CHAPTER VIII

TRAPS

Tragedy brooded over the mountain. The air was depressed, heavy with smoke lingering from the fire the night before. Still heavier was the atmosphere of the cabin on the Cascada. For a half hour Damon had been talking with two visitors on the porch. One was James Barnes, the Forest Supervisor, whom Dawn knew, and the other a man whom she had never before seen.

They had been sitting at lunch when the callers arrived. Hinray had slipped out the back door without being noticed. Garen and Dawn had cleared the table and sat down a trifle uneasily. Damon talked on with the Supervisor outside and finally came in, his face unusually grave and worn. The Supervisor and his companion followed.

“No, don’t go, Shepherd.” Damon nodded as Garen lifted an eyebrow of inquiry as to whether they wished to be alone.

The uncomfortable sense of something pending that Dawn had had all morning now came to a sharp reality. What had happened?

“Daughter, this concerns you,” Damon said with obvious effort. Dawn lifted her chin, waiting. The Supervisor took a seat at the table opposite her. Garen stood behind Dawn, and her father sat beside her. The other gentleman, who was introduced as the Assistant Supervisor of the Predatory Animal Bureau for the state, sat down too. His expression was dour.

“Supposing I talk with the young lady,” said the Supervisor. He had known Dawn for a long while, having come to the state but a few years after Ranger O’Neill.

The matter was this. Here was a letter from the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Predatory Animal Extinction, setting forth a complaint against her, Dawn O’Neill, on the testimony of one of the Bureau officials; that she had willfully and maliciously interfered with his work: namely, that whenever she found baited traps she had sprung them; that she had released certain small animals and had hidden or demolished poison bait spread in far parts of the range, difficult of access. As these baits were not put out till late in the season, after all cattle had been brought down from the range, the Government’s agent had been unaware of the interference with his work until he visited these places, weeks, sometimes months, later.

Damon O’Neill was looking with painful concentration at his daughter. Could she have done this?

The Supervisor finished speaking. He regarded Dawn seriously. There was absolute silence as she struggled with a stony rage in her heart. The Supervisor coughed. “It is really a serious matter,” he observed, “and one that we would not expect to encounter right in the service. I am told it has been going on for some time, more than a year to certain knowledge and probably still longer.” He read three instances of meddling with traps and poison bait.

Dawn sprang to her feet, but before she could say anything Garen caught her arm firmly and pushed her back into her chair. “I guess I’m the man who did it, Mr. Supervisor,” he asserted boldly. “At least I did on certain occasions, cited here. If this gentleman here was an eyewitness he must have seen me covering up a poison bait this spring. I was afraid that the game birds—some members of the bureau seem to forget that this is a bird refuge, too—might get it. I have found dead quail and turkey that have fed around the bait. A single grain of arsenic is sufficient for them.

“I am willing to make an issue of this,” Garen concluded firmly, “to protest against this method of killing wild animals. Not only because of its cruelty, but because of other, profounder, aspects of their slaughter. The true meaning of this I’ve learned by contact with this splendid forester, Damon O’Neill, and his daughter, Miss Dawn, who has done more for the Service than it can ever repay.”

Garen’s declaration had given no one an opportunity to speak. Dawn was staring at him in amazement. She stood up again and came over behind her father, putting her hands on his shoulders.

“I did it myself,” she said firmly. “Mr. Shepherd can’t lie for me, though I’m much obliged to him. He did help me cover one poison bait. But I sprung the traps, and many more of ’em; all I could find and spring. And I always have hid every bit of poisoned bait I found. I—I’ve been sorry at times—when I saw some one lose cattle that couldn’t afford it. But just the same—” she turned defiantly to the solemn-faced Supervisor of the Predatory Bureau—“it’s not right, killing wild things like that.

