Dorn Of The Mountains (2 page)

Milt Dorn quietly sat up to gaze with thoughtful eyes at the flickering fire.

He was thirty years old. As a boy of fourteen he had run off from his school and home in Iowa, and, joining a wagon train of pioneers, he was one of the first to see log cabins built on the slopes of the White Mountains. But he had not taken kindly to farming or sheep raising or monotonous visits to Pine and Slow Down and Snowdrop. This wandering forest life of his was not that he did not care for the villagers, for he did care, and he was welcome everywhere, but that he loved wild life and solitude and beauty with the primitive instinctive force of a savage.

And upon this night he had stumbled upon a dark plot against the only one of all the honest white people in that region who he could not call a friend.

“That man Beasley,” he soliloquized. “Beasley…preacher at Pine…in cahoots with Snake Anson! Well, he was right. Al Auchincloss is on his last legs…. Poor old man…. When I tell him…he’ll never believe
me,
that’s sure.”

Discovery of the plot meant to Dorn that he must hurry down to Pine, and, of all seasons, the autumn was the one he loved best in the mountains. He reflected, however, that he need not lose more than several days on the journey. It seemed that he took for granted a necessity of befriending Auchincloss, even though that hard old stockman had wronged him.

“A girl…Helen Rayner…twenty years old,” he mused. “Beasley wants her made way with…. That means…killed.”

Dorn accepted facts of life with that equanimity and fatality acquired by one long versed in the cruel annals of forest lore. Bad men worked their evil just as savage wolves relayed a deer. He had shot wolves for that trick. With men, good or bad, he had not clashed. Old women and children appealed to him, but he had never had any interest in girls. The image then of this Helen Rayner came strangely to Dorn, and he suddenly realized that he meant somehow to circumvent Beasley, not to befriend old Al Auchincloss, but for the sake of the girl. Probably she was already on her way West, alone, eager, hopeful of a future home. How little people guessed what awaited them at a journey’s end. Many trails ended abruptly in the forest—and only trained woodsmen could read the tragedy.

“Strange how I cut across country today from Spruce Swamp,” went on Dorn reflectively. Circumstances, movements usually were not strange to him. His methods and habits were seldom changed by chance. The matter, then, of his turning off a course, out of his way, for no apparent reason, and of his having overheard a plot singularly involving a young girl, was indeed an adventure to provoke thought. It provoked more, for Dorn grew conscious of an unfamiliar smoldering heat along his veins. He, who had little to do with the strife of men, and nothing to do with anger, felt his blood grow hot at the cowardly trap laid for an innocent girl.

“Old Al won’t listen to me,” pondered Dorn. “An’ even if he did…he wouldn’t believe me. Maybe nobody will…. All the same Snake Anson won’t get that girl.”

With these last words Dorn satisfied himself of his own position, and his pondering ceased. Taking his rifle, he descended from the loft and peered out of the door. The night had grown darker, windier, cooler; broken clouds were scudding across the sky; only a few stars showed; fine rain was blowing from the northwest; the forest seemed full of a low dull roar.

“Reckon I’d better hang up here,” he said, and turned to the fire. The coals were red now. From the depths of his hunting coat he procured a little bag of salt and some strips of dried meat. These strips he laid for a moment on the hot embers, until they began to sizzle and curl, then with a sharpened stick he removed them and ate like a hungry hunter grateful for little.

He sat on a block of wood with his palms spread to the dying warmth of the fire and his eyes fixed upon the changing glowing golden embers. Outside, the wind continued to rise and the moan of the forest increased to a roar. Dorn felt the comfortable warmth stealing over him, drowsily lulling; he heard the storm wind in the trees, now like a waterfall, and anon like a retreating army, and again low and sad, and he saw pictures in the glowing embers, strange as dreams.

Presently he rose, and, climbing to the loft, he stretched himself out upon the boughs, and soon fell asleep.

When the gray dawn broke, he was on his way, cross-country, to the village of Pine.

During the night the wind had shifted and the rain had ceased. A suspicion of frost shone in the grass in open places. All was gray—the parks—the glades—and deeper darker gray were the aisles of the forest. Shadows lurked under the trees and the silence seemed consistent with spectral forms. Then the east kindled, the gray lightened, the dreaming woodland awoke to the far-reaching rays of a bursting red sun.

