The Voice of the Pack Part 2

Dan didn't see his host at first. For the first instant he was entirely engrossed by a surging sense of disappointment,--a feeling that he had been tricked and had only come to another city after all. He got down on to the gravel of the station yard, and out on the gray street pavement he heard the clang of a trolley car. Trolley cars didn't fit into his picture of the West at all. Many automobiles were parked just beside the station, some of them foreign cars of expensive makes, such as he supposed would be wholly unknown on the frontier. A man in golf clothes brushed his shoulder.

It wasn't a large city; but there was certainly lack of any suggestion of the frontier. But there were a number of things that Dan Failing did not know about the West. One of the most important of them was the curious way in which wildernesses and busy cities are sometimes mixed up indiscriminately together, and how one can step out of a modern country club to hear the coyotes wailing on the hills. He really had no right to feel disappointed. He had simply come to the real West--that bewildering land in which To-morrow and Yesterday sit right next to each other, with no To-day between. The cities, often built on the dreams of the future, sometimes are modern to such a point that they give many a sophisticated Eastern man a decided shock. But quite often this quality extends to the corporation limits and not a step further. Then, likely as not, they drop sheer off, as over a precipice, into the utter wildness of the Past.

Dan looked up to the hills, and he felt better. He couldn't see them plainly. The faint smoke of a distant forest fire half obscured them.

Yet he saw fold on fold of ridges of a rather peculiar blue in color, and even his untrained eyes could see that they were clothed in forests of evergreen. It is a strange thing about evergreen forests that they never, even when one is close to them, appear to be really green. To a distant eye, they range all the way from lavender to a pale sort of blue for which no name has ever been invented. Just before dark, when, as all mountaineers know, the sky turns green, the forests are simply curious, dusky shadows. The pines are always dark. Perhaps, after all, they are simply the symbol of the wilderness,--eternal, silent, and in a vague way rather dark and sad. No one who really knows the mountains can completely get away from their tone of sadness. Over the heads of the green hills Dan could see a few great peaks; McLaughlin, even and regular as a painted mountain; Wagner, with queer white gashes where the snow still lay in its ravines, and to the southeast the misty range of snow-covered hills that were the Siskeyous. He felt decidedly better.

And when he saw old Silas Lennox waiting patiently beside the station, he felt he had come to the right place.

It would be interesting to explain why Dan at once recognized the older man for the breed he was. But unfortunately, there are certain of the many voices that speak within the minds of human beings of which scientists have never been able to take phonographic records. They simply whisper their messages, and their hearer, without knowing why, knows that he has heard the truth. Silas Lennox was not dressed in a way that would distinguish him. It was true that he wore a flannel s.h.i.+rt, riding trousers, and rather heavy, leathern boots. But sportsmen all over the face of the earth wear this costume at sundry times. Mountain men have a peculiar stride by which experienced persons can occasionally recognize them; but Silas Lennox was standing still when Dan got his first glimpse of him. The case resolves itself into a simple matter of the things that could be read in Lennox's face.

Dan disbelieved wholly in a book that told how to read characters at sight. Yet at the first glance of the lean, bronzed face his heart gave a curious little bound. A pair of gray eyes met his,--two fine black points in a rather hard gray iris. They didn't look past him, or at either side of him, or at his chin or his forehead. They looked right at his own eyes. The skin around the eyes was burned brown by the sun, and the flesh was so lean that the cheek bones showed plainly. The mouth was straight; but yet it was neither savage nor cruel. It was simply determined.

But the strangest part of all was that Dan felt an actual sense of familiarity with this kind of man. To his knowledge, he had never known one before; and it was extremely doubtful if, in his middle-western city, he had even seen the type. In spite of the fact that he thinks nothing of starting out thirty miles across the snow on snowshoes, the mountain man cannot be called an extensive traveler. He plans to go to some great city once in a lifetime and dreams about it of nights, but rather often the Death that is every one's next-door neighbor in the wilderness comes in and cheats him out of the trip. Few of the breed had ever come to Gitcheapolis. Yet all his life, Dan felt, he had known this straight, gray-eyed mountain breed even better than he knew the boys that went to college with him. At the time he didn't stop to wonder at the feeling. He was too busy looking about. But the time was to come when he would wonder and conclude that it was just another bit of evidence pointing to the same conclusion. And besides this unexplainable feeling of familiarity, he felt a sudden sense of peace, even a quiet sort of exultation, such as a man feels when he gets back into his own home country at last.

Lennox came up with a light, silent tread and extended his hand. "You're Dan Failing's grandson, aren't you?" he asked. "I'm Silas Lennox, who used to know him when he lived on the Divide. You are coming to spend the summer and fall on my ranch."

The immediate result of these words, besides relief, was to set Dan wondering how the old mountaineer had recognized him. He wondered if he had any physical resemblance to his grandfather. But this hope was shot to earth at once. His telegram had explained about his malady, and of course the mountaineer had picked him out simply because he had the mark of the disease on his face. As he shook hands, he tried his best to read the mountaineer's expression. It was all too plain: an undeniable look of disappointment.

