The Forester's Daughter Part 22

"How about Cliff? He may make trouble."

Her face darkened. "Cliff will reach him if he wants to--no matter where he is. And then, too, Landon likes Mr. Norcross and will see that he is not abused."

McFarlane ruminated over her suggestion, well knowing that she was planning this change in order that she might have Norcross a little nearer, a little more accessible.

"I don't know but you're right. Landon is almost as good a hustler as Tony, and a much better forester. I thought of sending Norcross up there at first, but he told me that Frank and his gang had it in for him. Of course, he's only nominally in the service; but I want him to begin right."

Berrie went further. "I want him to ride back with me to-day."

He looked at her with grave inquiry. "Do you think that a wise thing to do? Won't that make more talk?"

"We'll start early and ride straight through."

"You'll have to go by Lost Lake, and that means a long, hard hike. Can he stand it?"

"Oh yes. He rides well. It's the walking at a high alt.i.tude that does him up. Furthermore, Cliff may turn up here, and I don't want another mix-up."

McFarlane was troubled. "I ought to go back with you; but Moore is over here to line out a cutting, and I must stay on for a couple of days.

Suppose I send Tony along?"

"No, Tony would be a nuisance and would do no good. Another day on the trail won't add to Mrs. Belden's story. If she wants to be mean she's got all the material for it already."

In the end she had her way. McFarlane, perceiving that she had set her heart on this ride, and having perfect faith in her skill and judgment on the trail, finally said: "Well, if you do so, the quicker you start the better. With the best of luck you can't pull in before eight o'clock, and you'll have to ride hard to do that."

"If I find we can't make it I'll pull into a ranch. But I'm sure we can."

When Wayland came in the Supervisor inquired: "Do you feel able to ride back over the hill to-day?"

"Entirely so. It isn't the riding that uses me up; it is the walking; and, besides, as candidate for promotion I must obey orders--especially orders to march."

They breakfasted hurriedly, and while McFarlane and Tony were bringing in the horses Wayland and Berrie set the cabin to rights. Working thus side by side, she recovered her dominion over him, and at the same time regained her own cheerful self-confidence.

"You're a wonder!" he exclaimed, as he watched her deft adjustment of the dishes and furniture. "You're ambidextrous."

"I have to be to hold my job," she laughingly replied. "A feller must play all the parts when he's up here."

It was still early morning as they mounted and set off up the trail; but Moore's camp was astir, and as McFarlane turned in--much against Berrie's will--the lumberman and his daughter both came out to meet them. "Come in and have some breakfast," said Siona, with cordial inclusiveness, while her eyes met Wayland's glance with mocking glee.

"Thank you," said McFarlane, "we can't stop. I'm going to set my daughter over the divide. She has had enough camping, and Norcross is pretty well battered up, so I'm going to help them across. I'll be back to-night, and we'll take our turn up the valley to-morrow. Nash will be here then."

Berrie did not mind her father's explanation; on the contrary, she took a distinct pleasure in letting the other girl know of the long and intimate day she was about to spend with her young lover.

Siona, too adroit to display her disappointment, expressed polite regret.

"I hope you won't get storm-bound," she said, showing her white teeth in a meaning smile.

"If there is any sign of a storm we won't cross," declared McFarlane.

"We're going round by the lower pa.s.s, anyhow. If I'm not here by dark, you may know I've stayed to set 'em down at the Mill."

There was charm in Siona's alert poise, and in the neatness of her camp dress. Her dainty tent, with its stools and rugs, made the wilderness seem but a park. She reminded Norcross of the troops of tourists of the Tyrol, and her tent was of a kind to harmonize with the tea-houses on the path to the summit of the Matterhorn. Then, too, something triumphantly feminine shone in her bright eyes and glowed in her softly rounded cheeks. Her hand was little and pointed, not fitted like Berrie's for tightening a cinch or wielding an ax, and as he said "Good-by," he added: "I hope I shall see you again soon," and at the moment he meant it.

"We'll return to the Springs in a few days," she replied. "Come and see us. Our bungalow is on the other side of the river--and you, too," she addressed Berrie; but her tone was so conventionally polite that the ranch-girl, burning with jealous heat, made no reply.

McFarlane led the way to the lake rapidly and in silence. The splendors of the foliage, subdued by the rains, the grandeur of the peaks, the song of the glorious stream--all were lost on Berrie, for she now felt herself to be nothing but a big, clumsy, coa.r.s.e-handed tomboy. Her worn gloves, her faded skirt, and her man's shoes had been made hateful to her by that smug, graceful, play-acting tourist with the cool, keen eyes and smirking lips. "She pretends to be a kitten; but she isn't; she's a sly grown-up cat," she bitterly accused, but she could not deny the charm of her personality.

Wayland was forced to acknowledge that Berrie in this dark mood was not the delightful companion she had hitherto been. Something sweet and confiding had gone out of their relations.h.i.+p, and he was too keen-witted not to know what it was. He estimated precisely the value of the malicious parting words of Siona Moore. "She's a natural tease, the kind of woman who loves to torment other and less fortunate women. She cares nothing for me, of course, it's just her way of paying off old scores. It would seem that Berrie has not encouraged her advances in times past."

That Berrie was suffering, and that her jealousy touchingly proved the depth of her love for him, brought no elation, only perplexity. He was not seeking such devotion. As a companion on the trail she had been a joy--as a jealous sweetheart she was less admirable. He realized perfectly that this return journey was of her arrangement, not McFarlane's, and while he was not resentful of her care, he was in doubt of the outcome. It hurried him into a further intimacy which might prove embarra.s.sing.

