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

  “No. The bear might get his scent. An’, besides, Tom ain’t reliable on bears. I’ll leave Pedro home, too.”

  When they had hurried supper, and Dale 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 Dale 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 ten thousand 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.

  Dale 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. Dale 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 a deeper but still isolated patch of woods, Dale dismounted and tied his horse. When the girls got off he haltered 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 force of the man. Stepping softly, without the least sound, Dale 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 soft and springy, easy to step upon without noise. Dale 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.

  Dale 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 silent and motionless as one of the dark trees.

  “He’s not there yet,” Dale whispered, and he stepped forward very slowly. Helen and Bo began to come up against thin dead branches that were invisible and then cracked. Then Dale 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, Dale wormed his way along.

  Gradually the wood 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 dimming northern light, and then failed. Dale 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.”

  Dale 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 Dale. “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 filled 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 border-line opposite began to stand out as trees.

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

  “Not so loud,” whispered Dale.

  “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 Dale. “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. 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 Dale 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 round 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 Dale, 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 silence fell, absolutely unbroken.

  Dale nudged Helen, and then reached over 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 Dale’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 to Helen, and breathing quick and fast.

  “A-huh!” muttered Dale, 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 emotion, 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 which 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 two hundred 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 Dale. “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 he hunched in a big frosty heap over his prey and began to tear and rend.

  “Jess was a mighty good horse,” muttered Dale, 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 Dale 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 the shadow she could make out the gleam of his clear-cut profile, stern and cold.

  A streak of fire and a 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 clashing of his jaws in rage. But there was no other sound. Then again Dale’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 Dale, 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 Dale.

  “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 Dale, 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. Dale 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 Ranger 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 Dale’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 forest-land 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.

  Dale’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. Dale 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 Dale, 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 Dale. “It feels awful, but it’s nothin’.”

  Helen got a little air, that was like hot pin-points 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.”

  Dale 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 XIV

  ON THE NEXT morning Helen was awakened by what she imagined had been a dream of some one shouting. With a start she sat up. The sunshine showed pink and gold on the ragged spruce line of the mountain rims. 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 Dale’s voice.

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

  Helen got to her knees and peered out over Bo’s shoulder. Dale, standing tall and striking beside the campfire, was waving his sombrero. Away 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.

  “That first one’s Roy!” she exclaimed. “I’d never forget him on a horse.... Bo, it must mean Uncle Al’s come!”

  “Sure! We’re born lucky. Here we are safe and sound — and all this grand camp trip.... Look at the cowboys.... LOOK! Oh, maybe this isn’t great!” babbled Bo.

  Dale wheeled to see the girls peeping out.

  “It’s time you’re up!” he called. “Your uncle Al is here.”

  For an instant after Helen sank back out of Dale’s sight she sat there perfectly motionless, so struck was she by the singular tone of Dale’s voice. She imagined that he regretted what this visiting cavalcade of horsemen meant — they had come to take her to her ranch in Pine. Helen’s heart suddenly began to beat fast, but thickly, as if muffled within her breast.