Part 11 (2/2)

One of his lessons had been that of carrying an unconscious human form,--a method by which even a woman may carry, for a short distance, a heavy man. It was approximately the method used in carrying wounded in No Man's Land: the body thrown over the shoulders, one arm through the fork of the legs to the wounded man's hand. Her father was not a particularly heavy man, and she was an exceptionally strong young woman.

She knew at once that this problem was solved.

The hardest part was lifting him to her shoulders. Only by calling upon her last ounce of strength, and tugging upward with her arms, was she able to do it. But it was fairly easy, in her desperation, to carry him down the hill. What rest she got she took by leaning against a tree, the limp body still across her shoulders.

It was a distance of one hundred yards in all. No muscles but those trained by the outdoors, no lungs except those made strong by the mountain air, could have stood that test. She laid him on his own bed, on the lower floor, and set his broken limbs the best she could. She covered him up with thick, fleecy blankets, and set a bottle of whisky beside the bed. Then she wrote a note to Dan and fastened it upon one of the interior doors.

She had learned, long ago, the value of frequent rests. She did not fly at once to her long tramp. For three minutes she lay perfectly limp on the fireplace divan, resting from the exertion of carrying her father down the hill. Then she drew on her hob-nailed boots--needed sorely for the steep climb--and pocketed her pistol. She thrust a handful of jerked venison into the pocket of her coat and lighted the lantern. The forest night had fallen, soft and vibrant and tremulous, over the heads of the dark trees when she started out.

Far away on a distant hillside, Whisperfoot the cougar howled and complained because he could find no deer.

IX

s...o...b..rd felt very glad of her intimate, accurate knowledge of the whole region of the Divide. In her infancy the winding trails had been her playground, and long ago she had acquired the mountaineer's sixth sense for traversing them at night. She had need of that knowledge now. The moon was dim beneath thin clouds, and the lantern she carried did not promise much aid. The gla.s.s was rather smoked from previous burnings, and its flame glowed dully and threatened to go out altogether. It cast a few lame beams on the trail beneath her feet; but they perished quickly in the expanse of darkness.

She slipped into her free, swinging stride; and the last beams from the windows of the house were soon lost in the pines behind her. It was one of those silent, breathless nights with which no mountaineer is entirely unacquainted, and for a long tune the only sound she could hear was her own soft tramp in the pine needles. The trees themselves were motionless. That peculiar sound, not greatly different from that of running water which the wind often makes in the pine tops, was entirely lacking. Not that she could be deceived by it,--as stories tell that certain tenderfeet, dying of thirst in the barren hills, have been. But she always liked the sound; and she missed it especially to-night.

She felt that if she would stop to listen, there would be many faint sounds in the thickets,--those little hushed noises that the wild things make to remind night-wanderers of their presence. But she did not in the least care to hear these sounds. They do not tend toward peace of mind on a long walk over the ridges.

The wilderness began at once. Whatever influence toward civilization her father's house had brought to the wilds chopped off as beneath a blade in the first fringe of pines. This is altogether characteristic of the Oregon forests. They are much too big and too old to be tamed in any large degree by the presence of one house. No one knew this fact better than Lennox himself who, in a hard winter of four years before, had looked out of his window to find the wolf pack ranged in a hungry circle about his house. Within two hundred yards after she had pa.s.sed through her father's door, she was perfectly aware that the wild was stirring and throbbing with life about her. At first she tried very hard to think of other things. But the attempt wasn't entirely a success. And before she had covered the first of the twelve miles, the sounds that from the first had been knocking at the door of her consciousness began to make an entrance.

If a person lies still long enough, he can usually hear his heart beating and the flow of his blood in his arteries. Any sound, no matter how faint, will make itself heard at last. It was this way with a very peculiar noise that crept up through the silence from the trail behind her. She wouldn't give it any heed at first. But in a very little while indeed, it grew so insistent that she could no longer disregard it.

Some living creature was trotting along on the trail behind, keeping approximately the same distance between them.

