Dorn Of The Mountains (16 page)

Helen Rayner haunted him. In the sunlight there was not a place around camp that did not picture her lithe vigorous body, her dark thoughtful eyes, her eloquent resolute lips, and the smile that was so sweet and strong. At night she was there like a slender specter, pacing beside him under the moaning pines. Every campfire held in its heart the glowing white radiance of her spirit.

Nature had taught Dorn to love solitude and silence, but love itself taught him their meaning. Solitude had been created for the ea gle on his crag, for the blasted mountain fir, lovely and gnarled on its peak, for the elk and the wolf. But it had not been intended for man. And to live always in the silence of wild places was to become obsessed with self—to think and dream—to be happy, which state however pursued by man was not good for him. Man must be given imperious longings for the unattainable.

It needed then only the memory of an unattainable woman to render solitude passionately desired by a man, yet almost unendurable. Dorn was alone with his secret, and every pine, every thing in that park saw him shaken and undone.

In the dark pitchy deadness of night, when there was no wind and the cold on the peaks had frozen the waterfall, then the silence seemed insupportable. Many hours that should have been given to slumber were paced out under the cold white pitiless stars, under the lonely pines.

Dorn’s memory betrayed him, mocked his restraint, cheated him of any peace, and his imagination, sharpened by love, created pictures, fancies, feelings that drove him frantic.

He thought of Helen Rayner’s strong shapely brown hand. In a thousand different actions it haunted him. How quick and deft in campfire tasks! How graceful and swift as she plaited her dark hair! How tender and skilful in its ministration when one of his pets had been injured! How eloquent when pressed tightly against her breast in a moment of fear on the dangerous heights! How expressive of unthinkable things when laid on his arm!

Dorn saw that beautiful hand slowly creep up his arm, across his shoulder, and slide round his neck to clasp there. He was powerless to inhibit the picture. And what he felt then was boundless, unutterable. No woman had ever yet so much as clasped his hand, and heretofore no such imaginings had ever crossed his mind, yet deep in him, somewhere hidden, had been this waiting, sweet, and imperious need. In the bright day he appeared to ward off such fancies, but at night he was helpless. And every fancy left him weaker, wilder.

When at the culmination of this phase of his passion, Dorn, who had never known the touch of a woman’s lips, suddenly yielded to the illusion of Helen Rayner’s kisses, he found himself quite mad, filled with rapture and despair, loving her as he hated himself. It seemed as if he had experienced all these terrible feelings in some former life, and had forgotten them in this life. He had no right to think of her, but he could not resist it. Imagining the sweet surrender of her lips was a sacrilege, yet here, in spite of will and honor and shame, he was lost.

Dorn, at length, was vanquished, and he ceased to rail at himself, or restrain his fancies. He became a dreamy sad-eyed campfire gazer, like many another lonely man, separated by chance or error, from what the heart hungered for most. But this great experience, when all its significance had clarified in his mind, immeasurably broadened his understanding of the principles of Nature applied to life.

Love had been in him, stronger than in most men, because of his keen vigorous lonely years in the forest, where health of mind and body were intensified and preserved. How simple, how natural, how inevitable! He might have loved any fine-spirited, healthy-bodied girl. Like a tree shooting its branches and leaves, its whole entity, toward the sunlight, so had he grown toward a woman’s love. Why? Because the thing he revered in Nature, the spirit, the universal, the life that was God, had created at his birth or before his birth the three tremendous instincts of Nature—to fight for life, to feed himself, to reproduce his kind. That was all there was to it. But, oh, the mystery, the beauty, the torment, and the terror of this third instinct—this hunger for the sweetness and the glory of a woman’s love!

Helen Rayner dropped her knitting into her lap and sat pensively gazing out of the window over the bare yellow ranges of her uncle’s ranch.

The winter day was bright, but steely, and the wind that whipped down from the white-capped mountains had a keen frosty edge. A scant snow lay in protected places; cattle stood bunched in the lea of ridges; low sheets of dust scurried across the flats.

The big living room of the ranch house was warm and comfortable with its red adobe walls, its huge stone fireplace where cedar logs blazed, and its many-colored blankets. Bo Rayner sat before the fire, curled up in an armchair, absorbed in a book. On the floor lay a greyhound, his racy fine head stretched toward the warmth.

“Did Uncle call?” asked Helen, with a start out of her reverie.

