hearty voice broke the spell. Then Helen saw that the others were mounted. Bo had ridden up close; her face was earnest and happy and grieved all at once, as she bade good-by to Dale. The pack-burros were hobbling along toward the green slope. Helen was the last to mount, but Roy was the last to leave the hunter. Pedro came reluctantly.

It was a merry, singing train which climbed that brown odorous trail, under the dark spruces. Helen assuredly was happy, yet a pang abided in her breast.

She remembered that half-way up the slope there was a turn in the trail where it came out upon an open bluff. The time seemed long, but at last she got there. And she checked Ranger so as to have a moment's gaze down into the park.

It yawned there, a dark-green and bright-gold gulf, asleep under a westering sun, exquisite, wild, lonesome. Then she saw Dale standing in the open space between the pines and the spruces. He waved to her. And she returned the salute.

Roy caught up with her then and halted his horse. He waved his sombrero to Dale and let out a piercing yell that awoke the sleeping echoes, splitting strangely from cliff to cliff.

"Shore Milt never knowed what it was to be lonesome," said Roy, as if thinking aloud. "But he'll know now."

Ranger stepped out of his own accord and, turning off the ledge, entered the spruce forest. Helen lost sight of Paradise Park. For hours then she rode along a shady, fragrant trail, seeing the beauty of color and wildness, hearing the murmur and rush and roar of water, but all the while her mind revolved the sweet and momentous realization which had thrilled her—that the hunter, this strange man of the forest, so deeply versed in nature and so unfamiliar with emotion, aloof and simple and strong like the elements which had developed him, had fallen in love with her and did not know it.



CHAPTER XV

Dale stood with face and arm upraised, and he watched Helen ride off the ledge to disappear in the forest. That vast spruce slope seemed to have swallowed her. She was gone! Slowly Dale lowered his arm with gesture expressive of a strange finality, an eloquent despair, of which he was unconscious.

He turned to the park, to his camp, and the many duties of a hunter. The park did not seem the same, nor his home, nor his work.

"I reckon this feelin's natural," he soliloquized, resignedly, "but it's sure queer for me. That's what comes of makin' friends. Nell an' Bo, now, they made a difference, an' a difference I never knew before."

He calculated that this difference had been simply one of responsibility, and then the charm and liveliness of the companionship of girls, and finally friendship. These would pass now that the causes were removed.

Before he had worked an hour around camp he realized a change had come, but it was not the one anticipated. Always before he had put his mind on his tasks, whatever they might be; now he worked while his thoughts were strangely involved.

The little bear cub whined at his heels; the tame deer seemed to regard him with deep, questioning eyes, the big cougar padded softly here and there as if searching for something.

"You all miss them—now—I reckon," said Dale. "Well, they're gone an' you'll have to get along with me."

Some vague approach to irritation with his pets surprised him. Presently he grew both irritated and surprised with himself—a state of mind totally unfamiliar. Several times, as old habit brought momentary abstraction, he found himself suddenly looking around for Helen and Bo. And each time the shock grew stronger. They were gone, but their presence lingered. After his camp chores were completed he went over to pull down the lean-to which the girls had utilized as a tent. The spruce boughs had dried out brown and sear; the wind had blown the roof awry; the sides were leaning in. As there was now no further use for this little habitation, he might better pull it down. Dale did not acknowledge that his gaze had involuntarily wandered toward it many times. Therefore he strode over with the intention of destroying it.

For the first time since Roy and he had built the lean-to he stepped inside. Nothing was more certain than the fact that he experienced a strange sensation, perfectly incomprehensible to him. The blankets lay there on the spruce boughs, disarranged and thrown back by hurried hands, yet still holding something of round folds where the slender forms had nestled. A black scarf often worn by Bo lay covering the pillow of pine-needles; a red ribbon that Helen had worn on her hair hung from a twig. These articles were all that had been forgotten. Dale gazed at them attentively, then at the blankets, and all around the fragrant little shelter; and he stepped outside with an uncomfortable knowledge that he could not destroy the place where Helen and Bo had spent so many hours.

Whereupon, in studious mood, Dale took up his rifle and strode out to hunt. His winter supply of venison had not yet been laid in. Action suited his mood; he climbed far and passed by many a watching buck to slay which seemed murder; at last he jumped one that was wild and bounded away. This he shot, and set himself a Herculean task in packing the whole carcass back to camp. Burdened thus, he staggered under the trees, sweating freely, many times laboring for breath, aching with toil, until at last he had reached camp. There he slid the deer carcass off his shoulders, and, standing over it, he gazed down while his breast labored. It was one of the finest young bucks he had ever seen. But neither in stalking it, nor making a wonderful shot, nor in packing home a weight that would have burdened two men, nor in gazing down at his beautiful quarry, did Dale experience any of the old joy of the hunter.

"I'm a little off my feed," he mused, as he wiped sweat from his heated face. "Maybe a little dotty, as I called Al. But that'll pass."

Whatever his state, it did not pass. As of old, after a long day's hunt, he reclined beside the camp-fire and watched the golden sunset glows change on the ramparts; as of old he laid a hand on the soft, furry head of the pet cougar; as of old he watched the gold change to red and then to dark, and twilight fall like a blanket; as of old he listened to the dreamy, lulling murmur of the water fall. The old familiar beauty, wildness, silence, and loneliness were there, but the old content seemed strangely gone.

Soberly he confessed then that he missed the happy company of the girls. He did not distinguish Helen from Bo in his slow introspection. When he sought his bed he did not at once fall to sleep. Always, after a few moments of wakefulness, while the silence settled down or the wind moaned through the pines, he had fallen asleep. This night he found different. Though he was tired, sleep would not soon come. The wilderness, the mountains, the park, the camp—all seemed to have lost something. Even the darkness seemed empty. And when at length Dale fell asleep it was to be troubled by restless dreams.

