The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories
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Title: The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories
Editor: Franklin K. Mathiews
Release date: August 29, 2008 [eBook #26475]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26475
Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Emmy and the
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY SCOUTS BOOK OF CAMPFIRE STORIES ***
Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Emmy and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE BOY SCOUTS BOOK OF CAMPFIRE STORIES
[Illustration: THERE, STANDING KNEE-DEEP IN THE WATER, WAS THE BIGGEST
AND BLACKEST MOOSE IN THE WORLD]
THE BOY SCOUTS BOOK OF CAMPFIRE STORIES
EDITED
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY
FRANKLIN K. MATHIEWS
CHIEF SCOUT LIBRARIAN,
BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED FOR
THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY
INCORPORATED
NEW YORK 1933
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,
must not be reproduced in any form without
permission of the publishers.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
THE campfire for ages has been the place of council and friendship and
story-telling. The mystic glow of the fire quickens the mind, warms the
heart, awakens memories of happy, glowing tales that fairly leap to the
lips. The Boy Scouts of America has incorporated the "campfire" in its
program for council and friendship and story-telling. In one volume, the
_Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories_ makes available to scoutmasters
and other leaders a goodly number of stories worthy of their attention,
and when well told likely to arrest and hold the interest of boys in
their early teens, when "stirs the blood--to bubble in the veins."
At this time, when the boy is growing so rapidly in brain and body, he
can have no better teacher than some mighty woodsman. Now should be
presented to him stirring stories of the adventurous lives of men who
live in and love the out-of-doors. Says Professor George Walter Fiske:
"Let him emulate savage woodcraft; the woodsman's keen, practiced
vision; his steadiness of nerve; his contempt for pain, hardship and the
weather; his power of endurance, his observation and heightened senses;
his delight in out-of-door sports and joys and unfettered happiness with
untroubled sleep under the stars; his calmness, self-control, emotional
steadiness; his utter faithfulness in friendships; his honesty, his
personal bravery."
The Editor likes to think that quite a few of the stories found in the
_Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories_ present companions for the mind
of this hardy sort, and hopes, whether boys read or are told these
stories, they will prove to be such as exalt and inspire while they
thrill and entertain.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION v
I. SILVERHORNS _Henry van Dyke_ 1
II. WILD HORSE HUNTER _Zane Grey_ 21
III. HYDROPHOBIC SKUNK _Irvin S. Cobb_ 90
IV. THE OLE VIRGINIA _Stewart Edward White_ 100
V. THE WEIGHT OF OBLIGATION _Rex Beach_ 108
VI. THAT SPOT _Jack London_ 140
VII. WHEN LINCOLN LICKED A BULLY _Irving Bacheller_ 155
VIII. THE END OF THE TRAIL _Clarence E. Mulford_ 180
IX. DEY AIN'T NO GHOSTS _Ellis Parker Butler_ 201
X. THE NIGHT OPERATOR _Frank L. Packard_ 218
XI. CHRISTMAS EVE IN A LUMBER CAMP _Ralph Connor_ 258
XII. THE STORY THAT THE KEG TOLD ME _Adirondack (W. H. H.) Murray_ 275
[Illustration]
I.--Silverhorns[1]
_By Henry van Dyke_
THE railway station of Bathurst, New Brunswick, did not look
particularly merry at two o'clock of a late September morning. There was
an easterly haze driving in from the Baie des Chaleurs and the darkness
was so saturated with chilly moisture that an honest downpour of rain
would have been a relief. Two or three depressed and somnolent travelers
yawned in the waiting room, which smelled horribly of smoky lamps. The
telegraph instrument in the ticket office clicked spasmodically for a
minute, and then relapsed into a gloomy silence. The imperturbable
station master was tipped back against the wall in a wooden armchair,
with his feet on the table, and his mind sunk in an old Christmas number
of the _Cowboy Magazine_. The express agent, in the baggage-room, was
going over his last week's waybills and accounts by the light of a
lantern, trying to locate an error, and sighing profanely to himself as
he failed to find it. A wooden trunk tied with rope, a couple of dingy
canvas bags, a long box marked "Fresh Fish! Rush!" and two large leather
portmanteaus with brass fittings were piled on the luggage truck at the
far end of the platform; and beside the door of the waiting room,
sheltered by the overhanging eaves, was a neat traveling bag, with a gun
case and a rod case leaning against the wall. The wet rails glittered
dimly northward and southward away into the night. A few blurred lights
glimmered from the village across the bridge.
Dudley Hemenway had observed all these features of the landscape with
silent dissatisfaction, as he smoked steadily up and down the platform,
waiting for the Maritime Express. It is usually irritating to arrive at
the station on time for a train on the Intercolonial Railway. The
arrangement is seldom mutual; and sometimes yesterday's train does not
come along until to-morrow afternoon. Moreover, Hemenway was inwardly
discontented with the fact that he was coming out of the woods instead
of going in. "Coming out" always made him a little unhappy, whether his
expedition had been successful or not. He did not like the thought that
it was all over; and he had the very bad habit, at such times, of
looking ahead and computing the slowly lessening number of chances that
were left to him.
"Sixty odd years--I may get to be that old and keep my shooting sight,"
he said to himself. "That would give me a couple of dozen more camping
trips. It's a short allowance. I wonder if any of them will be more
lucky than this one. This makes the seventh year I've tried to get a
moose; and the odd trick has gone against me every time."
He tossed away the end of his cigar, which made a little trail of sparks
as it rolled along the sopping platform, and turned to look in through
the window of the ticket office. Something in the agent's attitude of
literary absorption aggravated him. He went round to the door and opened
it.
"Don't you know or care when this train is coming?"
"Nope," said the man placidly.
"Well, when? What's the matter with her? When is she due?"
"Doo twenty minits ago," said the man. "Forty minits late down to
Moocastle. Git here quatter to three, ef nothin' more happens."
"But what has happened? What's wrong with the beastly old road, anyhow?"
"Freight car skipped the track," said the man, "up to Charlo. Everythin'
hung up an' kinder goin' slow till they git the line clear. Dunno
nothin' more."
With this conclusive statement the agent seemed to disclaim all
responsibility for the future of impatient travelers, and dropped his
mind back into the magazine again. Hemenway lit another cigar and went
into the baggage room to smoke with the expressman. It was nearly three
o'clock when they heard the far-off shriek of the whistle sounding up
from the south; then, after an interval, the puffing of the engine on
the upgrade; then the faint ringing of the rails, the increasing clatter
of the train, and the blazing headlight of the locomotive swept slowly
through the darkness, past the platform. The engineer was leaning on one
arm, with his head out of the cab window, and Hemenway nodded as he
passed and hurried into the ticket office, where the ticktack of a
conversation by telegraph was soon under way. The black porter of the
Pullman car was looking out from the vestibule, and when he saw Hemenway
his sleepy face broadened into a grin reminiscent of many generous tips.
"Howdy, Mr. Hennigray," he cried; "glad to see yo' ag'in, sah! I got yo'
section all right, sah! Lemme take yo' things, sah! Train gwine to stop
hy'eh fo' some time yet, I reckon."
"Well, Charles," said Hemenway, "you take my things and put them in the
car. Careful with that gun now! The Lord only knows how much time this
train's going to lose. I'm going ahead to see the engineer."
Angus McLeod was a grizzle-bearded Scotchman who had run a locomotive on
the Intercolonial ever since the road was cut through the woods from New
Brunswick to Quebec. Every one who traveled often on that line knew him,
and all who knew him well enough to get below his rough crust, liked
him for his big heart.
"Hallo, McLeod," said Hemenway as he came up through the darkness, "is
that you?"
"It's nane else," answered the engineer as he stepped down from his cab
and shook hands warmly. "Hoo are ye, Dud, an' whaur hae ye been
murderin' the innocent beasties noo? Hae ye kilt yer moose yet? Ye've
been chasin' him these mony years."
"Not much murdering," replied Hemenway. "I had a queer trip this
time--away up the Nepisiguit, with old McDonald. You know him, don't
you?"
"Fine do I ken Rob McDonald, an' a guid mon he is. Hoo was it that ye
couldna slaughter stacks o' moose wi' him to help ye? Did ye see nane at
all?"
"Plenty, and one with the biggest horns in the world! But that's a long
story, and there's no time to tell it now."
"Time to burrn, Dud, nae fear o' it! 'Twill be an hour afore the line's
clear to Charlo an' they lat us oot o' this. Come awa' up into the cab,
mon, an' tell us yer tale. 'Tis couthy an' warm in the cab, an' I'm
willin' to leesten to yer bluidy advaintures."