“I didn’t hear him,” replied Bo.

Helen rose to tiptoe across the floor, and, softly parting some curtains, she looked into the room where her uncle lay. He was asleep. Sometimes he called out in his slumbers. For weeks now he had been confined to his bed, slowly growing weaker. With a sigh Helen returned to her window seat and took up her work.

“Bo, the sun is bright,” she said. “The days are growing longer. I’m so glad.”

“Nell, you’re always wishing time away. For me it passes quickly enough,” replied the sister.

“But I love spring and summer and fall…and I guess I hate winter,” returned Helen thoughtfully.

The yellow ranges rolled away up to the black ridges and they in turn swept up to the cold white mountains. Helen’s gaze seemed to go beyond that snowy barrier. And Bo’s keen eyes studied her sister’s earnest sad face.

“Nell, do you ever think of Dorn?” suddenly she queried.

The question startled Helen. A slow blush suffused neck and cheek. “Of course,” she replied as if surprised that Bo should ask such a thing.

“I…I shouldn’t have asked that,” said Bo softly, and then bent again over her book.

Helen gazed tenderly at that bright bowed head. In this swift flying eventful busy winter, during which the management of the ranch had devolved slowly upon Helen, the little sister had grown away from her. Bo had insisted upon her own free will and she had followed it, to the amusement of her uncle, to the concern of Helen, to the dismay and bewilderment of the faithful Mexican house keepers, and to the undoing of all the young men on the ranch.

Helen had always been hoping and waiting for a favorable hour in which she might find this willful sister once more susceptible to wise and loving influence. But while she hesitated to speak, slow footsteps and a
jingle
of spurs sounded without, and then came a timid knock. Bo looked up brightly and ran to open the door.

“Oh…it’s only you,” she uttered in withering scorn to whomever had knocked.

Helen thought she could guess who it was.

“How are you-all?” asked a drawling voice.

“Well, Mister Carmichael, if that interests you…I’m quite ill,” replied Bo freezingly.

“Ill…?
Aw,
no, now?”

“It’s a fact. If I don’t die right off, I’ll have to be taken back to Missouri,” said Bo casually.

“Are you goin’ to ask me in?” queried Carmichael bluntly. “It’s cold…an’ I’ve got somethin’ to say to….”

“To
me?
Well, you’re not backward, I declare,” retorted Bo.

“Miss Rayner, I reckon it’ll be strange to you…findin’ out I didn’t come to see you.”

“Indeed! No. But what
was
strange was the deluded idea I had that you meant to apologize to me…like a gentleman. Come in, Mister Carmichael. My sister is here.”

The door closed as Helen turned around. Carmichael stood just inside with his sombrero in hand, and, as he gazed at Bo, his lean face seemed hard. In the few months since autumn he had changed—aged it seemed, and the once young frank, alert, and careless cowboy traits had merged into the making of a man. Helen knew just how much of a man he really was. He had been her mainstay during all the complex working of the ranch that had fallen upon her shoulders.

“Wal, I reckon you was deluded all right…if you thought I’d crawl like them other lovers of yours,” he said with cool deliberation.

Bo turned pale and her eyes fairly blazed, yet even in what must have been her fury, Helen saw amaze and pain.

“
Other
lovers? I think the biggest delusion here is the way you flatter yourself,” replied Bo stingingly.

“Me…flatter myself? Nope. You don’t savvy me. I’m shore hatin’ myself these days.”

“Small wonder.
I
certainly hate you…with all my heart.”

At this retort the cowboy dropped his head and did not see Bo flaunt herself out of the room. But he heard the door close, and then slowly came toward Helen.

“Cheer up, Las Vegas,” said Helen, smiling. “Bo’s hottempered.”

“Miss Nell, I’m just like a dog. The meaner she treats me the more I love her,” he replied dejectedly.

To Helen’s first instinct of liking for this cowboy there had been added admiration, respect, and a growing appreciation of strong faithful developing character. Carmichael’s face and hands were red and chapped from winter winds; the leather of wrist bands, belt, and boots was all worn and shining and thin; little streaks of dust fell from him as he breathed heavily. He no longer looked the dashing cowboy, ready for a dance or lark or fight.

“How in the world did you offend her so?” asked Helen. “Bo is mad. I never saw her so mad as that.”