The truth was that even in spite of all the Chamber of Commerce head had told him, Lennox had still hoped to find some image of the elder Dan Failing in the face and body of his grandson. But at first there seemed to be none at all. The great hunter and trapper who had tamed the wilderness about the region of the Divide--as far as mortal man could tame it--had a skin that was rather the color of old leather. The face of this young man was wholly without tinge of color. Because of the thick gla.s.ses, Lennox could not see the young man's eyes; but he didn't think it likely they were at all like the eyes with which the elder Failing saw his way through the wilderness at night. Of course he was tall, just as the famous frontiersman had been, but while the elder weighed one hundred and ninety pounds, bone and muscle, this man did not touch one hundred and thirty. Evidently the years had brought degeneracy to the Failing clan. Lennox was desolated by the thought.

He helped Dan with his bag to a little wiry automobile that waited beside the station. They got into the two front seats.

"You'll be wondering at my taking you in a car--clear to the Divide,"

Lennox explained. "But we mountain men can't afford to drive horses any more where a car will go. This time of year I can make it fairly easy--only about fifteen miles on low gear. But in the winter--it's either a case of coming down on snowshoes or staying there."

And a moment later they were starting up the long, curved road that led to the Divide.

During the hour that they were crossing over the foothills, on the way to the big timber, Silas Lennox talked a great deal about the frontiersman that had been Dan's grandfather. A mountain man does not use profuse adjectives. He talks very simply and very straight, and often there are long silences between his sentences. Yet he conveys his ideas with entire clearness.

Dan realized at once that if he could be, in Lennox's eyes, one fifth of the man his grandfather had been, he would never have to fear again the look of disappointment with which his host had greeted him at the station. But instead of reaching that high place, he had only--death. He was never to be one of this strong breed from which his people sprang.

Always they would accept him for the memories that they held of his ancestors, pity him for his weakness, and possibly be kind enough to deplore his death. He never need fear any actual expressions of scorn.

Lennox had a natural refinement that forbade it. Dan never knew a more intense desire than that to make good in the eyes of these mountain men.

Far back, they had been his own people; and all men know that the upholding of a family's name and honor has been one of the greatest impulses for good conduct and great deeds since the beginnings of civilization. But Dan pushed the hope out of his mind at once. He knew what his destiny was in these quiet hills. And it was true that he began to have secret regrets that he had come. But it wasn't that he was disappointed in the land that was opening up before him. It fulfilled every promise. His sole reason for regrets lay in the fact that now the whole mountain world would know of the decay that had come upon his people. Perhaps it would have been better to have left them to their traditions.

He had never dreamed that the fame of his grandfather had spread so far.

For the first ten miles, Dan listened to stories,--legends of a cold nerve that simply could not be shaken; of a powerful, tireless physique; of moral and physical strength that was seemingly without limit. Then, as the foothills began to give way to the higher ridges, and the shadow of the deeper forests fell upon the narrow, brown road, there began to be long gaps in the talk. And soon they rode in utter silence, evidently both of them absorbed in their own thoughts.

Dan did not wonder at it at all. Perhaps he began to faintly understand the reason for the silence and the reticence that is such a predominant trait in the forest men. There is a quality in the big timber that doesn't make for conversation, and no one has ever been completely successful in explaining what it is. Perhaps there is a feeling of insignificance, a sensation that is particularly insistent in the winter snows. No man can feel like talking very loudly when he is the only living creature within endless miles. The trees, towering and old, seem to ignore him as a being too unimportant to notice. And besides, the silence of the forest itself seems to get into the spirit, and the great, quiet s.p.a.ces that lie between tree and tree simply dry up the springs of conversation. Dan did not feel oppressed at all. He merely seemed to fall into the spirit of the woods, and no words came to his lips. He began to watch the ever-changing vista that the curving road revealed.

First there had been brown hills, and here and there great heaps of stone. The brush had been rather scrubby, and the trees somewhat sickly and brown. But now, as the men mounted higher, they were coming into open forest. The trees stood one and one, perfect, dark-limbed, and only the carpet of their needles lay between. The change was evidenced in the streams, too. They seemingly had not suffered from the drought that had sucked up the valley streams. They were faster, whiter with foam, and the noise of their falling waters carried farther through the still woods. The road followed the long shoulder of a ridge, an easy grade of perhaps six per cent, but Dan counted ridges sloping off until he was tired.

By now the smaller wild things of the mountains began to present themselves a breathless instant beside the road. These little people have an actual purpose in the hills other than to furnish food for the larger forest creatures. They give a note of sociability, of companions.h.i.+p, that is sorely needed to dull the edge of the utter, stark lonesomeness and severity that is the usual tone of the mountains.

The fact that they all live under the snow in winter is one reason why this season is especially dreadful to the spirit.

