Dorn Of The Mountains by Zane Grey Page A

riding pains that made a victim of a tenderfoot on a long ride. It was almost too much to be borne. Presently to bear it any longer was not possible. She would fall off the horse and walk. The beauty of the forest, the living creatures to be seen scurrying away, the time, distance—everything faded before that stab-like pain. To her infinite relief she found that it was the trot that caused this torture. When Ranger walked, she did not have to suffer it. Thereupon she held him to a walk as long as she dared or until Dorn and Bo were almost out of sight, then she loped him ahead until he had caught up.
    So the hours passed, the sun got around low, sending golden shafts under the trees, and the forest gradually changed to a brighter, but a thicker color. This slowly darkened. Sunset was not far away.
    She heard the horses splashing in water, and soon she rode up to see tiny streams of crystal water running swiftly over beds of green moss. She crossed a number of these and followed along the last one into a more open place in the forest where the pines were huge, towering, and far apart. A low gray bluff of stone rose to the right, perhaps one third as high as the trees. From somewhere came the rushing sound of running water.
    “Big Spring,” announced Dorn. “We camp here. You girls have done well.”
    Another glance proved to Helen that all those little streams poured from under this gray bluff.
    “I’m dying for a drink!” cried Bo with her customary hyperbole.
    “I reckon you’ll never forget your first drink here,” remarked Dorn.
    Bo essayed to dismount and finally almost fell off, and, when she did get to the ground, her legs appeared to refuse their natural function and she fell flat. Dorn helped her up.
    “What’s wrong with me anyhow?” she demanded in great amaze.
    “Just stiff, I reckon,” replied Dorn as he led her a few awkward steps.
    “Bo, have you any hurts?” queried Helen, who still sat her horse, loath to try dismounting, yet wanting to beyond all words.
    Bo gave her an eloquent glance. “Nell, did you have one in your side, like a wicked long darning needle, punching deep when you weren’t ready?”
    “That one I’ll never get over!” exclaimed Helen softly. Then profiting by Bo’s experience she dismounted cautiously and managed to keep upright. Her legs felt like wooden things.
    Presently the girls went toward the spring.
    “Drink slow!” called out Dorn.
    Big Spring had its source somewhere deep inside the gray weathered bluff, from which came a hollow subterranean gurgle and roar of water. The fountainhead must have been a great well rushing up though the cold stone.
    Helen and Bo lay flat on a mossy bank, seeing their faces as they bent over, and they sipped a mouthful, by Dorn’s advice, and because they were so hot and parched and burning that they wanted to tarry a moment with a precious opportunity.
    The water was so cold that it sent a shock over Helen, made her teeth ache, and a singular revivifying current steal all through her, wonderful in its cool absorption of that dry heat of flesh, irresistible in its appeal to thirst. Helen raised her head to look at this water. It was colorless as she had found it tasteless.
    “Nell…drink!” panted Bo. “Think of our…old spring…in the orchard…full of pollywogs!”
    And then Helen drank thirstily, with closed eyes, while a memory of home stirred from Bo’s gift of poignant speech.

Chapter Seven
    The first camp duty Dorn performed was to throw a pack off one of the horses, and, opening it, he took out tarpaulin and blankets that he arranged on the ground under a pine tree.
    “You girls rest,” he said briefly.
    “Can’t we help?” asked Helen, although she could scarcely stand.
    “You’ll be welcome to do all you like after you’re broke in.”
    “Broke in!” ejaculated Bo with a little laugh. “I’m all broke up now.”
    “Bo, it looks as if Mister Dorn expects us to have quite a stay with him in the