The Understanding Heart

Front matter

Other Books by Peter B. Kyne ❦

The Enchanted Hill

Never the Twain Shall Meet

Chapter 1

ALONG the narrow, single-track dirt road that led through the canyons and over the low foot-hills on the western fringe of the San Dimas National Forest a young man rode on a handsome Morgan-bred horse. Behind him a small but powerful black mule, with a "mealy" nose, trotted mincingly under a canvas-covered pack in an effort to keep pace with the rapid running walk of the horse; from time to time this mule brayed his displeasure at the hardship.

"Won't do you a bit of good, you tricky rascal," the rider called back to the protesting mule, in the tone one employs to an understanding and well-understood comrade. "We've got to make headquarters by sundown. No loafing or browsing along the road for you, Jupiter, and no funny business to win my sympathy. Hey, there! Stop that!"

Jupiter, having, as he concluded, given due warning, was leading trumps, as it were, which is to say that with all the sincerity and earnestness of purpose of a mule, he was endeavoring to get from under that pack. His pitching and braying came to an abrupt stop, however, when the young man whirled his horse, "hazed" Jupiter in circles and belabored him with a rawhide quirt, for mules—and pack-mules in particular—have too much intelligence to fight a losing fight, and nobody had ever accused Jupiter of being dull. He ceased his cavortings, knowing from vast experience that the instant he did the quirt would cease to fall upon him. Bowing his head meekly, he trotted on ahead of the horse. Seemingly he had surrendered to the inevitable.

Of mules, however, it has been said that they will treat one kindly for twenty years in order to gain one's confidence and thus facilitate the task of kicking one's brains out in an unguarded moment. Thoroughly deceived by Jupiter's gesture of surrender, the young man dismounted to adjust his saddle and tighten the cinch; Jupiter, casting a speculative glance to the rear, waited until he saw the cinch dangling, and then slid quietly off the graded trail and went crashing down through a thicket of aspens, his intention being to brush the pack off his back since he had been denied the effort to buck it off.

To Jupiter's huge disgust the delicate aspens refused to stand up to the task he had set them. What he required, Jupiter now realized, was a heavy, low-growing limb or series of limbs on a scrubby juniper or bull pine tree. Below him, in the canyon, was timber suited to his purpose and toward it he trotted, heeding not the shouted commands of his owner to halt and behave himself. Before the latter could cinch his horse and follow, Jupiter had disappeared in the thick, heavy growth.

"You double-crossing devil!" the young man growled. "I'll never trust you again. Hereafter you'll trot ahead of me at the end of a riata, while I keep you on the jump with a four-horse whip. Right now you're scattering my dunnage from hell to breakfast, and when you've done your worst you'll start grazing."

As fast as he could he made his way through the aspens, which, bending, sprang back and slapped him cruelly before he could get out of range. Consequently his progress was slow. Jupiter's trail was quite apparent, however, and once at the bottom of the canyon the rider spurred to a trot and entered the timber at the exact point where the mule had entered. Thirty yards into it he emerged in a tiny open glade—and pulled up in astonishment. Quite in the center of the glade his pack-saddle reposed, and beside it his pack, with the pack-ropes neatly coiled on top of it. And while the lush green grass that Jupiter craved grew knee-high in that glade, Jupiter was not in sight.

"Jupiter can back out of a pack but he can't unsaddle himself," the young man decided. "And he'd never be obliging enough to stack my outfit neatly in the open, where I would have no difficulty finding it. Neither would it occur to him to untie the pack-ropes and coil them on top of the pack. Evidently Jupiter had an engagement to meet a gentleman friend here. Hello, what's this?"

The canvas that covered the pack had been purchased the day before, but the dust of travel had turned its pure white to dull gray. In the center of this gray expanse a space about a foot square had been dusted off, with the result that the original white showed prominently in the field of gray; beside the pack lay the little sprig of green fir that had been used as a whisk-broom. And in the center of the white patch the despoiled traveler read a penciled message:

The young man chuckled. "Steals my mule and makes me like it," he soliloquized. "No, he hasn't stolen it, either. He says he's merely borrowed Jupiter. And he's perfectly right in his conclusion that if he hadn't captured that hell-anointed mule I would even now be developing lumbago picking up my scattered possessions. I had a rifle just on top of this pack. Wonder if he took that."

