Zodiac Stories/Aries
ARIES, THE RAM.
LACK RIDGE DICK had lost his way.
He knew well the mountain-range, and when he went out to hunt that day, he had had no doubt of finding again his lonely shanty—before night—but here he was, far up among the great jagged rocks on a high peak, and here was the red of the splendid sunset-burning itself out in the sky, and below—slowly creeping up the long slope—was night.
Dick did not mind being alone. For a long time he had liked it best, and had built his log hut out of the way of other people on purpose. He had nothing to do with his kind except when he took a load of skins down to sell to the trading-merchants in the distant settlement.
But to be alone in the log hut, with a good supper on the table, and the door close shut, and a warm bed to go to by and by, was quite a different thing to being alone on a mountain-side, with snow coming.
For Dick knew what the great gray clouds rising as the sun set, meant.
Well, there was no help for it. He was not very far from the timber-line, and he must build a fire before it grew dark.
He took his hatchet and went down a little way to where he saw some dead pine trees, and chopped an armful of wood.
He built his fire skilfully, and set it blazing, and then he sat down against a rock and watched it.
He had a little food with him, and he ate half of it, keeping the rest for breakfast. When he had finished, it was dark. He lit his pipe. All around, into the thin air, the sharp crests of the mountains rose.
Every now and again he threw on fresh fuel, and the long yellow tongues of fire sprang up, and showers of scarlet sparks were scattered on every side.
It was very solemn alone up there in the stillness. The man felt as if the fire were a comrade, watching with him.
He drew nearer to it, leaning forward to gaze into its glowing depths. He began to see pictures there.
First, the picture of his mother. Her gentle face seemed near enough to kiss. He saw a little boy kneeling by her, with clasped hands, to repeat the prayer, "Our Father who art in Heaven."
Then came another picture—the same mother-face, older and thinner, and the same boy, grown tall and strong, and an open garden gate, through which the boy was going out into the unknown world. He could hear the gentle voice saying, "Don't give up your prayers, Dick!"
Picture followed picture—memory followed memory. Sad enough, some of them.
His life looked poor and bad in the retrospect. He had not heeded the words of kindly friends. He had grown hard and rough and selfish,—and now—
He started, and found that he had been asleep, and that the fire had burned low. As he hastened to mend it, a soft, cold touch came on his hand,—then another, and another. He looked up at the sky, and saw that the stars were no longer visible. The snow had come.
Dick shook his head.
"Going to be a big storm, I 'm afeared," he muttered. "Wonder how long I 've been asleep, now?"
He piled more sticks upon the fire, wrapped his thick coat tightly about him, and lay down to sleep again.
From time to time he waked, always finding the snow falling, falling, still. By daylight, several inches had fallen, covering the pine stumps, and making it harder than ever to know the way home. And still it came down, a mist of tiny white feathers which showed no sign of ceasing.
Dick dared not leave the shelter of the rock for the open. So he gathered more wood for his fire, ate the remains of the food on which he had supped the evening before, and resigned himself to wait.
It was with a gloomy face that he surveyed the ever-drifting snow, for he knew what it would mean to be "snowed up."
He pulled at his pipe, and watched the fire, and kept it bright. And so the day dragged on, and night fell again. He made up his mind that he must not let sleep overtake him to-night. He must, and would, keep awake, or he might be frozen to death.
He piled the long branches on his fire, and sat as near it as he could with safety, his eyes fixed upon the leaping flame. But it was not easy to resist the drowsy feeling which was stealing over him. His head drooped forward, his eyelids fell over his eyes. He slept.
When he woke, the fire was a mass of glowing coals, but the flames had sunk. He rubbed his eyes, shook back his hair, and stared. For he was no longer alone. Something living and breathing was standing on the other side of the fire, staring back at him with bright, unblinking eyes.
Dick had not been a hunter for years in vain, and he recognized the creature for a large and splendid Rocky Mountain ram.
The Rocky Mountain sheep are like no flocks of the plains. Wild, shy, strong, and beautiful, they dwell in the high regions where few can follow them.
Dick had shot many a one, and now, after his first minute of absolute surprise, his hand went swiftly to the leather belt where he carried his pistol and his knife. His rifle lay just out of reach.
But he paused.
The creature stood fearless and confident on the other side of the fire, its gray fleece reddened by the glow, its steadfast, untamed eyes fixed upon the hunter from between the sweeping curve of its powerful horns.
Possibly it had never seen a man before. At all events, it trusted him. It, like himself, was lost—a lonely being, snowed up, shut away from its kind; they were companions in trouble.
Dick withdrew his hand from his belt with a shamefaced feeling as if the sheep must have understood his intention.
But it did not seem so.
After staring at him a few moments longer, it laid itself down quietly, as if used to the situation.
"Poor old fellow!" said the man softly.
"Going to keep me company, are you? Well, I'll not touch you. We 'll watch it out together."
He set his pipe going again, and made up the fire as noiselessly as might be, and settled himself once more.
He dozed once or twice, and waked again. Always the mountain-sheep lay as he had last seen it, with intent eyes gazing into the storm.
The flock from which it had strayed were in need of its leadership, it might well be. Perhaps the ram knew it. Dick wondered if it did. He wondered if animals ever thought,—if they felt things, and knew joy and sorrow.
It was a new idea to a man whose only view of them had been the hunter's; who had never loved them, but only killed them for what they could bring him.
He noticed that one of the ram's horns had been injured, and that the end was broken in a peculiar way.
"I 'd know you, partner, if we met again," he said under his breath.
At last he fell into a longer sleep than he had yet experienced, and when he woke at last the sun was shining in a clear sky of pure and dazzling blue.
The snow was gone.
So was the Rocky Mountain ram. Stiff with cold, the man stood up and shook himself, and gazed about him. All around, the sharp peaks rose white and dazzling in the early sun. The last embers of the big wood-fire burned in the gray ashes.
When Dick made his laborious way home to the little shanty, one of his first acts was to open the box where he kept his few treasures, and to get out the yellow-leaved old Bible his mother had given him when he had left her years before.
There was a verse he wanted to find, and he turned the pages over, looking for it. At last a pencilled line caught his eye—ah! yes—here it was.
"'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way'; ("Yes, that's me all over," said Dick to himself as he read,) "'and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.'"
"His own way" had not been quite what as a boy he had thought it was going to be. It had been a poor way,—a way taking him farther and farther from the gentle mother at whose knee he had prayed. And there was a better way than his own had been,—God's way. God would forgive the past. God could make him a better man—a man that weak things could trust.
Dick went down on his knees with his face on the faded leaf of the old Bible.
When the beautiful Indian summer came to an end that year, and the hunters came down from the mountains with their trophies of skins and horns, two of them, overtaken by night, put up at Dick's shanty.
They showed their spoils proudly. Amongst the rest, a ram's head with one strangely twisted horn.
Dick's hand caught at it.
"How did you get this?" he asked eagerly.
"Shot him up yonder," said one of the men, surprised at his excitement.
"I'm right sorry."
"What for?"
"Because he and I were partners once,"—and he told the story.
"I know it's the same by the horn," he added at the end. "And now I want to buy the head. I 'll give you a fair price;—I 'm thinking of going back East, and I want to take this with me."
He opened a deer-skin pouch, and poured out a heap of bright silver on the pine table.
The rough hunter pushed it away.
"Put up your shiners!" he said gruffly. "You can have the head and fleece and all. Think I 'd sell a man his friend's body?"
And the ram's head hangs on the wall of Dick's house in the little village where he was born, and his children beg for the story of how he and the Rocky Mountain ram kept watch together in the storm.