Timber line

Capped in snow, their flanks of felspar rock robed in glistening drifts, the Coronado Peaks swept to towering altitudes above the dark green of the forests. Keen, fresh, heady as wine, was the air in those high places, and each minute crevasse, each ridge, was etched clearly in the sparkling winter sunlight.

But there was no eye to see the glories outspread before these sister queens of the Rockies. The eagles which soared above them through the blue of summer had departed to lower altitudes with the first icy breath of winter, and even now were nesting in canyon crags, where as early as March their Spartan young would hatch. The grizzly of the Holy Ghost would not stir from his deep cave and still deeper lethargy for another month, and it was too far above timber line for the lobo and his followers to find food.

The sun was sinking rapidly. Over the ridges a sharp light wind whistled. But below in the forests there was a hush, deeper than the hush of summer, for now there was no scurrying about of small creatures, the hum of insect life was lacking, and even the trees slept.

Yet beneath the low branches of a cluster of fir trees a life-and-death struggle was going on. A large wolf, gaunt beneath a splendid, tawny coat, strove in silent agony, his lips twisted back from his white tusks, to free himself from the icy steel thing that had held him all day. He made not a sound to break the stillness. This was instinctive caution, for so dulled with pain had his hearing become that he did not even notice the approach of a human being.

On a ridge above the fir and spruce stand a figure had appeared, and now stood outlined against the turquoise sky and snowy peaks; a girl, dressed in furry woolens of white and green, snowshoes in hand. She looked across the rim of the world and in a moment, as though a master stage director had so managed, her figure was bathed in a rosy light that changed the glacier-like heights above to flame-colored damask.

The lobo gnawed with concentrated fury at his imprisoned foot. The girl had turned, poising a moment on the ridge before starting downward. A long blue shadow was cast before her. With a wrench the wolf tore away from the trap and without delay limped off on three feet, disappearing among the boles of pine and fir. In the jaws of the trap dangled a large bloody paw.

Now the sun sank behind the great peaks. It would be dark all too soon. The girl stooped quickly to fasten on her snowshoes, then made toward the darkening shelter of the spruce. A snowy ptarmigan, sole dweller on those arctic heights since the red fox had captured his mate, fluttered before her. Now she saw the gleam of the trap and the dark trickle of blood staining the snow. She clasped her hands and caught her breath with a gasp.

“Oh, oh! Damn, curse them! I knew it, I knew it!”

Kneeling down, the girl pulled at the trap’s trophy. The paw was caught fast. She tried to open the formidable jaws of the thing, but it was impossible. Only a steel bar wielded by a man’s strength could open it. She rose to her feet, tears springing, and started off rapidly down the mountain, making her way easily through the open forest and over meadows where within a few weeks she would be picking alpine flowers.

For half a mile the girl sped lightly over the snow, her snowshoes barely breaking the crust. Coming to a spot that was evidently familiar she cast about for a moment, then in the dimming light pounced upon another trap. It was cleverly concealed on the far side of a log and set with a frozen hare for bait. With her forest staff she struck the trap spring smartly. It clicked with an ugly snap which made her jump back. Then she came close and stooped over it. Yes, it was sprung all right.

“There,” said she softly to herself and to the forest, “there’ll be nothing more caught in that trap.” A moment later she was again darting through the trees. The increasing darkness urged her to greater speed, but as she emerged from the gloom of the forest into a barren open space the air was once more filled with rosy light. The afterglow of the setting sun had commenced at the foot of the mountain and was slowly creeping upward. The world seemed to palpitate electrically with delicate colors, mauve, green, orchid, and the spotless snow reflected and radiated the light.

The girl sped along the white crest, avoiding those stretches where barren rock thrust forth. Her flying figure could scarcely have been seen against the snow, but now and again it was silhouetted against a background of somber pine, flashing from one point to another, scarf whipping out behind.

A quarter of a mile away, on a hog’s-back running parallel to but lower than the height which the girl was traveling, a man was scanning the far slopes through a field glass. The figure darted across the radius of his fixed gaze. With an exclamation he swept the slope until he caught the moving object again. For a moment only he focused on the flashing figure, for it disappeared over the crest and down toward the Santo Spirito canyon. The man rubbed his lens impatiently and looked again.

“Am I seeing things?” he grumbled, half amused. “A flying wraith of the mountains? Is it an ice maiden, or what?”

After all, who could it be, all alone, way up here in this wilderness? He’d inquire down below. Garen Shepherd, a young irrigation engineer, dug his spiked walking-stick into the treacherous surface and started down the trail—an hour or so, and even the prolonged afterglow, the amazing snow-light, would be gone. He had barely time to get back to the canyon of the Amarillo and Benty’s Lodge, where he was staying.

