The Man of the Forest, Zane Grey [books to read for 13 year olds txt] 📗

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

campfire, 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