So the two men clambered up into the engineer's seat. Hemenway gave
McLeod his longest and strongest cigar, and filled his own briar-wood
pipe. The rain was now pattering gently on the roof of the cab. The
engine hissed and sizzled patiently in the darkness. The fragrant smoke
curled steadily from the glowing tip of the cigar; but the pipe went out
half a dozen times while Hemenway was telling the story of Silverhorns.
"We went up the river to the big rock, just below Indian Falls. There we
made our main camp, intending to hunt on Forty-two Mile Brook. There's
quite a snarl of ponds and bogs at the head of it, and some burned hills
over to the west, and it's very good moose country.
"But some other party had been there before us, and we saw nothing on
the ponds, except two cow moose and a calf. Coming out the next morning
we got a fine deer on the old wood road--a beautiful head. But I have
plenty of deer heads already."
"Bonny creature!" said McLeod. "An' what did ye do wi' it, when ye had
murdered it?"
"Ate it, of course. I gave the head to Billy Boucher, the cook. He said
he could get ten dollars for it. The next evening we went to one of the
ponds again, and Injun Pete tried to 'call' a moose for me. But it was
no good. McDonald was disgusted with Pete's calling; said it sounded
like the bray of a wild ass of the wilderness. So the next day we gave
up calling and traveled the woods over toward the burned hills.
"In the afternoon McDonald found an enormous moose-track; he thought it
looked like a bull's track, though he wasn't quite positive. But then,
you know, a Scotchman never likes to commit himself, except about
theology or politics."
"Humph!" grunted McLeod in the darkness, showing that the strike had
counted.
"Well, we went on, following that track through the woods, for an hour
or two. It was a terrible country, I tell you: tamarack swamps, and
spruce thickets, and windfalls, and all kinds of misery. Presently we
came out on a bare rock on the burned hillside, and there, across a
ravine, we could see the animal lying down, just below the trunk of a
big dead spruce that had fallen. The beast's head and neck were hidden
by some bushes, but the fore shoulder and side were in clear view, about
two hundred and fifty yards away. McDonald seemed to be inclined to
think that it was a bull and that I ought to shoot. So I shot, and
knocked splinters out of the spruce log. We could see them fly. The
animal got up quickly, and looked at us for a moment, shaking her long
ears; then the huge unmitigated cow vamoosed into the brush. McDonald
remarked that it was 'a varra fortunate shot, almaist providaintial!'
And so it was; for if it had gone six inches lower, and the news gotten
out at Bathurst, it would have cost me a fine of two hundred dollars."
"Ye did weel, Dud," puffed McLeod; "varra weel indeed--for the coo!"
"After that," continued Hemenway, "of course my nerve was a little
shaken, and we went back to the main camp on the river, to rest over
Sunday. That was all right, wasn't it, Mac!"
"Aye!" replied McLeod, who was a strict member of the Presbyterian
church at Moncton. "That was surely a varra safe thing to do. Even a
hunter, I'm thinkin', wouldna like to be breakin' twa commandments in
the ane day--the foorth and the saxth!"
"Perhaps not. It's enough to break one, as you do once a fortnight when
you run your train into Riviere du Loup Sunday morning. How's that, you
old Calvinist?"
"Dudley, ma son," said the engineer, "dinna airgue a point that ye canna
understond. There's guid an' suffeecient reasons for the train. But
ye'll ne'er be claimin' that moose huntin' is a wark o' necessity or
maircy?"
"No, no, of course not; but then, you see, barring Sundays, we felt that
it was necessary to do all we could to get a moose, just for the sake of
our reputations. Billy, the cook, was particularly strong about it. He
said that an old woman in Bathurst, a kind of fortune teller, had told
him that he was going to have 'la bonne chance' on this trip. He wanted
to try his own mouth at 'calling.' He had never really done it before.
But he had been practicing all winter in imitation of a tame cow moose
that Johnny Moreau had, and he thought he could make the sound 'b'en
bon.' So he got the birch-bark horn and gave us a sample of his skill.
McDonald told me privately that it was 'nae sa bad; a deal better than
Pete's feckless bellow.' We agreed to leave the Indian to keep the camp
(after locking up the whisky flask in my bag), and take Billy with us on
Monday to 'call' at Hogan's Pond.
"It's a small bit of water, about three quarters of a mile long and four
hundred yards across, and four miles back from the river. There is no
trail to it, but a blazed line runs part of the way, and for the rest
you follow up the little brook that runs out of the pond. We stuck up
our shelter in a hollow on the brook, half a mile below the pond, so
that the smoke of our fire would not drift over the hunting ground, and
waited till five o'clock in the afternoon. Then we went up to the pond,
and took our position in a clump of birch trees on the edge of the open
meadow that runs round the east shore. Just at dark Billy began to call,
and it was beautiful. You know how it goes. Three short grunts, and then
a long ooooo-aaaa-ooooh, winding up with another grunt! It sounded
lonelier than a love-sick hippopotamus on the house top. It rolled and
echoed over the hills as if it would wake the dead.
"There was a fine moon shining, nearly full, and a few clouds floating
by. Billy called, and called, and called again. The air grew colder and
colder; light frost on the meadow grass; our teeth were chattering,
fingers numb.
"Then we heard a bull give a short bawl, away off to the southward.
Presently we could hear his horns knock against the trees, far up on
the hill. McDonald whispered, 'He's comin',' and Billy gave another
call.
"But it was another bull that answered, back of the north end of the
pond, and pretty soon we could hear him rapping along through the woods.
Then everything was still. 'Call agen,' says McDonald, and Billy called
again.
"This time the bawl came from another bull, on top of the western hill,
straight across the pond. It seemed to start up the other two bulls, and
we could hear all three of them thrashing along, as fast as they could
come, towards the pond. 'Call agen, a wee one,' says McDonald, trembling
with joy. And Billy called a little seducing call, with two grunts at
the end.
"Well, sir, at that, a cow and a calf came rushing down through the
brush not two hundred yards away from us, and the three bulls went
splash into the water, one at the south end, one at the north end, and
one on the west shore. 'Land,' whispers McDonald, 'it's a meenadgerie!'"
"Dud," said the engineer, getting down to open the furnace door a crack,
"this is mair than murder ye're comin' at; it's a buitchery--or else
it's juist a pack o' lees."
"I give you my word," said Hemenway, "it's all true as the catechism.
But let me go on. The cow and the calf only stayed in the water a few
minutes, and then ran back through the woods. But the three bulls went
sloshing around in the pond as if they were looking for something. We
could hear them, but we could not see any of them, for the sky had
clouded up, and they kept far away from us. Billy tried another short
call, but they did not come any nearer. McDonald whispered that he
thought the one in the south end might be the biggest, and he might be
feeding, and the two others might be young bulls, and they might be
keeping away because they were afraid of the big one. This seemed
reasonable; and I said that I was going to crawl around the meadow to
the south end. 'Keep near a tree,' says Mac; and I started.
"There was a deep trail, worn by animals, through the high grass; and in
this I crept along on my hands and knees. It was very wet and muddy. My
boots were full of cold water. After ten minutes I came to a little
point running out into the pond, and one young birch growing on it.
Under this I crawled, and rising up on my knees looked over the top of
the grass and bushes.
"There, in a shallow bay, standing knee-deep in the water, and rooting
up the lily stems with his long, pendulous nose, was the biggest and
blackest bull moose in the world. As he pulled the roots from the mud
and tossed up his dripping head I could see his horns--four and a half
feet across, if they were an inch, and the palms shining like tea trays
in the moonlight. I tell you, old Silverhorns was the most beautiful
monster I ever saw.
"But he was too far away to shoot by that dim light, so I left my birch
tree and crawled along toward the edge of the bay. A breath of wind must
have blown across me to him, for he lifted his head, sniffed, grunted,
came out of the water, and began to trot slowly along the trail which
led past me. I knelt on one knee and tried to take aim. A black cloud
came over the moon. I couldn't see either of the sights on the gun. But
when the bull came opposite to me, about fifty yards off, I blazed away
at a venture.
"He reared straight up on his hind legs--it looked as if he rose fifty
feet in the air--wheeled, and went walloping along the trail, around the
south end of the pond. In a minute he was lost in the woods. Good-by,
Silverhorns!"
"Ye tell it weel," said McLeod, reaching out for a fresh cigar. "Fegs!
Ah doot Sir Walter himsel' couldna impruve upon it. An, sae thot's the
way ye didna murder puir Seelverhorrns? It's a tale I'm joyfu' to be
hearin'."
"Wait a bit," Hemenway answered. "That's not the end, by a long shot.
There's worse to follow. The next morning we returned to the pond at
day-break, for McDonald thought I might have wounded the moose. We
searched the bushes and the woods where he went out very carefully,
looking for drops of blood on his trail."
"Bluid!" groaned the engineer. "Hech, mon, wouldna that come nigh to
mak' ye greet, to find the beast's red bluid splashed over the leaves,
and think o' him staggerin' on thro' the forest, drippin' the heart oot
o' him wi' every step?"
