Shepherd of the Hills — 13 - Chapters 24 and 25
CHAPTER XXIV. WHAT MAKES A MAN.
Mr. Matthews and his son finished their planting early in the afternoon and the boy set out to find old Kate and the mule colt.
Those rovers had not appeared at the home place for nearly two weeks, and some one must bring them in before they forgot their home completely.
“Don’t mind if I ain’t back for supper, Mother,” said Young Matt.
“I may eat at the ranch with Dad.
I ain’t been down there for quite a spell now, an’ I’d kind o’ like to know if that panther we’ve been a hearin’ is givin’ Dad any trouble.
” “Dad told me yesterday that he thought he heard old Kate’s bell over on yon side of Cox’s Bald,” said Mr. Matthews; “I believe if I was you I’d take across Cox’s, along the far side of th’ ridge, around Dewey an’ down into the Hollow that way.
Joe Gardner was over north yesterday, an’ he said he didn’t see no signs on that range.
I reckon you’ll find ’em on Dewey somewheres about Jim Lane’s, maybe.
You’d better saddle a horse.
” “No, I’ll take it a foot.
I can ride old Kate in, if I find them,” replied the big fellow; and, with his rifle in the hollow of his arm, he struck out over the hills.
All along the eastern slope of the ridge, that forms one side of Mutton Hollow, he searched for the missing stock, but not a sound of the bell could he hear; not a trace of the vagabonds could he find.
And that was because old Kate and the little colt were standing quietly in the shade in a little glen below Sand Ridge not a quarter of a mile from the barn.
The afternoon was well on when Young Matt gave up the search, and shaped his course for the sheep ranch.
He was on the farther side of Dewey, and the sun told him that there was just time enough to reach the cabin before supper.
Pushing straight up the side of the mountain, he found the narrow bench, that runs like a great cornice two-thirds of the way around the Bald Knob.
The mountaineer knew that at that level, on the side opposite from where he stood, was Sammy’s Lookout, and from there it was an easy road down to the sheep ranch in the valley.
Also, he knew that from that rocky shelf, all along the southern side of the mountain, he would look down upon Sammy’s home; and, who could tell, he might even catch a glimpse of Sammy herself.
Very soon he rounded the turn of the hill, and saw far below the Lane homestead; the cabin and the barn in the little clearing looking like tiny doll houses.
Young Matt walked slowly now.
The supper was forgotten.
Coming to the clump of cedars just above the Old Trail where it turns the shoulder of the hill from the west, he stopped for a last look.
Beyond this point, he would turn his back upon the scene that interested him so deeply.
The young man could not remember when he had not loved Sammy Lane.
She seemed to have been always a part of his life.
It was the season of the year when all the wild things of the forest choose their mates, and as the big fellow stood there looking down upon the home of the girl he loved, all the splendid passion of his manhood called for her.
It seemed to him that the whole world was slipping away to leave him alone in a measureless universe.
He almost cried aloud.
It is the same instinct that prompts the panther to send his mating call ringing over the hills and through the forest, and leads the moose to issue his loud challenge.
At last Young Matt turned to go, when he heard the sound of voices.
Someone was coming along the Old Trail that lay in full view on the mountain side not two hundred yards away.
Instinctively the woodsman drew back into the thick foliage of the cedars.
The voices grew louder.
A moment more and Sammy with Ollie Stewart appeared from around the turn of the hill.
They were walking side by side and talking earnestly.
The young woman had just denied the claims of her former lover, and was explaining the change in her attitude toward him; but the big fellow on the ledge above could not know that.
He could not hear what they were saying.
He only saw his mate, and the man who had come to take her from him.
Half crouching on the rocky shelf in the dark shadow of the cedar, the giant seemed a wild thing ready for his spring; ready and eager, yet held in check by something more powerful still than his passion.
Slowly the two, following the Old Trail, passed from sight, and Young Matt stood erect.
He was trembling like a frightened child.
A moment longer he waited, then turned and fairly ran from the place.
Leaving the ledge at the Lookout, he rushed down the mountain and through the woods as if mad, to burst in upon the shepherd, with words that were half a cry, half a groan.
“He’s come, Dad; he’s come.
I’ve just seen him with her.
” Mr. Howitt sprang up with a startled exclamation.
His face went white.
He grasped the table for support.
He tried to speak, but words would not come.
He could only stare with frightened eyes, as though Young Matt himself were some fearful apparition.
The big fellow threw himself into a chair, and presently the shepherd managed to say in a hoarse whisper, “Tell me about it, Grant, if you can.
