“I reckon you did,” he answered. “Are you riding easy?” 238
“Yes—but I am cold, and then hot again. The man hurt me.”
De Launay swore under his breath and awkwardly began to twist from his Mackinaw, which, when it was free, he wrapped around her. Then, holding her closer, he urged his horse to greater speed.
But, once upon the bench and free to look about him toward the steep slope of the crater’s outer walls, he was dismayed at the unexpected change in the landscape.
On the rocky slopes there had once stood a dense thicket of lodgepole pine, slender and close, through which a trail had been cut. But, years ago, a fire had swept the forest, leaving the gaunt stems and bare spikes to stand like a plantation of cane or bamboo on the crumbling lava. Then a windstorm had rushed across the mountains, leveling the dead trees to the ground, throwing them in wild, heaping chaos of jagged spikes and tangled branches. The tough cones, opened by the fire, had germinated and seedlings had sprung up amidst the riot of logs, growing as thick as grass. They were now about the height of a tall man’s head, forming, with the tangled abatis of spiky trunks, a seemingly impenetrable jungle.
There might be a practicable way through, but to search for it would take more time than the man had to spare. He must get the girl to rest and shelter before her illness gained much further headway, and 239 he knew that a search for a passage might well take days instead of the hours he had at his command. He wished that he had remained in the cañon where he might have pitched camp in spite of the danger from the prospector. But a return meant a further waste of time and he decided to risk an attempt to force his way through the tangle.
Carefully he headed into it. The going was not very hard at first as the trees lay scattered on the edge of the windfall. But, as he wormed into the labyrinth, the heaped up logs gave more and more resistance to progress, and it soon became apparent that he could never win through to the higher slopes which were free of the tangle.
If he had been afoot and unencumbered, the task would have been hard enough but not insuperable. Mounted, with pack horses carrying loads projecting far on the sides, to catch and entangle with spiky branches, the task became impossible. Yet he persisted, with a feeling that his best chance lay in pressing onward.
The lurching horse, scrambling over the timber, jolted and shook his burden and Solange began again to talk in Basque. Behind them the pack horses straggled, leaping and crashing clumsily in the jungle of impeding tree trunks. De Launay came to a stop and looked despairingly about him.
About thirty yards away, among the green saplings and gray down timber, stood a bluish shape, 240 antlered, with long ears standing erect. The black-tailed deer watched him curiously, and without any apparent fear. De Launay knew at once that the animal was unaccustomed to man and had not been hunted. He stared at it, wondering that it did not run.