"But we didn't find any blood, you old sentimentalist. That shot in the
dark was a clear miss. We followed the trail by broken bushes and
footprints, for half a mile, and then came back to the pond and turned
to go down through the edge of the woods to the camp.
"It was just after sunrise. I was walking a few yards ahead, McDonald
next, and Billy last. Suddenly he looked around to the left, gave a low
whistle and dropped to the ground, pointing northward. Away at the head
of the pond, beyond the glitter of the sun on the water, the big
blackness of Silverhorns' head and body was pushing through the bushes,
dripping with dew.
"Each of us flopped down behind the nearest shrub as if we had been
playing squat tag. Billy had the birch-bark horn with him, and he gave a
low, short call. Silverhorns heard it, turned, and came parading slowly
down the western shore, now on the sand beach, now splashing through the
shallow water. We could see every motion and hear every sound. He
marched along as if he owned the earth, swinging his huge head from side
to side and grunting at each step.
"You see, we were just in the edge of the woods, strung along the south
end of the pond, Billy nearest the west shore, where the moose was
walking, McDonald next, and I last, perhaps fifteen yards farther to
the east. It was a fool arrangement, but we had no time to think about
it. McDonald whispered that I should wait until the moose came close to
us and stopped.
"So I waited. I could see him swagger along the sand and step out around
the fallen logs. The nearer he came the bigger his horns looked; each
palm was like an enormous silver fish fork with twenty prongs. Then he
went out of my sight for a minute as he passed around a little bay in
the southwest corner, getting nearer and nearer to Billy. But I could
still hear his steps distinctly--slosh, slosh, slosh--thud, thud, thud
(the grunting had stopped)--closer came the sound, until it was directly
behind the dense green branches of a fallen balsam tree, not twenty feet
away from Billy. Then suddenly the noise ceased. I could hear my own
heart pounding at my ribs, but nothing else. And of Silverhorns not hair
nor hide was visible. It looked as if he must be a Boojum, and had the
power to 'softly and silently vanish away.'
"Billy and Mac were beckoning to me fiercely and pointing to the green
balsam top. I gripped my rifle and started to creep toward them. A
little twig, about as thick as the tip of a fishing rod, cracked under
my knee. There was a terrible crash behind the balsam, a plunging
through the underbrush and a rattling among the branches, a lumbering
gallop up the hill through the forest, and Silverhorns was gone into the
invisible.
"He had stopped behind the tree because he smelled the grease on
Billy's boots. As he stood there, hesitating, Billy and Mac could see
his shoulder and his side through a gap in the branches--a dead-easy
shot. But so far as I was concerned, he might as well have been in
Alaska. I told you that the way we had placed ourselves was a fool
arrangement. But McDonald would not say anything about it, except to
express his conviction that it was not predestinated we should get that
moose."
"Ah dinna ken ould Rob had sae much theology aboot him," commented
McLeod. "But noo I'm thinkin' ye went back to yer main camp, an' lat
puir Seelverhorrns live oot his life?"
"Not much, did we! For now we knew that he wasn't badly frightened by
the adventure of the night before, and that we might get another chance
at him. In the afternoon it began to rain; and it poured for forty-eight
hours. We covered in our shelter before a smoky fire, and lived on short
rations of crackers and dried prunes--it was a hungry time."
"But wasna there slathers o' food at the main camp? Ony fule wad ken
enough to gae doon to the river an' tak' a guid fill-up."
"But that wasn't what we wanted. It was Silverhorns. Billy and I made
McDonald stay, and Thursday afternoon, when the clouds broke away, we
went back to the pond to have a last try at turning our luck.
"This time we took our positions with great care, among some small
spruces on a joint that ran out from the southern meadow. I was farthest
to the west; McDonald (who had also brought his gun) was next; Billy,
with the horn, was farthest away from the point where he thought the
moose would come out. So Billy began to call, very beautifully. The long
echoes went bellowing over the hills. The afternoon was still and the
setting sun shone through a light mist, like a ball of red gold.
"Fifteen minutes after sundown Silverhorns gave a loud bawl from the
western ridge and came crashing down the hill. He cleared the bushes two
or three hundred yards to our left with a leap, rushed into the pond,
and came wading around the south shore toward us. The bank here was
rather high, perhaps four feet above the water, and the mud below it was
deep, so that the moose sank in to his knees. I give you my word, as he
came along there was nothing visible to Mac and me except his ears and
his horns. Everything else was hidden below the bank.
"There were we behind our little spruce trees. And there was
Silverhorns, standing still now, right in front of us. And all that Mac
and I could see were those big ears and those magnificent antlers,
appearing and disappearing as he lifted and lowered his head. It was a
fearful situation. And there was Billy, with his birch-bark hooter,
forty yards below us--he could see the moose perfectly.
"I looked at Mac, and he looked at me. He whispered something about
predestination. Then Billy lifted his horn and made ready to give a
little soft grunt, to see if the moose wouldn't move along a bit, just
to oblige us. But as Billy drew in his breath, one of those fool flies
that are always blundering around a man's face flew straight down his
throat. Instead of a call he burst out with a furious, strangling fit of
coughing. The moose gave a snort, and a wild leap in the water, and
galloped away under the bank, the way he had come. Mac and I both fired
at his vanishing ears and horns, but of course----"
"All Aboooard!" The conductor's shout rang along the platform.
"Line's clear," exclaimed McLeod, rising. "Noo we'll be off! Wull ye
stay here wi' me, or gang awa' back to yer bed?"
"Here," answered Hemenway, not budging from his place on the bench.
The bell clanged, and the powerful machine puffed out on its flaring way
through the night. Faster and faster came the big explosive breaths,
until they blended in a long steady roar, and the train was sweeping
northward at forty miles an hour. The clouds had broken; the night had
grown colder; the gibbous moon gleamed over the vast and solitary
landscape. It was a different thing to Hemenway, riding in the cab of
the locomotive, from an ordinary journey in the passenger car or an
unconscious ride in the sleeper. Here he was on the crest of motion, at
the forefront of speed, and the quivering engine with the long train
behind it seemed like a living creature leaping along the track. It
responded to the labor of the fireman and the touch of the engineer
almost as if it could think and feel. Its pace quickened without a jar;
its great eye pierced the silvery space of moonlight with a shaft of
blazing yellow; the rails sang before it and trembled behind it; it was
an obedient and joyful monster, conquering distance and devouring
darkness.
On the wide level barrens beyond the Tete-a-Gouche River the locomotive
reached its best speed, purring like a huge cat and running smoothly.
McLeod leaned back on his bench with a satisfied air.
"She's doin' fine, the nicht," said he. "Ah'm thinkin', whiles, o' yer
auld Seelverhorrns. Whaur is he noo? Awa' up on Higan' Pond, gallantin'
around i' the licht o' the mune wi' a lady moose, an' the gladness juist
bubblin' in his hairt. Ye're no sorry that he's leevin' yet, are ye,
Dud?"
"Well," answered Hemenway slowly, between the puffs of his pipe, "I
can't say I'm sorry that he's alive and happy, though I'm not glad that
I lost him. But he did his best, the old rogue; he played a good game,
and he deserved to win. Where he is now nobody can tell. He was
traveling like a streak of lightning when I last saw him. By this time
he may be----"
"What's yon?" cried McLeod, springing up. Far ahead, in the narrow apex
of the converging rails stood a black form, motionless, mysterious.
McLeod grasped the whistle cord. The black form loomed higher in the
moonlight and was clearly silhouetted against the horizon--a big moose
standing across the track. They could see his grotesque head, his
shadowy horns, high, sloping shoulders. The engineer pulled the cord.
The whistle shrieked loud and long.
The moose turned and faced the sound. The glare of the headlight
fascinated, challenged, angered him. There he stood defiant, front feet
planted wide apart, head lowered, gazing steadily at the unknown enemy
that was rushing toward him. He was the monarch of the wilderness. There
was nothing in the world that he feared, except those strange-smelling
little beasts on two legs who crept around through the woods and shot
fire out of sticks. This was surely not one of those treacherous
animals, but some strange new creature that dared to shriek at him and
try to drive him out of its way. He would not move. He would try his
strength against this big yellow-eyed beast.
"Losh!" cried McLeod; "he's gaun' to fecht us!" and he dropped the cord,
grabbed the levers, and threw the steam off and the brakes on hard. The
heavy train slid groaning and jarring along the track. The moose never
stirred. The fire smoldered in his small narrow eyes. His black crest
was bristling. As the engine bore down upon him, not a rod away, he
reared high in the air, his antlers flashing in the blaze, and struck
full at the headlight with his immense fore feet. There was a shattering
of glass, a crash, a heavy shock, and the train slid on through the
darkness, lit only by the moon.