At the camp by the lake the Supervisor became sharply commanding. "Now let's throw these packs on lively. It will be slippery on the high trail, and you'll just naturally have to hit leather hard and keep jouncing if you reach the wagon-road before dark. But you'll make it."

"Make it!" said Berrie. "Of course we'll make it. Don't you worry about that for a minute. Once I get out of the green timber the dark won't worry me. We'll push right through."

In packing the camp stuff on the saddles, Berrie, almost as swift and powerful as her father, acted with perfect understanding of every task, and Wayland's admiration of her skill increased mightily.

She insisted on her father's turning back. "We don't need you," she said.

"I can find the pa.s.s."

McFarlane's faith in his daughter had been tested many times, and yet he was a little loath to have her start off on a trail new to her. He argued against it briefly, but she laughed at his fears. "I can go anywhere you can," she said. "Stand clear!" With final admonition he stood clear.

"You'll have to keep off the boggy meadows," he warned; "these rains will have softened all those muck-holes on the other side; they'll be bottomless pits; watch out for 'em. Good-by! If you meet Nash hurry him along. Moore is anxious to run those lines. Keep in touch with Landon, and if anybody turns up from the district office say I'll be back on Friday. Good luck."

"Same to you. So long."

Berea led the way, and Norcross fell in behind the pack-horses, feeling as unimportant as a small boy at the heels of a circus parade. His girl captain was so competent, so self-reliant, and so sure that nothing he could say or do a.s.sisted in the slightest degree. Her leaders.h.i.+p was a curiously close reproduction of her father's unhurried and graceful action. Her seat in the saddle was as easy as Landon's, and her eyes were alert to every rock and stream in the road. She was at home here, where the other girl would have been a bewildered child, and his words of praise lifted the shadow from her face.

The sky was cloudy, and a delicious feeling of autumn was in the air--autumn that might turn to winter with a pa.s.sing cloud, and the forest was dankly gloomy and grimly silent, save from the roaring stream which ran at times foam-white with speed. The high peaks, gray and streaked with new-fallen snow, shone grandly, bleakly through the firs.

The radiant beauty of the road from the Springs, the golden glow of four days before was utterly gone, and yet there was exultation in this ride.

A distinct pleasure, a delight of another sort, lay in thus daring the majesty of an unknown wind-swept pa.s.s.

Wayland called out: "The air feels like Thanksgiving morning, doesn't it?"

"It _is_ Thanksgiving for me, and I'm going to get a grouse for dinner,"

she replied; and in less than an hour the snap of her rifle made good her promise.

After leaving the upper lake she turned to the right and followed the course of a swift and splendid stream, which came churning through a cheerless, mossy swamp of spruce-trees. Inexperienced as he was, Wayland knew that this was not a well-marked trail; but his confidence in his guide was too great to permit of any worry over the pa.s.s, and he amused himself by watching the water-robins as they flitted from stone to stone in the torrent, and in calculating just where he would drop a line for trout if he had time to do so, and in recovered serenity enjoyed his ride. Gradually he put aside his perplexities concerning the future, permitting his mind to prefigure nothing but his duties with Landon at Meeker's Mill.

He was rather glad of the decision to send him there, for it promised absorbing sport. "I shall see how Landon and Belden work out their problem," he said. He had no fear of Frank Meeker now. "As a forest guard with official duties to perform I can meet that young savage on other and more nearly equal terms," he a.s.sured himself.

The trail grew slippery and in places ran full of water. "But there's a bottom, somewhere," Berrie confidently declared, and pushed ahead with resolute mien. It was noon when they rose above timber and entered upon the wide, smooth slopes of the pa.s.s. Snow filled the gra.s.s here, and the wind, keen, cutting, unhindered, came out of the desolate west with savage fury; but the sun occasionally shone through the clouds with vivid splendor. "It is December now," shouted Wayland, as he put on his slicker and cowered low to his saddle. "It will be January soon."

"We will make it Christmas dinner," she laughed, and her glowing good humor warmed his heart. She was entirely her cheerful self again.

As they rose, the view became magnificent, wintry, sparkling. The great clouds, drifting like ancient wars.h.i.+ps heavy with armament, sent down chill showers of hail over the frosted gold of the gra.s.sy slopes; but when the shadows pa.s.sed the sunlight descended in silent cataracts deliriously spring-like. The conies squeaked from the rocky ridges, and a brace of eagles circling about a lone crag, as if exulting in their sovereign mastery of the air, screamed in shrill ecstatic duo. The sheer cliffs, on their shadowed sides, were violently purple. Everywhere the landscape exhibited cras.h.i.+ng contrasts of primary pigments which bit into consciousness like the flare of a martial band.

The youth would have lingered in spite of the cold; but the girl kept steadily on, knowing well that the hardest part of their journey was still before them, and he, though longing to ride by her side, and to enjoy the views with her, was forced to remain in the rear in order to hurry the reluctant pack-animals forward. They had now reached a point twelve thousand feet above the sea, and range beyond range, to the west and south, rose into sight like stupendous waves of a purple-green sea.

To the east the park lay level as a floor and carpeted in tawny velvet.

It was nearly two o'clock when they began to drop down behind the rocky ridges of the eastern slope, and soon, in the bottom of a warm and sheltered hollow just at timber-line, Berrie drew her horse to a stand and slipped from the saddle. "We'll rest here an hour," she said, "and cook our grouse; or are you too hungry to wait?"