He lifted up the canvas cover and peered under it. The rifle was gone. His glance wandered to the heavy revolver in its leathern holster strapped to the front of his stock-saddle and he shook his head. "You win the right to ride that infernal Jupiter far and fast and until he bucks you off, as he most certainly will the minute he gets the notion in his head that he's done a day's work. I could follow you, mister, but I couldn't hope to contend with a pistol against your—I mean my—rifle. Besides, you've promised I shall have Jupiter back, bad as he is. Stranger, I believe you'd be a friendly cuss if given half a chance. You hated to do this thing to me but you just naturally had to, so for your decent intention I'll forgive you."

He unsaddled his horse, cinched the pack-saddle on him instead and painstakingly packed him with Jupi- ter's discarded load and his own saddle. Then, leading the horse by the macarte, he set out afoot to follow the trail of the recreant Jupiter.

By sundown he had followed it ten miles to another little glade, and quite in the center of this glade, held in the cleft of an alder branch thrust upright in the soft earth, he found another message. It was written in pencil on the white inner side of a square of willow bark, fresh-cut, and in order that the message might not be overlooked a red bandanna handkerchief had been tied to the alder branch. The message read:

"I wish I could meet this cheerful fellow," was the thought that occurred to Jupiter's owner. "He's evidently on the dodge, but something tells me it isn't for anything very serious."

He unpacked in the little glade, put the stock-saddle on his horse and set out briskly on Jupiter's trail. A half-mile farther on he found the mule grazing and looking innocent, so he roped him and led him back to the pack, put hobbles on him and a bell, hobbled his horse, turned both animals loose to graze, and went into camp for the night.

Early next morning he was on the road. He found the trail again—he had traveled parallel with it the preceding day—and about noon reached the headquarters of the Forest Ranger force in charge of the San Dimas. A ranger came out of the office and greeted him as he dismounted.

"Hello, there, stranger. You're Garland, I take it?"

The new arrival saluted him. "Yes, sir, I am."

"I'm Chief Ranger Casey. We rather looked for you to arrive last night, Garland."

"Oh, I had a brawl with this fool mule! He delayed me, so I camped out rather than prowl through a timbered country I don't know, and in the dark."

"Well, light and have luncheon with Mrs. Casey and me. I'm going to locate you at the Tantrum Meadows station, about ten miles from here. Better rest yourself and your animals for two hours and feed. You can get to your station by dark."

The chief ranger called an Indian, who took charge of Garland's horse and pack-mule, while he took charge of Garland and led him over to his comfortable log bungalow. Mrs. Casey came out of the kitchen, where she was preparing luncheon for her husband, and the chief ranger presented her to the recent arrival.

"Mr. Garland, Bessie, is the transfer from the Cocopah Reserve, in Arizona," he explained. "He takes Jem Scully's station up on Tantrum. He will have luncheon with us."

Mrs. Casey favored young Garland with an old-fashioned curtsy, in which he noted more than a little embarrassment. She was about forty years old and had never been beautiful. Her face, red with the heat of the kitchen, was perspiring freely and when she spoke Garland noted that her voice was pitched an octave too high. "She's tired, nervous, and irritable," he thought. "I'll bet she henpecks the Chief."

"You're welcome," the lady acknowledged the introduction and her lord's mandate. "I'm sure we haven't anything fit to give a guest, but such as it is, if you can stand it, we can." A nervous little titter concluded her ungracious speech.

"Jupiter is an intellectual giant compared with that woman," the youthful ranger told himself. "I've always heard Casey was hard-boiled. Now I know why." He was about to venture a cheerful commonplace when the lady returned to her kitchen, and Casey followed her in. When he came out his face was red with annoyance.

"She's scolded him for bringing a guest in on her without warning. As if the poor devil could help it!" Aloud Garland said, "I'm afraid, Chief, I'm putting your wife to a lot of unnecessary trouble. Tell her, please, not to make a fuss as if I were company."

