The Strength of the Pines

by Edison Marshall

He had always known how the pine shadows would fall across the carpet of needles. The trees themselves were the same grave companions that he had expected, but his delight was all the more because of his expectations.

He began to catch glimpses of the smaller forest creatures,—the Little People that are such a delight to all real lovers of the wilderness. Sometimes it was a chipmunk, trusting to his striped skin—blending perfectly with the light and shadow—to keep him out of sight. These are quivering, restless, ever-frightened little folk, and heaven alone knows what damage they may do to the roots of a tree. But Bruce wasn't in the mood to think of forest conservation to-day. He had left a number of his notions in the city where he had acquired them,—and this little, bright-eyed rodent in the tree roots had almost the same right to the forests that he had himself. Before, he had a measure of the same arrogance with which most men—realizing the dominance of their breed—regard the lesser people of the wild; but something of a disastrous nature had happened to it. He spoke gayly to the chipmunk and passed on.

As the trail climbed higher, the sense of wilderness became more pronounced. Even the trees seemed larger and more majestic, and the glimpses of the wild people were more frequent. The birds stopped their rattle-brained conversation and stared at him with frank curiosity. The grouse let him get closer before they took to cover.

Of course the bird life was not nearly so varied as in the pretty groves of the Middle West. Most birds are gentle people, requiring an easy and pleasant environment, and these stern, stark mountains were no place for them. Only the hardier creatures could flourish here. Their songs would have been out of place in the great silences and solemnity of the evergreen forest. This was no land for weaklings. Bruce knew that as well as he knew that his legs were under him. The few birds he saw were mostly of the hardier varieties,—hale-fellows-well-met and cheerful members of the lower strata in bird society. "Good old roughnecks," he said to them, with an intuitive understanding.

That was just the name for them,—a word that is just beginning to appear in dictionaries. They were rough in manner and rough in speech, and they pretended to be rougher than they were. Yet Bruce liked them. He exulted in the easy freedom of their ways. Creatures have to be rough to exist in and love such wilderness as this. Life gets down to a matter of cold metal,—some brass but mostly iron! He rather imagined that they could be fairly capable thieves if occasion arose, making off with the edibles he had bought without a twitch of a feather. They squawked and scolded at him, after their curiosity was satisfied. They said the most shocking things they could think of and seemed to rejoice in it. He didn't know their breeds, yet he felt that they were old friends. They were rather large birds, mostly of the families of jays and magpies.

The hours passed. The trail grew dimmer. Now it was just a brown serpent in the pine needles, coiling this way and that,—but he loved every foot of it. It dipped down to a little stream, of which the blasting sun of summer had made only a succession of shallow pools. Yet the water was cold to his lips. And he knew that little brook trout—waiting until the fall rains should make a torrent of their tiny stream and thus deliver them—were gazing at him while he drank.

The trail followed the creek a distance, and at last he found the spring that was its source. It was only a small spring, lost in a bed of deep, green ferns. He sat down to rest and to eat part of his lunch. The little wind had died, leaving a profound silence.

By a queer pounding of his blood Bruce knew that he was in the high altitudes. He had already come six miles from the cabin. The hour was about six-thirty; in two hours more it would be too dark to make his way at all.

He examined the mud about the spring, and there was plenty of evidence that the forest creatures had passed that way. Here was a little triangle where a buck had stepped, and farther away he found two pairs of deer tracks,—evidently those of a doe with fawn. A wolf had stopped to cool his heated tongue in the waters, possibly in the middle of some terrible hunt in the twilight hours.

There was a curious round track, as if of a giant cat, a little way distant in the brown earth. It told a story plainly. A cougar—one of those great felines that is perhaps better called puma—had had an ambush there a few nights before. Bruce wondered what wilderness tragedy had transpired when the deer came to drink. Then he found another huge abrasion in the mud that puzzled him still more.