The trail was just a narrow serpent in the brush; and it had not been made by gangs of laborers, working with shovels and picks. Possibly half a dozen white men, in all, had ever walked along it. It was just the path of the wild creatures, worn down by hoof and paw and cushion since the young days of the world.
It was covered, like a sheep lane, with little slit triangles in the yellow dirt. Some of them were hardly larger than the print of a man's thumb, and they went all the way up to a great imprint that Dan could scarcely cover with his open hand. All manner of deer, from seasonal fawns with spotted coats and wide, startled eyes to the great bull elk, monarch of the forest, had passed that way before him. Once he found the traces of an old kill, where a cougar had dined and from which the buzzards had but newly departed. And once he saw where Woof had left his challenge in the bark of a great pine.
This is a very common thing for Woof to do,—to go about leaving challenges as if he were the most warlike creature in the world. In reality, he never fights until he is driven to it, and then his big, furry arms turn out to be steel compressors of the first order; he is patient and good-natured and ordinarily all he wants to do is sleep in the leaves and grunt and soliloquize and hunt berries. But woe to the man or beast who meets him in a rough-and-tumble fight. Unlike his great cousin the Grizzly, that American Adamzad that not only walks like a man but kills cattle like a butcher, he almost never eats meat. No one ever pays any attention to his challenges either, and likely he never thought any one would. They seemed to be the result of an inherited tendency with him, just as much as to grow drowsy in winter, or to scratch fleas from his furry hide.
He sees a tree that suits his fancy and immediately stands on his hind legs beside it. Then he scratches the bark, just as high up as he can reach. The idea seemed to be that if any other bear should journey along that way, should find that he couldn't reach as high, he would immediately quit the territory. But it doesn't work out in practice. Nine times out of ten there will be a dozen Woofs in the same neighborhood, no two of equal size, yet they hunt their berries and rob their bee trees in perfect peace. Perhaps the impulse still remains, a dim, remembered instinct, long after it has outlived its usefulness,—just as man, ten thousand years after his arboreal existence, will often throw his arms into the air as if to seize a tree branch when he is badly frightened.
It was a roundabout trail home, but yet it had its advantages. It took him within two miles of Snowbird's lookout station, and at this hour of day he had been particularly fortunate in finding her at a certain spring on the mountain side. It was a rather singular coincidence. Along about four he would usually find himself wandering up that way. Strangely enough, at the same time, it was true that she had an irresistible impulse to go down and sit in the green ferns beside the same spring. They always seemed to be surprised to see one another. In reality, either of them would have been considerably more surprised had the other failed to put in an appearance. And always they had long talks, as the afternoon drew to twilight.
"But I don't think you ought to wait so late before starting home," the girl would always say. "You're not a human hawk, and it is easier to get lost than you think."
And this solicitude, Dan rightly figured, was a good sign. There was only one objection to it. It resulted in an unmistakable inference that she considered him unable to take care of himself,—and that was the last thing on earth that he wanted her to think. He understood her well enough to know that her standards were the standards of the mountains, valuing strength and self-reliance above all things. He didn't stop to question why, every day, he trod so many weary miles to be with her.
She was as natural as a fawn; and many times she had quite taken away his breath. And once she did it literally. He didn't think that so long as death spared him he would ever be able to forget that experience. It was her birthday, and knowing of it in time he had arranged for the delivery of a certain package, dear to a girlish heart, at her father's house. In the trysting hour he had come trudging over the hills with it, and few experiences in his life had ever yielded such unmitigated pleasure as the sight of her, glowing white and red, as she took off its wrapping paper. It was a jolly old gift, he recollected.—And when she had seen it, she fairly leaped at him. Her warm, round arms around his neck, and the softest, loveliest lips in the world pressed his. But in those days he didn't have the strength that he had now. He felt he could endure the same experience again with no embarrassment whatever. His first impression then, besides abounding, incredible astonishment, was that she had quite knocked out his breath. But let it be said for him that he recovered with notable promptness. His own arms had gone up and closed around,—and the girl had wriggled free.
"But you mustn't do that!" she told him.
"But, good Lord, girl! You did it to me! Is there no justice in women?"