"The women who raise the most hell when they're fussed are just the ones ten men and a boy couldn't keep from fussing. Sit down, Garland, and I'll explain your new job to you," Casey answered bluntly. He drew Garland up to a large blue-print map tacked on the wall. "This is the San Dimas," he said, "and the map is correctly oriented. Here, in between these two ridges, is Tantrum Meadows—about five miles long and a mile and a half wide at the most. Your station is at the eastern end—here. Kitchen, combination living and dining-room, bedroom and bath—if you care to heat your water with a kerosene heater. Barn and a corral, chicken-house and a few chickens. Jem Scully was a bit of a nester and liked things comfortable. It's a nice, comfortable station, and I think you'll like it. We try to run this show without fuss or feathers, Garland. I'm known as a hard-boiled chief ranger and I am—toward slackers; but when I get a good man on a station I respect him and leave him alone."

The younger man smiled. "Thank you, Chief. I see you and I are going to get along together as slick as two eels swimming in oil."

"I have but one piece of advice for you, Garland. Don't find too many excuses to visit the lookout station on Bogus Peak. Here it is—right here. You'll have enough work to keep you busy all week, so reserve Sunday for your social life."

"Oh, have we some social life in the San Dimas?" Garland queried. "I always understood it was a lonely, God-forsaken stretch of country."

"We haven't very much, Garland, but then, what we lack in quantity we make up in quality. Bogus Lookout is the social center—or at least it draws rangers from the Tantrum Meadows station as a magnet draws needles. The lookout on Bogus is a girl."

"Indeed! What sort of a girl, Chief?"

Chief Ranger Casey glanced darkly toward the kitchen and replied in a lowered voice, "A regular girl! A lalapalooza! Whee-e-w!" He whistled softly, and Garland was aware that his chief had expressed the apotheosis of admiration and approval. "She'll knock your eye out," Casey continued, "although I'm not supposed to say so out loud."

Although an unmarried man, Ranger Garland thought he understood his chief's position, and his heart went out to the honest fellow.

"I'm for the girl a mile," Casey resumed, "although she's a thorn in my official side. She raises such hell with my organization!" Again his glance wandered kitchenward, and Garland was aware that Mrs. Casey was part of the chief's organization. "As fast as I plant a married ranger at Tantrum I lose him. His wife finds it lonely, so she mounts a horse and rides up to Bogus to sort of collaborate with her own sex. One look at the lookout lady, and the ship is sunk without a trace. The ranger's wife fears for her husband, whose duties may take him into the danger zone, and first thing I know she has him out of the Tantrum station and I have to get a new ranger. So I try an unmarried one—and within a week he has proposed to Monica Dale and been refused. Then he feels like a dirty deuce in a clean pack and gets out of the country. You know how it is with a young fellow. He's always embarrassed when he has to meet the girl who's turned him down and trampled on his conceit."

"They do not appear to be very persistent wooers," Garland suggested.

"Oh, they're as persistent as the ordinary run of men, but the trouble is, Monica Dale isn't an ordinary girl. She has a faculty for selling a fellow an idea, and the best thing she sells is the idea that the fellow isn't wanted. She takes the tuck out of them somehow."

"Hum-m-m!" Garland's contemptuous grunt was not lost on Casey.

"She'd take the tuck out of a graven image," he declared. "Boy, hear me. She's man-proof. Forest rangers she figures as pointblank range; she has her sights set for bigger game."

"Well, that's to her credit," Garland laughed.

"You be careful, son. Wait till you hear her voice over the telephone. Stir you a bit!"

"The girl's safe from old man Garland's boy, Chief. I might fall in love with her, but until she fell in love with me I'd keep my fool mouth shut. I'm in no position to ask any girl to marry me, Chief. I have no desire to give hostages to fortune."

"You'll have the desire, all right. Not to have it would be unhuman and unmasculine. I admit Sunday belongs to you, but don't let me catch you spending a couple of afternoons a week on Bogus. And when you do go there on week-days, be sure you have a sound excuse. By the way, you'll find a duplicate of this map at your station. All the fire-fighting stations are marked very plainly and I suggest that you spend the first week with your forest guard, Martin, going over your territory and familiarizing yourself with it."

