CHAPTER III

AN OREAD OF THE ROCKIES

“Another Shepherd, by the name of Garen, at your service,” the stranger replied. “And may I inquire who are you?”

Dawn merely stared at him, overcome by shyness.

“I’d have thought you just the spirit of the lake,” the young man continued whimsically, “except that I saw you come down through the forest. You must be the guardian of the whole mountain, eh? An oread.”

He stopped, for the girl began to shiver. She was wet to the waist, for Piñon had fumbled for a footing before he found the little beach. The stranger snatched up the woolen blazer on which he had been sitting and offered it to her. Dawn managed a “Thank you” and took the wrap, still shyly. She sat down with Shepherd on the hot rock in the sun.

Had she called the sheep herders any bad names? Had she jeered when they threw stones and missed? At remembrance of the fight her indignation mounted again. She burst warmly into explanation.

“It’s the goats. They’re the worst! I like them all right, only they do so much damage. I’ll teach those fellows to break pasture. They’re always letting the bars down and leaving gates open. Folks aren’t satisfied with the range we give them; want to crowd the pastures with cattle, and sheep and goats that cut the cover all up. Ruin the Reservation, that’s what!”

The man noticed that she spoke possessively of the mountain—“the range _we_ give them.”

“You belong to the mountain?” he queried superfluously.

“Damon O’Neill’s daughter,” Dawn said proudly. “But I guess you don’t know either why it makes a forester so mad to see mountain meadows all cut up.”

“I’ve an idea,” the man replied, “but suppose you tell me. I’ve heard that Damon O’Neill and his daughter know more about the mountain than God does.”

He was studying the girl’s profile; strong straight nose, a trifle short; a full-lipped mouth, a full, rebellious chin. A student of natural things, this Shepherd, and Dawn O’Neill was as natural and unspoiled as the mountain itself. And unlike the wild creatures of the forest, she had no fear.

Her golden skin deepened to vivid color below gray eyes that were wide apart and accustomed to looking, and seeing, far away; very clear eyes, rested with looking into green depths, protected with lashes made thick by the sun, and with serious straight brows. Her hair was cropped in rough locks, short at the back and wind-blown about her face. It came to a point on her forehead and silky down grew over her temples.

Garen noted the high, wide cheek-bones, the firm, full jaw, the well-modeled nose that just escaped being too wide; they meant balance, physical endurance and strength, he decided. Her mouth was generously wide, and lovely; as lovely as her laugh. He wondered if she had a mind as naturally fine and strong as the body of which she was so unconscious. She had begun to answer the question which he had already forgotten in his absorption.

“You see, these are the only forests in this dry country; up here on the mountain reservations. And all the streams and rivers are fed from the mountains, so if the slopes are destroyed and the grass and sod all cut up, why, then the run-off of water is something terrible and tears down all at once. Then there’s floods below and hell to pay. And no water left up here to keep feeding the streams till the next rain. Besides”—Dawn had scarcely drawn breath—“it ruins the new forests we’re buildin’ up.” She stopped, conclusively, and Garen Shepherd was impressed with the clarity and brevity of her explanation. She’d been brought up on this.

“So you’re the guardian of the plain as well as of the mountain,” he replied. “I think after all you are a naiad instead of an oread. You are surely my patron deity then, for water is what we pray for, we Irrigation fellows. That should make us friends.”

Dawn turned to face him and for the first time looked directly at her companion. She had been perfectly aware of him, however, had taken him in the moment she accepted his blazer. Now she thrust out her hand suddenly,

“Shake!”

Garen Shepherd got as strong a pressure as any land-office commissioner from a homesteader. His fingers tingled. A pleasant warmth that was not from the sun pervaded him.

“Yes, I guess you fellows understand,” Dawn was saying. “But those men in Washington, they put us up here to take care of the forests and then they let people try to steal ’em right out from under our noses! Forest isn’t just forest,” she explained condescendingly; “it’s streams, and holding spring floods back, and well-water and range for stockmen too.”

“When we get through down below,” Garen Shepherd’s gaze was afar over the mountain top, “there’ll be room for ’most every one, and water for them too. We’ll catch and hold all you spare us from your mountains and fill the desert with the perfume of alfalfa blossoms and the buzz of honey-bees. Millions of tons of water will be behind that giant dam when it is finished. Think of that!”

