“THE TRAIL HELD TRUE”

The forest enveloped her, but she sheltered herself in its heart, and was glad of its soothing silence. The wind had died down to a rustling murmur in the highest foliage; through rifts in the dark-green canopy she caught glimpses of a cool blue sky; and there was a rooty sweetness in the air.

Mile by mile the road, a mere track traveled by Murray’s team at long intervals, grew rougher and more difficult. Soon it had abandoned the easy grades for the gulch, and climbed steep mountain sides, in a devious course through heavy timber, dropping to tumbling rivulets, climbing again to hang on the edges of high cliffs, dodging here and there among massive, outjutting rocks. Four hours she rode thus, mounting, ever mounting, with glimpses now and then of the forests massed green-black below, and glimpses even of the Park itself, around the shoulder of a hill, a patch of green and violet bright with sunshine. And then, when weariness had begun to weigh upon her, and as the shadows of the forest turned to glooms, she saw with a thrill of expectation that the road dipped ahead of her into a little gulch that lay hidden away in a cleft of the mountains. She must surely be near her destination now; and sure enough, she was riding presently along the bank of a roaring stream; beyond her was a small meadow of a brilliant green, and at the far edge of it a log cabin, with friendly smoke curling from the chimney.

But she was surprised and disappointed. She had expected, on reaching Murray’s, to see the stark head of Thunder Mountain towering above it, near and sheer. It was nowhere visible; not even the silvery peaks, its neighbors, were to be seen; there were only forests heaped on forests to the sky line. The trail, then, must be longer than she thought; and she seemed to be no closer to him than when she had studied the bald head of the mountain through the clouds.

She was welcomed by Mrs. Murray with cordiality, but in some surprise. A stout and jovial person, whose spirits appeared not to have been lowered in the least degree by the loneliness of her surroundings, Mrs. Murray was a helpful hostess to Marion, who was now in a state of deep dejection. A little boy and his smaller sister, both very dirty but rugged and red-cheeked, played in the open space before the cabin. The week’s washing was on the line, and from behind it, at the sound of a horse’s hoof beats, came Mrs. Murray, staring in amazement. Wonders on wonders in that solitude, where nothing ever happened! First a runaway horse of unheard-of color, saddled and bridled, dashing past the cabin, and almost trampling the children at their play; then Philip Haig, with his set face and burning eyes, making inquiries, and asking for a bite to eat; and then

“Well! If it ain’t Miss Gaylord!” cried Mrs. Murray, as she rushed to greet her. “What in the world ”

She paused on that, recalling suddenly what she had heard at Thompson’s of Marion’s nursing Haig back to life, and intuitively associating her appearance there with his. Marion saw the thought reflected in the woman’s honest face, and knew that after all the happenings of the summer, and the gossip that had followed, her better course was to be frank with Mrs. Murray from the start. Besides she could not wait to ask her questions by any indirection.

“Have you seen him?” she demanded eagerly.

“Yes, he was here about noontime. The look on his face!”

She threw up her hands in a gesture that indicated the abandonment of all hope for such a man.

“And Sunnysides?”

“Long before him. The critter almost run over my two babies, playin’ there before the door. Poor dears, scared almost out o’ their skins!”

“What did he say?”

“Nothin’. That is, not much. About the horse first. My man told him it ain’t no use tryin’ to ketch him, an’ it’s foolish to try to cross Thunder Mountain. Murray’s been here ten years, an’ ain’t gone much further’n the edge of it. Storms allus drove him back. An’ what’s the use, when he’s got wife an’ childer to look after? Of course Haig ”

“What did he say then?”

“He says he c’n cross if Sunnysides can, an’ if they can’t they’ll fight it out up there. My man asks why he didn’t go ’round a safe way an’ wait for Sunnysides in the San Luis, if he thinks the horse’s goin’ back home. Haig says he’d made up his mind to cross Thunder Mountain some time, an’ now’s as good a time as any. But it’s ” She was checked at last by the look of anguish on Marion’s face. “But you just come in. It’s supper time, almost, an’ you must be right hungry. Murray’ll be here soon, an’ he’ll put up your horse.”

In the cabin there was to be seen at first just one big room, with two beds at one end, a table surrounded by chairs in the middle, and a stove in the midst of kettles and pans and tubs at the other. But presently Marion noticed a kind of balcony above the beds, and she learned later that this was the “spare bedroom” in which she would be stowed away for the night.