"Is Bogus Lookout in my territory?"

"Theoretically, yes. However, I never knew anybody who had any government business there, except to mend the Forest Service telephone line, or pack supplies up there for Monica Dale."

"What about that Monica Dale?" Mrs. Casey, bearing a tureen of soup, had emerged from the kitchen.

"I was warning Mr. Garland against her," Casey replied with a half-hearted attempt at humor.

"The hussy! She's never done with rolling her eyes at everything in pants."

"Oh, come, Bessie, my dear!" the chief ranger pleaded. "Everybody in pants knows Monica is a lady."

"A hillbilly's daughter—the child of an ignorant prospector a lady?" Mrs. Casey tittered mirthlessly and Garland hoped she would drop the tureen of hot soup and scald her feet.

Knowing, however, that if anybody was to be scalded that person would be the chief ranger, he skilfully changed the topic of conversation by steering it into the channel he guessed would be most pleasing to the lady—to wit, herself, her interests, her nobility in making such a delightful home for her husband in a country so barren of the social and cultural influences women of her class must crave. He was so barefaced about it—blatant almost—that Casey gave him a sly wink of approval and a barely perceptible nod which said, "She likes that sort of guff. Feed her more of it."

When, two hours later, Ranger Garland resumed his journey toward Tantrum Meadows station, the Caseys parted from him with genuine regret. "What a nice young man!" Mrs. Chief Ranger Casey declared, and went to the gate and gazed after him.

"I wonder what the devil he's doing in the Forest Service," Casey mused. "He's been bred and raised for something better in life, although I was too, for that matter." He sighed. "Perhaps, like me, the open spaces have got him. Perhaps he loves trees and peace and homely comfort and freedom from the competition of existence. Nice lad. Wouldn't be surprised if he gives Monica Dale a dose of her own medicine. Wouldn't I cheer if he did! But he'll not!"

Chapter 2

THE morning following his first night at the Tantrum Meadows station Ranger Garland was awakened at an early hour by the telephone bell, insistently ringing the call of that station. He found Chief Ranger Casey on the line.

"Got a special job for you, Garland," the chief ranger informed his subordinate. "Today you double as a policeman. There's an escaped convict in the San Dimas and I'm notifying all rangers and forest guards to be on the lookout for him. The sheriff and his posse are on his trail. They left it about a mile east of my headquarters and came over here for breakfast, but they have bloodhounds and can pick the trail up again after they have eaten."

"Have you a description of the man, Chief?"

"Yes. In fact, I know him well. His name is Robert Lee Mason. He's about twenty-eight or twenty-nine years of age, about six feet tall, a spare man, but powerful—shoulders as broad as a barn door. Weighs about a hundred and eighty but doesn't look it. Thick fair hair, inclined to be wavy, dark blue eyes and olive complexion. You couldn't mistake him because of that detail. Most people with olive complexions have brown eyes, but this chap's are dark blue, a little deep-set and with a piercing expression. When he looks at you, you know a man is giving you the once-over. His nose is thin and high—patrician countenance—and his mouth sets shut like a cellar door. His teeth are fine, even white and all there, and the first joint of his left index-finger is missing. Got it snarled up in his rope one day when he was laying it on a steer—most cowmen lose a finger before they emerge from the awkward squad."

"I'm glad to hear him so well spoken of, Chief," Garland replied pleasantly. "I take it he isn't a convict because he committed an atrocious crime."

"He didn't. Garland, he's a mighty decent chap. He only bumped off a man a good many folks in this country say wanted killing most gosh-awful bad."

"Must we run the poor devil down and deliver him to the sheriff?" Garland queried plaintively.