Thirty or forty yards beyond, the momentum was exhausted and the engine
came to a stop. Hemenway and McLeod clambered down and ran back, with
the other trainmen and a few of the passengers. The moose was lying in
the ditch beside the track, stone dead and frightfully shattered. But
the great head and the vast spreading antlers were intact.
"Seelverhorrns, sure enough!" said McLeod, bending over him. "He was
crossin' frae the Nepisiguit to the Jacquet; but he didna get across.
Weel, Dud, are ye glad? Ye hae kilt yer first moose!"
"Yes," said Hemenway, "it's my first moose. But it's your first moose,
too. And I think it's our last. Ye gods, what a fighter!"
FOOTNOTE:
[1] From _Days Off_. Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Used
by permission of the publishers.
[Illustration]
II.--The Wild-Horse Hunter[2]
_By Zane Grey_
I
THREE wild-horse hunters made camp one night beside a little stream in
the Sevier Valley, five hundred miles, as a crow flies, from Bostil's
Ford.
These hunters had a poor outfit, excepting, of course, their horses.
They were young men, rangy in build, lean and hard from life in the
saddle, bronzed like Indians, still-faced, and keen-eyed. Two of them
appeared to be tired out, and lagged at the camp-fire duties. When the
meager meal was prepared they sat, cross-legged, before a ragged
tarpaulin, eating and drinking in silence.
The sky in the west was rosy, slowly darkening. The valley floor
billowed away, ridged and cut, growing gray and purple and dark. Walls
of stone, pink with the last rays of the setting sun, inclosed the
valley, stretching away toward a long, low, black mountain range.
The place was wild, beautiful, open, with something nameless that made
the desert different from any other country. It was, perhaps, a
loneliness of vast stretches of valley and stone, clear to the eye, even
after sunset. That black mountain range, which looked close enough to
ride to before dark, was a hundred miles distant.
The shades of night fell swiftly, and it was dark by the time the
hunters finished the meal. Then the camp fire had burned low. One of the
three dragged branches of dead cedars and replenished the fire. Quickly
it flared up, with the white flame and crackle characteristic of dry
cedar. The night wind had risen, moaning through the gnarled, stunted
cedars near by, and it blew the fragrant wood smoke into the faces of
the two hunters, who seemed too tired to move.
"I reckon a pipe would help me make up my mind," said one.
"Wal, Bill," replied the other, dryly, "your mind's made up, else you'd
not say smoke."
"Why?"
"Because there ain't three pipefuls of thet precious tobacco left."
"Thet's one apiece, then. . . . Lin, come an' smoke the last pipe with
us."
The tallest of the three, he who had brought the firewood, stood in the
bright light of the blaze. He looked the born rider, light, lithe,
powerful.
"Sure, I'll smoke," he replied.
Then, presently, he accepted the pipe tendered him, and, sitting down
beside the fire, he composed himself to the enjoyment which his
companions evidently considered worthy of a decision they had reached.
"So this smokin' means you both want to turn back?" queried Lin, his
sharp gaze glancing darkly bright in the glow of the fire.
"Yep, we'll turn back. An', Gee! the relief I feel!" replied one.
"We've been long comin' to it, Lin, an' thet was for your sake," replied
the other.
Lin slowly pulled at his pipe and blew out the smoke as if reluctant to
part with it. "Let's go on," he said, quietly.
"No. I've had all I want of chasin' thet wild stallion," returned Bill,
shortly.
The other spread wide his hands and bent an expostulating look upon the
one called Lin. "We're two hundred miles out," he said. "There's only a
little flour left in the bag. No coffee! Only a little salt! All the
hosses except your big Nagger are played out. We're already in strange
country. An' you know what we've heerd of this an' all to the south.
It's all canyons, an' somewheres down there is thet awful canyon none of
our people ever seen. But we've heerd of it. An awful cut-up country."
He finished with a conviction that no one could say a word against the
common sense of his argument. Lin was silent, as if impressed.
Bill raised a strong, lean, brown hand in a forcible gesture. "We can't
ketch Wildfire!"
That seemed to him, evidently, a more convincing argument than his
comrade's.
"Bill is sure right, if I'm wrong, which I ain't," went on the other.
"Lin, we've trailed thet wild stallion for six weeks. Thet's the longest
chase he ever had. He's left his old range. He's cut out his band, an'
left them, one by one. We've tried every trick we know on him. An' he's
too smart for us. There's a hoss! Why, Lin, we're all but gone to the
dogs chasin' Wildfire. An' now I'm done, an' I'm glad of it."
There was another short silence, which presently Bill opened his lips to
break.
"Lin, it makes me sick to quit. I ain't denyin' thet for a long time
I've had hopes of ketchin' Wildfire. He's the grandest hoss I ever laid
eyes on. I reckon no man, onless he was an Arab, ever seen as good a
one. But now thet's neither here nor there. . . . We've got to hit the
back trail."
"Boys, I reckon I'll stick to Wildfire's tracks," said Lin, in the same
quiet tone.
Bill swore at him, and the other hunter grew excited and concerned.
"Lin Slone, are you gone plumb crazy over thet red hoss?"
"I--reckon," replied Slone. The working of his throat as he swallowed
could be plainly seen by his companions.
Bill looked at his ally as if to confirm some sudden understanding
between them. They took Slone's attitude gravely and they wagged their
heads doubtfully. . . . It was significant of the nature of riders that
they accepted his attitude and had consideration for his feelings. For
them the situation subtly changed. For weeks they had been three
wild-horse wranglers on a hard chase after a valuable stallion. They had
failed to get even close to him. They had gone to the limit of their
endurance and of the outfit, and it was time to turn back. But Slone had
conceived that strange and rare longing for a horse--a passion
understood, if not shared, by all riders. And they knew that he would
catch Wildfire or die in the attempt. From that moment their attitude
toward Slone changed as subtly as had come the knowledge of his feeling.
The gravity and gloom left their faces. It seemed they might have
regretted what they had said about the futility of catching Wildfire.
They did not want Slone to see or feel the hopelessness of his task.
"I tell you, Lin," said Bill, "your hoss Nagger's as good as when we
started."
"Aw, he's better," vouchsafed the other rider. "Nagger needed to lose
some weight. Lin, have you got an extra set of shoes for him?"
"No full set. Only three left," replied Lin, soberly.
"Wal, thet's enough. You can keep Nagger shod. An' _mebbe_ thet red
stallion will get sore feet an' go lame. Then you'd stand a chance."
"But Wildfire keeps travelin' the valleys--the soft ground," said Slone.
"No matter. He's leavin' the country, an' he's bound to strike sandstone
sooner or later. Then, by gosh! mebbe he'll wear off them hoofs."
"Say, can't he ring bells offen the rocks?" exclaimed Bill.
"Boys, do you think he's leavin' the country?" inquired Slone,
anxiously.
"Sure he is," replied Bill. "He ain't the first stallion I've chased off
the Sevier range. An' I know. It's a stallion thet makes for new
country, when you push him hard."
"Yep, Lin, he's sure leavin'," added the other comrade. "Why, he's
traveled a bee line for days! I'll bet he's seen us many a time.
Wildfire's about as smart as any man. He was born wild, an' his dam was
born wild, an' there you have it. The wildest of all wild creatures--a
wild stallion, with the intelligence of a man! A grand hoss, Lin, but
one thet has killed stallions all over the Sevier range. A wild
stallion thet's a killer! I never liked him for thet. Could he be
broke?"
"I'll break him," said Lin Slone, grimly. "It's gettin' him thet's the
job. I've got patience to break a hoss. But patience can't catch a
streak of lightnin'."
"Nope; you're right," replied Bill. "If you have some luck you'll get
him--mebbe. If he wears out his feet, or if you crowd him into a narrow
canyon, or run him into a bad place where he can't get by you. Thet might
happen. An' then, with Nagger, you stand a chance. Did you ever tire
thet hoss?"
"Not yet."
"An' how fur did you ever run him without a break? Why, when we ketched
thet sorrel last year I rode Nagger myself--thirty miles, most at a hard
gallop. An' he never turned a hair!"
"I've beat thet," replied Lin. "He could run hard fifty miles--mebbe
more. Honestly, I never seen him tired yet. If only he was fast!"
"Wal, Nagger ain't so slow, come to think of thet," replied Bill, with a
grunt. "He's good enough for you not to want another hoss."
"Lin, you're goin' to wear out Wildfire, an' then trap him somehow--is
thet the plan?" asked the other comrade.
"I haven't any plan. I'll just trail him, like a cougar trails a deer."
"Lin, if Wildfire gives you the slip he'll have to fly. You've got the
best eyes for tracks of any wrangler in Utah."