” “I seen them up on Dewey just now, goin’ down the Old Trail from Sammy’s Lookout to her home.
I was huntin’ stock.
” The old scholar leaned toward his friend, as he almost shouted, “Saw them going to Sammy’s home!
Saw whom, lad?
Whom did you see?
” “Why—why—Sammy Lane and that—that Ollie Stewart, of course.
I tell you he’s come back.
Come to take her away.
” The reaction was almost as bad as the shock.
Mr. Howitt gasped as he dropped back into his seat.
He felt a hysterical impulse to laugh, to cry out.
Young Matt continued; “He’s come home, Dad, with all his fine clothes and city airs, and now she’ll go away with him, and we won’t never see her again.
” As he began to put his thoughts into words, the giant got upon his feet, and walked the floor like one insane.
“He shan’t have her,” he cried, clenching his great fists; “he shan’t have her.
If he was a man I could stand it, Dad.
But look at him!
Look at him, will you?
The little white-faced, washed out runt, what is he?
He ain’t no man, Dad.
He ain’t even as much of a man as he was.
And Sammy is—God!
What a woman she is!
You’ve been a tellin’ me that I could be a gentleman, even if I always lived in the backwoods.
But you’re wrong, Dad, plumb wrong.
I ain’t no gentleman.
I can’t never be one.
I’m just a man.
I’m a—a savage, a damned beast, and I’m glad of it.
” He threw back his shaggy head, and his white teeth gleamed through his parted lips, as he spoke in tones of mad defiance.
“Dad, you say there’s some things bigger’n learnin’, and such, and I reckon this here’s one of them.
I don’t care if that little whelp goes to all the schools there is, and gets to be a president or a king; I don’t care if he’s got all the money there is between here and hell;
put him out here in the woods, face to face with life where them things don’t count, and what is he?
What is he, Dad?
He’s nothin’!
plumb nothin’!
” The old shepherd waited quietly for the storm to pass.
The big fellow would come to himself after a time; until then, words were useless.
At last Young Matt spoke in calmer tones; “I run away, Dad.
I had to.
I
was afraid I’d hurt him.
Something inside o’ me just fought to get at him, and I couldn’t a held out much longer.
I don’t want to hurt nobody, Dad.
I reckon it was a seein’ ’em together that did it.
It’s a God’s blessin’ I come away when I did; it sure is.
” He dropped wearily into his chair again.
Then the teacher spoke, “It is always a God’s blessing, lad, when a man masters the worst of himself.
You are a strong man, my boy.
You hardly know your strength.
But you need always to remember that the stronger the man, the easier it is for him to become a beast.
Your manhood depends upon this, and upon nothing else, that you conquer and control the animal side of yourself.
It will be a sad moment for you, and for all of us who love you, if you ever forget.
Don’t you see, lad, it is this victory only that gives you the right to think of yourself as a man.
Mind, I say to think of yourself, as a man.
It doesn’t much matter what others think of you.
It is what one can honestly think of one’s self that matters.
” So they spent the evening together, and the big mountaineer learned to see still more deeply into the things that had come to the older man in his years of study and painful experience.
When at last Young Matt arose to say good-night, the shepherd tried to persuade him to sleep at the ranch.
But he said, no, the folks at home would be looking for him, and he must go.
“I’m mighty glad I come, Dad,” he added; “I don’t know what I’d do if it wasn’t for you; go plumb hog wild, and make a fool of myself, I reckon.
I don’t know what a lot of us would do, either.
Seems like you’re a sort of shepherd to the whole neighborhood.
I reckon, though, I’m ’bout the worst in the flock,” he finished with a grim smile.
Mr. Howitt took his hat from the nail.
“If you must go, I will walk a little way with you.
I love to be out such nights as this.
I often wish Pete would take me with him.
” “He’s out somewhere to-night, sure,” replied the other, as they started.
“We heard him a singin’ last night.
” Then he stopped and asked, “Where’s your gun, Dad?
There’s a panther somewhere on this range.
” “I know,” returned the shepherd; “I heard it scream last night; and I meant to go up to the house to-day for a gun.
I broke the hammer of mine yesterday.
” “That’s bad,” said Young Matt.
“But come on, I’ll leave mine with you until to-morrow.
That fellow would sure make things lively, if he should come to see you, and catch you without a shootin’ iron.
” Together the two walked through the timber, until they came to where the trail that leads to the Matthews place begins to climb the low spur of the hill back of the house.
