A silence ensued, fraught with poignant fear for Helen, as she gazed into Bo's whitening face. She read her sister's mind. Bo was remembering tales of lost people who never were found.
"Me an' Milt get lost every day," said Roy. "You don't suppose any man can know all this big country. It's nothin' for us to be lost."
"Oh! . . . I was lost when I was little," said Bo.
"Wal, I reckon it'd been better not to tell you so offhand like," replied Roy, contritely. "Don't feel bad, now. All Ineed is a peek at Old Baldy. Then I'll have my bearin'. Come on."Helen's confidence returned as Roy led off at a fast trot.
He rode toward the westering sun, keeping to the ridge they had ascended, until once more he came out upon a promontory.
Old Baldy loomed there, blacker and higher and closer. The dark forest showed round, yellow, bare spots like parks.
"Not so far off the track," said Roy, as he wheeled his horse. "We'll make camp in Milt's senaca to-night."He led down off the ridge into a valley and then up to higher altitude, where the character of the forest changed.
The trees were no longer pines, but firs and spruce, growing thin and exceedingly tall, with few branches below the topmost foliage. So dense was this forest that twilight seemed to have come.
Travel was arduous. Everywhere were windfalls that had to be avoided, and not a rod was there without a fallen tree. The horses, laboring slowly, sometimes sank knee-deep into the brown duff. Gray moss festooned the tree-trunks and an amber-green moss grew thick on the rotting logs.
Helen loved this forest primeval. It was so still, so dark, so gloomy, so full of shadows and shade, and a dank smell of rotting wood, and sweet fragrance of spruce. The great windfalls, where trees were jammed together in dozens, showed the savagery of the storms. Wherever a single monarch lay uprooted there had sprung up a number of ambitious sons, jealous of one another, fighting for place. Even the trees fought one another! The forest was a place of mystery, but its strife could be read by any eye. The lightnings had split firs clear to the roots, and others it had circled with ripping tear from top to trunk.
Time came, however, when the exceeding wildness of the forest, in density and fallen timber, made it imperative for Helen to put all her attention on the ground and trees in her immediate vicinity. So the pleasure of gazing ahead at the beautiful wilderness was denied her. Thereafter travel became toil and the hours endless.
Roy led on, and Ranger followed, while the shadows darkened under the trees. She was reeling in her saddle, half blind and sick, when Roy called out cheerily that they were almost there.
Whatever his idea was, to Helen it seemed many miles that she followed him farther, out of the heavy-timbered forest down upon slopes of low spruce, like evergreen, which descended sharply to another level, where dark, shallow streams flowed gently and the solemn stillness held a low murmur of falling water, and at last the wood ended upon a wonderful park full of a thick, rich, golden light of fast-fading sunset.
"Smell the smoke," said Roy. "By Solomon! if Milt ain't here ahead of me!"He rode on. Helen's weary gaze took in the round senaca, the circling black slopes, leading up to craggy rims all gold and red in the last flare of the sun; then all the spirit left in her flashed up in thrilling wonder at this exquisite, wild, and colorful spot.
Horses were grazing out in the long grass and there were deer grazing with them. Roy led round a corner of the fringed, bordering woodland, and there, under lofty trees, shone a camp-fire. Huge gray rocks loomed beyond, and then cliffs rose step by step to a notch in the mountain wall, over which poured a thin, lacy waterfall. As Helen gazed in rapture the sunset gold faded to white and all the western slope of the amphitheater darkened.
Dale's tall form appeared.
"Reckon you're late," he said, as with a comprehensive flash of eye he took in the three.
"Milt, I got lost," replied Roy.
"I feared as much. . . . You girls look like you'd done better to ride with me," went on Dale, as he offered a hand to help Bo off. She took it, tried to get her foot out of the stirrups, and then she slid from the saddle into Dale's arms. He placed her on her feet and, supporting her, said, solicitously: "A hundred-mile ride in three days for a tenderfoot is somethin' your uncle Al won't believe. . . .
Come, walk if it kills you!"
Whereupon he led Bo, very much as if he were teaching a child to walk. The fact that the voluble Bo had nothing to say was significant to Helen, who was following, with the assistance of Roy.
One of the huge rocks resembled a sea-shell in that it contained a hollow over which the wide-spreading shelf flared out. It reached toward branches of great pines. Aspring burst from a crack in the solid rock. The campfire blazed under a pine, and the blue column of smoke rose just in front of the shelving rock. Packs were lying on the grass and some of them were open. There were no signs here of a permanent habitation of the hunter. But farther on were other huge rocks, leaning, cracked, and forming caverns, some of which perhaps he utilized.
"My camp is just back," said Dale, as if he had read Helen's mind. "To-morrow we'll fix up comfortable-like round here for you girls."Helen and Bo were made as easy as blankets and saddles could make them, and the men went about their tasks.
"Nell -- isn't this -- a dream?" murmured Bo.
"No, child. It's real -- terribly real," replied Helen. "Now that we're here -- with that awful ride over -- we can think.""It's so pretty -- here," yawned Bo. "I'd just as lief Uncle Al didn't find us very soon.""Bo! He's a sick man. Think what the worry will be to him.""I'll bet if he knows Dale he won't be so worried.""Dale told us Uncle Al disliked him."
"Pooh! What difference does that make? . . . Oh, I don't know which I am -- hungrier or tireder!""I couldn't eat to-night," said Helen, wearily.