Dorn Of The Mountains

by Zane Grey

  The hunter searched some of the slopes next day and even went up on one of the mountains. He did not discover any sign of Muss, but he said he had found something else.

  “Do you girls want some real excitement?” he asked.

  Helen smiled her acquiescence and Bo replied with one of her forceful speeches.

  “Don’t mind bein’ good an’ scared?” he went on.

  “You can’t scare me,” bantered Bo. But Helen looked doubtful.

  “Up in one of the parks I run across one of my horses…a lame bay you haven’t seen. Well, he had been killed by that old silvertip I told you was hangin’ around. Hadn’t been dead over an hour. Blood was still runnin’ an’ only a little meat eaten. That bear heard me or saw me an’ made off into the woods. But he’ll come back to night. I’m goin’ up there, lay for him, an’ kill him…. Reckon you’d better go, because I don’t want to leave you here alone at night.”

  “Are you going to take Tom?” asked Bo.

  “No. The bear might get his scent. An’ besides Tom ain’t reliable on bears.”

  When they had hurried supper, and Dorn had gotten in the horses, the sun had set and the valley was shadowing low down while the ramparts were still golden.

  The long zigzag trail Dorn followed up the slope took nearly an hour to climb, so that, when that was surmounted and he led out of the woods, twilight had fallen. A rolling park extended as far as Helen could see, bordered by forest that in places sent out straggling stretches of trees. Here and there like islands were isolated patches of timber.

  At 10,000 feet elevation the twilight of this clear and cold night was a rich and rare atmospheric effect. It looked as if it was seen through perfectly clear smoked glass. Objects were singularly visible, even at long range, and seemed magnified. In the west, where the afterglow of sunset lingered over the dark ragged spruce-speared horizon line, there was such a transparent golden line melting into vivid star-fired blue that Helen could only gaze and gaze in wondering admiration.

  Dorn spurred his horse into a lope and the spirited mounts of the girls kept up with him. The ground was rough, with tufts of grass growing close together, yet the horses did not stumble. Their action and snorting betrayed excitement. Dorn led around several clumps of timber, up a long grassy swale, and then straight westward across an open flat toward where the dark-fringed forest line raised itself, wild and clear, against the cold sky. The horses went swiftly, and the wind cut like a blade of ice. Helen could barely get her breath and she panted as if she had just climbed a laborsome hill. The stars began to blink out of the blue, and the gold paled somewhat, and yet twilight lingered. It seemed long across that flat, but really was short. Coming to a thin line of trees that led down over a slope to deeper, but still isolated patch of woods, Dorn dismounted and tied his horse. When the girls got off, he halted their horses, also.

  “Stick close to me an’ put your feet down easy,” he whispered. How tall and dark he loomed in the fading light! Helen thrilled, as she had often of late, at the strange potential physical force of the man. Stepping softly, without the least sound, Dorn entered this straggly bit of woods, which appeared to have narrow byways and nooks. Then presently he came to the top of a well-wooded slope, dark as pitch, apparently. But as Helen followed, she perceived the trees, and they were thin dwarf spruce, partly dead. The slope was exposed—springy, easy to step upon without noise. Dorn went so cautiously that Helen could not hear him, and sometimes in the gloom she could not see him. Then the chill thrills ran over her. Bo kept holding on to Helen, which fact hampered Helen as well as worked somewhat to disprove Bo’s boast. At last level ground was reached. Helen made out a light-gray background crossed by black bars. Another glance showed this to be the dark tree trunks against the open park.

  Dorn halted and with a touch brought Helen to a straining pause. He was listening. It seemed wonderful to watch him bend his head and stand as silently and motionlessly as one of the dark trees.

  “He’s not there yet,” Dorn whispered, and he stepped forward very slowly. Helen and Bo began to come up against thin dead branches that were invisible, and they cracked. Then Dorn knelt down, seemed to melt into the ground.

  “You’ll have to crawl,” he whispered.

  How strange and thrilling that was for Helen, and hard work! The ground bore twigs and dead branches, which had to be carefully crawled over, and lying flat, as was necessary, it took prodigious effort to drag her body inch by inch. Like a huge snake Dorn wormed his way along.