Here Mr. Howitt stopped to say good-night, adding, as the young man gave him the rifle, “I don’t like to take this, Grant.
What if you should meet that panther between here and home?
” “Shucks!
” returned the other; “you’re the one that’ll need it.
You’ve got to take care of them sheep.
I’ll get home alright.
” “Don’t forget the other beast, lad.
Remember what it is that makes the man.
” CHAPTER XXV. YOUNG MATT REMEMBERS.
After parting with his friend, Young Matt continued on his way until he reached the open ground below the point where the path from the ranch joins the Old Trail.
Then he stopped and looked around.
Before him was the belt of timber, and beyond, the dark mass of the mountain ridge with the low gap where his home nestled among the trees.
He could see the light from the cabin window shining like a star.
Behind him lay the darker forest of the Hollow, and beyond, like a great sentinel, was the round, treeless form of Dewey Bald.
From where he stood, he could even see clearly against the sky the profile of the mountain’s shoulder, and the ledge at Sammy’s Lookout.
Another moment, and the young man had left the path that led to his home, and was making straight for the distant hill.
He would climb to that spot where he had stood in the afternoon, and would look down once more upon the little cabin on the mountain side.
Then he would go home along the ridge.
Three quarters of an hour later, he pushed up out of a ravine that he followed to its head below the Old Trail, near the place where, with Pete and the shepherd, he had watched Sammy reading her letter.
He was climbing to the Lookout, for it was the easiest way to the ledge, and, as his eye came on a level with the bench along which the path runs, he saw clearly on the big rock above the figure of a man.
Instantly Young Matt stopped.
The moon shone full upon the spot, and he easily recognized the figure.
It was Ollie Stewart.
Young Stewart had been greatly puzzled by Sammy’s attitude.
It was so unexpected, and, to his mind, so unreasonable.
He loved the girl as much as it was possible for one of his weak nature to love; and he had felt sure of his place in her affections.
But the door that had once yielded so readily to his touch he had found fast shut.
He was on the outside, and he seemed somehow to have lost the key.
In this mood on his way home, he had reached the spot that was so closely associated with the girl, and, pausing to rest after the sharp climb, had fallen to brooding over his disappointment.
So intent was he upon his gloomy thoughts that he had not heard Young Matt approaching, and was wholly unconscious of that big fellow’s presence in the vicinity.
For a time the face at the edge of the path regarded the figure on the rock intently; then it dropped from sight.
Young Matt slipped quietly down into the ravine, and a few moments later climbed again to the Old Trail at a point hidden from the Lookout.
Here he stepped quickly across the narrow open space and into the bushes on the slope of the mountain above.
Then with the skill of one born and reared in the woods, the mountaineer made his way toward the man on the shoulder of the hill.
What purpose lay under his strange movement Young Matt did not know.
But certainly it was not in his mind to harm Ollie.
He was acting upon the impulse of the moment; an impulse to get nearer and to study unobserved the person of his rival.
So he stalked him with all the instinct of a creature of the woods.
Not a twig snapped, not a leaf rustled, as from bush to fallen log, from tree trunk to rock, he crept, always in the black shadows, or behind some object.
But there were still other eyes on Old Dewey that night, and sharp ears heard the big woodsman climbing out of the ravine, if Ollie did not.
When the young man in the clear light of the moon crossed the Old Trail, a figure near the clump of trees, where he had sat with his two friends that day, dropped quietly behind a big rock, half hidden in the bushes.
As the giant crept toward the Lookout, this figure followed, showing but little less skill than the mountaineer himself.
Once a loose stone rattled slightly, and the big fellow turned his head; but the figure was lying behind a log that the other had just left.
When Young Matt finally reached the position as close to Ollie as he could go without certain discovery, the figure also came to a rest, not far away.
The moments passed very slowly now to the man crouching in the shadows.
Ollie looked at his watch.
It was early yet to one accustomed to late hours in the city.
Young Matt heard distinctly the snap of the case as the watch was closed and returned to its owner’s pocket.
Then Stewart lighted a cigar, and flipped the burned out match almost into his unseen companion’s face.
It seemed to Young Matt that he had been there for hours.
Years ago he left his home yonder on the ridge, to look for stray stock.
They must have forgotten him long before this.
The quiet cabin in the Hollow, and his friend, the shepherd, too, were far away.
In all that lonely mountain there was no one—no one but that man on the rock there; that man, and himself.
How bright the moon was!
Suddenly another form appeared upon the scene.
It came creeping around the hill from beyond the Lookout.