The light of a vision was in the engineer’s eyes. Already he could see the desert blossoming with meadows where white-faced cattle stood knee-deep in grama grass. Dawn’s eyes widened. “I would sure admire to see it,” she answered generously.

“You shall.” Shepherd turned eagerly. “Surely you shall. I’ll show you over myself if you will come down sometime. Senator Grange, his daughter, and their party were there last week, and we’re having visitors from different spots in the world all the time.”

“I’ve got to be starting,” Dawn remembered. “My father will be worried if he gets back before I do. And I’ve my lessons.”

“Your lessons?” Garen Shepherd was loth to leave the sun-warmed rock, the talk.

“Yes, I haven’t finished my studies for this spring. You see, I’m going to college next year, and I study every morning after I’ve done my work round the cabin. Damon hears me at night, when he’s not too tired. He’s been my teacher always. Oh, yes, I _have_ been to school. I went a couple of times, but I couldn’t bear it.

“Dad took me the first time when I was six, to a convent. He got as far as the door!” She laughed joyously. “He turned around and saw my face. I didn’t cry, mind you. But I guess I was a coony little thing just the same. I reached out my arms and he stooped down and held out his.”

“And didn’t you stay?”

“I never let go of him, nor he of me. And he’d paid the money down, mind you. But he didn’t stop for that. We started and never stopped till we got up to the Cascada. Next time I didn’t go till I was twelve. That was three years ago last fall; I’ll be sixteen next month. I _hated_ sitting on a hard bench shut up in a room all the time!” She shuddered at the remembrance, but in a moment her laughter came bubbling forth again.

Shepherd thought it the most refreshing laughter he had ever heard, spontaneous and naturally musical.

“That is wonderful. Yet you are going to college next year,” he said, impressed. “How have you managed?”

“Damon knows a great deal of book-learning,” Dawn replied, “and he’s got a notion that it’s books, not schoolrooms, that teach us. So he’s taught me after his own ideas, and we’re nearly ready to pass the examinations. I have to do that to study under some great teachers that Damon has heard about. I’ll be having to take a special course, of course, because there’s only certain studies I’m good in. I’m not interested in the others. Dad started me on geometry last fall, but I burned the book up.” She shrugged defiantly. “So we didn’t get ahead much!”

Shepherd, having caught the infection of Dawn’s spontaneous merriment, laughed till the tears rolled out of his eyes.

Suddenly she leaped to her feet, whistling to Piñon who browsed near. The sorrel came trotting up. Shep leaped to the front of the saddle, and Dawn swung into the seat without putting foot to the stirrup and was clambering away over the rocks without farewell or ceremony. In the mountains one goes when he is ready.

“Here! Hold on,” shouted Shepherd. “I’m coming too. Can’t I ride with you? I go almost all the way.”

“Sure,” she called back. “The trail’s free.” He had to catch his pony, tighten the saddle, grab up his duffle, and hurry to overtake her.

Never had spring seemed more lovely. Never had the mountain been half so beautiful. The aspen groves were like a thousand shining arrows shot into the ground from the sun, each bole a shaft of light held by the gleaming surface of silver bark.

“Some old bear has made its own blaze here.” Shepherd pointed to an unusually large aspen, the satiny bark of which was scarred with the fresh rips of a grizzly’s great claws.

Dawn reined Piñon up sharply. The pony stopped, sniffed the air with widening nostrils, snorted and trembled.

“The grizzly’s been here not long ago,” Dawn said in a low voice. “Piñon smells it.”

The white collie was dashing about in the underbrush, beating this way and that, to pick up the scent.

“A grizzly will sharpen its claws like that,” Dawn murmured, “and when it’s hurt it will sometimes tear the bark to ribbons.”

Suddenly she wheeled Piñon, and cutting through the grove, disappeared into a glade below. Shepherd looked after her in surprise and followed slowly. The glade was blocked at the upper end by a wall of rock, once a waterfall’s course, at the foot of which Dawn stood beside a pile of stones. In the center, Shepherd saw, lay the remains of an old ram’s carcass, half of which had been devoured.

Dawn’s look was one of acute distress. “The bear has eaten poison bait,” she said.

“How do you know it was poisoned?” Shepherd asked.

“I know it was. I—I dragged it down here just two days ago and covered it myself so’s nothing would get it.” She began to weep. “The bear was suffering when it tore the tree and has gone away to die.”