  Gradually the wind lightened. They were nearing the edge of the park. Helen now saw a strip of open with a high black wall of spruce beyond. The afterglow flashed or changed, like a diminishing northern light, and then failed. Dorn crawled on farther to halt at length between two tree trunks at the edge of the wood.

  “Come up beside me,” he whispered.

  Helen crawled on, and presently Bo was beside her, panting, with pale face and great staring eyes, plain to be seen in the wan light.

  “Moon’s comin’ up. We’re just in time. The old grizzly’s not there yet, but I see coyotes. Look.” Dorn pointed across the open neck of park to a dim blurred patch standing apart some little distance from the black wall.

  “That’s the dead horse,” whispered Dorn. “An’ if you watch close, you can see the coyotes. They’re gray an’ they move…. Can’t you hear them?”

  Helen’s excited ears, so full of throbs and imaginings, presently registered low snaps and snarls. Bo gave her arm a squeeze.

  “I hear them. They’re fighting…. Oh…gee,” she panted, and drew a long full breath of unutterable excitement.

  “Keep quiet now an’ watch an’ listen,” said the hunter.

  Slowly the black ragged forest line seemed to grow blacker and lift; slowly the gray neck of park lightened under some invisible influence; slowly the stars paled and the sky filmed over. Somewhere the moon was rising. And slowly that vague blurred patch grew a little clearer.

  Through the tips of the spruce, now seen to be rather close at hand, shone a slender silver crescent moon, darkening, hiding, shining again, climbing until its exquisite sickle point topped the trees, and then, magically it cleared them, radiant and cold. While the eastern black wall shaded still blacker, the park blanched and the borderline opposite began to stand out as trees.

  “Look! Look!” cried Bo very low and fearfully, as she pointed.

  “Not so loud,” whispered Dorn.

  “But I see something!”

  “Keep quiet,” he admonished.

  Helen, in the direction Bo pointed, could not see anything but moon-blanched bare ground, rising close at hand to a little ridge.

  “Lie still,” whispered Dorn. “I’m goin’ to crawl around to get a look from another angle. I’ll be right back.” He moved noiselessly backward and disappeared.

  With him gone, Helen felt a palpitating of her heart and a prickling of her skin.

  “Oh, my, Nell. Look,” whispered Bo in fright. “I know I saw something.”

  On top of the little ridge a round object moved slowly, getting farther out into the light. Helen watched with suspended breath. It moved out to be silhouetted against the sky—apparently a huge round bristling animal frosty in color. Helen’s tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. That frosty color proved the thing to be a grizzly bear. One instant it seemed huge—the next small—then close at hand and far away. It swerved to come directly toward them. Suddenly Helen realized that the beast was not a dozen yards distant. She was just beginning a new experience—a real and horrifying terror in which her blood curdled, her heart gave a tremendous leap and then stood still, and she wanted to fly, but was rooted to the spot—when Dorn returned to her side.

  “That’s a pesky porcupine,” he whispered. “Almost crawled over you. He sure would have stuck you full of quills.”

  Whereupon, he threw a stick at the animal. It bounced straight up to turn around with startling quickness, and it gave forth a rattling sound, then it
crawled out of sight.

  “Por-cu-pine?” whispered Bo pantingly. “It might…as well…have been…an elephant.”

  Helen uttered a long eloquent sigh. She would not have cared to describe her emotions at sight of a harmless hedgehog.

  “Listen,” warned Dorn, very low. His big hand closed over Helen’s gauntleted one. “There you have the real cry of the wild.”

  Sharp and cold on the night air split the cry of a wolf, distant yet wonderfully distinct. How wild and mournful and hungry! How marvelously pure! Helen shuddered through all her frame with the thrill of its music, the wild and unutterable and deep emotions it aroused. Again a sound of this forest had pierced beyond her life, back into the dim remote past from which she had come.

  The cry was not repeated. The coyotes were still. And a silence fell, absolutely unbroken.

