A Silver Girdle
By Claire W. Noall
Chapter 4
Synopsis: Tom Reynolds, having lost his fortune, takes his family from their New York home to a dude ranch in Utah bordering the Uinta Mountains, which he had deeded to his daughter, Eileen, just before his financial crash. The title is threatened by an accusation of intent to defraud. To save the ranch, Tom must establish the fact that the deed was made in good faith. Eileen sees Brent Baring, forest ranger, in the office of the forest supervisor, Dave Morley, after she comes to Utah, but Baring is not interested. They meet again in a lonely spot on her ranch. This time she thinks she is not interested, but that remains to be seen. The Reynolds family establish a summer camp at the end of the motor road at Mirror Lake in the Uintas to supply pack trains and guide fishermen into the interior of the high Uintas. Eileen is wondering why she has not heard from Wayne, her sweetheart in New York, as she rides through the forest toward Mt. Agassiz. Intending to take a bird’s-eye view of the region in order to be of more help to her father, she disobeys the law of the forest and climbs alone to a high point on this steep peak. Being overtaken by a terrific rain and snow storm, she slips on the wet rocks as she is making her way down the mountain and faints just as night closes in.
MORLEY left Camp Reynolds with a growing respect for Tom’s wood-nymph. Breakfast in the chill morning air had been another heartening experience. Rolling his sleeping-bag, he lashed it behind his saddle and slung his knapsack of concentrated foods into place.
With a farewell gesture, he called a rollicking “So long,” and ambled down the trail toward Rainbow on his piebald pony, Clute, short for Clutie, Scotch devil. He had explained the name with a twinkle in his eye. “Just for the fun of it and love o’ the hoss,” he said. The woods closed behind him as though he had never entered.
But Brent was expecting him at his ranger’s quarters on the shore of the lake.
After a long jaunt over a band of brown running through the green grass and under the enclosing pines of a natural park, he entered the steep defile of the North Fork of the Duchesne river. Here, Clute picked his way carefully over a crumbling trail high on the inside wall of the gorge. Emerging at last, he cantered through a forest of aspen and pine to come eventually upon the open mouth of a great horseshoe ravine, green with timber, rising omnipotently to the highline, forever separating the north rim from the mountain floor. He paused for a moment and gazed into the heart of this green bowl. Its silence crept through his being. His blithe spirits were hushed — Morley never failed to respond to the kinship of his beloved woods. And then, a deep-throated breeze broke the silence to carry its morning message from the depth of the ravine to its topmost height over the dark, emerald branches of the pines which swayed to a shimmering paleness in their rhythmic motion. Finally, entering a valley of lakes, Morley and his pony edged an outstretched girdle of shining waters. They passed one sparkling lake after another — like so many irregular silver coins, set in sections of jade. Crossing the grassy link that brought them to Rainbow’s shore, twelve miles from Camp Reynolds, Baring’s tent came into view like a white handkerchief, spread on the grass to bleach.
MORLEY found Brent sheltered in masculine security against the wind and the weather and a few ribbons of snow that stubbornly defied the June sun by hiding under the outspread branches of the spruce and pines. Books were his boon companions in this solitary dell, and carefully mounted specimens showed his interest in every botanical species that came to life in this high altitude.
“Hi there!” shouted Morley, rousing him from a microscopic study of wood-rings.
“Hi there!” shouted Brent. “What’s been eating you; I thought you’d be here yesterday!”
“Didn’t get started in time. Where do yu think I spent the night?”
“Under a log, back yonder!”
“Wrong again! In a new camp at Mirror. Friend o’ mine named Reynolds has brought his family up. He’s going to do the fisherman’s guide stunt and bring parties in here on horseback and pack.”
“Reynolds — Reynolds? The woods are full of that breed.”
“Unh uh — this man’s a great geezer. We knew each other when we were so high. He made a pile out o’ sheep and oil, but Wall Street busted ‘m, and he’s come back where he know’s he’s welcome!”
“Well, it’s not the first time I’ve heard that name in these parts.”
