The Man of the Forest, Zane Grey [books to read for 13 year olds txt] 📗
- Author: Zane Grey
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He did Nell, though. She’s an awful tenderfoot,” replied Bo.
“He’s a splendid-looking dog,” said Helen, ignoring her
sister’s sally. “I love dogs. Will he make friends?”
“He’s shy an’ wild. You see, when I leave camp he won’t hang
around. He an’ Tom are jealous of each other. I had a pack
of hounds an’ lost all but Pedro on account of Tom. I think
you can make friends with Pedro. Try it.”
Whereupon Helen made overtures to Pedro, and not wholly in
vain. The dog was matured, of almost stern aloofness, and
manifestly not used to people. His deep, wine-dark eyes
seemed to search Helen’s soul. They were honest and wise,
with a strange sadness.
“He looks intelligent,” observed Helen, as she smoothed the
long, dark ears.
“That hound is nigh human,” responded Dale. “Come, an’ while
you eat I’ll tell you about Pedro.”
Dale had gotten the hound as a pup from a Mexican
sheep-herder who claimed he was part California bloodhound.
He grew up, becoming attached to Dale. In his younger days
he did not get along well with Dale’s other pets and Dale
gave him to a rancher down in the valley. Pedro was back in
Dale’s camp next day. From that day Dale began to care more
for the hound, but he did not want to keep him, for various
reasons, chief of which was the fact that Pedro was too fine
a dog to be left alone half the time to shift for himself.
That fall Dale had need to go to the farthest village,
Snowdrop, where he left Pedro with a friend. Then Dale rode
to Show Down and Pine, and the camp of the Beemans’ and with
them he trailed some wild horses for a hundred miles, over
into New Mexico. The snow was flying when Dale got back to
his camp in the mountains. And there was Pedro, gaunt and
worn, overjoyed to welcome him home. Roy Beeman visited Dale
that October and told that Dale’s friend in Snowdrop had not
been able to keep Pedro. He broke a chain and scaled a
ten-foot fence to escape. He trailed Dale to Show Down,
where one of Dale’s friends, recognizing the hound, caught
him, and meant to keep him until Dale’s return. But Pedro
refused to eat. It happened that a freighter was going out
to the Beeman camp, and Dale’s friend boxed Pedro up and put
him on the wagon. Pedro broke out of the box, returned to
Show Down, took up Dale’s trail to Pine, and then on to the
Beeman camp. That was as far as Roy could trace the
movements of the hound. But he believed, and so did Dale,
that Pedro had trailed them out on the wild-horse hunt. The
following spring Dale learned more from the herder of a
sheepman at whose camp he and the Beemans; had rested on the
way into New Mexico. It appeared that after Dale had left
this camp Pedro had arrived, and another Mexican herder had
stolen the hound. But Pedro got away.
“An’ he was here when I arrived,” concluded Dale, smiling.
“I never wanted to get rid of him after that. He’s turned
out to be the finest dog I ever knew. He knows what I say.
He can almost talk. An’ I swear he can cry. He does whenever
I start off without him.”
“How perfectly wonderful!” exclaimed Bo. “Aren’t animals
great? … But I love horses best.”
It seemed to Helen that Pedro understood they were talking
about him, for he looked ashamed, and swallowed hard, and
dropped his gaze. She knew something of the truth about the
love of dogs for their owners. This story of Dale’s,
however, was stranger than any she had ever heard.
Tom, the cougar, put in an appearance then, and there was
scarcely love in the tawny eyes he bent upon Pedro. But the
hound did not deign to notice him. Tom sidled up to Bo, who
sat on the farther side of the tarpaulin table-cloth, and
manifestly wanted part of her breakfast.
“Gee! I love the look of him,” she said. “But when he’s
close he makes my flesh creep.”
“Beasts are as queer as people,” observed Dale. “They take
likes an’ dislikes. I believe Tom has taken a shine to you
an’ Pedro begins to be interested in your sister. I can
tell.”
“Where’s Bud?” inquired Bo.
“He’s asleep or around somewhere. Now, soon as I get the
work done, what would you girls like to do?”
“Ride!” declared Bo, eagerly.
“Aren’t you sore an’ stiff?”
“I am that. But I don’t care. Besides, when I used to go out
to my uncle’s farm near Saint Joe I always found riding to
be a cure for aches.”
“Sure is, if you can stand it. An’ what will your sister
like to do?” returned Dale, turning to Helen.
“Oh, I’ll rest, and watch you folks — and dream,” replied
Helen.
“But after you’ve rested you must be active,” said Dale,
seriously. “You must do things. It doesn’t matter what, just
as long as you don’t sit idle.”
“Why?” queried Helen, in surprise. “Why not be idle here in
this beautiful, wild place? just to dream away the hours —
the days! I could do it.”
“But you mustn’t. It took me years to learn how bad that was
for me. An’ right now I would love nothin’ more than to
forget my work, my horses an’ pets — everythin’, an’ just
lay around, seein’ an’ feelin’.”
“Seeing and feeling? Yes, that must be what I mean. But why
— what is it? There are the beauty and color — the wild,
shaggy slopes — the gray cliffs — the singing wind — the
lulling water — the clouds — the sky. And the silence,
loneliness, sweetness of it all.”