  Dorn nudged Helen, and then reached out to give Bo a tap. He was peering keenly ahead and his strained intensity could be felt. Helen looked with all her might and she saw the shadowy gray forms of the coyotes skulk away, out of the moonlight into the gloom of the woods, where they disappeared. Not only Dorn’s intensity but the very silence, the wildness of the moment and place, seemed fraught with wonderful potency. Bo must have felt it, too, for she was trembling all over, and holding tightly on to Helen, and breathing quickly and fast.

  “Ahuh,” muttered Dorn under his breath.

  Helen caught the relief and certainty in his exclamation, and she divined then something of what the moment must have been to a hunter. Then her roving alert glance was arrested by a looming gray shadow coming out of the forest. It moved, but surely that huge thing could not be a bear. It passed out of gloom into silver moonlight. Helen’s heart bounded. For it was a great frosty-coated bear lumbering along toward the dead horse. Instinctively Helen’s hand sought the arm of the hunter. It felt like iron under a rippling surface. The touch eased away the oppression over her lungs, the tightness of her throat. What must have been fear left her, and only a powerful excitement remained. A sharp expulsion of breath from Bo and a violent jerk of her frame were signs that she had sighted the grizzly.

  In the moonlight he looked of immense size and that wild park with the gloomy blackness of forest furnished a fit setting for him. Helen’s quick mind, so taken up with emotions, still had a thought for the wonder and the meaning of that scene. She wanted the bear killed, yet that seemed a pity.

  He had a wagging, rolling slow walk that took several moments to reach his quarry. When at length he reached it, he walked around with sniffs, plainly heard, and then a cross growl. Evidently he had discovered that his meal had been messed over. As a whole the big bear could be seen distinctly, but only in outline and color. The distance was perhaps 200 yards. Then it looked as if he had begun to tug at the carcass. Indeed he was dragging it, very slowly but surely.

  “Look at that,” whispered Dorn. “If he ain’t strong. Reckon I’ll have to stop him.”

  The grizzly, however, stopped of his own accord, just outside of the shadow line of the forest. Then, hunched in a big frosty heap over his prey, he began to tear and rend.

  “Jess was a mighty good horse,” muttered Dorn grimly. “Too good to make a meal for a hog silvertip.” Then the hunter silently rose to a kneeling position, swinging the rifle in front of him. He glanced up into the low branches of the tree overhead. “Girls, there’s no tellin’ what a grizzly will do. If I yell, you climb up in this tree an’ do it quick.”

  With that he leveled the rifle, resting his left elbow on his knee. The front end of the rifle, reaching out of the shade, shone silver in the moonlight. Man and weapon became still as stone. Helen held her breath. But Dorn relaxed, lowering the barrel.

  “Can’t see the sights very well,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Remember now…if I yell, you climb!”

  Again he aimed and slowly grew rigid. Helen could not take her fascinated eyes off him. He knelt bareheaded and in that shadow she could make out the gleam of his clear-cut profile, stern and cold.

  A streak of fire and heavy report startled her. Then she heard the bullet hit. Shifting her glance, she saw the bear lurch with convulsive action, rearing on his hind legs. Loud clicking snaps must have been a clenching of his jaws in rage. But there was no other sound. Then again Dorn’s heavy gun boomed. Helen heard again that singular spatting thud of striking lead. The bear went down with a flop as if he had been dealt a terrific blow. But just as quickly he was up on all fours and began to whirl with hoarse savage bawls of agony and fury. His action quickly carried him out of the moonlight into the shadow, where he disappeared. There the bawls gave place to gnashing snarls, and crashings in the brush, and snapping of branches as he made his way into the forest.

  “Sure he’s mad,” said Dorn, rising to his feet. “An’ I reckon hard hit. But I won’t follow him to night.”

  Both the girls got up, and Helen found she was shaky on her feet and very cold.

  “Oh-h, wasn’t…it…won-…wonder…ful!” cried Bo.

  “Are you scared? Your teeth are chatterin’,” queried Dorn.

  “I’m…cold.”

  “Well, it sure is cold all right,” he responded. “Now the fun’s over you’ll feel it…. Nell, you’re froze, too.”

