The Voice of the Pack/Book 1/Chapter 4
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. It's too late for that."
"Of course—but sit down now, anyway. I'm sorry that Snowbird is n't here."
"Snowbird is—"
"My daughter. My boy, she can make a biscuit! That's not her name, of course, but we've always called her that. She got tired of keeping house and is working this summer. Poor Bill has to keep house for her, and no wonder he's eager to take the stock down to the lower levels. I only wish he had n't brought 'em up this spring at all; I've lost dozens from the coyotes."
"But a coyote can't kill cattle—"
"It can if it has hydrophobia, a common thing in the varmints this time of year. But as I say, Bill will take the stock down next season, and then Snowbird's work will be through, and she'll come back here."
"Then she's down in the valley?"
"Far from it. She's a mountain girl if one ever lived. Perhaps you don't know the recent policy of the forest service to hire women when they can be obtained. It was a policy started in wartimes and kept up now because it is economical and efficient. She and a girl from college have a cabin not five miles from here on old Bald Mountain, and they're doing lookout duty."
Dan wondered intensely what lookout duty might be. His thoughts went back to his early study of forestry. "You see, Dan," Lennox said in explanation, "the government loses thousands of dollars every year by forest fire. A fire can be stopped easily if it is seen soon after it starts. But let it burn awhile, in this dry season, and it's a terror—a wall of flame that races through the forests and can hardly be stopped. And maybe you don't realize how enormous this region is—literally hundreds of miles across. We 're the last outpost—there are four cabins, if you can find them, in the first seventy miles back to town. So they have to put lookouts on the high points, and now they're coming to the use of aëroplanes so they can keep even a better watch. All summer and until the rains come in the fall, they have to guard every minute, and even then sometimes the fires get away from them. And one of the first things a forester learns, Dan, is to be careful with fire."
"Is that the way they are started—from the carelessness of campers?"
"Partly. There's an old rule in the hills: put out every fire before you leave it. Be careful with the cigar butts, too—even the coals of a pipe. But of course the lightning starts many fires, and, I regret to say, hundreds of them are started with matches."
"But why on earth—"
"It does n't make very good sense, does it? Well, one reason is that certain stockmen think that a burned forest makes good range—that the undervegetation that springs up when the trees are burned makes good feed for stock. And you must know, too, that there are two kinds of men in the mountains. One kind—the real mountain man, such as your grandfather was—lives just as well, just as clean as the ranchers in the valley. Some of this kind are trappers or herders. But there's another class too—the most unbelievably shiftless, ignorant people in America. They have a few acres to raise crops, and they kill deer for their hides, and most of all they make their living fighting forest fires. A fire means work for every hill-billy in the region—often five or six dollars a day and better food than they're used to. Moreover, they can loaf on the job, put in claims for extra hours, and make what to them is a fortune.
"You 'll likely see a few of the breed before—before your visit here is ended. There's a family of 'em not three miles away—and that's real neighborly in the mountains—by the name of Cranston. Bert Cranston traps a little and makes moonshine; you 'll probably see plenty of him before the trip is over. Sometime I 'll tell you of a little difficulty that I had with him once. You need n't worry about him coming to this house; he's already received his instructions in that matter.
"But I see I'm getting all tangled up in my traces. Snowbird and a girl friend from college got jobs this summer as lookouts—all through the forest service they are hiring women for the work. They are more vigilant than men, less inclined to take chances, and work cheaper. These two girls have a cabin near a spring, and they cook their own food, and are making what is big wages in the mountains. I'm rather hoping she 'll drop over for a few minutes to-night."
"Good Lord—does she travel over these hills in the darkness?"
The mountaineer laughed—a delighted sound that came somewhat curiously from the bearded lips of the stern, dark man. "Dan, I 'll swear she's afraid of nothing that walks the face of the earth—and it is n't because she has n't had experiences either. She's a dead shot with a pistol, for one thing. She's physically strong, and every muscle is hard as nails. She used to have Shag, too—the best dog in all these mountains. She's a mountain girl, I tell you; whoever wins her has got to be able to tame her!" The mountaineer laughed again. "I sent her to school, of course, but there was only one boy she'd look at—the athletic coach! And it was n't his fault that he did n't follow her back to the mountains."
The call to supper came then, and Dan got his first sight of mountain food. There were potatoes, newly dug, mountain vegetables that were crisp and cold, a steak of peculiar shape, and a great bowl of purple berries to be eaten with sugar and cream. Dan's appetite was not as a rule particularly good. But evidently the long ride had affected him. He simply did n't have the moral courage to refuse when the elder Lennox heaped his plate.