“He was hungry too,” Mrs. Murray went on, being careful, however, to confine herself to the material side of the subject. “He ate some dinner, an’ then, after we give up tryin’ to stop him, Murray said he’d got to take somethin’ with him to eat, an’ some blankets. He hadn’t a thing, mind you, an’ didn’t want to take nothin’, but he did take a good-sized strip o’ bacon and some bread I’d just did the bakin’ an’ a fryin’-pan an’ matches an’ a knife. Murray done ’em up in a pair o’ blankets, an’ stuck in a leather coat with sheepskin inside, an’ hung a hatchet on his saddle. He’ll need ’em if he gits across into the Black Lake country, which’s worse some ways than Thunder Mountain forest’t ain’t never been touched, an’ bad lands, an’ ”

Murray’s entrance interrupted this speech, which was becoming painful to her guest, in spite of the good woman’s resolution to say nothing discouraging. Murray, a bearded, rough fellow in whose face shone good nature and contentment with the living he made out of his cows and chickens and few head of stock feeding in the mountain meadows, received a whispered hint, and obediently talked of other things than Haig and the runaway. They supped on bacon and eggs, with bread and butter and milk; and an hour afterwards Marion was tucked away in a comfortable bed in that queer “spare bedroom” up against the eaves of the log cabin.

Exhaustion soon brought her sleep. But in the middle of the night she was awakened by a storm that swept high over the ranch house, scarcely touching it in its sheltered hollow, but shrieking and wailing among the rocks and pines. She sat up in her bed to listen! Thunder Mountain! Before her eyes there rose, out of the dark of the cabin, a vision of Philip prone among the rocks of that terrible summit, struck down by the wind, or felled by a thunderbolt, drenched with rain, and perishing of cold. There came, above the howling of the wind, a deafening crash of thunder that rolled away in sullen bellowing. She buried her face among the pillows to shut out the frightful sound; and at length, when the tumult had died away to recur no more, she lay weeping softly until sleep came again to her relief. She did not wake again till morning.

“How much farther up can I go?” asked Marion at breakfast.

“You don’t mean ” began Mrs. Murray in alarm.

“No,” replied Marion quickly. “I don’t mean the top. But can’t I ride near enough to see it?”

“You c’n go to timber line safe enough,” said Murray.

“Yes, I’ve been that far, but you mustn’t think o’ goin’ further,” added the woman, still suspicious. “I’ll tell you what! Murray’ll go with you.”

“By no means!” Marion protested. “It isn’t necessary at all. I can follow trails well enough.”

“I wish you’d let Murray go with you. He’ll be glad to show you ”

“No. Thank you just the same, Mrs. Murray, but ”

“And you’ll not try to go past timber line?”

“Don’t worry about that, please! I know I could never go where men have failed. I’ve heard all about Thunder Mountain, and I just want to see it, near. Besides ”

She did not finish, but turned quickly away. This sign of emotion was not hidden from Mrs. Murray, and it heightened her anxiety. Lord only knew what the girl’d try to do once she got out of their sight! But where the intellectual and argumentative Smythe had failed, what could be expected of these simple mountain folk, who for all their sturdy independence were not a little awed by the superior poise and distinction of their visitor? Moreover, Marion was at this moment entirely honest in her assurance that she intended to go no farther than timber line. If the idea that lay deep in the back of her mind had grown since its inception some hours before, it was yet formless and unrecognized; if her purpose now had her firmly gripped, she was as yet unconscious of it, obeying it subconsciously, while she told herself, as she told Mrs. Murray, that she wanted only to satisfy her aching heart by doing merely all that a girl could do. To make sure that Philip had not already failed that he had not been thrown back from the very edge of the fatal crest that he did not now lie somewhere on the last steep slope above timber line, where she might see and save him: this was the utmost of her design in setting out that morning against the protests of her hosts.

Yielding at last, where she could avail no more, the ranchwife fixed up a simple luncheon of bread and butter and jam, which she tied in a little package at Marion’s saddlebow. And then, with a final word of warning that she must stop at timber line, an’ be back at the house ’fore dark, or she, Mrs. Murray, would be wild, and he, Murray, would have to go searching for her, the good woman let her go, and waved a fat farewell to her until Marion was out of sight among the trees.

