Shepherds of the Wild/Chapter 18
Chapter XVIII
The summer days dragged by, one by one, until they were all gone. Moons waxed and waned, annual plants budded, flowered, and died, the glossy green of the pine needles changed to a dusky blue; and all of these things were as they should be. There was, however, one important and disastrous omission. No rain had fallen since April.
It was bad for all the forest in general and very bad for certain people in particular. Of course, the little underground folk, such as the digger squirrels and gophers, didn't particularly care. Their small stomachs seemed to be lined with fur; and the dryer the brushwood the easier they could gnaw it. Old Urson, the porcupine, might have found this arid season quite to his liking. But it was more than possible that he didn't even know it hadn't rained. For Urson is ever lost in a strange apathy, a mental stupor, and life must be to him an inscrutable mystery without head or tail. He is guileless and stupid and so slow that even a cub-bear can overtake him (although clumsy little Woof, because of certain removable decorations on Urson's back, would not care to do it a second time) and one of his only two advantages is an utter indifference to the water supply. He can get along very well on the moisture in the tree limbs on which he browses. His other advantage is, of course, a convertible-armor arrangement that he uses for a back. One minute, and Urson looks sleek and almost as handsome as, say, a dromedary seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The next, and he becomes a formidable bundle of bristling spines, a veritable burr that is most painful to touch.
Of course the poison people did not care. They could swim on demand, of course, but they were not fond of water. If rain came any time during the following winter it would be soon enough for them. They lay in heavy sleep on the rock ledges where the heat waves danced. It isn't wise, however, to put one's trust in that slumber and go climbing over those sun-blasted rocks with unprotected ankles. A rattlesnake may look dead as last year's leaves, he may lie so still that even the buzzard—in the sky—is deceived, and yet he can spring straight out of his dark, wicked dreams and bury his hypodermic needles, filled with as deadly a poison as a scientist can concoct in his laboratory, in the exact spot of man's flesh he chooses. The heat waves danced and spiraled in the air, the rocks grew too hot to touch, and still the serpents lay in their heat trance, wholly content. And lastly, the buzzards had no complaint with the drought.
For disaster to the forest creatures always means triumph to the buzzards. They are the undertakers, the followers of the dead. If all the streams and all the springs should dry up, the buzzards would be in their glory. There is a legend, passed down from mother to fledgling among them, that long ago such a drought did happen, and that is what the ancient birds think about when they soar so endlessly in the sky. And there is a prophecy that some time such an hour of glory will come again.
But the deer found poor feeding. The grass was dry as dust, the leaves crinkly and crisp, their favorite saltlicks were hard, dry mud. Most of the springs were dried up, the lesser tributaries of Silver Creek were only successions of stagnant pools in which the silver people were already dying and turning white bellies to the sun. The grubs that the old black bear loved were dried to little flakes, like grease spots, on the dead logs; and the berries withered and dropped off before they ever ripened. The wolves ran their game, and since in the hot, stifling days exhaustion came quickly to their prey, perhaps they benefited, rather than suffered, from the drought. But these gray hunters can always be expected to benefit. "Mercy from Cold-Eye is the season that betrays the wolf," is one of those strange maxims among the forest people, and it needs, like most of the forest sayings, a certain amount of interpretation. Cold-Eye is the forest name for the rattlesnake, and no man who has seen the evil diamonds in his head can doubt that it is a good one. And mercy is the one thing that can never be expected from the rattler. It is the same as saying that it will be a snowy day in July when the wolf cannot turn the most far-spread disaster to his own account. Everything always turns out all right for the gray rangers. And maybe that is the reason why, in spite of endless centuries of warfare with men, they still fill the autumn woods with their songs.
But Broken Fang, the great tawny king of the pumas, and all his lithe and deadly younger brethren almost starved to death. Their whole hunting success depended on a noiseless stalk upon a breed of creatures with ears sharp enough to hear the predatory beetles utter their kill screams in the air, and even the feline cushioned feet could not step with silence in the dry brush. At first there was only gnawing hunger and distemper, then frantic ferocity, and finally almost a madness wherein blue lights dwelt ever in their eyes and agonized convulsions came to the muscles of their throats. Even the porcupines heard them come in time to climb out to the end of the tree limbs, and by the middle of September Broken Fang was ready and willing to lie in ambush a whole night for the sake of a chipmunk that might venture forth from its nest.
