The Forester"s Daughter.
by Hamlin Garland.
FOREWORD
This little story is the outcome of two trips (neither of which was in the Bear Tooth Forest) during the years 1909 and 1910. Its main claim on the reader"s interest will lie, no doubt, in the character of Berea McFarlane; but I find myself re-living with keen pleasure the splendid drama of wind and cloud and swaying forest which made the expeditions memorable.
The golden trail is an actuality for me. The camp on the lake was mine.
The rain, the snow I met. The prying camp-robbers, the grouse, the muskrats, the beaver were my companions. But Berrie was with me only in imagination. She is a fiction, born of a momentary, powerful hand-clasp of a Western rancher"s daughter. The story of Wayland Norcross is fiction also. But the McFarlane ranch, the mill, and the lonely ranger-stations are closely drawn pictures of realities. Although the stage of my comedy is Colorado, I have not held to any one locality. The scene is composite.
It was my intention, originally, to write a much longer and more important book concerning Supervisor McFarlane, but Berrie took the story into her own strong hands and made of it something so intimate and so idyllic that I could not bring the more prosaic element into it. It remained personal and youthful in spite of my plans, a divergence for which, perhaps, most of my readers will be grateful.
As for its t.i.tle, I had little to do with its selection. My daughter, Mary Isabel, aged ten, selected it from among a half-dozen others, and for luck I let it stand, although it sounds somewhat like that of a paper-bound German romance. For the sub-t.i.tle my publishers are responsible.
Finally, I warn the reader that this is merely the very slender story of a young Western girl who, being desired of three strong men, bestows her love on a "tourist" whose weakness is at once her allurement and her care. The administration problem, the sociologic theme, which was to have made the novel worth while, got lost in some way on the low trail and never caught up with the lovers. I"m sorry--but so it was!
Chicago, January, 1914.
THE FORESTER"S DAUGHTER
I
THE HAPPY GIRL
The stage line which ran from Williams to Bear Tooth (one of the most authentic then to be found in all the West) possessed at least one genuine Concord coach, so faded, so saddened, so cracked, and so splintered that its pa.s.sengers entered it under protest, and alighted from it with thanksgiving, and yet it must have been built by honorable men, for in 190- it still made the run of one hundred and twenty miles twice each week without loss of wheel or even so much as moulting a sc.r.a.p of paint.
And yet, whatever it may have been in its youth, it was in its age no longer a gay dash of color in the landscape. On the contrary, it fitted into the dust-brown and sage-green plain as defensively as a beetle in a dusty path. Nevertheless, it was an indispensable part of a very moving picture as it crept, creaking and groaning (or it may be it was the suffering pa.s.senger creaking and groaning), along the hillside.
After leaving the Grande River the road winds up a pretty high divide before plunging down into Ute Park, as they call all that region lying between the Continental Range on the east and the Bear Tooth plateau on the west. It was a big spread of land, and very far from an Eastern man"s conception of a park. From Dome Peak it seems a plain; but, in fact, when clouds shut off the high summits to the west, this "valley" becomes a veritable mountain land, a tumbled, lonely country, over which an occasional horseman crawls, a minute but persistent insect. It is, to be exact, a succession of ridges and ravines, sculptured (in some far-off, post-glacial time) by floods of water, covered now, rather spa.r.s.ely, with pinons, cedars, and aspens, a dry, forbidding, but majestic landscape.
In late August the hills become iridescent, opaline with the translucent yellow of the aspen, the coral and crimson of the fire-weed, the blood-red of huckleberry beds, and the royal purple of the asters, while flowing round all, as solvent and neutral setting, lies the gray-green of the ever-present and ever-enduring sage-brush. On the loftier heights these colors are arranged in most intricate and cunning patterns, with nothing hard, nothing flaring in the prospect. All is harmonious and restful. It is, moreover, silent, silent as a dream world, and so flooded with light that the senses ache with the stress of it.
Through this gorgeous land of mist, of stillness, and of death, a few years ago a pale young man (seated beside the driver) rode one summer day in a voiceless rapture which made Bill McCoy weary.
"If you"d had as much of this as I have you"d talk of something else," he growled, after a half dozen attempts at conversation. Bill wasn"t much to look at, but he was a good driver and the stranger respected him for it.
Eventually this simple-minded horseman became curious about the slim young fellow sitting beside him.
"What you doing out here, anyhow--fishing or just rebuilding a lung?"
"Rebuilding two lungs," answered the tourist.
"Well, this climate will just about put lungs into a coffee-can,"
retorted Bill, with official loyalty to his country.
To his discerning eye "the tourist" now became "a lunger." "Where do you live when you"re to home?"
"Connecticut."
"I knew it."
"How did you know it?" The youth seemed really interested to know.
"I drove another fellow up here last fall that dealt out the same kind of brogue you do."
This amused the tourist. "You think I have a "brogue," do you?"
"I don"t think it--I know it!" Bill replied, shortly.
He was prevented at the moment from pursuing this line of inquiry by the discovery of a couple of hors.e.m.e.n racing from a distant ranch toward the road. It was plain, even to the stranger, that they intended to intercept the stage, and Bill plied the lash with sudden vigor.
"I"ll give "em a chase," said he, grimly.
The other appeared a little alarmed, "What are they--bandits?"
"Bandits!" sneered Bill. "Your eyesight is piercing. Them"s _girls_."
The traveler apologized. "My eyes aren"t very good," he said, hurriedly.
He was, however, quite justified in his mistake, for both riders wore wide-rimmed sombreros and rode astride at a furious pace, bandanas fluttering, skirts streaming, and one was calling in shrill command, "OH, BILL!"
As they neared the gate the driver drew up with a word of surprise. "Why, howdy, girls, howdy!" he said, with an a.s.sumption of innocence. "Were you wishin" fer to speak to me?"
"Oh, shut up!" commanded one of the girls, a round-faced, freckled romp.
"You know perfectly well that Berrie is going home to-day--we told you all about it yesterday."
"Sure thing!" exclaimed Bill. "I"d forgot all about it."
"Like nothin"!" exclaimed the maid. "You"ve been countin" the hours till you got here--I know you."
Meanwhile her companion had slipped from her horse. "Well, good-by, Molly, wish I could stay longer."
"Good-by. Run down again."
"I will. You come up."
The young pa.s.senger sprang to the ground and politely said: "May I help you in?"
Bill stared, the girl smiled, and her companion called: "Be careful, Berrie, don"t hurt yourself, the wagon might pitch."
The youth, perceiving that he had made another mistake, stammered an apology.
The girl perceived his embarra.s.sment and sweetly accepted his hand. "I am much obliged, all the same."