  Helen nodded. She was indeed as cold as she had ever been before. But that did not prevent a strange warmness along her veins and a quickened pulse, the cause of which she did not conjecture.

  “Let’s rustle,” said Dorn, and led the way out of the wood and skirted its edge around to the slope. There they climbed to the flat, and went through the straggling line of trees to where the horses were tethered.

  Up here the wind began to blow, not hard through the forest, but still strong and steady out in the open, and bitterly cold. Dorn helped Bo to mount, and then Helen.

  “I’m…numb,” she said. “I’ll fall off…sure.”

  “No. You’ll be warm in a jiffy,” he replied, “because we’ll ride some, goin’ back. Let your horse pick the way an’ you hang on.”

  With Ranger’s first jump Helen’s blood began to run. Out he shot, his lean dark head beside Dorn’s horse. The wild park lay, clear and bright, in the moonlight, with strange silvery radiance on the grass. The patches of timber, like spired black islands in a moon-blanched lake, seemed to harbor shadows, and places for bears to hide, ready to spring out. As Helen neared each little grove, her pulses shook and her heart beat. Half a mile of rapid riding burned out the cold. And all seemed glorious—the sailing moon, white in a dark-blue sky, the white passionless stars, so solemn, so far away, the beckoning fringe of forestland, at once mysterious and friendly, and the fleet horses, running with soft rhythmic thuds over the grass, leaping the ditches and the hollows, making the bitter wind sting and cut. Coming up that park, the ride had been long; going back was as short as it was thrilling. In Helen experiences gathered realization slowly, and it was this swift ride, the horses neck and neck, and all the wildness and beauty, that completed the slow insidious work of years. The tears of excitement froze on her cheeks and her heart heaved full. All that pertained to this night got into her blood. It was only to feel, to live now, but it could be understood and remembered forever afterward.

  Dorn’s horse, a little in advance, sailed over a ditch. Ranger made a splendid leap, but he alighted among some grassy tufts, and fell. Helen shot over his head. She struck lengthwise, her arms stretched, and slid hard to a shocking impact that stunned her. Bo’s scream rang in her ears; she felt the wet grass under her face, and then the strong hands that lifted her. Dorn loomed over her, bending down to look into her face; Bo was clutching her with frantic hands. And Helen could only gasp. Her breast seemed caved in. The need to breathe was torture.

  “Nell…you’re not hurt. You fell light, like a feather. All grass here…. You can’t be hurt!” said Dorn sharply.

  His anxious voice penetrated beyond her hearing, and his strong hands went swiftly over her arms and shoulders feeling for broken bones.


  “Just had the wind knocked out of you,” went on Dorn. “It feels awful, but it’s nothin’.”

  Helen got a little air that was like hot pinpoints in her lungs, and then a deeper breath, and then full gasping respiration.

  “I guess…I’m not hurt…not a bit,” she choked out.

  “You sure had a header. Never saw a prettier spill. Ranger doesn’t do that often. I reckon we were travelin’ too fast…. But it was fun, don’t you think?”

  It was Bo who answered. “Oh, glorious! But, gee, I was scared.”

  Dorn still held Helen’s hands. She released them, while looking up at him. The moment was realization for her, of what for days had been a vague sweet uncertainty becoming near and strange, disturbing and present. This accident had been a sudden violent end to the wonderful ride. But its effect, the knowledge of what had got into her blood, would never change. And inseparable from it was this man of the forest.

  Chapter Eleven

  On the next morning Helen was awakened by what she imagined had been a dream of someone shouting. With a start she sat up. The sunshine showed pink and gold on the ragged spruce line of the mountain ruins. Bo was on her knees, braiding her hair with shaking hands, and at the same time trying to peep out.

  And the echoes of a ringing cry were cracking back from the cliffs. That had been Dorn’s voice.

  “Nell! Nell! Wake up!” called Bo wildly. “Oh, someone’s come! Horses and men!”

  Helen got to her knees and peered out over Bo’s shoulder. Dorn, standing tall and striking beside the campfire, was waving his sombrero. Way down the open edge of the park came a string of pack burros with mounted men behind. In the foremost rider Helen recognized Roy Beeman.