The Man of the Forest | Page 8

army, and again low and sad; and
he saw pictures in the glowing embers, strange as dreams.
Presently he rose and, climbing to the loft, he stretched himself out, and
soon fell asleep.
When the gray dawn broke he was on his way, 'cross-country, to the
village of Pine.
During the night the wind had shifted and the rain had ceased. A
suspicion of frost shone on the grass in open places. All was gray -- the
parks, the glades -- and deeper, darker gray marked the aisles of the
forest. Shadows lurked under the trees and the silence seemed
consistent with spectral forms. Then the east kindled, the gray lightened,
the dreaming woodland awoke to the far-reaching rays of a bursting red
sun.
This was always the happiest moment of Dale's lonely days, as sunset
was his saddest. He responded, and there was something in his blood
that answered the whistle of a stag from a near-by ridge. His strides
were long, noiseless, and they left dark trace where his feet brushed the
dew-laden grass.
Dale pursued a zigzag course over the ridges to escape the hardest
climbing, but the "senacas" -- those parklike meadows so named by
Mexican sheep-herders -- were as round and level as if they had been

made by man in beautiful contrast to the dark-green, rough, and rugged
ridges. Both open senaca and dense wooded ridge showed to his quick
eye an abundance of game. The cracking of twigs and disappearing
flash of gray among the spruces, a round black lumbering object, a
twittering in the brush, and stealthy steps, were all easy signs for Dale
to read. Once, as he noiselessly emerged into a little glade, he espied a
red fox stalking some quarry, which, as he advanced, proved to be a
flock of partridges. They whirred up, brushing the branches, and the
fox trotted away. In every senaca Dale encountered wild turkeys
feeding on the seeds of the high grass.
It had always been his custom, on his visits to Pine, to kill and pack
fresh meat down to several old friends, who were glad to give him
lodging. And, hurried though he was now, he did not intend to make an
exception of this trip.
At length he got down into the pine belt, where the great, gnarled,
yellow trees soared aloft, stately, and aloof from one another, and the
ground was a brown, odorous, springy mat of pine-needles, level as a
floor. Squirrels watched him from all around, scurrying away at his
near approach -- tiny, brown, light-striped squirrels, and larger ones,
russet-colored, and the splendid dark-grays with their white bushy tails
and plumed ears.
This belt of pine ended abruptly upon wide, gray, rolling, open land,
almost like a prairie, with foot-hills lifting near and far, and the
red-gold blaze of aspen thickets catching the morning sun. Here Dale
flushed a flock of wild turkeys, upward of forty in number, and their
subdued color of gray flecked with white, and graceful, sleek build,
showed them to be hens. There was not a gobbler in the flock. They
began to run pell-mell out into the grass, until only their heads
appeared bobbing along, and finally disappeared. Dale caught a
glimpse of skulking coyotes that evidently had been stalking the
turkeys, and as they saw him and darted into the timber he took a quick
shot at the hindmost. His bullet struck low, as he had meant it to, but
too low, and the coyote got only a dusting of earth and pine-needles
thrown up into his face. This frightened him so that he leaped aside

blindly to butt into a tree, rolled over, gained his feet, and then the
cover of the forest. Dale was amused at this. His hand was against all
the predatory beasts of the forest, though he had learned that lion and
bear and wolf and fox were all as necessary to the great scheme of
nature as were the gentle, beautiful wild creatures upon which they
preyed. But some he loved better than others, and so he deplored the
inexplicable cruelty.
He crossed the wide, grassy plain and struck another gradual descent
where aspens and pines crowded a shallow ravine and warm,
sun-lighted glades bordered along a sparkling brook. Here he heard a
turkey gobble, and that was a signal for him to change his course and
make a crouching, silent detour around a clump of aspens. In a sunny
patch of grass a dozen or more big gobblers stood, all suspiciously
facing in his direction, heads erect, with that wild aspect peculiar to
their species. Old wild turkey gobblers were the most difficult game to
stalk. Dale shot two of them. The others began to run like ostriches,
thudding over the ground, spreading their wings, and