"Good Heavens, I can't eat all that," he said, as it was passed to him. But the others laughed and told him to take heart.
He took heart. It was a singular thing, but at that first bite his sudden confidence in his gustatory ability almost overwhelmed him. All his life he had avoided meat. His mother had always been convinced that such a delicate child as he had been could not properly digest it. But all at once he decided to forego his mother's philosophies for good and all. There was certainly nothing to be gained by following them any longer. So he cut himself a bite of the tender steak—fully half as generous as the bites that Bill was consuming across the table. And its first flavor simply filled him with delight.
"What is this meat?" he asked. "I 've certainly tasted it before."
"I 'll bet a few dollars that you have n't, if you 've lived all your life in the Middle West," Lennox answered. "Maybe you 've got what the scientists call an inherited memory of it. It's the kind of meat your grandfather used to live on—venison."
Both of them had seemed pleased that he liked the venison. And both seemed boyishly eager to test his reaction to the great, wild huckleberries that were the dessert of the simple meal. He tried them with much ceremony.
Their flavor really surprised him. They had a tang, a fragrance that was quite unlike anything he had ever tasted, yet which brought a curious flood of dim, half-understood memories. It seemed to him that always he had stood on the hillsides, picking these berries as they grew, and staining his lips with them. But at once he pushed the thoughts out of his mind, thinking that his imagination was playing tricks upon him. And soon after this, Lennox led him out of the house for his first glimpse of the hills in the darkness.
They walked together out to the gate, across the first of the wide pastures where, at certain seasons, Lennox kept his cattle; and at last they came out upon the tree-covered ridge. The moon was just rising. They could see it casting a curious glint over the very tips of the pines. But it could n't get down between them. They stood too close, too tall and thick for that. And for a moment, Dan's only sensation was one of silence.
"You have to stand still a moment, to really know anything," Lennox told him.
They both stood still. Dan was as motionless as that day in the park, long weeks before, when the squirrel had climbed on his shoulder. The first effect was a sensation that the silence was deepening around them. It was n't really true. It was simply that he had become aware of the little continuous sounds of which usually he was unconscious, and they tended to accentuate the hush of the night. He heard his watch ticking in his pocket, the whispered stir of his own breathing, and he was quite certain that he could hear the fevered beat of his own heart in his breast. But then slowly he began to become aware of other sounds, so faint and indistinct that he really could not be sure that he heard them. There was a faint rustle and stir, as of the tops of the pine trees far away. Possibly he heard the wind too, the faintest whisper in the world through the underbrush. And finally, most wonderful of all, he began to hear one by one, over the ridge on which he stood, little whispered sounds of living creatures stirring in the thickets. He knew, just as all mountaineers know, that the wilderness about him was stirring and pulsing with life. Some of the sounds were quite clear—an occasional stir of a pebble or the crack of a twig, and some, like the faintest twitching of leaves in the brush not ten feet distant, could only be guessed at.
"What is making the sounds?" he asked.
He did n't know it, at the time, but Lennox turned quickly toward him. It was n't that the question had surprised the mountaineer. Rather it was the tone in which Dan had spoken. It was perfectly cool, perfectly self-contained.
"The one right close is a chipmunk. I don't know what the others are; no one ever does know. Perhaps ground squirrels, or rabbits, or birds, and maybe even one of those harmless old black bears who is curious about the house. The bears have more curiosity than they can well carry around, and they say they 'll sometimes come up and put their front feet on a window sill of a house, and peer through the window. They must think men are the craziest things! And of course it might be a coyote—and a mad one at that. I guess I told you that they 're subject to rabies at this time of year. I 'll confess I'd rather have it be anything else. And tell me—can you smell anything—"
"Good Lord, Lennox! I can smell all kinds of things."
"I'm glad. Some men can't. No one can enjoy the woods if he can't smell. Part of the smells are of flowers, and part of balsam, and God only knows what the others are. They are just the wilderness—"
Dan could not only perceive the smells and sounds, but he felt that they were leaving an imprint on the very fiber of his soul. He knew one thing. He knew he could never forget this first introduction to the mountain night. The whole scene moved him in strange, deep ways in which he had never been stirred before; it left him exultant and, in deep wells of his nature far below the usual currents of excitement, a little excited too. And all the time he had that indefinable sense of familiarity, a knowledge that this was his own land, and after a long, long time of wandering in far places, he had come back to it.
Then both of them were startled out of their reflections by the clear, unmistakable sound of footsteps on the ridge. Both of them turned, and Lennox laughed softly in the darkness. "My daughter," he said. "I knew she would n't be afraid to come."