Once more the forest enfolded her. Though the wagon road ended at Murray’s, the trail was still for some distance plainly marked, and offered few difficulties. Even when it began to be less distinct she was not alarmed. Smythe had told her, and Murray had confirmed his description, that Thunder Mountain was not formidable as far as the foot of the final scarp. Seth had taught her something of the lore of trails, and she was confident that she would be able to find her way even if the underfoot marks should fail. There would be blazes on trees, and broken limbs and twigs, and many subtle signs that she now sought to marshal in her mind against a possible perplexity. With eyes alert, she rode slowly and resolutely on, ever higher and higher, hour after hour, most of the time through dense woods, but now and then across a rocky slope, or down into a shallow gulch, and out again. By imperceptible degrees the trail grew fainter; and once it failed her utterly, in a small open space in the woods.

For a moment she was on the very point of panic; the forest seemed to be closing in on her with sudden malignity; and the terror of Thunder Mountain held her in its cold grip. But desperation called up her courage. She walked Tuesday in an ever-widening circle around the spot where she had lost the trail, with her heart almost still, and her eyes straining at every tree as it came within her vision. Where? Where? Would there be no more blazes, no more broken limbs, no more prints of hoofs on the mossy earth? Had she left the trail farther back than she had thought? And would she wander over all the vast bosom of the mountain until she fell from the saddle, and knew no more?

It was a real peril, and one that might have had a tragic termination as easily as a happy one, more easily, indeed, if she had lost her head. But something strong within her kept her senses keen; and suddenly she broke out in a cry of joy and triumph that went echoing down the forest aisles. There, on a patriarchal pine, though almost obliterated by time and weather, was the blaze in the bark that told her the trail ran at the base of that solid trunk. She halted Tuesday there and faced a new difficulty: in her many circlings she had lost the general direction in which she had been riding. The trail was under her horse’s hoofs; but which way should she go? There appeared to be no ascent the one way or the other, and no slope on either side.

She solved the problem by following the trail regardless of direction until she was able to discover in the black mold the fresh print of a horse’s hoof an unshod hoof this was, and the print certainly no older than yesterday. Without serious misgivings now, she rode on, and in a few minutes the trail mounted again with a sharpness sufficient to remove the last of her doubts.

Well, she was a woodsman now, and would fear no more. But she took the precaution to banish all thoughts excepting those necessary to the task in hand. The woods themselves offered countless temptations to distraction. They were alive. Grouse moved among the branches of the trees; small birds of a very silent habit fluttered across the trail; and once a deer slipped away through a dim and leafy avenue. In moist places flowers of tender hues still bloomed as if to shame the autumn browns of the underbrush. And then she emerged from the soft shades of the green woods into one of the most melancholy of mountain places, a great patch of burnt timber. For surely half an hour she rode through a veritable cemetery of pines, among multitudes of tall straight shafts from which the flames had licked the foliage and stripped the limbs, and from which the rains and snows and winds of winter had washed the charred bark until the boles stood white and ghastly, infinitely sad and still. No life was here, no flutter or call or hum of living creatures; and the silence was like a menace. She began to cast apprehensive glances around her, and was glad to the very core of her when the forest gradually greened again, and she was in the cool and friendly shade.

Yet another terrifying experience awaited her, not terrifying in the sense of any peril to herself so much as in its vivid suggestion of peril to Philip Haig. Without warning there came a prodigious crash of thunder; very near, it seemed. The whole earth rocked and shook, she fancied, under that smashing blow, and thereupon a savage bellowing filled the vault of heaven, and the forest quivered with the reverberations. Hard on the first blow fell another; and then the strokes descended in a swift and terrible succession, until there was one continuous and deafening roar like nothing she had ever heard or imagined. By this she knew that she was now close up under the frowning battlement of Thunder Mountain; and that a storm had burst upon that shelterless and unpitied head, with a malevolent timeliness befitting its ill repute. And somewhere in the midst of that destroying fury was Philip Haig!

The blue tracery of sky was blotted out; the forest became dark as night; the tree tops heaved and thrashed about in the wind that rushed down the mountain side. On the heels of the wind came a drenching rain, and Marion took what refuge was offered close to the trunk of a huge pine, which shook and shivered as if it too had nerves that were unstrung by all this tumult.