“Miss Nell, it was just this way,” began Carmichael. “Shore Bo’s knowed I was in love with her. I asked her to marry me an’ she wouldn’t say yes or no…. An’ mean as it sounds, she never run away from it, that’s shore. We’ve had some quarrels…two of them bad, an’ this last’s the worst.”

“Bo told me about one quarrel,” said Helen. “It was because you drank…that time.”

“Shore it was. She took one of her cold spells an’ I just got drunk.”

“But that was wrong,” protested Helen.

“I ain’t so shore. You see I used to get drunk often…before I come here. An’ I’ve been drunk only once. But at Las Vegas, the outfit would never believe that. Wal, I promised Bo I wouldn’t do it again, an’ I’ve kept my word.”

“That is fine of you. But tell me, why is she angry now?”

“Bo makes up to all the fellars,” confessed Carmichael, hanging his head. “I took her to the dance last week over in the town hall. That’s the first time she’d gone anywhere with me. I shore was proud…. But that dance was hell. Bo carried on somethin’ terrible, an’ I….”

“Tell me. What did she do?” demanded Helen anxiously. “I’m responsible for her. I’ve got to see that she behaves.”

“
Aw,
I ain’t sayin’ she didn’t behave like a lady,” replied Carmichael. “It was…she…wal, all them fellars are fools over her…an’ Bo wasn’t true to me.”

“My dear boy, is Bo engaged to you?”

“Lord…if she only was!” He sighed.

“Then how can you say she wasn’t true to you? Be reasonable.”

“I reckon now, Miss Nell, that no one can be in love and act reasonable,” rejoined the cowboy. “I don’t know how to explain, but the fact is I felt that Bo has played the…the devil with me an’ all the other fellars.”

“You mean she has flirted?”

“I reckon.”

“Las Vegas, I’m afraid you’re right,” said Helen with growing apprehension. “Go on. Tell me what’s happened.”

“Wal, that Turner boy, who rides for Beasley, he was hot after Bo,” returned Carmichael, and he spoke as if the memory hurt him. “Reckon I’ve no use for Turner. He’s a finelookin’, strappin’ big cowpuncher, an’ calculated to win the girls. He brags that he can, an’ I reckon he’s right. Wal, he was always hangin’ around Bo. An’ he stole one of my dances with Bo. I only had three, an’ he comes up to say this one was his. Bo, very innocent…oh, she’s a cute one…she says…‘Why, Mister Turner, is it really yours?’ An’ she looked so full of joy that, when he says to me…‘Excuse us, friend Carmichael,’…I sat there like a locoed jackass and let them go. But I wasn’t mad at thet. He was a better dancer than me, an’ I wanted her to have a good time. What started the hell was I seen him put his arm round her when it wasn’t just time, accordin’ to the dance, an’ Bo…she didn’t break any records gettin’ away from him. She pushed him away after a little…after I near died. Wal, on the way home I had to tell her. I shore did. An’ she said what I’d love to forget. Then…then, Miss Nell, I grabbed her…it was outside here by the porch an’ all bright moonlight…I grabbed her an’ hugged an’ kissed her good. When I let her go, I says, sorta brave, but I was plumb scared…I says…‘Wal, are you goin’ to marry me now?’ ”

He concluded with a gulp and looked at Helen with woe in his eyes.

“Oh! What did Bo do?” breathlessly queried Helen.

“She slapped my face,” he replied. “An’ then she says…‘I
did
like you best, but
now
I hate you!’ An’ she slammed the door in my face.”

“I think you made a great mistake,” said Helen gravely.

“Wal, if I thought so, I’d beg her forgiveness. But I reckon I don’t. What’s more I feel better than before. I’m only a cowboy an’ never was much good till I met her. Then I braced. I got to havin’ hopes, studyin’ books, an’ you know how I’ve been lookin’ into this ranchin’ game. I stopped drinkin’ an’ saved my money. Wal, she knows all that. Once she said she was proud of me. But it didn’t seem to count big with her. An’ if it can’t count big, I don’t want it to count at all. I reckon the madder Bo is at me, the more chance I’ve got. She knows I love her…that I’d die for her…that I’m a changed man. An’ she knows I never before thought of darin’ to touch her hand. An’ she knows she flirted with Turner.”

“She’s only a child,” replied Helen. “And all this change…the West…the wildness…and you boys making much of her…why, it’s turned her head. But Bo will come out of it true blue. She is good, loving. Her heart is gold.”