Below, in the canyon of the Santo Spirito, it lacked but three minutes of nightfall. When the dying afterglow reached a certain point the canyon would be suddenly submerged in darkness. Damon O’Neill, the forest ranger of the Coronado slopes, led his mare into the log stable back of his cabin. He blanketed her against a bitter night, so bitter that even the chatter of the Cascada, the noisy stream that flowed at the bottom of the canyon, was sealed up and silenced in a prison of ice. He buckled the straps deftly, patted the sorrel mare’s nose, and went out, closing the door carefully behind him.

As he stood on the cabin steps, peering nervously about and gazing where the upper mountain still glowed with light, the white figure for which he was looking emerged from the spruce. With a shout and a few sliding steps the girl reached the cabin just as the canyon was slipping into night.

“Dawn! You just made it. Where’ve you been so late?”

“Snowshoeing up on the divide, Dad. It was glorious. Don’t worry. I keep my eye on the time.” She was unstrapping her snowshoes, while her father gathered an armful of wood from the pile beside the door. She hung the shoes on a nail against the cabin, opened the door for her father, and followed him inside. In a moment squares of light twinkled out from the cabin windows. All about the little log house fir and pine rose like clustered cathedral spires. All the universe was dark except for the far stars—and for pairs of shining eyes that came and went through the forest.

Inside the cabin it was warm and close. Damon kicked the logs smoldering in the wide stone fireplace and threw on light fuel till they blazed high. In a small kitchen adjoining the one big living-room a little cook-stove gave out waves of warmth and the smell of supper, of spruce pitch and resin burning, of wet woolen things drying.

Dawn had taken off her outer wraps and her heavy boots. She slipped into felt house shoes and an old green sweater and skirt. She hurried about laying the table, filling the coffee pot, and handing her father a fresh towel after his noisy ablutions. The cabin was very pleasant, the main room long, and eighteen or twenty feet wide. Against the log walls hung heavy Indian rugs, but so snug and well built was Damon O’Neill’s cabin that the rugs never swelled with drafts, no matter how the wind might howl outside. The floors too were strewn with well-worn Navajo blankets. The furniture was rough, made by hand—before the fire a rustic seat, a long table with two benches at one side, some chairs, a chest, a wood box at the other, and five shelves of worn books.

Dawn turned the wick lower in the kerosene lamp and they sat down to supper; beans and chili, brown bread and steaming canned tomatoes, stewed apricots deluged with canned cream. They ate in silence. Damon O’Neill seemed tired, but Dawn appeared not to notice it, though she cast him covert glances. When he took his place before the fire she came as usual and sat on a little hassock at his knee. He drew her head down and puffed at his briar pipe in contentment, putting his stockinged feet on top of Shep, the white collie that slept before the fire.

“You tired, Damon?”

“No. Just sleepy from the cold. Thinkin’ about a young lady I know, too.” He patted the girl’s tousled auburn hair, his brows knitting. “What’s troublin’ you, Dawn? Lonesome? Well, I guess it’ll be school for you next year, Missie.”

“School! Who should I be lonesome for when I’ve got you for company! I tell you, I’m mad. Daddy, if you must know. You’d find it out anyway; you always do. I found another lobo’s paw in a trap this afternoon. Up on the divide. Not very far below timber line.”

Damon O’Neill shook his head in annoyance. He did not answer for a few moments.

“Too bad. Hate to see it. It’s all wrong,” he said. “But these predatory animal fellows’ve got their orders. It’s been a hard winter for the stockmen, and it’s going to be a harder summer down below. They think they had it bad last year, but,” he predicted, “it was nothing compared to what they’re going to get.”

“You think there’s going to be another drouth, Damon?” queried Dawn anxiously.

“Drouth? No. And that would never affect us up here to amount to anything. The forest will always draw its own water, Dawn, never forget that. But down below it’s different. Yet as a matter of fact,” he went on, “for the past seven years they’ve had more rainfall in this country than for a quarter century past.

“But there’ll be little grass just the same. Dust will fly in their pastures and the folks down below will be bleating, ‘Drouth, drouth.’ They’ve not sowed; so they can’t reap. They’re greedy, those fellows, but can’t see it. Overstocked, that’s the trouble; the range eaten up, and cattle dying for lack of food. And what with losses from the wolves and lions—” Damon puffed for a while silently.

“And so they’re killing off all the wild things that interfere with cattle or eat anything cattle might eat.” Dawn shuddered. “I’d feel awful if they ever caught the old Custer wolf. They’d never get him to take poison bait, would they, Damon? He’s too smart, isn’t he? He wouldn’t even let one of his pack touch poison bait, would he? If they were starving he wouldn’t take a chance.”

“I guess that’s right,” agreed her father. “He knows about traps too. Can smell one under a snow drift. He’s got almost human reasoning, that lobo.”