Every tree trunk seemed to have its chipmunks, and they all appeared to be suffering from the same delusion. They all were afflicted with the idea that the car was trying to cut off their retreat, and only by crossing the road in front of it could they save themselves. This idea is a particularly prevalent one with wild animals; and it is the same instinct that makes a domestic cow almost invariably cross the road in front of a motorist. And it also explains why certain cowardly animals, such as the wolf or cougar, will sometimes seemingly without a cause on earth, make a desperate charge on a hunter. They think their retreat is cut off, and they have to fight. Again and again the chipmunks crossed at the risk of their lives. Sometimes the two men saw those big, flat-footed rabbits that are especially constructed for moving about in the winter snows, and more than once the grouse rose with a whir and beat of wings.

Every mile was an added delight to Dan. Not even wine could have brought a brighter sparkle to his eyes. He had begun to experience a vague sort of excitement, an emotion that was almost kin to exultation, over the constant stir and movement of the forest life. He didn't know that a bird dog feels the same when it gets to the uplands where the quail are hiding. He had no acquaintance with bird dogs whatever. He hadn't remembered that he had qualities in common with them,--a long line of ancestors who had lived by hunting.

Once, as they stopped the car to refill the radiator from a mountain stream, Lennox looked at him with sudden curiosity. "You are getting a thrill out of this, aren't you?" he asked wonderingly.

It was a curious tone. Perhaps it was a hopeful tone, too. He spoke as if he hardly understood.

"A thrill!" Dan echoed. He spoke as a man speaks in the presence of some great wonder. "Good Heavens, I never saw anything like it in my life."

"In this very stream," the mountaineer told him joyously, "you may occasionally catch trout that weigh three pounds."

But as he got back into the car, the look of interest died out of Lennox's eyes. Of course any man would be somewhat excited by his first glimpse of the wilderness. It was not that he had inherited any of the traits of his grandfather. It was absurd to hope that he had. And he would soon get tired of the silences and want to go back to his cities.

He told his thought--that it would all soon grow old to him; and Dan turned almost in anger.

"You don't know," he said. "I didn't know myself, how I would feel about it. I'm never going to leave the hills again."

"You don't mean that."

"But I do." He tried to speak further, but he coughed instead. "But I couldn't if I wanted to. That cough tells you why, I guess."

"You mean to say--" Silas Lennox turned in amazement. "You mean that you're a--a goner? That you've given up hope of recovering?"

"That's the impression I meant to convey. I've got a little over four months--though I don't see that I'm any weaker than I was when the doctor said I had six months. Those four will take me all through the fall and the early winter. And I hope you won't feel that you've been imposed upon--to have a dying man on your hands."

"It isn't that." Silas Lennox threw his car into gear and started up the long grade. And he drove clear to the top of it and into another glen before he spoke again. Then he pointed to what looked to Dan like a brown streak that melted into the thick brush. "That was a deer," he said slowly. "Just a glimpse, but your grandfather could have got him between the eyes. Most like as not, though, he'd have let him go. He never killed except when he needed meat. But that--as you say--ain't the impression I'm trying to convey."

He seemed to be groping for words.

"What is it, Mr. Lennox?" Dan asked.

"Instead of being sorry, I'm mighty glad you've come," Lennox told him.

"It's not that I expect you to be like your grandfather. You haven't had his chance. But it's always the way of true men, the world over, to come back to their own kind to die. That deer we just saw--he's your people, and so are all these ranchers that grub their lives out of the forests--they are your people too. The bears and the elk, and even the porcupines. Though you likely won't care for 'em, it's almost as if they were your grandfather's own folks. And you couldn't have pleased the old man's old friends any better, or done more for his memory, than to come back to his own land for your last days."

There were great depths of meaning in the simple words. There were significances, such as the love that the mountain men have for their own land, that came but dimly to Dan's perceptions. The words were strange, yet Dan intuitively understood. It was as if a prodigal son had returned at last, and although his birthright was squandered and he came only to die, the people of his home would give him kindness and forgiveness, even though they could not give him their respect.

IV

The Lennox home was a typical mountain ranch-house,--square, solid, comforting in storm and wind. Bill was out to the gate when the car drove up. He was a son of his father, a strong man in body and personality. He too had heard of the elder Failing, and he opened his eyes when he saw the slender youth that was his grandson. And he led the way into the white-walled living room.

The shadows of twilight were just falling; and Bill had already lighted a fire in the fireplace to remove the chill that always descends with the mountain night. The whole long room was ruddy and cheerful in its glare. At once the elder Lennox drew a chair close to it for Dan.

"You must be chilly and worn-out from the long ride," he suggested quietly. He spoke in the tone a strong man invariably uses toward an invalid. But while a moment before Dan had welcomed the sight of the leaping, life-giving flames, he felt a curious resentment at the words.

"I'm not cold," he said. "It's hardly dark yet. I'd sooner go outdoors and look around."

The elder man regarded him curiously, perhaps with the faintest glimmer of admiration. "You'd better wait till to-morrow, Dan," he replied.

"Bill will have supper soon, anyway. To-morrow we'll walk up the ridge and I'll see if I can show you a deer. You don't want to overdo too much, right at first."

"But, good Heavens! I'm not going to try to spare myself while I'm here.