“You’ll take a shine to these folks fer sartin. Old Tom’s got a little wife what’s likely never seen a real mountain before; but yu oughta see ‘er pick up sticks. And say! he’s got a gal.”
“A girl!”
“Yeah. She rides a beautiful nag. Like as not you’ll be seein’ ‘er over here, if yu don’t get back there right pronto. She goes ’round a lot. She’s going t* help her pappy bring folks in. You’n Tom’ll have t’ hook up on these anglers.”
Brent was nonplused. Though he wouldn’t cross a mountain to avoid a girl he had never crossed a rill to meet one. There was a firmness about his well-knit presence that denied feminine charm. The forest fed his soul. And the first person he had met on the other side of the mountains was a slip of a girl named Reynolds — but she was a rancher! And now, here was another — come to invade his forest! Were the Uintas infested? The thought rankled.
After he and Morley had gone over the forestry situation and had eaten a bachelor’s bite, Morley rode on toward Granddaddy Lake.
“So long,” he said, “I might be back to keep you company tonight,”
“Okay, I’ll be looking for you!’
Brent climbed his watchtower to scan the forests and mountains in every direction. The open meadows were green with a swaying carpet of new grass. The lily pads seen on so many of the lakes looked like saucy tokens from his high perch. His powerful binoculars brought each distant mountain that came within his range nearer by many times. “For the love of Mike! What’s crawling up Agassiz’s flank?” he speculated half aloud as he perused this mighty monument, a bird’s long flight to the northwest from Rainbow, and across many a yawning chasm at that. He focused steadily on the great sand-colored buttress sloping up from the edge of the forest. “It can’t be- — but it is. There’s a human fly on that old boy as sure as I’m a foot high. And I didn’t know there was a soul in these mountains besides Morley and myself! I’ll be a son-of-a-gun — the Reynolds outfit of course!”
Brent looked for other moving objects on Agassiz. He saw none; he scrunched his nose, puzzled. Descending the ladder, he went back to his studies.
He was deeply absorbed and en-tirely unaware when the change came about, but all at once he noticed a strange hushed silence — like time suspended. It was uncanny. The aspens ceased their constant quivering. He looked out over Rainbow; the surface was as smooth as dull satin. A creepy feeling stole over him. And then a little whistling breeze crept over the lake, across the grass, and shimmered up the pearly trunks of the aspens where it caught the nervous leaves and set them trembling again.
Brent was uneasy. Once more he climbed the ladder of his tower and looked about. The forest was at peace — the sky clear. But he knew the signs of the weather. He gazed off toward Agassiz and ran his eye up and down, forward and back over the lofty summit. He saw no one. He paused to wait for the clouds. They had to come. The first appeared — a white plume, back of the broken ridges. Another came, platinum gray, and another. Brent watched them gather. He took a wild joy in a mountain storm.
Again, he examined Agassiz through the glasses. Underneath the cornice of an overhanging cliff came a tiny figure, still crawling upward, and still solitary.
“Could anyone be so foolish as to try that mountain alone?” he spoke aloud. “Reynolds must be a mountain goat — but lie doesn’t know the weather.”
Brent heard the muted rumble of distant thunder. “I’m going over yonder! That bird might need some assistance.”
He dashed away on his brindle pony. Agassiz was nearly ten miles from Rainbow by trail, even by the shortest route. “It’s a deuce of a long way up there, but he can’t know these mountains as I do or he wouldn’t be scaling one of them right now.”
Brent headed north for the highline. Rainbow is far enough east of the great horseshoe ravine for the trail to circle the abyss. Up the steep path his pony toiled. “Get along Rock — get along, you little cayuse!” He dug his heels into the panting beast and struck his shoulder with his quirt to urge him forward and upward. “This might be pure foolishness, but a job’s a job, and something tells me that fellow’s taking chances.”
