CHAPTER X

MONEY IN THE BANK

Damon had never mentioned to Dawn the incident of the poisoned bait. He understood his daughter too well. It would have been punishment to her. It had wounded him deeply that she should have been reprimanded. He was only human, and after the matter had passed, his feeling of their being in the wrong was tinged with resentment.

In his world there were the mountain and the Service. In Dawn’s world there was only the mountain. The Service was a servant and she a hand-maiden to the mountain. If the servant was in the wrong she would disregard him.

“But they’re not entirely in the wrong, darlin’,” Damon protested. “We have to effect a balance for the unnatural conditions man makes. Keeping down the beasts is cruelty that’s for the good of the whole, and _that_ patterns after the grand scheme of Nature too.”

Dawn flung out her arms impetuously. “All right, all right. We won’t argue about it, Damon, we won’t argue,” she cried irritably. “But they’re wiping out the creatures, and that’s just the beginning. When the creatures go, it’ll all be desert.”

“Well, now,” Damon soothed as he puffed at his pipe, “think of what the bird refuges have done this year. Think of the antelope and deer, and cheer up. That’s some help, isn’t it?”

Apparently it was. “Damon—!” Dawn’s eyes flashed with her usual spirit—“do you know I saw the grosbeak and the chestnut-backed bluebird in the willows about the dam, and yesterday there were mocking-birds down in San Mateo. The mountain bluebirds that had almost gone last year were thick, and the blue piñon jays calling ‘peenyoney, peenyoney’ as they picked off all the nuts. Poor things. They had flown before the fire. And do you know, Dad, I saw the biggest eagle I ever saw the day after we came back from down below.” Dawn was sewing up her stockings. Damon’s she darned with a beautiful weaving of wools taught her by Hinray. “This bird was a golden eagle, I’m sure, from his shining golden brown color as he soared in the sun. He must have been nine feet from tip to tip.”

Damon whistled. “And I brought her up to be truthful! Go on, go on, my gal. You’ll be a writer yet.”

“Well,” Dawn went on, undeterred, “he soared round and round over one spot. I was above McGuire’s and I looked across the valley to where you can catch a glint of the waterfalls if you stand in just the right place—that’s where I took Garen—and I saw the eagle.

“Once before I saw that eagle, when I was just a kid. I remember it swooping down over me as I was picking flowers in the meadow while you surveyed below. Suddenly I thought the sun went under a cloud, but something made me look up, and here was the cloud between me and the sun, dropping down to earth. I was frozen still. It swept so close I could see its beak and eyes. Then with a great whirring of wings it stopped and shot straight back up into the air again.”

“He might have taken you away,” Damon observed thoughtfully. “I’d never thought of that danger, thank goodness. I know that bird too,” he nodded, pulling at his pipe. “He’s the oldest on the mountains, I imagine. He is a huge creature.”

“Well, what I had meant to tell about was this,” Dawn went on. “After circling, the eagle dropped like a stone and disappeared just about where the falls were. I wanted to see where he had landed, because maybe there’s an eyrie there, and with all my hunting I’ve never found an eagle’s eyrie this far up, though I know there are some. But it was too late when I got over to the other side; he was perched above me on an old tree, a dead tree.”

“That’s the fellow,” Damon replied. “He likes the old dead tree. They often do. He’s too old for mating, but he’s feathered many a nest of eaglets in the past, that old bird, and I’ll wager could tell tales if he could talk—of the trappers in these woods and the old scouts and Indian fighters.—What about some grub?”

As they ate, Hal Benty rode up with mail and papers. He sat on his horse by the stoop awhile, chatting.

“Perrys’re comin’ back,” he said just as he was leaving. “They’re bringin’ a bunch with ’em for some fall hunting. Pa says it seems as if those fellows was never too busy nor too much taken up to hunt. They’ll be here tomorrow, if they ain’t already in this afternoon.”

“I’m going to ask Mr. Perry about the rumors in the paper of the banks in the city,” said Damon. “I’m mighty glad we’ve got our money in a state bank. Things don’t seem to be getting any better. That reminds me, honey. What school is it to be for the second year? You know we want to get the application in this fall.”

“I know, I know, Damon. Let’s decide it this evening or tomorrow.” She began to laugh, to tease Shep, and putting a record on her phonograph, essayed a one-step, very stiffly.