Slone accepted the compliment with a fleeting, doubtful smile on his
dark face. He did not reply, and no more was said by his comrades. They
rolled with backs to the fire. Slone put on more wood, for the keen wind
was cold and cutting; and then he lay down, his head on his saddle, with
a goatskin under him and a saddle blanket over him.
All three were soon asleep. The wind whipped the sand and ashes and
smoke over the sleepers. Coyotes barked from near in darkness, and from
the valley ridge came the faint mourn of a hunting wolf. The desert
night grew darker and colder.
* * * * *
The Stewart brothers were wild-horse hunters for the sake of trades and
occasional sales. But Lin Slone never traded nor sold a horse he had
captured. The excitement of the game, and the lure of the desert, and
the love of a horse were what kept him at the profitless work. His type
was rare in the uplands.
These were the early days of the settlement of Utah, and only a few of
the hardiest and most adventurous pioneers had penetrated the desert in
the southern part of that vast upland. And with them came some of that
wild breed of riders to which Slone and the Stewarts belonged. Horses
were really more important and necessary than men; and this singular
fact gave these lonely riders a calling.
Before the Spaniards came there were no horses in the West. Those
explorers left or lost horses all over the southwest. Many of them were
Arabian horses of purest blood. American explorers and travelers, at the
outset of the nineteenth century, encountered countless droves of wild
horses all over the plains. Across the Grand canyon, however, wild horses
were comparatively few in number in the early days; and these had
probably come in by way of California.
The Stewarts and Slone had no established mode of catching wild horses.
The game had not developed fast enough for that. Every chase of horse or
drove was different; and once in many attempts they met with success.
A favorite method originated by the Stewarts was to find a water hole
frequented by the band of horses or the stallion wanted, and to build
round this hole a corral with an opening for the horses to get in. Then
the hunters would watch the trap at night, and if the horses went in to
drink, a gate was closed across the opening.
Another method of the Stewarts was to trail a coveted horse up on a mesa
or highland, places which seldom had more than one trail of ascent and
descent, and there block the escape, and cut lines of cedars, into which
the quarry was run till captured. Still another method, discovered by
accident, was to shoot a horse lightly in the neck and sting him. This
last, called creasing, was seldom successful, and for that matter in
any method ten times as many horses were killed as captured.
Lin Slone helped the Stewarts in their own way, but he had no especial
liking for their tricks. Perhaps a few remarkable captures of remarkable
horses had spoiled Slone. He was always trying what the brothers claimed
to be impossible. He was a fearless rider, but he had the fault of
saving his mount, and to kill a wild horse was a tragedy for him. He
would much rather have hunted alone, and he had been alone on the trail
of the stallion Wildfire when the Stewarts had joined him.
* * * * *
Lin Slone awoke next morning and rolled out of his blanket at his usual
early hour. But he was not early enough to say good-by to the Stewarts.
They were gone.
The fact surprised him and somehow relieved him. They had left him more
than his share of the outfit, and perhaps that was why they had slipped
off before dawn. They knew him well enough to know that he would not
have accepted it. Besides, perhaps they felt a little humiliation at
abandoning a chase which he chose to keep up. Anyway, they were gone,
apparently without breakfast.
The morning was clear, cool, with the air dark like that before a storm,
and in the east, over the steely wall of stone, shone a redness growing
brighter.
Slone looked away to the west, down the trail taken by his comrades,
but he saw nothing moving against that cedar-dotted waste.
"Good-by," he said, and he spoke as if he was saying good-by to more
than comrades.
"I reckon I won't see Sevier Village soon again--an' maybe never," he
soliloquized.
There was no one to regret him, unless it was old Mother Hall, who had
been kind to him on those rare occasions when he got out of the
wilderness. Still, it was with regret that he gazed away across the red
valley to the west. Slone had no home. His father and mother had been
lost in the massacre of a wagon train by Indians, and he had been one of
the few saved and brought to Salt Lake. That had happened when he was
ten years old. His life thereafter had been hard, and but for his sturdy
Texas training he might not have survived. The last five years he had
been a horse hunter in the wild uplands of Nevada and Utah.
Slone turned his attention to the pack of supplies. The Stewarts had
divided the flour and the parched corn equally, and unless he was
greatly mistaken they had left him most of the coffee and all of the
salt.
"Now I hold that decent of Bill an' Abe," said Slone, regretfully. "But
I could have got along without it better 'n they could."
Then he swiftly set about kindling a fire and getting a meal. In the
midst of his task a sudden ruddy brightness fell around him. Lin Slone
paused in his work to look up.
The sun had risen over the eastern wall.
"Ah!" he said, and drew a deep breath.
The cold, steely, darkling sweep of desert had been transformed. It was
now a world of red earth and gold rocks and purple sage, with everywhere
the endless straggling green cedars. A breeze whipped in, making the
fire roar softly. The sun felt warm on his cheek. And at the moment he
heard the whistle of his horse.
"Good old Nagger!" he said. "I shore won't have to track you this
mornin'."
Presently he went off into the cedars to find Nagger and the mustang
that he used to carry a pack. Nagger was grazing in a little open patch
among the trees, but the pack horse was missing. Slone seemed to know in
what direction to go to find the trail, for he came upon it very soon.
The pack horse wore hobbles, but he belonged to the class that could
cover a great deal of ground when hobbled. Slone did not expect the
horse to go far, considering that the grass thereabouts was good. But in
a wild-horse country it was not safe to give any horse a chance. The
call of his wild brethren was irresistible. Slone, however, found the
mustang standing quietly in a clump of cedars, and, removing the
hobbles, he mounted and rode back to camp. Nagger caught sight of him
and came at his call.
This horse Nagger appeared as unique in his class as Slone was rare
among riders. Nagger seemed of several colors, though black
predominated. His coat was shaggy, almost woolly, like that of a sheep.
He was huge, raw-boned, knotty, long of body and long of leg, with the
head of a war charger. His build did not suggest speed. There appeared
to be something slow and ponderous about him, similar to an elephant,
with the same suggestion of power and endurance.
Slone discarded the pack saddle and bags. The latter were almost empty.
He roped the tarpaulin on the back of the mustang, and, making a small
bundle of his few supplies, he tied that to the tarpaulin. His blanket
he used for a saddle blanket on Nagger. Of the utensils left by the
Stewarts he chose a couple of small iron pans, with long handles. The
rest he left. In his saddle bags he had a few extra horseshoes, some
nails, bullets for his rifle, and a knife with a heavy blade.
"Not a rich outfit for a far country," he mused. Slone did not talk very
much, and when he did he addressed Nagger and himself simultaneously.
Evidently he expected a long chase, one from which he would not return,
and light as his outfit was it would grow too heavy.
Then he mounted and rode down the gradual slope, facing the valley and
the black, bold, flat mountain to the southeast. Some few hundred yards
from camp he halted Nagger and bent over in the saddle to scrutinize
the ground.
The clean-cut track of a horse showed in the bare, hard sand. The hoof
marks were large, almost oval, perfect in shape, and manifestly they
were beautiful to Lin Slone. He gazed at them for a long time, and then
he looked across the dotted red valley up to the vast ridgy steppes,
toward the black plateau and beyond. It was the look that an Indian
gives to a strange country. Then Slone slipped off the saddle and knelt
to scrutinize the horse tracks. A little sand had blown into the
depressions, and some of it was wet and some of it was dry. He took his
time about examining it, and he even tried gently blowing other sand
into the tracks, to compare that with what was already there. Finally he
stood up and addressed Nagger.
"Reckon we won't have to argue with Abe an' Bill this mornin'," he said,
with satisfaction. "Wildfire made that track yesterday, before sunup."
Thereupon Slone remounted and put Nagger to a trot. The pack horse
followed with an alacrity that showed he had no desire for loneliness.
As straight as a bee line Wildfire had left a trail down into the floor
of the valley. He had not stopped to graze, and he had not looked for
water. Slone had hoped to find a water hole in one of the deep washes in
the red earth, but if there had been any water there Wildfire would have
scented it. He had not had a drink for three days that Slone knew of.
And Nagger had not drunk for forty hours. Slone had a canvas water bag
hanging over the pommel, but it was a habit of his to deny himself, as
far as possible, till his horse could drink also. Like an Indian, Slone
ate and drank but little.
It took four hours of steady trotting to reach the middle and bottom of
that wide, flat valley. A network of washes cut up the whole center of
it, and they were all as dry as bleached bone. To cross these Slone had
only to keep Wildfire's trail. And it was proof of Nagger's quality that
he did not have to veer from the stallion's course.
It was hot down in the lowland. The heat struck up, reflected from the
sand. But it was a March sun, and no more than pleasant to Slone. The
wind rose, however, and blew dust and sand in the faces of horse and
rider. Except lizards Slone did not see any living things.