It passed, and the sky cleared with what to her seemed extraordinary swiftness. And when she rode out again to pick up the trail, the air was indescribably fresh and exhilarating, and the sun was soon filtering through the foliage upon her pathway.

The trail grew more precipitous, its surroundings more rugged and wild. Rocks took the place of the soft, mossy soil, and the forest thinned and shrank. Where there had been monarchs in their majesty she rode now among stunted pines and dwarf oaks no higher than her head. And soon she was at timber line, where the beaten and disheartened trees grew downward, or curled along the earth like serpents, or spread out in fantastic, unnatural, and monstrous shapes.

And there at last towered the bald head of Thunder Mountain. She could not see, of course, the flat top itself. Before her rose a precipitous slope, covered with loose stones and debris, and ending in a jagged line of rock against the sky, dull gray against the blue. Thin grass grew yet some distance up the slope; and then it was bare of vegetation, bare of soil, with a wavering faint line marking where life ended and death began.

She halted near the last gnome-tree, and stared at the desolate slope and the forbidding sky line. This was the end of her journey; and she knew no more than she could have known back there in the Park. The mountain was still the sphinx, telling her nothing, though she had come to it at last after months of questioning, with one question on her lips. Where was Philip? Perhaps just yonder, just beyond that sharp-raised barrier. From that crest, no doubt, the whole expanse of the summit would be visible. And how could she go back alone, without being able to assure herself forever that she had done her best?

She studied the slope. From where she stood to the gray sky line the distance was perhaps seven hundred feet. But the trail, which she could discern faintly marked among the loose and sliding stones, traveled five or six times that distance in its zigzag course. Fascinated, her eyes followed it in and out until its dim line vanished high up in the gray-brown uniformity of the steep ascent. From this she looked up eagerly at the sky. It was a clear steel-blue; the sun shone bright on the expanse of stone; a vigorous but not violent breeze came from around the distant curve of the slope. It seemed incredible, considering all that she had heard, and all that she had imagined. The mountain, she knew, had its brief and infrequent hours of quiet, but she had pictured it as terrifying even in its calm. Now it was formidable and mysterious, and she could not forget its menace; but it was not terrible. On top, perhaps

She urged Tuesday forward. The trail went far out to the right at an easy gradient, turned sharply, and came back to reach out as far to the left. It was more difficult than Marion had imagined, for the reason that the loose stones afforded an ill footing for the pony, which slipped and slid and stumbled, often going to his knees, and more than once barely avoiding a fall that would have sent horse and rider rolling down to be caught by the network of stunted trees. But Tuesday was sure of foot; and so, with muscles quivering under the strain, and his eyes bulging with anxiety and fear, he climbed up and up without disaster, while Marion leaned far forward in the saddle, her nerves on edge, her eyes alert, and her heart pounding wildly, as much from excitement as from its struggle with that high altitude.

How long that climb endured she never knew; the actual minutes seemed to her as hours, their total an eternity. But at last, trembling and sweating, Tuesday stood on a narrow shelf of granite, with the long slope behind, and a wall of rock ahead. While the pony rested, Marion looked to left and right for the continuation of the trail. She could not see it, but knew there should be an opening somewhere in the wall that rose sheer some twenty-five or thirty feet above her head. Slowly riding along the platform, searching for a sign, the wall at her left, and the declivity at her right, she came to a place where the barrier curved inward, and was also hollowed out at its base, so that a shallow cave (speaking loosely) was formed, where some sort of shelter might have been found from a storm. This possibility flashed into Marion’s mind, for she could not forget the mountain and its ways. She dismounted to look into the cave, and at two steps started forward with a cry.

On the rocky floor was a small heap of ashes and charred ends of sticks. Kneeling quickly, she tore off a glove, and thrust her fingers into the ashes. They were warm! And near the ashes she discovered the rind of a thin slice of bacon, and a few crumbs of bread. Philip had passed Murray’s soon after midday; he would have reached the cave, then, before night; and so he had slept there, and risen at dawn, and eaten his meagre breakfast, and ridden on.

She leaped to her feet, ran out and mounted her pony, and rode forward along the platform, searching for the trail.