Dale stood with face and arm upraised, and he watched Helen ride off the ledge to disappear in the forest. That vast spruce slope seemed to have swallowed her. She was gone!
Slowly Dale lowered his arm with gesture expressive of a strange finality, an eloquent despair, of which he was unconscious.
He turned to the park, to his camp, and the many duties of a hunter. The park did not seem the same, nor his home, nor his work.
"I reckon this feelin's natural," he soliloquized, resignedly, "but it's sure queer for me. That's what comes of makin' friends. Nell an' Bo, now, they made a difference, an' a difference I never knew before."He calculated that this difference had been simply one of responsibility, and then the charm and liveliness of the companionship of girls, and finally friendship. These would pass now that the causes were removed.
Before he had worked an hour around camp he realized a change had come, but it was not the one anticipated. Always before he had put his mind on his tasks, whatever they might be; now he worked while his thoughts were strangely involved.
The little bear cub whined at his heels; the tame deer seemed to regard him with deep, questioning eyes, the big cougar padded softly here and there as if searching for something.
"You all miss them -- now -- I reckon," said Dale. "Well, they're gone an' you'll have to get along with me."Some vague approach to irritation with his pets surprised him. Presently he grew both irritated and surprised with himself -- a state of mind totally unfamiliar. Several times, as old habit brought momentary abstraction, he found himself suddenly looking around for Helen and Bo. And each time the shock grew stronger. They were gone, but their presence lingered. After his camp chores were completed he went over to pull down the lean-to which the girls had utilized as a tent. The spruce boughs had dried out brown and sear; the wind had blown the roof awry; the sides were leaning in. As there was now no further use for this little habitation, he might better pull it down. Dale did not acknowledge that his gaze had involuntarily wandered toward it many times. Therefore he strode over with the intention of destroying it.
For the first time since Roy and he had built the lean-to he stepped inside. Nothing was more certain than the fact that he experienced a strange sensation, perfectly incomprehensible to him. The blankets lay there on the spruce boughs, disarranged and thrown back by hurried hands, yet still holding something of round folds where the slender forms had nestled. A black scarf often worn by Bo lay covering the pillow of pine-needles; a red ribbon that Helen had worn on her hair hung from a twig. These articles were all that had been forgotten. Dale gazed at them attentively, then at the blankets, and all around the fragrant little shelter; and he stepped outside with an uncomfortable knowledge that he could not destroy the place where Helen and Bo had spent so many hours.
Whereupon, in studious mood, Dale took up his rifle and strode out to hunt. His winter supply of venison had not yet been laid in. Action suited his mood; he climbed far and passed by many a watching buck to slay which seemed murder;at last he jumped one that was wild and bounded away. This he shot, and set himself a Herculean task in packing the whole carcass back to camp. Burdened thus, be staggered under the trees, sweating freely, many times laboring for breath, aching with toil, until at last he had reached camp.
There he slid the deer carcass off his shoulders, and, standing over it, he gazed down while his breast labored. It was one of the finest young bucks he had ever seen. But neither in stalking it, nor making a wonderful shot, nor in packing home a weight that would have burdened two men, nor in gazing down at his beautiful quarry, did Dale experience any of the old joy of the hunter.
"I'm a little off my feed," he mused, as he wiped sweat from his heated face. "Maybe a little dotty, as I called Al. But that'll pass."Whatever his state, it did not pass. As of old, after a long day's hunt, he reclined beside the camp-fire and watched the golden sunset glows change on the ramparts; as of old he laid a hand on the soft, furry head of the pet cougar; as of old he watched the gold change to red and then to dark, and twilight fall like a blanket; as of old he listened to the dreamy, lulling murmur of the water fall. The old familiar beauty, wildness, silence, and loneliness were there, but the old content seemed strangely gone.
Soberly he confessed then that he missed the happy company of the girls. He did not distinguish Helen from Bo in his slow introspection. When he sought his bed he did not at once fall to sleep. Always, after a few moments of wakefulness, while the silence settled down or the wind moaned through the pines, he had fallen asleep. This night he found different. Though he was tired, sleep would not soon come. The wilderness, the mountains, the park, the camp -- all seemed to have lost something. Even the darkness seemed empty. And when at length Dale fell asleep it was to be troubled by restless dreams.
Up with the keen-edged, steely-bright dawn, he went at the his tasks with the springy stride of the deer-stalker.
At the end of that strenuous day, which was singularly full of the old excitement and action and danger, and of new observations, he was bound to confess that no longer did the chase suffice for him.
Many times on the heights that day, with the wind keen in his face, and the vast green billows of spruce below him, he had found that be was gazing without seeing, halting without object, dreaming as he had never dreamed before.