The instinct of all the creatures was to climb ever higher,—into the far, lovely grass slopes of the high peaks. In these places the melting snow, the colder nights and days, the moisture-laden winds that swept across them removed, in some degree, the effect of drought. The rains would certainly come in October, but it began to look as if, unless better hunting were found in these high realms, the starving felines could not survive the few weeks that remained. But there were good prospects in these high trails. Dwelling in the wastes of sliderock and snow field, feeding on the grass slopes and scaling the loftiest cliffs, lived the very monarchs of the mountains, creatures that weighed up to two hundred and fifty pounds, and who even in these starving times were tender and fat.
They were the mountain sheep. Far above timber line, in the land where the great snow banks endured through the centuries, these hardy creatures lived and died and had their being: the finest game, the richest trophies, perhaps the most interesting wild animals in all North American fauna. Here old Surefoot and Argali, the two greatest of the bighorn rams, fought their battles in the fall. There were no heavy thickets for ambush, but Broken Fang could find niches and sharp turns in the trail where he could wait for the ewes to wander by.
Because they had a strong man and a faithful dog to care for them, Crowson's flock of domestic sheep weathered the drought with little discomfort. It was true that the herbage was dry and tasteless, but the sheep are a breed that has learned to fare well where cattle would die. They nibbled the leaves and twigs; Hugh led them to the greenest glens, the richest meadows, and his weekly change of camp site found them ever higher on the range where the effects of drought were less. And in the last days of September they were so high that the old leader of the bighorn flock could look down and see these tame brethren, like moving fields of snow, on the slopes beneath.
These days had been good to Hugh. Every one had been a fresh delight, every night had fallen to find a greater strength and a higher peace in his spirit. Was not this his destiny? Had he not come to his Lost Land, after many years of wandering on dark and unknown trails? Could his home be elsewhere than on these rugged mountains, the shadow of the forest upon him, and the green glades lying in the beauty of the moon? All his life, it seemed to him, his spirit had gone groping—here and there—for something it could never find; and here, behind the flocks, it had found it at last.
He loved the long days of wandering, the nights of vigil, the cool camps in the forest shadow, the little daily adventures that were all part of the eternal war that the powers of the wilderness waged upon the dominance and works of man. Sometimes these took the form of a wolf, striking like a gray shadow from a clump of underbrush and making his kill before Hugh could raise his weapon, sometimes the measured stalk of a cougar on the fold. The fight was never done. Never the night descended but that the age-old battle cry of the wild—the howl of a wolf or a scream of a cougar in the gloom—would come soaring, eerie and wild past all telling, to his ears. And more than once the leaping flame of his camp was the center of a circle of fire,—twin disks, here and there, wherever the eyes might fall.
The inanimate wild itself menaced the flock. It wasn't easy to find watering places in these days of drought. There were deep glens—box canyons the mountaineers call them—into which stray bands from the flock would wander and be unable to find the way out. Sometimes arms of the brush thickets cut them off from their fellows, and these were the times when Running Feet and his savage companions were in their glory. Hugh found an ever-increasing delight in testing his own strength and skill against the sinister forces of the wild. It was his joy to give the flock the best possible care: keeping down its casualties, choosing the best feeding grounds, and protecting them from panic or excitement. And as the result of his vigilance, few of his sheep died of sickness, and the lambs grew like weeds.
"You know, Hugh," the girl told him one day, "you are a wonderful herder. We owe you more than we can ever pay."
No praise had ever meant so much. "I have to be a good one," the man replied, glowing. "I have to make up for the years I've wasted. Besides—it seems to come naturally to me."
He had never spoken a truer word. It seemed to him that this was his ordained place,—behind the flocks as they fed through the forest.
He liked the long still nights in which he knew the solace of the fire, and the whispering and the mystery that crept to him from the forest. He felt that he had lost all love of pretentious things. His standards were true at last, and the little, simple joys that came to him now meant more than all the luxury of his former life. His pipe—no longer tasting of varnish but cool and sweet—his simple meals, the little triumphs of his day's work, his refreshing rest after the day's fatigue gave him unmeasured joy. He had the lasting satisfaction of work well done, of time profitably spent. Already, he reflected, he had some hundred dollars to show his friends in the Greenwood Club! But that famous organization seemed infinitely distant now. It was as if it had never been real: that all his days he had roamed behind the sheep.