“I reckon I know, an’ my faith can’t be shook,” rejoined Carmichael simply. “But she ought to believe that she’ll make bad blood out here. The West is the West. Any kind of girls are scarce. An’ one like Bo…. Lord! We cowboys never seen one to compare with her. She’ll make bad blood an’ some of it will be spilled.”

“Uncle Al encourages her,” said Helen apprehensively. “It tickles him to hear how the boys are after her. Oh, she doesn’t tell him. But he hears. And I, who must stand in Mother’s place to her, what can I do?”

“Miss Nell, are you on my side?” asked the cowboy wistfully. He was strong and elemental, caught in the toils of some power beyond him.

Yesterday Helen might have hesitated at that question. But today Carmichael brought some proven quality of loyalty, some strange depth of rugged sincerity, as if he had learned his future worth.

“Yes, I am,” Helen replied earnestly, and she offered her hand.

“Wal, then it’ll shore all turn out happy,” he said, squeezing her hand. His smile was grateful, but there was nothing in it of the victory he hinted at. Some of his ruddy color had gone. “An’ now I want to tell you why I came.” He had lowered his voice. “Is Al asleep?” he whispered.

“Yes,” replied Helen. “He was a little while ago.”

“Reckon I’d better shut his door.”

Helen watched the cowboy glide across the room and carefully close the door, then return to her with intent eyes. She sensed events in his look, and she divined suddenly that he must feel as if he were her brother.

“Shore I’m the one that fetches all the bad news to you,” he said regretfully.

Helen caught her breath. There had indeed been many little calamities to mar her management of the ranch—loss of cattle, horses, sheep—the desertion of herders to Beasley—failure of freighters to arrive when most needed—fights among the cowboys—and disagreements over long-arranged deals.

“Your Uncle Al makes a heap of this here Jeff Mulvey,” asserted Carmichael.

“Yes, indeed. Uncle absolutely relies on Jeff,” replied Helen.

“Wal, I hate to tell you, Miss Nell,” said the cowboy bitterly, “that Mulvey ain’t the man he seems.”

“Oh, what do you mean?”

“When your uncle dies, Mulvey is goin’ over to Beasley an’ he’s goin’ to take all the fellars who’ll stick to him.”

“Could Jeff be so faithless…after so many years my uncle’s foreman? Oh, how do you know?”

“Reckon I guessed long ago. But wasn’t shore. Miss Nell, there’s a lot in the wind lately, as poor old Al grows weaker. Mulvey has been particularly friendly to me an’ I’ve nursed him along, ’cept I wouldn’t drink. An’ his pards have been particular friends with me, too, more an’ more as I loosened up. You see they was shy of me when I first got here. Today the whole deal showed clear to me like a hoof track in soft ground. Bud Lewis, who’s bunked with me, come out an’ tried to win me over to Beasley…soon as Auchincloss dies. I palavered with Bud an’ I wanted to know. But Bud would only say he was goin’ along with Jeff an’ others of the outfit. I told him I’d reckon over it an’ let him know. He thinks I’ll come around.”

“Why…why will these men leave me when…when…? Oh, poor Uncle! They bargain on his death. But why…tell me why?”

“Beasley has worked on them…won them over,” replied Carmichael grimly. “After Al dies, the ranch will go to you. Beasley means to have it. He an’ Al was pards once, an’ now Beasley has most folks here believin’ he got the short end of that deal. He’ll have papers, shore, an’ he’ll have most of the men. So he’ll just put you off an’ take possession. That’s all, Miss Nell, an’ you can rely on it’s bein’ true.”

“I…believe you…but I can’t believe such…such robbery possible,” gasped Helen.

“It’s simple as two an’ two. Possession is law out here. Once Beasley gets on the ground, it’s settled. What could you do with no men to fight for your property?”

“But surely some of the men will stay with me.”

“I reckon. But not enough.”

“Then I can hire more. The Beeman boys. And Dorn would come to help me.”

“Dorn would come. An’ he’d help a heap. I wish he was here,” replied Carmichael soberly. “But there’s no way to get him. He’s snowed-up till May.”

“I dare not confide in Uncle,” said Helen with agitation. “The shock might kill him. Then to tell him of the unfaithfulness of his men…that would be cruel…. Oh, it can’t be so bad as you think.”