"We must." Casey was very emphatic. "He's a mountain man and he has one enemy in this country at the present time. Seems as if he couldn't complete his murder engagements before they sent him down to San Quentin. We'll have to round him up, if possible, to keep him out of trouble and save Jethroe, of the Hercules Hydraulic Mining Company at Dogwood Flats, some funeral expenses. The sheriff says he's back here to get Jethroe—not that anybody gives a hang, but then why permit him to make a mess? Anyhow, you and I are in the Forest Service. We are sworn to cooperate with the civil authorities and empowered to arrest law-breakers. It is our duty and we can't dodge it."

"Hard-boiled or ever faithful—I wonder which," Garland mused. Aloud: "Very well, Chief. I wish Robert Lee Mason well, but if I should walk into him he'll not escape."

"Good man!"

"Have you telephoned that girl—what's her name?—the one in charge of the lookout station on Bogus—to keep an eye out for him? With that telescope of hers she can see anything that moves within a radius of five miles."

"She couldn't see it this morning. There's fog in the San Dimas."

"I didn't know. Your ring got me out of bed. But she could be ready when the fog lifts2"

"The sheriff doesn't want her to be ready. She knows this man Mason. He's an old friend of hers—some say an old admirer. Anyhow, she likes him better than any man she ever met; she's a mountain girl and would help him if she could."

"Bully for her!" said Ranger Garland.

"She reasons two ways—with her heart, like a woman and with her head, like a man. Usually she uses her head on men, but her heart would go out to Bob Mason. Sheriff Bentley feels certain he will head for Bogus, for he must have food. He must be half starved by now. Of course the girl doesn't know he's on the loose. Now, then, son, you mount that horse of yours and ride up to Bogus to make a neighborly call. If the fog lifts use that telephone of hers freely, and report to me by telephone if you see anything like a man moving anywhere. If you have reason to believe Mason has already reached Bogus and that the girl has him in hiding there, arrest him—that is, if you can find him."

"That means I am to search for him."

"Naturally. By the way, there's a reward of fifty dollars from the state for capturing an escaped convict, I believe, and Jethroe has offered a thousand personally. I'll bet the cowardly skunk is shivering in his boots."

"I could use that thousand to advantage—I mean, I could use half of it. Naturally half is yours if I land Mason back in San Quentin."

"If my rheumatism hadn't come on this morning you'd never have heard from me in this matter. I'd be on my way to Bogus now, to collect the entire thousand for myself."

Garland laughed at the chief's bluntness. "Did you say they have bloodhounds on his trail?"

"I did."

"Then, unless he's too far ahead of them, they'll trail him right up to Bogus. The country is as dry as tinder ordinarily, which would make trailing difficult for the best of hounds, but fortunately the fog you speak of will help a heap. With all the trees and bushes dripping moisture he ought to leave a trail like a polecat."

"Well, you go get him first, son. We need the money."

"I'll be on my way within the hour. Must have breakfast first."

"Good man! Adiós!"

In the very act of sugaring his coffee Ranger Garland paused with brimming spoon uplifted. "Now, I'll bet a ripe peach," he reflected, "that this Bob Mason is the honest rascal who stole my Jupiter mule and rifle yesterday. Yesterday he caused me a ten-mile hike and today he's causing me a ten-mile ride. Yes, Casey is right. In a company of ten men that chap would most certainly be Number One. And I don't blame that lookout girl for liking him. I never saw him and I like him! The scoundrel's on the square!" He dropped the sugar into his coffee. "I hope he's miles from Bogus when I get there, but if he should be there—well, five hundred dollars is a great deal of money. Anyhow, I'll have a look at this modern Circe on the mountain-top."

There was eerie, sublime loveliness in the panorama outspread before Monica Dale, yet it failed to awaken in her the thrill which, undoubtedly, it would have awakened in one not so habituated to it as the mistress of Bogus Lookout. During the preceding afternoon a heavy North Pacific fog had blown in before the north-west summer trade-wind. Scudding eastward from the ocean, it had crept up and over the redwood-studded crests of the Coast Range mountains, where it hung until sucked down into the interior valleys by the vacuum created when the hot atmosphere of the plains climbed to cooler heights; billowing steadily eastward, it had rolled up the western slopes of the Siskiyou Range, and now, in the dark blur of sugar-pine and white pine that was the San Dimas National Forest, it rested, too spent and thin to climb higher.