Up with the keen-edged, steely-bright dawn, he went at the his tasks with the springy stride of the deer-stalker.

At the end of that strenuous day, which was singularly full of the old excitement and action and danger, and of new observations, he was bound to confess that no longer did the chase suffice for him.

Many times on the heights that day, with the wind keen in his face, and the vast green billows of spruce below him, he had found that he was gazing without seeing, halting without object, dreaming as he had never dreamed before.

Once, when a magnificent elk came out upon a rocky ridge and, whistling a challenge to invisible rivals, stood there a target to stir any hunter's pulse, Dale did not even raise his rifle. Into his ear just then rang Helen's voice: "Milt Dale, you are no Indian. Giving yourself to a hunter's wildlife is selfish. It is wrong. You love this lonely life, but it is not work. Work that does not help others is not a real man's work."

From that moment conscience tormented him. It was not what he loved, but what he ought to do, that counted in the sum of good achieved in the world. Old Al Auchincloss had been right. Dale was wasting strength and intelligence that should go to do his share in the development of the West. Now that he had reached maturity, if through his knowledge of nature's law he had come to see the meaning of the strife of men for existence, for place, for possession, and to hold them in contempt, that was no reason why he should keep himself aloof from them, from some work that was needed in an incomprehensible world.

Dale did not hate work, but he loved freedom. To be alone, to live with nature, to feel the elements, to labor and dream and idle and climb and sleep unhampered by duty, by worry, by restriction, by the petty interests of men—this had always been his ideal of living. Cowboys, riders, sheep-herders, farmers—these toiled on from one place and one job to another for the little money doled out to them. Nothing beautiful, nothing significant had ever existed in that for him. He had worked as a boy at every kind of range-work, and of all that humdrum waste of effort he had liked sawing wood best. Once he had quit a job of branding cattle because the smell of burning hide, the bawl of the terrified calf, had sickened him. If men were honest there would be no need to scar cattle. He had never in the least desired to own land and droves of stock, and make deals with ranchmen, deals advantageous to himself. Why should a man want to make a deal or trade a horse or do a piece of work to another man's disadvantage? Self-preservation was the first law of life. But as the plants and trees and birds and beasts interpreted that law, merciless and inevitable as they were, they had neither greed nor dishonesty. They lived by the grand rule of what was best for the greatest number.

But Dale's philosophy, cold and clear and inevitable, like nature itself, began to be pierced by the human appeal in Helen Rayner's words. What did she mean? Not that he should lose his love of the wilderness, but that he realize himself! Many chance words of that girl had depth. He was young, strong, intelligent, free from taint of disease or the fever of drink. He could do something for others. Who? If that mattered, there, for instance, was poor old Mrs. Cass, aged and lame now; there was Al Auchincloss, dying in his boots, afraid of enemies, and wistful for his blood and his property to receive the fruit of his labors; there were the two girls, Helen and Bo, new and strange to the West, about to be confronted by a big problem of ranch life and rival interests. Dale thought of still more people in the little village of Pine—of others who had failed, whose lives were hard, who could have been made happier by kindness and assistance.

What, then, was the duty of Milt Dale to himself? Because men preyed on one another and on the weak, should he turn his back upon a so-called civilization or should he grow like them? Clear as a bell came the answer that his duty was to do neither. And then he saw how the little village of Pine, as well as the whole world, needed men like him. He had gone to nature, to the forest, to the wilderness for his development; and all the judgments and efforts of his future would be a result of that education.

Thus Dale, lying in the darkness and silence of his lonely park, arrived at a conclusion that he divined was but the beginning of a struggle.

It took long introspection to determine the exact nature of that struggle, but at length it evolved into the paradox that Helen Rayner had opened his eyes to his duty as a man, that he accepted it, yet found a strange obstacle in the perplexing, tumultuous, sweet fear of ever going near her again.

Suddenly, then, all his thought revolved around the girl, and, thrown off his balance, he weltered in a wilderness of unfamiliar strange ideas.

When he awoke next day the fight was on in earnest. In his sleep his mind had been active. The idea that greeted him, beautiful as the sunrise, flashed in memory of Auchincloss's significant words, "Take your chance with the girl!"

The old rancher was in his dotage. He hinted of things beyond the range of possibility. That idea of a chance for Dale remained before his consciousness only an instant. Stars were unattainable; life could not be fathomed; the secret of nature did not abide alone on the earth—these theories were not any more impossible of proving than that Helen Rayner might be for him.

Nevertheless, her strange coming into his life had played havoc, the extent of which he had only begun to realize.

For a month he tramped through the forest. It was October, a still golden, fulfilling season of the year; and everywhere in the vast dark green a glorious blaze of oak and aspen made beautiful contrast. He carried his rifle, but he never used it. He would climb miles and go this way and that with no object in view. Yet his eye and ear had never been keener. Hours he would spend on a promontory, watching the distance, where the golden patches of aspen shone bright out of dark-green mountain slopes. He loved to fling himself down in an aspen-grove at the edge of a senaca, and there lie in that radiance like a veil of gold and purple and red, with the white tree-trunks striping the shade. Always, whether there were breeze or not, the aspen-leaves quivered, ceaselessly, wonderfully, like his pulses, beyond his control. Often he reclined against a mossy rock beside a mountain stream to listen, to watch, to feel all that was there, while his mind held a haunting, dark-eyed vision of a girl. On the lonely heights, like an eagle, he sat gazing down into Paradise Park, that was more and more beautiful, but would never again be the same, never fill him with content, never be all and all to him.