Miles of low greasewood and sparse yellow sage led to the first almost
imperceptible rise of the valley floor on that side. The distant cedars
beckoned to Slone. He was not patient, because he was on the trail of
Wildfire; but, nevertheless, the hours seemed short.
Slone had no past to think about, and the future held nothing except a
horse, and so his thoughts revolved the possibilities connected with
this chase of Wildfire. The chase was hopeless in such country as he was
traversing, and if Wildfire chose to roam around valleys like this one
Slone would fail utterly. But the stallion had long ago left his band of
horses, and then, one by one his favorite consorts, and now he was
alone, headed with unerring instinct for wild, untrammeled ranges. He
had been used to the pure, cold water and the succulent grass of the
cold desert uplands. Assuredly he would not tarry in such barren lands
as these.
For Slone an ever-present and growing fascination lay in Wildfire's
clear, sharply defined tracks. It was as if every hoof mark told him
something. Once, far up the interminable ascent, he found on a ridge top
tracks showing where Wildfire had halted and turned.
"Ha, Nagger!" cried Slone, exultingly. "Look there! He's begun facin'
about. He's wonderin' if we're still after him. He's worried. . . . But
we'll keep out of sight--a day behind."
When Slone reached the cedars the sun was low down in the west. He
looked back across the fifty miles of valley to the colored cliffs and
walls. He seemed to be above them now, and the cool air, with tang of
cedar and juniper, strengthened the impression that he had climbed high.
A mile or more ahead of him rose a gray cliff with breaks in it and a
line of dark cedars or pinyons on the level rims. He believed these
breaks to be the mouths of canyons, and so it turned out. Wildfire's
trail led into the mouth of a narrow canyon with very steep and high
walls. Nagger snorted his perception of water, and the mustang whistled.
Wildfire's tracks led to a point under the wall where a spring gushed
forth. There were mountain lion and deer tracks also, as well as those
of smaller game.
Slone made camp here. The mustang was tired. But Nagger, upon taking a
long drink, rolled in the grass as if he had just begun the trip. After
eating, Slone took his rifle and went out to look for deer. But there
appeared to be none at hand. He came across many lion tracks, and saw,
with apprehension, where one had taken Wildfire's trail. Wildfire had
grazed up the canyon, keeping on and on, and he was likely to go miles in
a night. Slone reflected that as small as were his own chances of
getting Wildfire, they were still better than those of a mountain lion.
Wildfire was the most cunning of all animals--a wild stallion; his speed
and endurance were incomparable; his scent as keen as those animals that
relied wholly upon scent to warn them of danger; and as for sight, it
was Slone's belief that no hoofed creature, except the mountain sheep
used to high altitudes, could see as far as a wild horse.
It bothered Slone a little that he was getting into a lion country.
Nagger showed nervousness, something unusual for him. Slone tied both
horses with long halters and stationed them on patches of thick grass.
Then he put a cedar stump on the fire and went to sleep. Upon awakening
and going to the spring he was somewhat chagrined to see that deer had
come down to drink early. Evidently they were numerous. A lion country
was always a deer country, for the lions followed the deer.
Slone was packed and saddled and on his way before the sun reddened the
canyon wall. He walked the horses. From time to time he saw signs of
Wildfire's consistent progress. The canyon narrowed and the walls grew
lower and the grass increased. There was a decided ascent all the time.
Slone could find no evidence that the canyon had ever been traveled by
hunters or Indians. The day was pleasant and warm and still. Every once
in a while a little breath of wind would bring a fragrance of cedar and
pinyon, and a sweet hint of pine and sage. At every turn he looked ahead,
expecting to see the green of pine and the gray of sage. Toward the
middle of the afternoon, coming to a place where Wildfire had taken to a
trot, he put Nagger to that gait, and by sundown had worked up to where
the canyon was only a shallow ravine. And finally it turned once more, to
lose itself in a level where straggling pines stood high above the
cedars, and great, dark-green silver spruces stood above the pines. And
here were patches of sage, fresh and pungent, and long reaches of
bleached grass. It was the edge of a forest. Wildfire's trail went on.
Slone came at length to a group of pines, and here he found the remains
of a camp fire, and some flint arrow-heads. Indians had been in there,
probably having come from the opposite direction to Slone's. This
encouraged him, for where Indians could hunt so could he. Soon he was
entering a forest where cedars and pinyons and pines began to grow
thickly. Presently he came upon a faintly defined trail, just a dim,
dark line even to an experienced eye. But it was a trail, and Wildfire
had taken it.
Slone halted for the night. The air was cold. And the dampness of it
gave him an idea there were snow banks somewhere not far distant. The
dew was already heavy on the grass. He hobbled the horses and put a bell
on Nagger. A bell might frighten lions that had never heard one. Then he
built a fire and cooked his meal.
It had been long since he had camped high up among the pines. The sough
of the wind pleased him, like music. There had begun to be prospects of
pleasant experience along with the toil of chasing Wildfire. He was
entering new and strange and beautiful country. How far might the chase
take him? He did not care. He was not sleepy, but even if he had been it
developed that he must wait till the coyotes ceased their barking round
his camp fire. They came so close that he saw their gray shadows in the
gloom. But presently they wearied of yelping at him and went away. After
that the silence, broken only by the wind as it roared and lulled,
seemed beautiful to Slone. He lost completely that sense of vague regret
which had remained with him, and he forgot the Stewarts. And suddenly he
felt absolutely free, alone, with nothing behind to remember, with wild,
thrilling, nameless life before him. Just then the long mourn of a
timber wolf wailed in with the wind. Seldom had he heard the cry of one
of those night wanderers. There was nothing like it--no sound like it to
fix in the lone camper's heart the great solitude and the wild.
II
In the early morning when all was gray and the big, dark pines were
shadowy specters, Slone was awakened by the cold. His hands were so numb
that he had difficulty starting a fire. He stood over the blaze, warming
them. The air was nipping, clear and thin, and sweet with frosty
fragrance.
Daylight came while he was in the midst of his morning meal. A white
frost covered the ground and crackled under his feet as he went out to
bring in the horses. He saw fresh deer tracks. Then he went back to camp
for his rifle. Keeping a sharp lookout for game, he continued his search
for the horses.
The forest was open and parklike. There were no fallen trees or
evidences of fire. Presently he came to a wide glade in the midst of
which Nagger and the pack mustang were grazing with a herd of deer. The
size of the latter amazed Slone. The deer he had hunted back on the
Sevier range were much smaller than these. Evidently these were mule
deer, closely allied to the elk. They were so tame they stood facing him
curiously, with long ears erect. It was sheer murder to kill a deer
standing and watching like that, but Slone was out of meat and hungry
and facing a long, hard trip. He shot a buck, which leaped spasmodically
away, trying to follow the herd, and fell at the edge of the glade.
Slone cut out a haunch, and then, catching the horses, he returned to
camp, where he packed and saddled, and at once rode out on the dim
trail.
The wilderness of the country he was entering was evident in the fact
that as he passed the glade where he had shot the deer a few minutes
before, there were coyotes quarreling over the carcass.
Slone could see ahead and on each side several hundred yards, and
presently he ascertained that the forest floor was not so level as he
had supposed. He had entered a valley or was traversing a wide, gently
sloping pass. He went through thickets of juniper, and had to go around
clumps of quaking asp. The pines grew larger and farther apart. Cedars
and pinyons had been left behind, and he had met with no silver spruces
after leaving camp. Probably that point was the height of a divide.
There were banks of snow in some of the hollows on the north side.
Evidently the snow had very recently melted, and it was evident also
that the depth of snow through here had been fully ten feet, judging
from the mutilation of the juniper trees where the deer, standing on the
hard, frozen crust, had browsed upon the branches.
The quiet of the forest thrilled Slone. And the only movement was the
occasional gray flash of a deer or coyote across a glade. No birds of
any species crossed Slone's sight. He came, presently, upon a lion track
in the trail, made probably a day before. Slone grew curious about it,
seeing how it held, as he was holding, to Wildfire's tracks. After a
mile or so he made sure the lion had been trailing the stallion, and for
a second he felt a cold contraction of his heart. Already he loved
Wildfire, and by virtue of all this toil of travel considered the wild
horse his property.
"No lion could ever get close to Wildfire," he soliloquized, with a
short laugh. Of that he was absolutely certain.
The sun rose, melting the frost, and a breath of warm air, laden with
the scent of pine, moved heavily under the huge, yellow trees. Slone
passed a point where the remains of an old camp fire and a pile of deer
antlers were further proof that Indians visited this plateau to hunt.
