As you ride a trail study how to improve it, added the Supervisor, sheathing his ax. They can all be improved.
Wayland was sure of this a few steps farther on, when the Supervisors horse went down in a small bog-hole, and Berries pony escaped only by the most desperate plunging. The girl laughed, but Wayland was appalled and stood transfixed watching McFarlane as he calmly extricated himself from the saddle of the fallen horse and chirped for him to rise.
You act as if this were a regular part of the journey, Wayland said to Berrie.
Its
all in the days work, she replied; but I despise a bog worse than anything else on the trail. Ill show you how to go round this one. Thereupon she slid from her horse and came tiptoeing back along the edge of the mud-hole.
McFarlane cut a stake and plunged it vertically in the mud. That means no bottom, he explained. We must cut a new trail.
Wayland was dismounting when Berrie said: Stay on. Now put your horse right through where those rocks are. Its hard bottom there.
He felt like a child; but he did as she bid, and so came safely through, while McFarlane set to work to blaze a new route which should avoid the slough which was already a bottomless horror to the city man.
This mishap delayed them nearly half an hour, and the air grew dark and chill as they stood there, and the amateur ranger began to understand how serious a lone night journey might sometimes be. What would I do if when riding in the dark my horse should go down like that and pin me in the mud? he asked himself. Eternal watchfulness is certainly one of the foresters first principles.
The sky was overshadowed now, and a thin drizzle of rain filled the air. The novice hastened to throw his raincoat over his shoulders; but McFarlane rode steadily on, clad only in his shirtsleeves, unmindful of the wet. Berrie, however, approved Waylands caution. Thats right; keep dry, she called back. Dont pay attention to father, hed rather get soaked any day than unroll his slicker. You mustnt take him for model yet awhile.
He no longer resented her sweet solicitude, although he considered himself unentitled to it, and he rejoiced under the shelter of his fine new coat. He began to perceive that one could be defended against a storm.
After passing two depressing marshes, they came to a hillside so steep, so slippery, so dark, so forbidding, that one of the pack-horses balked, shook his head, and reared furiously, as if to say I cant do it, and I wont try. And Wayland sympathized with him. The forest was gloomy and cold, and apparently endless.
After coaxing him for a time with admirable gentleness, the Supervisor, at Berries suggestion, shifted part of the load to her own saddle-horse, and they went on.
Wayland, though incapable of comment so great was the demand upon his lungs was not too tired to admire the power and resolution of the girl, who seemed not to suffer any special inconvenience from the rarefied air. The dryness of his open mouth, the throbbing of his troubled pulse, the roaring of his breath, brought to him with increasing dismay the fact that he had overlooked another phase of the rangers job. I couldnt chop a hole through one of these windfalls in a week, he admitted, as McFarlanes blade again liberated them from a fallen tree. To do office work at six thousand feet is quite different from swinging an ax up here at timber-line, he said to the girl. I guess my chest is too narrow for high altitudes.
Oh, youll get used to it, she replied, cheerily. I always feel it a little at first; but I really think its good for a body, kind o stretches the lungs. Nevertheless, she eyed him with furtive anxiety.
He was beginning to be hungry also he had eaten a very early breakfast and he fell to wondering just where and when they were to camp; but he endured in silence. So long as Berrie makes no complaint my mouth is shut, he told himself. Surely I can stand it if she can. And so struggled on.
Up and up the pathway looped, crossing minute little boggy meadows, on whose bottomless ooze the grass shook like a blanket, descending steep ravines and climbing back to dark and muddy slopes. The forest was dripping, green, and silent now, a mysterious menacing jungle. All the warmth and magic of the golden forest below was lost as though it belonged to another and sunnier world. Nothing could be seen of the high, snow-flecked peaks which had allured them from the valley. All about them drifted the clouds, and yet through the mist the flushed face of the girl glowed like a dew-wet rose, and the imperturbable Supervisor jogged his remorseless, unhesitating way toward the dense, ascending night.
Im glad Im not riding this pass alone, Wayland said, as they paused again for breath.
So am I, she answered; but her thought was not his. She was happy at the prospect of teaching him how to camp.
At last they reached the ragged edge of timber-line, and there, rolling away under the mist, lay the bare, grassy, upward-climbing, naked neck of the great peak. The wind had grown keener moment by moment, and when they left the storm-twisted pines below, its breath had a wintry nip. The rain had ceased to fall, but the clouds still hung densely to the loftiest summits. It was a sinister