This was always the happiest moment of Dorn’s lonely days, as sunset was his saddest. He responded, and there was something in his blood that answered the whistle of a stag from a nearby ridge. His strides were long, noiseless, and they left dark trace where his feet brushed the dew-laden grass.

Dorn pursued a zigzag course over the ridges, to escape the hardest climbing, but the
parques
, those park-like meadows so named by Mexican sheepherders, were as round and level as if they had been made by man to show beautiful contrast to the dark-green, rough, and rugged ridges. Both open
parque
and dense wooded ridges showed to his quick eye an abundance of game. The
cracking
of twigs and disappearing flash of gray among the spruces, a round black lumbering object, a
twittering
in the brush, and stealthy steps—were all easy signs for Dorn to read. Once, as he noiselessly emerged into a little glade, he espied a red fox stalking some quarry, which, as he advanced, proved to be a flock of partridges. They whirred up, brushing the branches, and the fox trotted away. In every
parque
Dorn encountered wild turkeys, feeding on the seeds of the high grass.

It had always been his custom, on his visits to Pine, to kill and pack fresh meat down to several old friends, who were glad to give him lodging. And hurried as he was now, he did not intend to make an exception of this trip.

At length he got down into the pine belt, where the great gnarled yellow trees soared aloft, stately and aloof from one another, and the ground was a brown odorous springy mat of pine needles, level as a floor. Squirrels watched him from all around, scurrying away at his near approach—tiny brown light-striped squirrels, and larger ones, russet colored, and the splendid dark grays, with their white bushy tails and plumed ears.

This belt of pine ended abruptly upon wide gray rolling open land, almost like a prairie, with foothills lifting near and far, and the red-gold blaze of aspen thickets, catching the morning sun. Here Dorn flushed a flock of wild turkeys, upwards of forty in number and their subdued color of gray flecked with white, and graceful sleek build, showed them to be hens. There was not a gobbler in the flock. They began to run pell-mell out into the grass, until only their heads appeared bobbing along, and finally disappeared. Dorn caught a glimpse of skulking coyotes that evidently had been stalking the turkeys, and, as they saw him and darted into the timber, he took a quick shot at the hindmost. His bullet struck low, as he had meant it to, but too low, and the coyote got only a dusting of earth and pine needles thrown up in his face. This frightened him so that he leaped aside blindly to butt into a tree, rolled over, gained his feet, and then the cover of the forest. Dorn was amused at this. His hand was against all the predatory beasts of the forest, although he had learned that lion and bear and wolf were all as necessary to the great scheme of Nature as were the gentle beautiful wild creatures upon which they preyed. But some he loved better than others, and so deplored the inexplicable cruelty.

He crossed the wide grassy plain, and struck another gradual descent where aspens and pines crowded a shallow ravine and warm sun-lighted glades bordered along a sparkling brook. Here he heard a turkey gobble, and that was a signal for him to change his course and make a crouching silent detour around a clump of aspens. In a sunny patch of grass a dozen or more big gobblers stood, all suspiciously facing in his direction, heads erect with that wild aspect peculiar to their species. Old wild turkey gobblers were the most difficult game to stalk. Dorn shot two of them. The others began to run like ostriches,
thudding
over the ground, spreading their wings, and with that running start launched their heavy bodies into whirring flight. They flew low, at about the height of a man from the grass, and vanished in the woods.

Dorn threw the two turkeys over his shoulder and went on his way. Soon he came to a break in the forest level, from which he gazed down a league-long slope of pine and cedar, out upon the bare glistening desert, stretching away, endlessly rolling out to the dim, dark horizon line.

The little hamlet of Pine lay on the last level of sparsely timbered forest. A road, running parallel with a dark-watered swift-flowing stream, divided the cluster of log cabins from which columns of blue smoke drifted lazily aloft. Fields of corn and fields of oats, yellow in the sunlight, surrounded the village, and green pastures, dotted with horses and cattle, reached away to the denser woodland. This site appeared to be a natural clearing, for there was no evidence of cut timber. The scene was rather too wild to be pastoral, but it was serene, tranquil, giving the impression of a remote community, prosperous and happy, drifting along the peaceful tenor of sequestered lives.

Dorn halted before a neat little log cabin and little patch of garden bordered with sunflowers. His call was answered by an old woman, gray and bent, but remarkably spry, who appeared at the door.

“Why, land’s sakes, if it ain’t Milt Dorn!” she exclaimed in welcome.