Shepherd took her arm and tried to pull her away from the gruesome sight, but she began to cover the ram with rocks again; so together they piled up a cairn that even another grizzly could not tear down. He did not ask any questions, and when they went back to their horses they mounted silently and trotted quickly away, out of the shimmering beauty of the grove. They emerged into a stand of high yellow pine and cantered over the springing russet carpet, a foot deep in pine needles, for a mile or more. At length, as they breathed their groaning ponies at the top of a sharp hill, Dawn spoke:

“You’re not going to tell, are you?”

“Tell? Tell what? You know, Miss Dawn, you can trust me.”

She nodded, and pointing down through a clearing in the trees, showed him a mountain homesteader’s tidy place. “That’s old McGuire’s homestead. Follow me and I’ll show you something.”

She was off at a wild run, following the ridge above the homestead. When they drew together again, horses and riders were both panting.

“Do you see a big pine through that gap?” Dawn pointed across a canyon to a ridge on the opposite side. A heavy stand of spruce and pine covered the slope, through which patches of white quartz gleamed here and there. “A great big pine that stands out above the others?” She hung breathless on his answer.

“Why, yes,” Shepherd replied. “I seem to see a big one on a crest there. Of course. Now it stands out quite plainly.”

“I knew you would be able to see it,” Dawn said with satisfaction. “Some day I’m going to chop that tree down. It’s a very old tree, and I want you to be there to witness it. Will you?”

“Delighted,” Shepherd grinned. “What has the tree done to you?”

“You don’t believe me, do you? You’re making fun of me?”

“Certainly I believe you. I’ll even help chop the tree!”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” Dawn asked solemnly. “I’ll help you, and you help me. I’ve promised some other friends of mine to help them. It’s the Pueblo Indians of Picuris. They come up here every spring to the source of their waters. It’s sacred to them, you know, and now it’s all to be taken away from them. It’s on a part of their Reservation, but now a new survey’s been made, ’way this side.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about that.” Shepherd nodded.

“I’m going to prove the old survey,” said Dawn with determination, “and I’ll need a witness when I chop into the Silverstake Pine—that’s what they called the old boundary pine—for we can’t take the tree into court, and who can tell what may happen to our witness when we are not there? It’s an overgrown blaze we’ll be finding, you see, if I’m right.”

They took the trail again, dropping down into the canyon. Piñon chose his own path without any direction from Dawn, who had tossed the reins loose upon the pony’s neck and sat half turned in the saddle, calling back to Shepherd. He followed as close as his pony could travel upon Piñon’s heels. The sorrel chose the best trails with sure knowledge, but when it came to a choice of direction and Dawn did not at once lay rein to right or left of his neck, Piñon would bob his head like a circus horse, impatiently demanding his mistress’s wishes.

“You must know every foot of the mountain,” Shepherd called. “I wish I knew it as well. I spent all morning trying to find the source of the water in that lake where we were. I wish I knew where it all comes from.”

“We’re right under the source of some of it, Mister,” said Dawn. “It rises up above the pine I just pointed to, and iffen—there, I get that from listening to Hinray so much—_if_ you’re sound of wind and limb I’ll take you up. No wonder you couldn’t find it. No one can. And the water that enters the head of the lake comes over a falls and above that must gush from the mountain itself. No one’s ever found where. It springs from the living rock, Dad says, cold as ice. And I know two places where streams flow underground and disappear!” She offered this as very choice information. She was not disappointed.

“I’d love to see it,” Shepherd exclaimed eagerly. “Will you show me? When can we do it?”

“Reckon maybe we could now,” Dawn replied, glancing at her wrist watch, which she verified by the sun. “We came right smart there for a space. This short cut has brought us right beneath it. It won’t take more than a half hour.”

A quarter of an hour later they stood panting upon a summit that seemed the top of the world; yet it was a good deal below timber line, for far opposite they could see at a much higher elevation on the slopes of the Truchas the dark border where the tall timber was halted by the hand of Creation. Above them a lacy fall of water hurled itself musically over rocks so beautiful that they seemed painted. The water fell some thirty feet into a great natural basin fringed with maidenhair fern. It trickled gently over the mossy edge and down the mountain side in a diminutive stream.

“That isn’t all of it?” Garen Shepherd pointed to the tiny trickle.

Dawn was smiling with delight. “Look.” She led the way up to the face of the rock, caught Shepherd’s hand, and ducked beneath the lacy whispering veil of water. The Irrigation Engineer found himself in a cavern of shimmering green light, exquisitely, strangely lovely. Above the tinkling of the waterfall a rumbling murmur became apparent. The murmur grew on the ears until it became a roar. Dawn was pointing.