“It’s a driftin’ back. What I love to do an’ yet fear most.
It’s what makes a lone hunter of a man. An’ it can grow so
strong that it binds a man to the wilds.”
“How strange!” murmured Helen. “But that could never bind
ME. Why, I must live and fulfil my mission, my work in the
civilized world.”
It seemed to Helen that Dale almost imperceptibly shrank at
her earnest words.
“The ways of Nature are strange,” he said. “I look at it
different. Nature’s just as keen to wean you back to a
savage state as you are to be civilized. An’ if Nature won,
you would carry out her design all the better.”
This hunter’s talk shocked Helen and yet stimulated her
mind.
“Me — a savage? Oh no!” she exclaimed. “But, if that were
possible, what would Nature’s design be?”
“You spoke of your mission in life,” he replied. “A woman’s
mission is to have children. The female of any species has
only one mission — to reproduce its kind. An’ Nature has
only one mission — toward greater strength, virility,
efficiency — absolute perfection, which is unattainable.”
“What of mental and spiritual development of man and woman?”
asked Helen.
“Both are direct obstacles to the design of Nature. Nature
is physical. To create for limitless endurance for eternal
life. That must be Nature’s inscrutable design. An’ why she
must fail.”
“But the soul!” whispered Helen.
“Ah! When you speak of the soul an’ I speak of life we mean
the same. You an’ I will have some talks while you’re here.
I must brush up my thoughts.”
“So must I, it seems,” said Helen, with a slow smile. She
had been rendered grave and thoughtful. “But I guess I’ll
risk dreaming under the pines.”
Bo had been watching them with her keen blue eyes.
“Nell, it’d take a thousand years to make a savage of you,”
she said. “But a week will do for me.”
“Bo, you were one before you left Saint Joe,” replied Helen.
“Don’t you remember that school-teacher Barnes who said you
were a wildcat and an Indian mixed? He spanked you with a
ruler.”
“Never! He missed me,” retorted Bo, with red in her cheeks.
“Nell, I wish you’d not tell things about me when I was a
kid.”
“That was only two years ago,” expostulated Helen, in mild
surprise.
“Suppose it was. I was a kid all right. I’ll bet you—” Bo
broke up abruptly, and, tossing her head, she gave Tom a pat
and then ran away around the corner of cliff wall.
Helen followed leisurely.
“Say, Nell,” said Bo, when Helen arrived at their little
green ledge-pole hut, “do you know that hunter fellow will
upset some of your theories?”
“Maybe. I’ll admit he amazes me — and affronts me, too, I’m
afraid,” replied Helen. “What surprises me is that in spite
of his evident lack of schooling he’s not raw or crude. He’s
elemental.”
“Sister dear, wake up. The man’s wonderful. You can learn
more from him than you ever learned in your life. So can I.
I always hated books, anyway.”
When, a little later, Dale approached carrying some bridles,
the hound Pedro trotted at his heels.
“I reckon you’d better ride the horse you had,” he said to
Bo.
“Whatever you say. But I hope you let me ride them all, by
and by.”
“Sure. I’ve a mustang out there you’ll like. But he pitches
a little,” he rejoined, and turned away toward the park. The
hound looked after him and then at Helen.
“Come, Pedro. Stay with me,” called Helen.
Dale, hearing her, motioned the hound back. Obediently Pedro
trotted to her, still shy and soberly watchful, as if not
sure of her intentions, but with something of friendliness
about him now. Helen found a soft, restful seat in the sun
facing the park, and there composed herself for what she
felt would be slow, sweet, idle hours. Pedro curled down
beside her. The tall form of Dale stalked across the park,
out toward the straggling horses. Again she saw a deer
grazing among them. How erect and motionless it stood
watching Dale! Presently it bounded away toward the edge of
the forest. Some of the horses whistled and ran, kicking
heels high in the air. The shrill whistles rang clear in the
stillness.
“Gee! Look at them go!” exclaimed Bo, gleefully, coming up
to where Helen sat. Bo threw herself down upon the fragrant
pine-needles and stretched herself languorously, like a lazy
kitten. There was something feline in her lithe, graceful
outline. She lay flat and looked up through the pines.
“Wouldn’t it be great, now,” she murmured, dreamily, half to
herself, “if that Las Vegas cowboy would happen somehow to
come, and then an earthquake would shut us up here in this
Paradise valley so we’d never get out?”
“Bo! What would mother say to such talk as that?” gasped
Helen.
“But, Nell, wouldn’t it be great?”
“It would be terrible.”
“Oh, there never was any romance in you, Nell Rayner,”
replied Bo. “That very thing has actually happened out here
in this wonderful country of wild places. You need not tell
me! Sure it’s happened. With the cliff-dwellers and the
Indians and then white people. Every place I look makes me
feel that. Nell, you’d have to see people in the moon
through a telescope before you’d believe that.”
“I’m practical and sensible, thank goodness!”
“But, for the sake of argument,” protested Bo, with flashing
eyes, “suppose it MIGHT happen. Just to please me, suppose
we DID get shut up here with Dale and that cowboy we saw
from the train. Shut in without any hope
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