The Man of the Forest, Zane Grey [manga ebook reader txt] 📗

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 of ever climbing out.... What would you do? Would you give up and pine away and die? Or would you fight for life and whatever joy it might mean?”

“Self-preservation is the first instinct,” replied Helen, surprised at a strange, deep thrill in the depths of her. “I'd fight for life, of course.”

“Yes. Well, really, when I think seriously I don't want anything like that to happen. But, just the same, if it DID happen I would glory in it.”

While they were talking Dale returned with the horses.

“Can you bridle an' saddle your own horse?” he asked.

“No. I'm ashamed to say I can't,” replied Bo.

“Time to learn then. Come on. Watch me first when I saddle mine.”

Bo was all eyes while Dale slipped off the bridle from his horse and then with slow, plain action readjusted it. Next he smoothed the back of the horse, shook out the blanket, and, folding it half over, he threw it in place, being careful to explain to Bo just the right position. He lifted his saddle in a certain way and put that in place, and then he tightened the cinches.

“Now you try,” he said.

According to Helen's judgment Bo might have been a Western girl all her days. But Dale shook his head and made her do it over.

“That was better. Of course, the saddle is too heavy for you to sling it up. You can learn that with a light one. Now put the bridle on again. Don't be afraid of your hands. He won't bite. Slip the bit in sideways.... There. Now let's see you mount.”

When Bo got into the saddle Dale continued: “You went up quick an' light, but the wrong way. Watch me.”

Bo had to mount several times before Dale was satisfied. Then he told her to ride off a little distance. When Bo had gotten out of earshot Dale said to Helen: “She'll take to a horse like a duck takes to water.” Then, mounting, he rode out after her.

Helen watched them trotting and galloping and running the horses round the grassy park, and rather regretted she had not gone with them. Eventually Bo rode back, to dismount and fling herself down, red-cheeked and radiant, with disheveled hair, and curls damp on her temples. How alive she seemed! Helen's senses