It was a long, low, lithe-bodied, form that moved with the easy, gliding movements of a big cat.
Noiselessly the soft padded feet fell upon the hard rock and loose gravel of the old pathway; the pathway along which so many things had gone for their kill, or had gone to be killed.
Young Matt saw it the moment it appeared.
He started in his place.
He recognized it instantly as the most feared of all the wild things in the mountain wilderness—a panther.
He saw it sniff the footprints on the trail—Ollie’s footprints.
He saw it pause and crouch as it caught sight of the man on the rock.
Instantly wild and unwelcome thoughts burned within the strong man’s brain.
The woodsman knew why that thing had come.
Against such a foe the unconscious weakling on the rock there, calmly puffing his cigar, would have no chance whatever.
He would not even know of its presence, until it had made its spring, and its fangs were in his neck.
The man of the wilderness knew just how it would be done.
It would be over in a minute.
The giant clenched his teeth.
Why had he not gone on to his home after leaving the shepherd?
Why had he followed that impulse to stand again where he had stood that afternoon?
Above all, what had possessed him—what had led him to creep to his present position?
He shot a quick glance around.
How bright—how bright the moon was!
The panther turned aside from the trail and with silent grace leaped to the ledge, gaining a position on a level with Ollie—still unconscious of its presence.
A cold sweat broke out on the big man’s forehead.
The great hands worked.
His breath came in quick gasps.
It could not be laid to his door.
He had only to withdraw, to stop his ears and run, as he had fled that afternoon.
God!
How slowly that thing crept forward, crouching low upon its belly, its tail twitching from side to side, nearer, nearer.
Young Matt felt smothered.
He loosened the collar of his shirt.
The moon—the moon was so bright!
He could even see the muscles in the beast’s heavy neck and shoulders working under the sleek skin.
Suddenly the words of the shepherd came to him, as though shouted in his ears, _“Remember the other beast, lad.
Don’t you see it is this victory only that gives you the right to think of yourself as a man?
”_ Ollie was almost brushed from his place as the big mountaineer sprang from the shadow, while the panther, startled by the appearance of another man upon the rock, paused.
An exclamation of fright burst from young Stewart, as he took in the situation.
And the giant by his side reached forth a hand to push him back, as he growled, “Shut up and get out of the way!
This here’s my fight!
” At the movement the wild beast seemed to understand that the newcomer was there to rob him of his prey.
With a snarl, it crouched low again, gathering its muscles for the spring.
The giant waited.
Suddenly the sharp crack of a rifle rang out on the still night, echoing and echoing along the mountain.
The panther leaped, but fell short.
The startled men on the rock saw it threshing the ground in its death struggle.
“That was a lucky shot for you,” said Ollie.
“Lucky for me,” repeated Young Matt slowly, eyeing his well dressed companion; “Well, yes, I reckon it was.
” “Who fired it?
” The big fellow shook his head in a puzzled way.
Stewart looked surprised.
“Wasn’t it someone hunting with you?
” “With me?
Huntin’?
Not to-night;” muttered the other still searching the hill side.
“Well, I’d like to know what you were doing here alone, then;” said Ollie suspiciously.
At his tone, Young Matt turned upon him savagely, “’Tain’t none of your business, what I was a doin’ here, that I can see.
I reckon these hills are free yet.
But it’s mighty lucky for us both that someone was ’round, whoever he is.
Maybe you ain’t thankful that that critter ain’t fastened on your neck.
But I am.
An’ I’m goin’ to find out who fired that shot if I can.
” He started forward, but Ollie called imperiously, “Hold on there a minute, I want to say something to you first.
” The other paused, and young Stewart continued; “I don’t know what you mean by prowling around this time of night.
But it looks as though you were watching me.
I warn you fairly, don’t try it again.
I know how you feel toward Miss Lane, and I know how you have been with her while I was away.
I tell you it’s got to stop.
She is to be my wife, and I shall protect her.
You may just as well—” He got no further.
The big man sprang forward to face him with a look that made the dandy shrink with fear.
“Protect Sammy Lane from me!
Protect her, you!
You know what I feel toward her?
You!
” He fairly choked with his wild rage.
The frightened Ollie drew a weapon from his pocket, but, with a snarling laugh, the big fellow reached out his great hand and the shining toy went whirling through the air.
“Go home,” said the giant.
“Damn you, go home!
Don’t you hear?
For God’s sake get out o’ my sight ’fore I forget again!
” Ollie went.
CHAPTER XXVI. OLLIE’S DILEMMA.