At their feet a stream, the greater part of the water that came over the falls above, flowed backward into a cavern and disappeared, back into the living rock of the mountain, to flow below the surface on its way to the sea, at what depth no engineer could guess, to water the deep-searching roots of what desert bush, to well to the surface from depths of a hundred, a thousand, feet, at the bidding of man.

Shortly afterward they stood again in the yellow light of the outer day. Dawn was beaded with drops of spray like moonstones.

“No one knows where it goes,” Shepherd said thoughtfully. “Do you know that too, Miss Dawn?”

She shook her head quizzically. “I know where one sunken river comes out.”

“How does this tiny stream feed the Cascada to the south, the lake to the east and the stream that branches through McGuire’s to the west?”

“Why, there’s a million sources, not just one, for each stream. You know that. Come.” Pulling at his hand, she scrambled down the slope, showing him where here and there tiny trickles sought their way down to join a stream below. The deep moss and the felted carpet beneath them, a six-inch humus of rotted leaves and vegetation, was saturated as a sponge with the moisture of spring rains. A thousand little reservoirs had swelled into the cups and basins formed by the roots of trees, purling gently over to feed with economical regularity the boisterous Cascada that would eventually reach the sandy flats of a great river a hundred miles below.

An hour later they were trotting down a mountain road toward the fork of the Cascada.

“I’m staying at Benty’s,” Shepherd told her. “But I expect to leave in the morning. My vacation’s up. I may not get up here again all summer, but if I do I shall surely come over to the Cascada, if I may. And you must be sure to let me know if you come down to the city, for the cars from the dam site go in often.”

They were nearing the fork, where the big stream of the upper valley was joined by the Cascada. A rider on a sorrel horse was waiting there.

“It’s young Perry,” said Shepherd, “lad from Kansas City, staying at Benty’s with his family till their camp is set up. Nice kid.”

He halloed as they rode down toward him. He was lost, bewildered, a trifle uneasy, overawed by the majesty of the peaks that hung, still frigid with snow, over the primeval forest.

“Hey, Shepherd,” he called out in relief, “I got lost! Glad you came along.”

The boy, who appeared to be about seventeen, looked with undisguised interest at Dawn. Shepherd introduced him.

“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Perry,” she remembered to say.

“You live up the Cascada?” he inquired easily. “I could follow that without getting lost.” The boy laughed. “I’ll ride up tomorrow if I may.” He bowed with an exaggerated deference.

“Miss Dawn’s a wonderful guide,” Shepherd put in.

“Maybe she’ll show me the mountain,” young Perry responded, looking eagerly toward the mountain girl.

As he rode down the mountain a few moments later, Jack Perry at his heels, Shepherd felt that he had had a perfect experience. The day, the beauty of the mountain side, the girl’s laughter ringing across the mountain lake, the cavern behind the waterfall—he fairly ached with the beauty of it. He felt resentful toward the boy who broke in on his thoughts.

“Some champion, that girl. Wills, Earhart, Ederle, rolled in one, eh? With looks. So these are the Rockies! What are we doing up here? Oh, my Dad’s got in with a bunch that are going to develop. He’s got big interests back of him.

“It’s some country out here, but they’re dead. Dad’s interested in range, opening it up. He’s invested in a cattle bank in the state, and he’s got sheep and goats planted somewhere in these parts already.”

“That so?” Shepherd looked at young Perry with interest. “Gone into the stock business, eh? Has he acquired any range?”

“You mean bought any ranches? No. I imagine the bank’ll take over a plenty,” replied the boy easily. “He’s got a man running his stock for him. Some trouble with fool government regulations.” He shrugged as though those were the least of a developer’s worries.

So that was the way the land lay. Shepherd said nothing but looked thoughtfully at Jack.

“We might as well make the best of it,” the boy confided. “Mother’s got to stay in the West for her health. Might as well make something out of it while we’re here, and open up the country.”

“That was done long ago,” Shepherd said. “Agriculture’s the thing now. I wish we could interest people with money, like your father, in the irrigation developments, agricultural projects, you know.”

Jack looked at him incredulously and burst out laughing. “Agriculture, in a land like this? Why this country’s good for stock and nothing else.”

They had reached Benty’s, and although Garen was annoyed, he could say no more at the time.