“Them dances is turrible!” There was Hinray looking in the door. He was always appearing unexpectedly. “Why’n’t you do the Hota or the Tekalotita that you learned down to the Pecos dances? They’re somp’n to look at. But you got to have a flower in yore teeth. Wait!” He disappeared, returning a moment later from the river with a sprig of wild roses.

Dawn was in a gale of merriment. The idea of holding the flowers in her teeth was convulsing, but when Hinray put on a Spanish record she seized them and flung into the stamping abandon of the old folk dance preserved by the descendants of the conquistadores who dwelt in the little town at the foot of the mountain.

She was stamping the dust out of the floor when the music stopped amid more handclapping and _otra vezes_ than an audience of only three could achieve. The door was filled with people—Jack, a young woman, an older man.

Jack was smiling in his disarming and confident way as he jumped in and seized Dawn’s hand. She yielded with nothing of resentment. She’d been afraid that Jack would never come back to the mountain. He’d been almost her first playmate. For you couldn’t think of Hal that way; _he_ wasn’t understanding enough. Sometimes she had regretted that she had run away that day in the city. Perhaps if she’d stayed she’d have had a nice time. But she couldn’t face all those others.

At times she’d felt that Jack meant to ignore her; that it couldn’t be accidental, and that if he returned _he_ should be ignored. But what reason _could_ he have for not being nice! Of course, she was just acting like a baby. Now here he was and they’d have a grand ride. Dawn was radiant with the surprise. The party were out to take a ride and wanted her to guide them.

Jack felt very much at home at the O’Neill cabin. He was troubled with no misgivings. He was glad to be back, and when he was in the mountains he wanted to see Dawn, and that was all there was to it. Norine Masters had gone back home now, but in town—well, maybe it was just as well that Dawn had got away that day, after all.

“Sorry we missed you when you were in town,” he offered casually. “Dad is so busy he hardly knows what he’s doing, and Mother was down with the heat. I wasn’t sure it was you. You should have waited.”

The Kansas City guests were charmed with the aspen-log cabin, with the view, with the trout in the Cascada, with everything. They wanted to ride through the dark forest, up the tanbark trail to Lake Peak, to look down on Lost Lake and up to the snow-capped Coronados. Tomorrow they were to go on the hunt. Turkey. Oh, too early for turkey? What a pity!

Dawn glanced at Damon. Should she go? He nodded; he had desk work at home. Jack was beside her on the ride, which would bring them home after sundown. It was when they had started down the trail that Mr. Harmon, gazing on the little lake that lay like a vanity mirror in an emerald case below them, said, shivering, “That must have been some plunge you had the night of the fire, Jack, in ice water. Who was it they said rode in with a horse after you?”

“It was this girl here,” Jack replied in embarrassment. The mountaineers had told the tale to the Harmons. “Oh, I thought I had explained when you were introduced. It was Dawn. I don’t know what I would have done without her. I never did have a chance to see you afterward and thank you, Dawn. I came up—I surely did appreciate—”

“Don’t mention it,” Dawn interrupted coolly. “A little thing like that!” There was a twinkle in her eye. Mrs. Harmon burst out laughing and exchanged significant glances with her husband. Jack joined rather ruefully in the merriment at his expense, tried to say something, but couldn’t.

Mrs. Harmon was an excellent horsewoman, Dawn discovered, warming to her. “I’m coming out here again,” Mrs. Harmon told her, “and if you ever come through Kansas City please let me know and come and stay at my house. I’ll give you the best horse I can find to ride. It won’t be like your Piñon here, though.”

How moist it was up under the trees! Yet they’d had no rain for weeks.

“There’ll be a terrific rain before the week is out,” Dawn prophesied. “It is due the mountain, and when it comes, look out. Seems as if the whole state is just waiting for a deluge, for something to burst.”

Mr. Harmon looked at her curiously. “I love thunder and lightning,” Mrs. Harmon said quickly, shaking her head at her husband.

“You’ve never heard it before,” Dawn assured her, “until you’ve heard it in the mountains.”

Jack rode as near Dawn as the trail would allow. He felt a change in her manner toward him, and as though he knew he was losing something, tried to regain the old footing, the something that he’d rather drop than have taken away from him. But he could not regain it, try as he would. Nor could Dawn.

Her pleasure in having him back faded, and with it faded also the hurt attached to the thought of his home. Yet in the going a loss was left, a vacancy that even the glory of her mountain did not quite satisfy or fill, a loss of faith in humankind. It was one of the first encounters that Damon had feared for her; he knew too well the hurts that friendship can experience.