AS he reached an altitude of nearly eleven thousand feet, he struck the blazed trail marking the highline running east and west. Brent turned and rode into the face of the sun, but he could see the clouds piling into the sky. He could do no more than wheedle Rock into a fast walk; the horse’s breath came too hard for him to lope. Only the remarkable stamina of the pony kept him going at this pace. Brent passed the head of the great ravine; it dropped off to a nauseating depth to one less used to the sight. The trail laced the edge of the timber line, running in and out of the forest. Finally it cleared the woods to trace the base of a mound of gray stone, Agassiz’s footstool. An eerie light had gradually enveloped the whole area as the forester neared Agassiz. The pure rock of the mountain had taken on a sickly lemon hue in the shadow of the black clouds that were swooping over its brow. Suddenly, the murky yellow light of the sun was damped. The thunder crashed over Brent’s head. The lightning struck the peak and glanced off the terraced edge with a menacing snap. Involuntarily Brent hunched his shoulders and drew in his head although he had been in these mountain storms before. Quickly, he unlashed his slicker at the back of his saddle and got into it. He struck Rock. As the pony jumped forward the rain began to fall in torrents. A sudden drop in the temperature sent a cold shiver over him. “Go on, Rock, go on,” he hurried his unwilling pony across the wide base of Agassiz to the mountain’s approachable side.
Like a weird undertone to the crashing of the storm, he heard a horse whinny and snort, a note of panic in the sound. Again and again, louder and more distinctly, and so nervous it was pitiful to hear.
Brent crossed a rocky rib in the direction of the sound, and there he saw a mahogany-coated Thoroughbred, a white star on her forehead, stamping and snorting in a frenzy of distress.
“By Jove, if I haven’t seen that animal before I’ll eat my hat! I’d know that horse anywhere! And I might have known there’s only one person on earth crazy enough to climb that mountain alone — that Gypsy-^-Reynolds! That beast senses her peril as well as I do!”
He tethered Rock; Nitana shied. And then the horses cowered against the trunk of a tree like friends in distress as Brent hastened toward the mountain. The rain turned to hail, hard and punishing. But the icy hailstones softened as he scrambled over the slippery rocks. They were transmuted into sky-scrolls of swirling flakes. Darkness gradually crept up from the depths below.
He made a funnel of his hands and called “Hello — o — o,” but his tone was muffled. The crag tossed back the thickened sound of his voice as if in derision. “Where in heaven’s name is she? If she had come down that horse wouldn’t be there!”
The storm increased to a raging blizzard. Brent’s teeth chattered. He had once heard a mountaineer tell how he had been caught in a terrific snowstorm on Agassiz in the middle of July, but the actual experience was frightful. His form contracted with cold in spite of his exertion in ascending the mountain. His breath came in short, heavy gasps, but he didn’t stop. Like a panther creeping to its lair, he clung to the rocks and made his way upward.
THE light was growing very dim. Time and again he had shouted and called, but no answer came to lighten his struggle. The search seemed infinite and hopeless, but his training and manhood gave him the sheer courage to persist. Silently he prayed for help to find this girl. He realized he might have missed her, but he knew he had followed the only approach up the otherwise almost vertical face leading to the sharp summit of this stern mountain. And, although it was hours before, he had seen her come this way. He couldn’t give up — the night would be too terrifying if she were still here.
Then, in the last snowy glimmer of day, about four times his height above him and off to the right, he saw a snow-covered outline, barely distinguishable, but softer than that which any rock could make. Hand over hand he climbed. Cradled in the angle of two slabs of stone he found Eileen, stiff and blue; her hat had tumbled off, the crown was filled with snow. He turned on his flashlight and propping it in a rock, he raised her eyelids and listened for her pulse — there was life. He brushed the snow from her, and went to work swiftly and methodically. He was trained for emergencies. He held a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia, which he always carried in his first-aid kit, to her nose. He breathed into her mouth, pried her teeth open, and poured a few drops of brandy between her lips. He slowly flexed her arms and massaged her whole body. After another whiff of ammonia she opened her eyes; they closed again.
“And I don’t even know your name, Miss — Gypsy — Reynolds — Reynolds — Reynolds!” he said insistently. Eileen’s eyes opened again.
“Can you hear me, Miss Reynolds? Tell me your name!”
“Name?” Eileen repeated groggily, and then lapsed again.
Brent held the ammonia to her nose and forced some more brandy between her lips. “Yes, your name,” he urged, and began to coax her circulation again with his systematic massaging.
