第3章

Alder was Vic Gregg's Athens and Rome in one, its schoolhouse his Acropolis, and Captain Lorrimer's saloon his Forum.Other people talked of larger cities, but Alder satisfied the imagination of Vic; besides, Grey Molly was even now in the blacksmith's pasture, and Betty Neal was teaching in the school.Following the march of the mountains and the drift of the clouds, he turned towards Alder.The piled water shook the dam, topped it, burst it into fragments, and rushed into freedom; he must go to Alder, have a drink, shake hands with a friend, kiss Betty Neal, and come back again.

Two days going, two days coming, three days for the frolic; a week would cover it all.And two hours later Vic Gregg had cached his heavier equipment, packed his necessaries on the burro, and was on the way.

By noon he had dropped below the snowline and into the foothills, and with every step his heart grew lighter.Behind him the mountains slid up into the heart of the sky with cold, white winter upon them, but here below it was spring indubitably.There was hardly enough fresh grass to temper the winter brown into shining bronze, but a busy, awakening insect life thronged through the roots.Surer sign than this, the flowers were coming.

A slope of buttercups flashed suddenly when the wind struck it and wild morning glory spotted a stretch of daisies with purple and dainty lavender.

To be sure, the blossoms never grew thickly enough to make strong dashes of color, but they tinted and stained the hillsides.He began to cross noisy little watercourses, empty most of the year, but now the melting snow fed them.From eddies and quiet pools the bright watercress streamed out into the currents, and now and then in moist ground under a sheltering bank he found rich patches of violets.

His eyes went happily among these tokens of the glad time of the year, but while he noted them and the bursting buds of the aspen, reddish-brown, his mind was open to all that middle register of calls which the human ear may notice in wild places.Far above his scale were shrilling murmurs of birds and insects, and beneath it ran those ground noises that the rabbit, for instance, understands so well; but between these overtones and undertones he heard the scream of the hawk, spiraling down in huge circles, and the rapid call of a grouse, far off, and the drone of insects about his feet, or darting suddenly upon his brain and away again.He heard these things by the grace of the wind, which sometimes blew them about him in a chorus, and again shut off all except that lonely calling of the grouse, and often whisked away every murmur and left Gregg, in the center of a wide hush with only the creak of the pack-saddle and the click of the burro's accurate feet among the rocks.

At such times he gave his full attention to the trail, and he read it as one might turn the pages of a book.He saw how a rabbit had scurried, running hard, for the prints of the hind feet planted far ahead of those on the forepaws.There was reason in her haste, for here the pads of a racing coyote had dug deeply into a bit of soft ground.The sign of both rabbit and coyote veered suddenly, and again the trail told the reason clearly--the big print of a lobo's paw, that gray ghost which haunts the ranges with the wisest brain and the swiftest feet in the West.Vic Gregg grinned with excitement; fifty dollars' bounty if that scalp were his! But the story of the trail called him back with the sign of some small animal which must have traveled very slowly, for in spite of the tiny size of the prints, each was distinct.The man sniffed with instinctive aversion and distrust for this was the trail of the skunk, and if the last of the seven sleepers was out, it was spring indeed.He raised his cudgel and thwacked the burro joyously.

"Get on, Marne," he cried."We're overdue in Alder."Marne switched her tail impatiently and canted back a long ear to listen, but she did not increase her pace; for Marne had only one gait, and if Vic occasionally thumped her, it was rather by way of conversation than in any hope of hurrying their journey.