When Dawn parted from the crowd at the ford near her cabin Jack rode close to Piñon and said cheerfully, “I’ll be up first thing in the morning, Dawn. The bunch are hunting, but I’m not going. I’ll break loose and be over. So long.”

Damon had put the potatoes on and was reading his mail. He looked worried and hot. “Here’s a note from Shepherd. He’ll be up the end of the week.” He tossed it to Dawn. “The state is in a bad way.” He was reading a two-day-old paper with detached interest. “Goodness, the bank at Tucumcari has gone, and three in other sections of the state. That is the tenth in the last ten days. Yet here are statements from Perry, among others, saying that though the situation is hard for the smaller cities, there is no danger for the state banks.

“I guess things must be all right,” Damon tossed the paper down, “or Perry wouldn’t be up here at this time. That’s a big banker from Chicago, or Kansas City, that he’s got at his place now. I’m glad we’ve got money in the bank, my sweet.”

Damon left the next morning for a survey of the burned-over area on the northeast slope. One gain only had been accomplished; the dead wood and rubbish, the worst sort of fire trap, had been completely burned off, leaving the upper slope free for a fresh start. The lower slope was denuded. Centuries later it might again accumulate enough soil to sustain a forest growth. Now, however, there was not a sprig left to keep the soil from washing down into the desert.

James’s canyon would be dry except for flood waters. The ranchman had written Damon for information on how to make application for a farming homestead under the new dam project. It was a distressing trip over the mountains. The fire, Damon discovered, had smoldered its way, worm-like, through the humus for days. It was not surprising that the boys had not seen it. It had taken two days to travel a half mile, and in one hour after the wind rose it had swept through eight miles. So swiftly had one part burned, leaping from the crown of one tree to another at forty to fifty feet from the ground, that the growth beneath had merely shriveled, and with rain would spring up again from the roots.

Still, it was a depressing sight, and Damon was glad to get back to the upper Amarillo and the untouched woods again. It was nine o’clock when he lifted a weary leg from the saddle and stepped off on to the cabin porch. Dawn met him, took Little Sorrel’s bridle, unsaddled and turned her loose, then hurried to place Damon’s dinner before him. Cup after cup of steaming coffee he drank in contented silence, then pushed back his chair and held out his arms.

Dawn settled down, disposing her long legs over the arm of the chair. She had stayed at the cabin all day, working about the place. Jack had come over, but hadn’t been there more than an hour when his folks had sent for him. He said he would phone her back, but she hadn’t heard from him, and just about an hour ago one of the Bentys had come by and said that the whole crowd had left. Gone back to town on the evening train. Mr. Perry had been called on business. Dawn handed Damon the morning paper. Jim Benty had brought it up to them.

The banks had _crashed_! The whole state had been stricken by a sweeping financial disaster. The loans extended to the stockmen and renewed through the past four years had been called in at last, the resources of the state were exhausted, and this morning the First State Bank and the Federal Cattlemen’s Loan had had to close their doors. Yesterday there had been a run on one of the savings banks, which had paid out to the last penny, and the president had given his guarantee to his depositors that he would in time make good to them every cent, and that he would in some way safeguard all his investors.

But the Cattlemen’s Loan! Perry up here hunting with this damnable thing imminent! Had he wanted to be out of the way when it happened? Or was he trying to get help from the Kansas banker? The paper said that although the Cattlemen’s Loan had been the last to go under, its resources had already been exhausted.

Damon read and reread the front page. Then he threw it down, smiling bitterly.

“Money in the bank,” he said. “Money in the bank, oh, yes! Your money, Dawn. Yours! My God, that young—”

“Don’t say it, Daddy; don’t say it!” Her firm fingers were on his lips. “Perhaps it isn’t gone. Wait till tomorrow, darling. And—I don’t care, Damon. Honest, I don’t. We’ve got our home, we’ve got Piñon and Little Sorrel, our jobs. And, Dad, look! We’ve still got a chance at the Silverstake Mine. See.” She thrust the paper before him again, pointing to a small boxed item.

Congress had refused the bill to open up the Indian Reservation for public grazing or any public uses whatsoever. But a statement made by the Indian Office said that the survey made by the Land Office would have to be the accepted boundary. That would mean that the Indians would be cut off from the Sacred Source which they loved so much, and it would also impair their title to the use below of their own water. It left Damon’s claim on the public domain.

“Daddy, tomorrow I’ll ride over there.” Damon nodded. Nothing made much difference anyhow. She might as well look for the old pine tree again, if she wanted to.