From this camp broader, more deeply defined trails led away to the south
and east. Slone kept to the east trail, in which Wildfire's tracks and
those of the lion showed clearly. It was about the middle of the
forenoon when the tracks of the stallion and lion left the trail to lead
up a little draw where grass grew thick. Slone followed, reading the
signs of Wildfire's progress, and the action of his pursuer, as well as
if he had seen them. Here the stallion had plowed into a snow bank,
eating a hole two feet deep; then he had grazed around a little; then on
and on; there his splendid tracks were deep in the soft earth. Slone
knew what to expect when the track of the lion veered from those of the
horse, and he followed the lion tracks. The ground was soft from the
late melting of snow, and Nagger sunk deep. The lion left a plain track.
Here he stole steadily along; there he left many tracks at a point where
he might have halted to make sure of his scent. He was circling on the
trail of the stallion, with cunning intent of ambush. The end of this
slow, careful stalk of the lion, as told in his tracks, came upon the
edge of a knoll where he had crouched to watch and wait. From this perch
he had made a magnificent spring--Slone estimating it to be forty
feet--but he had missed the stallion. There were Wildfire's tracks
again, slow and short, and then deep and sharp where in the impetus of
fright he had sprung out of reach. A second leap of the lion, and then
lessening bounds, and finally an abrupt turn from Wildfire's trail told
the futility of that stalk. Slone made certain that Wildfire was so keen
that as he grazed along he had kept to open ground.
Wildfire had run for a mile, then slowed down to a trot, and he had
circled to get back to the trail he had left. Slone believed the horse
was just so intelligent. At any rate, Wildfire struck the trail again,
and turned at right angles to follow it.
Here the forest floor appeared perfectly level. Patches of snow became
frequent, and larger as Slone went on. At length the patches closed up,
and soon extended as far as he could see. It was soft, affording
difficult travel. Slone crossed hundreds of deer tracks, and the trail
he was on evidently became a deer runway.
Presently, far down one of the aisles between the great pines Slone saw
what appeared to be a yellow cliff, far away. It puzzled him. And as he
went on he received the impression that the forest dropped out of sight
ahead. Then the trees grew thicker, obstructing his view. Presently the
trail became soggy and he had to help his horse. The mustang floundered
in the soft snow and earth. Cedars and pinyons appeared again, making
travel still more laborious.
All at once there came to Slone a strange consciousness of light and
wind and space and void. On the instant his horse halted with a snort.
Slone quickly looked up. Had he come to the end of the world? An abyss,
a canyon, yawned beneath him, beyond all comparison in its greatness. His
keen eye, educated to desert distance and dimension swept down and
across, taking in the tremendous truth, before it staggered his
comprehension. But a second sweeping glance, slower, becoming
intoxicated with what it beheld, saw gigantic cliff steppes and yellow
slopes dotted with cedars, leading down to clefts filled with purple
smoke, and these led on and on to a ragged red world of rock, bare,
shining, bold, uplifted in mesa, dome, peak, and crag, clear and strange
in the morning light, still and sleeping like death.
This, then, was the great canyon, which had seemed like a hunter's fable
rather than truth. Slone's sight dimmed, blurring the spectacle, and he
found that his eyes had filled with tears. He wiped them away and looked
again and again, until he was confounded by the vastness and grandeur
and the vague sadness of the scene. Nothing he had ever looked at had
affected him like this canyon, although the Stewarts had tried to prepare
him for it.
It was the horse hunter's passion that reminded him of his pursuit. The
deer trail led down through a break in the wall. Only a few rods of it
could be seen. This trail was passable, even though choked with snow.
But the depth beyond this wall seemed to fascinate Slone and hold him
back, used as he was to desert trails. Then the clean mark of Wildfire's
hoof brought back the old thrill.
"This place fits you, Wildfire," muttered Slone, dismounting.
He started down, leading Nagger. The mustang followed. Slone kept to the
wall side of the trail, fearing the horses might slip. The snow held
firmly at first and Slone had no trouble. The gap in the rim rock
widened to a slope thickly grown over with cedars and pinyons and
manzanita. This growth made the descent more laborious, yet afforded
means at least for Slone to go down with less danger. There was no
stopping. Once started, the horses had to keep on. Slone saw the
impossibility of ever climbing out while that snow was there. The trail
zigzagged down and down. Very soon the yellow wall hung tremendously
over him, straight up. The snow became thinner and softer. The horses
began to slip. They slid on their haunches. Fortunately the slope grew
less steep, and Slone could see below where it reached out to
comparatively level ground. Still, a mishap might yet occur. Slone kept
as close to Nagger as possible, helping him whenever he could do it. The
mustang slipped, rolled over, and then slipped past Slone, went down the
slope to bring up in a cedar. Slone worked down to him and extricated
him. Then the huge Nagger began to slide. Snow and loose rock slid with
him, and so did Slone. The little avalanche stopped of its own accord,
and then Slone dragged Nagger on down and down, presently to come to the
end of the steep descent. Slone looked up to see that he had made short
work of a thousand-foot slope. Here cedars and pinyons grew thickly
enough to make a forest. The snow thinned out to patches, and then
failed. But the going remained bad for a while as the horses sank deep
in a soft red earth. This eventually grew more solid and finally dry.
Slone worked out of the cedars to what appeared a grassy plateau
inclosed by the great green and white slope with its yellow wall
overhanging, and distant mesas and cliffs. Here his view was restricted.
He was down on the first bench of the great canyon. And there was the
deer trail, a well-worn path keeping to the edge of the slope. Slone
came to a deep cut in the earth, and the trail headed it, where it began
at the last descent of the slope. It was the source of a canyon. He
could look down to see the bare, worn rock, and a hundred yards from
where he stood the earth was washed from its rims and it began to show
depth and something of that ragged outline which told of violence of
flood. The trail headed many canyons like this, all running down across
this bench, disappearing, dropping invisibly. The trail swung to the
left under the great slope, and then presently it climbed to a higher
bench. Here were brush and grass and huge patches of sage, so pungent
that it stung Slone's nostrils. Then he went down again, this time to
come to a clear brook lined by willows. Here the horses drank long and
Slone refreshed himself. The sun had grown hot. There was fragrance of
flowers he could not see and a low murmur of a waterfall that was
likewise invisible. For most of the time his view was shut off, but
occasionally he reached a point where through some break he saw towers
gleaming red in the sun. A strange place, a place of silence, and smoky
veils in the distance. Time passed swiftly. Toward the waning of the
afternoon he began to climb what appeared to be a saddle of land,
connecting the canyon wall on the left with a great plateau, gold-rimmed
and pine-fringed, rising more and more in his way as he advanced. At
sunset Slone was more shut in than for several hours. He could tell the
time was sunset by the golden light on the cliff wall again overhanging
him. The slope was gradual up to this pass to the saddle, and upon
coming to a spring and the first pine trees, he decided to halt for
camp. The mustang was almost exhausted.
Thereupon he hobbled the horses in the luxuriant grass round the spring,
and then unrolled his pack. Once as dusk came stealing down, while he
was eating his meal, Nagger whistled in fright. Slone saw a gray,
pantherish form gliding away into the shadows. He took a quick shot at
it, but missed.
"It's a lion country, all right," he said. And then he set about
building a big fire on the other side of the grassy plot, so as to have
the horses between fires. He cut all the venison into thin strips, and
spent an hour roasting them. Then he lay down to rest, and he said:
"Wonder where Wildfire is to-night? Am I closer to him? Where's he
headin' for?"
The night was warm and still. It was black near the huge cliff, and
overhead velvety blue, with stars of white fire. It seemed to him that
he had become more thoughtful and observing of the aspects of his wild
environment, and he felt a welcome consciousness of loneliness. Then
sleep came to him and the night seemed short. In the gray dawn he arose
refreshed.
The horses were restive. Nagger snorted a welcome. Evidently they had
passed an uneasy night. Slone found lion tracks at the spring and in
sandy places. Presently he was on his way up to the notch between the
great wall and the plateau. A growth of thick scrub oak made travel
difficult. It had not appeared far up to that saddle, but it was far.
There were straggling pine trees and huge rocks that obstructed his
gaze. But once up he saw that the saddle was only a narrow ridge, curved
to slope up on both sides.
Straight before Slone and under him opened the canyon, blazing and
glorious along the peaks and ramparts, where the rising sun struck,
misty and smoky and shadowy down in those mysterious depths.
It took an effort not to keep on gazing. But Slone turned to the grim
business of his pursuit. The trail he saw leading down had been made by
Indians. It was used probably once a year by them; and also by wild
animals, and it was exceedingly steep and rough. Wildfire had paced to
and fro along the narrow ridge of that saddle, making many tracks,
before he had headed down again. Slone imagined that the great stallion
had been daunted by the tremendous chasm, but had finally faced it,
meaning to put this obstacle between him and his pursuers. It never
occurred to Slone to attribute less intelligence to Wildfire than that.
So, dismounting, Slone took Nagger's bridle and started down. The
mustang with the pack was reluctant. He snorted and whistled and pawed
the earth. But he would not be left alone, so he followed.