“Even though my father says it’s necessary under the circumstances, it’s _not_ right. Shoot them if you will. Oh, I know that I can’t do any good. My little help isn’t going to straighten out all the wrongs of my world any more than what you’re doing is going to help any one in the end. It’s gone beyond that. But just the same I’m not going to sit still and act as if I liked it! Why, there’s too many cattle for the range now.” She spread her hands helplessly, tears in her blazing eyes. “Why kill off the wild creatures? They don’t eat grass! They keep your forests and watersheds healthy.”

The expert on poison chemistry looked pained and bewildered. What was this abandoned, headstrong young person talking about? But the Supervisor had listened with involuntary appreciation. “O’Neill, your daughter is filled with true scientific ardor, I can see.”

“Well, I am to blame for that,” Damon replied quietly. “She has been brought up on the soundest principles of forestry. The French hold the wolf a great friend to the forest. They have not the problems of a stock country over there.”

“I see, I see.” The Supervisor was drumming on the table with his fingers. “Miss Dawn, you love this mountain, don’t you?”

Dawn did not reply. She could not. She flushed painfully. The Supervisor continued.

“You want to stay here, of course. And so you must yield to orders. O’Neill—” He turned to Damon, who, having revolved the matter in his mind, was about to say something. “No, just a moment, please. Let us say nothing more about this. I think that when I have explained to the departmental heads the peculiar feeling that Dawn has for the forest and its wellbeing, for the mountain and all the life on it, that the complaints which have been forwarded to the local office will be withdrawn.

“It is scarcely necessary to remind them of your long and exceptional service, but knowing nothing about the facts, I could make no explanation. You and Dawn had better come down to the District Superintendent’s office and talk it over.”

The forest ranger nodded. “Dawn has worked as hard on this job for the last three years as many a man,” he said gruffly. “She’s preserved more range to fatten more cattle than the beasts you kill could destroy, I venture.”

“That’s pure imagination.” Pickering of the Predatory Bureau spoke for the first time. “If you have no conception of the value of the work, at least you can keep from interfering. We had set traps for a most dangerous lobo, but finally had to put our hunters on his trail. We got him too—” he glared triumphantly—“the outlaw lobo that we’ve been after for years—and the last grizzly on this mountain. Shot yesterday.”

A cry escaped Dawn, and Damon’s big knotty hands shook so that he had to steady them by holding on to the back of a chair. He recovered himself in a moment.

“You may say,” he said directly to his chief, “that my daughter will not interfere with any of the work of the bureau in the future.” He came to his feet, his voice rising. “Let them kill off everything and be damned to them. You know as well as I do, Chief, that one wrong don’t right another. That’s what this country’s suffering from now. Too damn many cattle. And I guess the wild beasts know it. But no one takes the hint. Some day the real predatory animal that walks on two legs, ’ll get his.”

“By golly, O’Neill, you’re right. Ours is a slow uphill job; but remember, reclamation isn’t accomplished in a year.” He shook hands all around, and departed, Pickering protesting as they rode off that the forest ranger was an impractical fool, a visionary.

Damon was shaking with passion. Dawn stood by the table, the color drained from her face. To these two, children of nature, hating the strife and friction of the outside world, the morning’s visit had been a decided shock. Garen Shepherd broke the silence by coming forward with outstretched hands to Dawn.

“Let me shake hands with you, Dawn, and with you, sir. I’m proud to know you both. You are ornaments to a grand work and should be presented with special medals. And you will be, before the task is finished. Mark my words.”

“That old lemon-face!” came Hinray’s voice from the kitchen door.

Dawn laughed suddenly, a bright spontaneous laugh, clearing away the gloom that had fallen on the cabin as a fresh wind sweeping through clears out smoke. She had laughed this way when Garen first heard her across the lake.

“That’s that!” she shouted. “Oh, Damon, cheer up! I’ll not be shot or put in the reformatory. Thank you, Garen Shepherd,” she whirled on the Irrigation engineer, “thank you for that one grand lie. But do you suppose I’d let anybody else take the credit for a sin I’m proud of?” And while she wrung his hand she laughed again, happy once more, full of exuberant gayety.