Foregoing any attempt to ignore it, she set her cool young mind to thinking what manner of beast it might be. Its step was not greatly different from that of a large dog,--except possibly a dog would have made slightly more noise. Yet she couldn't even be sure of this basic premise, because this animal, whatever it might be, had at first seemingly moved with utmost caution, but now took less care with its step than is customary with the wild denizens of the woods. A wolf, for instance, can simply drift when it wishes, and the silence of a cougar is a name. Yet unless her pursuer were a dog, which seemed entirely unlikely, it was certainly one of these two. She would have liked very much to believe the step was that of Old Woof, the bear, suddenly curious as to what this dim light of hers might be; but she couldn't bring herself to accept the lie. Woof, except when wounded or cornered, is the most amiable creature in the Oregon woods, and it would give her almost a sense of security to have him waddling along behind her. The wolves and cougar, remembering the arms of Woof, would not be nearly so curious. But unfortunately, the black bear had never done such a thing in the memory of man, and if he had, he would have made six times as much noise. He can go fairly softly when he is stalking, but when he is obliged to trot--as he would be obliged to do to keep up with a swift-walking human figure--he cracks twigs like a rolling log. She had the impression that the animal behind had been pa.s.sing like smoke at first, but wasn't taking the trouble to do it now.

The sound was a soft _pat-pat_ on the trail,--sometimes entirely obliterated but always recurring when she began to believe that she had only fancied its presence. Sometimes a twig, rain-soaked though it was, cracked beneath a heavy foot, and again and again she heard the brush crus.h.i.+ng and rustling as something pa.s.sed through. Behind it all, a weird _motif_, remained the _pat-pat_ of cus.h.i.+oned feet. Sometimes, when the trail was covered with soft pine needles, it was practically indistinguishable. She had to strain to hear it,--and it is not pleasing to the spirit to have to strain to hear any sound. On the bare, rain-packed earth, even untrained plainsmen's ears could not possibly doubt the reality of the sound.

The animal was approximately one hundred feet behind. It wasn't a wolf, she thought. The wolves ran in packs this season, and except in winter were more afraid of human beings than any other living creature. It wasn't a lynx--one of those curiosity-devoured little felines that will mew all day on a trail and never dare come near. It was much too large for a lynx. The feet fell too solidly. She had already given up the idea that it could be Woof. There were no dogs in the mountains to follow at heel; and she had no desire whatever to meet s.h.a.g, the faithful hybrid that used to be her guardian in the hills. For s.h.a.g had gone to his well-deserved rest several seasons before. Two other possibilities remained. One was that this follower was a human being, the other that it was a cougar.

Ordinarily a human being is much more potentially dangerous to a woman in the hills at night than a cougar. A cougar is an abject coward and some men are not. But s...o...b..rd felt herself entirely capable of handling any human foes. They would have no advantage over her; they would have no purpose in killing from ambush; and she trusted to her own marksmans.h.i.+p implicitly. While it is an extremely difficult thing to shoot at a cougar leaping from the thicket, a tall man standing on a trail presents an easy target. Besides, she had a vague sense of discomfort that if this animal were a cougar, he wasn't acting true to form. He was altogether too bold.

She knew perfectly that many times since men came to live in the pine-clad mountains they have been followed by the great, tawny cats.

Curiosity had something to do with it, and perhaps less pleasing reasons. But any dreadful instincts that such a cat may have, he utterly lacks courage to obey. He has an inborn fear of men, a fear that goes down to the roots of the world, and he simply doesn't dare make an attack. It was always a rather distressing experience, but nothing ever came of it except a good tale around a fireside. But most of these episodes, s...o...b..rd remembered, occurred either in daylight or in the dry season. The reason was obviously that in the damp woods or at night a stalking cougar cannot be perceived by human senses. Her own senses could perceive this animal all too plainly,--and the fact suggested unpleasant possibilities.

The animal on the trail behind her was taking no care at all to go silently. He was simply pat-patting along, wholly at his ease. He acted as if the fear that men have instilled in his breed was somehow missing.

And that is why she instinctively tried to hurry on the trail.

The step kept pace. For a long mile, up a barren ridge, she heard every step it made. Then, as the brush closed deeper around her, she couldn't hear it at all.

She hurried on, straining to the silence. No, the sound was stopped.

Could it be that the animal, fearful at last, had turned from her trail?

And then for the first time a gasp that was not greatly different from a despairing sob caught at her throat. She heard the steps again, and they were in the thickets just beside her.

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