The blue cast above her upper lip that showed even in the ghostly light of the flash faded; her nostrils became less pinched. Gradually she was restored. And then a deep frown creased her forehead as she felt the pain in her ankle.
“Tell me your name,” he said.
“My name? Eileen,” she responded, and then faded out again.
“Eileen! Eileen, wake up! I’m going to help you to get down the mountain,” he said quietly as he revived her once more with the ammonia.
A look of intelligence possessed her features as consciousness slowly returned. In the yellow light of the flash, and through the falling snow, she saw Brent’s fine eyes; not steel-gray, but dark and luminous. “Brent Baring, forest ranger,” she whispered, “how strange — ”
“Come,” he said, “we must get down from here.”
The crescendo of the storm had attained its full volume and was diminishing to a quiet pianissimo.
But when Eileen tried to stand she crumpled. The pressure of her boot was unbearable.
“What is it? What hurts you?”
“My ankle,” she gasped in a throaty voice.
He lifted her foot slightly, “Hm, sprained!” And he knew that his problem was manifoldly increased. He released the pressure a little by loosening the lace. “But,” he said, “I can’t do anything for your ankle now. We’ll have to leave your boot on until we get to your camp; we don’t want the ankle to swell right out of bounds,” he said kindly, “and you’ll need the boot for warmth and support.”
GOING down was so difficult, the descent was almost beyond both of them. Brent used the flashlight to get his bearings. Eileen tried to carry it when he had to carry her, but both her hands were in use as well as his, the way was so steep. At times she slid down the rocky masses, holding herself back with her two hands and her good foot. In places Brent lifted her down from dangerous heights, and then, again, with his assistance she could make her way over huge boulders, but only at the cost of hideous pain. The wet and snowy darkness was a treacherous accompaniment to their groping over the precipitous rocks. Although Eileen suffered excruciatingly, she endured. Brent revived her with the spirits of ammonia and a tiny sip of water when the weakness and pain mastered her. It was a tortuous ordeal to reach the base of Agassiz.
As they neared the foot of the mountain, the snow was no longer falling, and everything was absolutely black with night. But suddenly, the clouds parted in the southern sky. The rift grew wide, and scalloped margins were silvered from behind. In a welled depth, Mars gleamed orange-red. Eileen saw this vision through her pain. Her emotions quickened. And then, as the moon floated into openings of lighted clouds, a feeling of great magnitude embraced her, like a promise of life after she had been so near death.
They had a level stretch to cross before they reached the horses; Brent carried her. He had spoken no word of reproach or surprise. Strangely enough, not an expression of gratitude had come from Eileen — it would have seemed maudlin. Their situation was still overwhelmingly serious and her feelings went too deep for words. The knowledge that he had saved her life gave them understanding.
A sound penetrated the darkness. “Oooo hoooo — oooo hoooo,” long and sustained.
“It’s Daddy!” exclaimed Eileen in a glad but shaken voice. “Oooo r hooo,” she called, but the sound trailed off obliquely in a thin and tremulous slant.
“Oooo hooo,” hollaed Brent. Putting Eileen down so she could lean against him, he flashed his light up and down and back and forth, the mountaineer’s signal for “all is well.”
Tom answered with his own.
Brent had sensed the position of the horses. The answering call from Tom and the light helped him to locate them exactly. His life in the woods had sensitized him acutely in searching for a landmark in the blackness of a mountain night where eyes are as useless as those of the blind fish of some stygian cave. It was not surprising that he could make his way toward the location of the horses, Tom’s light verified their position.
Mr. Reynolds hurried forward to meet them, “Eileen!”
“Daddy!”
He saw by the flashlight that she was being carried, and her voice revealed her condition.
“Dad!” She reached out to him in the dark, exhausted, her reserve strength consumed. “This is Brent Baring, the forest ranger. He came for me — he brought me down the mountain! He says he saw someone up there with his glasses from his station at Rainbow, before the storm. I’ve turned my ankle; I can’t stand.”
“Baring!” exclaimed Reynolds, taking Eileen in his own arms. “Morley’s told me about you. Thank heaven, you got here in time! How did you know?”