“Reckon it’s me, Missus Cass,” he replied. “An’ I’ve brought you a turkey.”

“Milt, you’re that good boy who never forgits old Widow Cass…. What a gobbler! First one I’ve seen this fall…. My man Tom used to fetch home gobblers like that…. An’ mebbe he’ll come home again some time.”

Her husband, Tom Cass, had gone into the forest years before and had never returned. But the old woman always looked for him and never gave up hope.

“Men have been lost in the forest an’ yet come back,” replied Dorn as he had said to her many a time.

“Come right in. You air hungry, I know…. Now, son, when last did you eat a fresh egg or a flapjack?”

“You should remember,” he answered, laughing as he followed her into a small clean kitchen.

“Lawsa’ me! An’ thet’s months ago,” she replied, shaking her gray head. “Milt, you should give up thet wild life…an’ marry…an’ have a home.”

“You always tell me that.”

“Yes, an’ I’ll see you do it yet…. Now you set there, an’ pretty soon I’ll give you thet to eat which’ll make your mouth water.”

“What’s the news, auntie?” he asked.

“Nary news in this dead place. Why, nobody’s been to Snowdrop in two weeks! Sary Jones died, poor old soul…she’s better off…an’ one of my cows run away. Milt, she’s wild when she gits loose in the woods. An’ you’ll have to track her, ‘cause nobody else can. An’ John Dakker’s heifer was killed by a lion, an’ Lem Harden’s fast hoss…you know his favorite…was stole by hoss thieves. Lem is jist crazy…. An’ thet reminds me, Milt, where’s your big bay Ranger…thet you’d never sell or lend?”

“My hosses are up in the woods, auntie, safe, I reckon, from hoss thieves.”

“Well, thet’s a blessin’. We’ve had some stock stole this summer, Milt, an’ no mistake.”

Thus, while preparing a meal for Dorn, the old woman went on recounting all that had happened in the little village since his last visit. Dorn enjoyed her gossip and quaint philosophy, and it was exceedingly good to sit at her table. In his opinion nowhere else could there have been such butter and cream, such ham and eggs. Besides, she always had apple pie it seemed at any time he happened in, and apple pie was one of Dorn’s few regrets while up in the lonely forest.

“How’s old Al Auchincloss,” presently inquired Dorn.

“Poorly…poorly.” Mrs. Cass sighed. “But he tramps an’ rides around same as ever. Al’s not long for this world…. An’, Milt, that reminds me…there’s the biggest news you ever heard.”

“You don’t say so!” exclaimed Dorn to encourage the excited old woman.

“Al has sent back to Saint Joe fer his niece, Helen Rayner. She’s to inherit all his property. We’ve heard much of her…a purty lass, they say…. Now, Milt Dorn, here’s your chance. Stay out of the woods an’ go to work…. You can marry that girl!”

“No chance for me, auntie,” replied Dorn, smiling.

The old woman snorted. “Much you know! Any girl would have you, Milt Dorn, if you’d only throw a ‘kerchief.”

“Me! An’ why, auntie?” he queried, half amused, half thoughtful. When he got back to civilization, he always had to adjust his thoughts to the ideas of people.

“Why? I declare, Milt, you live so in the woods you’re like a boy of ten…an’ then sometimes as old as the hills. There’s no young man to compare with you hereabouts. An’ this girl…she’ll have all the spunk of the Auchinclosses.”

“Then…maybe she’d not be such a catch after all,” replied Dorn.

“Wal, you’re no cause to love them…thet’s sure. But, Milt, the Auchincloss women are always good wives.”

“Dear auntie, you’re dreamin’,” said Dorn soberly. “I want no wife. I’m happy in the woods.”

“Air you goin’ to live like an Injun all your days, Milt Dorn?” she queried sharply.

“I hope and pray so.”

“You ought to be ashamed. But some lass will change you, boy, an’ mebbe it’ll be this Helen Auchincloss.
I
hope an’ pray so, to that.”

“Auntie, supposin’ she did change me. She’d never change old Al. He hates me, you know.”

“Wal, I ain’t so sure, Milt. I met Al the other day. He inquired for you. An’ said you was wild. But he reckoned men like you was good for pioneer settlements. Lord knows the good turns you’ve done this village! Milt, old Al doesn’t approve of your wild life, but he never had any hard feelin’s till that tame lion of yours killed so many of his sheep.”