Strangely, he no longer even missed the old days. The love of strong drink was gone from his body. He didn't look a great deal like the man that the Old Colonel had sent forth from the Greenwood Club. His hands and face had been brown before, now they were almost as dark as those of Pete, his late guide. A fast walk over the ridges did not fatigue him now. He was lean and hard as hickory, the muscles rippled under his toughened skin, the sweet, mountain air rushed deep in his lungs. It was almost recreation: never in his old life had he known the buoyancy, the tireless strength, the simple joy of living vibrant and alive in every nerve. There was a curious change in his eyes, too. The little blood-splotches had quite gone from the whites, and they were a firm, pale blue. The corneas looked slightly more hard and bright, and the lines that dissipation had enscribed were almost gone.
"Go for two weeks," the Old Colonel had said. " And Lord knows—it might make a man of you."
Two weeks! Three months had already passed, and whether Alice knew it or not, that remote possibility that the Old Colonel had hoped for had already come true. Hugh had done a man's work: the degree had been won. For the law that was true in the earth's young days is true to-day; it endures when scorn has spent itself and false pride is humbled: that by toil and conflict alone shall men find their place, their honor, and their happiness. Hugh knew now, as he watched his sheep, that this was the world of the warrior, not the weakling; of those who gave, not those who took; of those who stood firm and endured, not those who broke and fled from the crash of armor.
He did not doubt but that he had already been forgotten by the members of the Greenwood Club. Three months had he been gone: another played his hand at poker, another occupied his favorite seat in the club dining room. But of course they would forget him! There was no comradeship of arms, no mutual memories of trial and strife and conquest to hold them close to him. He had supposed that he had known them intimately, their natures and their souls, but now he realized that they had been but strangers, after all. Living an artificial life, he had seen only exteriors. He had flattered himself—in his subconscious mind rather than conscious—that they were close and lasting friends. Now he knew that only the fire of conflict and stress can weld a lasting friendship between man and man. Friendship is too dear and precious a thing to find in soft ways. That, like all of the other rewards of life, goes only to the warrior.
He was forgotten: the night life of the club whirled on without him. The talk was the same, the lights glittered as ever, the crowds thronged through the streets without, the same round of gaieties made its lifeless and eternal circuit. By a strange paradox he suddenly knew that if he were remembered at all, it was by those who had shared with him in his debauches. And after all they had been the most vital part of his old life. They were the thing most worth while. At least he had lived then, he had known basic exultations and passions, he had not been soft and dead. There had been stress, wakefulness, vitality. Perhaps their pleasure lay in the fact that they had simulated life. But by the other clubmen, men he had laughed with and talked to, he was simply one who had been and passed on.
He was stirred to the depths of his being by the contrast here. He laughed at the thought that he might ever be forgotten by the companion beside him now,—the great shepherd dog that muzzled his hands. Had they not fought on the same side in battle? Had they not faced the same enemies, known the same stress, felt the same pinch of cold in the crisp dawns and the same cheering warmth of the fire? Had they not gone together into still and sinister glens after the lost sheep? They had braved the dangers, they had endured the storms, they had fought the same fight for the same reward,—the joy of living and of service. Here was one of whom he did not know merely the exterior. He felt the animal's heart pounding against his own body, and he knew its strength and its courage. Its fidelity, its love, its true and noble worth could not be put into words. And here was a friend, as long as blood stirred in his veins, who would be faithful.
No artificial lights glittered in these mountains. Rather Hugh knew those known to the shepherds who watched the sky for a sign in olden days,—the peace of the stars and the glory of the moon. The only talk was such as he and the shepherd dog had together, the complaint of the sheep, and the voices of the forest about him. The crowds were far, the gaieties were known at last as the dreams they really were, and in their place was the silence, the inner peace, the joy of conquest, and the white sheep, feeding in the shadow of the high peaks. He was far and alone, but he was content.
But Hugh was not entirely forgotten. Even now the Old Colonel sat in his chair in the lounging room, his factory-tied tie at an angle at his collar, his hands folded, his eyes seeing out and beyond the city that stretched about him. And to him, at least, Hugh was still a reality. Even if he were dead—slain in some great stress in those far Rockies—he was more vital and alive in the Colonel's eye than he had ever been before. Had he won, or had he failed? Was he standing straight or had he fallen? Had he gone down, or even now was he sitting, redeemed and recreated, beside his camp fire in the Land of Mighty Men?