“I didn’t know it was your daughter; I only knew that someone was on that mountain alone and that these peaks were brewing a storm. Old Agassiz hasn’t had much to do with humans — and there are times when even friendly mountains are dangerous. I thought I’d better come over here.”
“I wanted to help you, Dad, by getting a look-out from up there.”
“Let me direct your help after this, Eileen. No more bolting. “When your mother told me where you’d gone I could hardly believe it. I thought you’d wait for me to climb Agassiz. I made for the highline as fast as I could, but it was snowing on the mountain before I left camp. It was dark before I got over here, but I heard the horses champing, and I had seen your flashlight. When I found two horses I knew someone was with you, but I couldn’t think past Morley. The next thing is to get you home, my dear. Your mother will be out of her mind if we keep her in suspense much longer.”
“Poor Mom! I guess she thinks I’m as wild as a regular product of the Old West. She must be awfully worried.”
Eileen tried to sit her horse, but she sickened and almost fell. Her father put her behind him on Onesta; Nitana followed, nickering now and then knowingly. Brent led the way through the forest. He knew his way about, even in the night, but Rock could have tracked the short cut without his rider.
THE storm had shortened the day, and Dadai was beside herself with fear and anxiety. The men had come from the hatchery. She didn’t let them pitch their own tent, but told them they could share Slim’s and Squint’s. They kept watch with her during the terrible hours of suspense, but they couldn’t honestly try to allay her fears. They merely helped to pass the time away with an effort at conversation.
Finally the barking of the dogs announced the approach. Dadai snatched a lantern and rushed from the tent to learn the news. When she saw Tom lifting Eileen from Onesta’s back, her knees gave way and she almost sank to the ground.
“She’s all right, Mother.” Tom seldom called her by that name; it sounded heavenly to Dadai now. “A sprained ankle, and a frightful exposure, but Mr. Baring, here, saw someone on the mountain from his station at Rainbow Lake and went after her. He saved her life.”
“Mr. Baring — another friend! People are so kind out here. I haven’t met many, but how wonderfully good they have all been! Won’t you come in?” The tears streamed from Dadai’s eyes now that she was released from the great tension she had endured.
She had hot drinks ready and a good fire going. The tent was warm and dry. Eileen soaked her ankle in a hot solution of Epsom salts. After it had been rubbed with liniment and bound, her father helped her into bed in the sheep-wagon, where she fell into an exhausted sleep. Before she dropped off’ she at last tried to find words to thank Brent.
“Please,” he said, “I’m a forest ranger, not a hero.”
He stayed in camp that night, but when Eileen opened her eyes the next morning, he was gone — back to his duties at Rainbow.
For two long weeks her adventuresome spirits were trapped; not a tether’s length from camp could she move. She whiled away some of the time by sitting on a stool with her foot propped on the sawed end of a narrow section of log, practicing fly casting in a tub of water Slim had arranged especially for the purpose.
“Look, Jimmie,” she said, “move your rod in a straight line to cast. Make a hinge out of your wrist and keep your pole in a vertical plane.”
“Huh?” What d’yit mean, vertical plane?”
“See! This way. Move your rod straight up and down. Get your action from your shoulder.”
“Gee! You must’a been readin’ some fancy instructions,” laughed Slim. “It’s practice, not readin’ that counts when you get on the edge of a fishin* hole. Let me show yu’, Jim.”
“Just because you saw me with a copy of Field and Stream in my hand is no sign I have been doing any fancy reading. Let me show Jim where to hold his rod and how to press his reel. Now look, Jim, this is how you move your hand; up and down on the hinge of your wrist — and this is a vertical plane — and this is how you get your action from your shoulder. Now watch my fly strike that floating leaf.”
“Aw shucks! Yu got it loaded,” scoffed Slim.
“Sure I have, but not with a butterfly. That’s a fishing fly, and I’ve been practicing accuracy, so there! Now you try,” and she handed the rod to Jim.
But Eileen’s thoughts were often at Rainbow while her wrist made its vertical motion.
And then came a letter from Wayne!
(To be continued)