As far to the west as Monica could see, her world was a sea of fog, white as a gull's breast. Above it arched a cerulean sky; as the sun climbed to the zenith, and the white invader retired slowly before the onslaught of its rays, the fog gradually took on a bluish tinge. That was the down-thrust of light from the sky and the upthrust of light from the dark forest below. Presently hilltops and mountain peaks rose from the surrounding vapor and gave to the scene an appearance truly maritime—a peaceful sea dotted with lovely little islands all crested with huge trees, among whose crowns thin wisps of fog still fluttered like a bride's veil. And over all was silence—the silence of the silent places—the silence that speaks like the thunder of many guns.

Fog in a hilly, timbered country is ever a magic artist, but the evidence that the magician was departing, rather than the knowledge that he had been there, brought a distinct comfort to the girl. Always when the fog swirled around Bogus, she felt more isolated and lonely than before, for if the hills prevented her escape into the outer world, at least they were distant sentinels; whereas the fog was disturbingly expressive of gray prison walls closing in around her. Now that the gray walls were falling away she came out of her cabin into the yard, the better to watch the retreat.

Suddenly a few hundred yards below her a dry twig snapped. The sound came from the timber on the far edge of the little mountain meadow in which she could see her horse grazing. "A deer," Monica thought—but instantly changed her mind as she observed her horse lift his head, stare interestedly in the direction of the snapping sound and snort. "A bear in the huckleberry bushes," the girl decided, and ran into the house for her rifle. She could find much of food value in a fat bear that close to her habitation, and his pelt would be worth something provided the animal's summer ranging had not scuffed too much of the fur off his abdomen.

Emerging from the cabin she walked slowly down the hillside, screening her advance as much as possible behind intervening trees and manzanita shrubs. At the near edge of the little meadow she paused behind a madrone tree, rested her rifle across a low limb and waited.

"Not a bear," she decided presently, for her horse had disillusioned her again. Following his first slight momentary apprehension, a mild curiosity had impelled him to walk gingerly across the meadow toward the sound. Monica waited. Presently another twig snapped, there was a crash of crushed, bending shrubbery, the thud of a falling body. The horse snorted and retreated a few yards.

"A man," Monica decided. "I wonder if he has designs on my horse." She carefully withdrew the soft-nosed cartridge from the breech and slipped a cartridge with a steel-jacketed bullet into its place. "No use to dumdum him," she reflected.

A gasping, sobbing exhalation came from the edge of the timber—a sound indicative of exhaustion and despair. "Hum-m-m!" the girl soliloquized. "Some fool stranger in these parts has lost himself in the tall timber, and the fog has complicated matters for him. He's been wandering around until he is weak and exhausted. Didn't have sense enough to sit down and wait for the fog to lift and then start a fire with green wood, so the smoke would mount over the tree tops."

A man emerged from the timber and stood staring at the horse—and that this man was weak and far spent was evident, for he stood weaving from side to side before extending his hand to the animal and say- ing: "Whoa, boy! Steady, little horse! I'm not going to hurt you." He staggered slowly toward the animal, snapping his fingers, his voice soothing the horse with endearments.

Monica watched him with interest when, upon reaching the gentle animal, he reached cautiously up and grasped the mane with one hand while with the other he patted the neck, his hand creeping steadily forward until his fingers closed over the head-stall. Then, from his pocket, he produced a short section of heavy twine, fashioned a rude pair of reins and led the horse to an adjacent tree stump, to the summit of which he climbed laboriously, swung the horse in alongside the stump and flopped weakly over on him. For perhaps ten seconds he lay across the animal's back, his legs kicking feebly; then with a supreme effort he straddled the animal and turned him directly up the hill toward the gate in the wire fence that enclosed the meadow.

Monica met him at the gate and opened it, without being observed by the stranger, for his head was sunk low on his breast and his eyes were closed. He was letting the horse have his head. The man's face was covered with a week-old stubble of blond whisker; it was foul with grime and blood and perspiration, and he appeared to keep his seat with difficulty.