The trail led down under cedars that fringed a precipice. Slone was
aware of this without looking. He attended only to the trail and to his
horse. Only an Indian could have picked out that course, and it was
cruel to put a horse to it. But Nagger was powerful, sure-footed, and
he would go anywhere that Slone led him. Gradually Slone worked down and
away from the bulging rim wall. It was hard, rough work, and risky
because it could not be accomplished slowly. Brush and rocks, loose
shale and weathered slope, long, dusty inclines of yellow earth, and
jumbles of stone--these made bad going for miles of slow, zigzag trail
down out of the cedars. Then the trail entered what appeared to be a
ravine.
That ravine became a canyon. At its head it was a dry wash, full of
gravel and rocks. It began to cut deep into the bowels of the earth. It
shut out sight of the surrounding walls and peaks. Water appeared from
under a cliff and, augmented by other springs, became a brook. Hot, dry,
and barren at its beginning, this cleft became cool and shady and
luxuriant with grass and flowers and amber moss with silver blossoms.
The rocks had changed color from yellow to deep red. Four hours of
turning and twisting, endlessly down and down, over bowlders and banks
and every conceivable roughness of earth and rock, finished the pack
mustang; and Slone mercifully left him in a long reach of canyon where
grass and water never failed. In this place Slone halted for the noon
hour, letting Nagger have his fill of the rich grazing. Nagger's three
days in grassy upland, despite the continuous travel by day, had
improved him. He looked fat, and Slone had not yet caught the horse
resting. Nagger was iron to endure. Here Slone left all the outfit
except what was on his saddle, and the sack containing the few pounds
of meat and supplies, and the two utensils. This sack he tied on the
back of his saddle, and resumed his journey.
Presently he came to a place where Wildfire had doubled on his trail and
had turned up a side canyon. The climb out was hard on Slone, if not on
Nagger. Once up, Slone found himself upon a wide, barren plateau of
glaring red rock and clumps of greasewood and cactus. The plateau was
miles wide, shut in by great walls and mesas of colored rock. The
afternoon sun beat down fiercely. A blast of wind, as if from a furnace,
swept across the plateau, and it was laden with red dust. Slone walked
here, where he could have ridden. And he made several miles of
up-and-down progress over this rough plateau. The great walls of the
opposite side of the canyon loomed appreciably closer. What, Slone
wondered, was at the bottom of this rent in the earth? The great desert
river was down there, of course, but he knew nothing of it. Would that
turn back Wildfire? Slone thought grimly how he had always claimed
Nagger to be part fish and part bird. Wildfire was not going to escape.
By and by only isolated mescal plants with long, yellow-plumed spears
broke the bare monotony of the plateau. And Slone passed from red sand
and gravel to a red, soft shale, and from that to hard, red rock. Here
Wildfire's tracks were lost, the first time in seven weeks. But Slone
had his direction down that plateau with the cleavage lines of canyons
to right and left. At times Slone found a vestige of the old Indian
trail, and this made him doubly sure of being right. He did not need to
have Wildfire's tracks. He let Nagger pick the way, and the horse made
no mistake in finding the line of least resistance. But that grew harder
and harder. This bare rock, like a file, would soon wear Wildfire's
hoofs thin. And Slone rejoiced. Perhaps somewhere down in this awful
chasm he and Nagger would have if out with the stallion. Slone began to
look far ahead, beginning to believe that he might see Wildfire. Twice
he had seen Wildfire, but only at a distance. Then he had resembled a
running streak of fire, whence his name, which Slone had given him.
This bare region of rock began to be cut up into gullies. It was
necessary to head them or to climb in and out. Miles of travel really
meant little progress straight ahead. But Slone kept on. He was hot and
Nagger was hot, and that made hard work easier. Sometimes on the wind
came a low thunder. Was it a storm or an avalanche slipping or falling
water? He could not tell. The sound was significant and haunting.
Of one thing he was sure--that he could not have found his back trail.
But he divined he was never to retrace his steps on this journey. The
stretch of broken plateau before him grew wilder and bolder of outline,
darker in color, weirder in aspect and progress across it grew slower,
more dangerous. There were many places Nagger should not have been put
to--where a slip meant a broken leg. But Slone could not turn back. And
something besides an indomitable spirit kept him going. Again the sound
resembling thunder assailed his ears, louder this time. The plateau
appeared to be ending in a series of great capes or promontories. Slone
feared he would soon come out upon a promontory from which he might see
the impossibility of further travel. He felt relieved down in the
gullies, where he could not see far. He climbed out of one, presently,
from which there extended a narrow ledge with a slant too perilous for
any horse. He stepped out upon that with far less confidence than
Nagger. To the right was a bulge of low wall, and a few feet to the left
a dark precipice. The trail here was faintly outlined, and it was six
inches wide and slanting as well. It seemed endless to Slone, that
ledge. He looked only down at his feet and listened to Nagger's steps.
The big horse trod carefully, but naturally, and he did not slip. That
ledge extended in a long curve, turning slowly away from the precipice,
and ascending a little at the further end. Slone drew a deep breath of
relief when he led Nagger up on level rock.
Suddenly a strange yet familiar sound halted Slone, as if he had been
struck. The wild, shrill, high-pitched, piercing whistle of a stallion!
Nagger neighed a blast in reply and pounded the rock with his iron-shod
hoofs. With a thrill Slone looked ahead.
There, some few hundred yards distant, on a promontory, stood a red
horse.
"It's Wildfire!" breathed Slone, tensely.
He could not believe his sight. He imagined he was dreaming. But as
Nagger stamped and snorted defiance Slone looked with fixed and keen
gaze, and knew that beautiful picture was no lie.
Wildfire was as red as fire. His long mane, wild in the wind, was like a
whipping, black-streaked flame. Silhouetted there against that canyon
background he seemed gigantic, a demon horse, ready to plunge into fiery
depths. He was looking back over his shoulder, his head very high, and
every line of him was instinct with wildness. Again he sent out that
shrill, air-splitting whistle. Slone understood it to be a clarion call
to Nagger. If Nagger had been alone Wildfire would have killed him. The
red stallion was a killer of horses. All over the Utah ranges he had
left the trail of a murderer. Nagger understood this, too, for he
whistled back in rage and terror. It took an iron arm to hold him. Then
Wildfire plunged, apparently down, and vanished from Slone's sight.
Slone hurried onward, to be blocked by a huge crack in the rocky
plateau. This he had to head. And then another and like obstacle checked
his haste to reach that promontory. He was forced to go more slowly.
Wildfire had been close only as to sight. And this was the great canyon
that dwarfed distance and magnified proximity. Climbing down and up,
toiling on, he at last learned patience. He had seen Wildfire at close
range. That was enough. So he plodded on, once more returning to careful
regard of Nagger. It took an hour of work to reach the point where
Wildfire had disappeared.
A promontory indeed it was, overhanging a valley a thousand feet below.
A white torrent of a stream wound through it. There were lines of green
cottonwoods following the winding course. Then Slone saw Wildfire slowly
crossing the flat toward the stream. He had gone down that cliff, which
to Slone looked perpendicular.
Wildfire appeared to be walking lame. Slone, making sure of this,
suffered a pang. Then, when the significance of such lameness dawned
upon him he whooped his wild joy and waved his hat. The red stallion
must have heard, for he looked up. Then he went on again and waded into
the stream, where he drank long. When he started to cross, the swift
current drove him back in several places. The water wreathed white
around him. But evidently it was not deep, and finally he crossed. From
the other side he looked up again at Nagger and Slone, and, going on, he
soon was out of sight in the cottonwoods.
"How to get down!" muttered Slone.
There was a break in the cliff wall, a bare stone slant where horses had
gone down and come up. That was enough for Slone to know. He would have
attempted the descent if he were sure no other horse but Wildfire had
ever gone down there. But Slone's hair began to rise stiff on his head.
A horse like Wildfire, and mountain sheep and Indian ponies, were all
very different from Nagger. The chances were against Nagger.
"Come on, old boy. If I can do it, you can," he said.
Slone had never seen a trail as perilous as this. He was afraid for his
horse. A slip there meant death. The way Nagger trembled in every muscle
showed his feelings. But he never flinched. He would follow Slone
anywhere, providing Slone rode him or led him. And here, as riding was
impossible, Slone went before. If the horse slipped there would be a
double tragedy, for Nagger would knock his master off the cliff. Slone
set his teeth and stepped down. He did not let Nagger see his fear. He
was taking the greatest risk he had ever run.
The break in the wall led to a ledge, and the ledge dropped from step to
step, and these had bare, slippery slants between. Nagger was splendid
on a bad trail. He had methods peculiar to his huge build and great
weight. He crashed down over the stone steps, both front hoofs at once.
The slants he slid down on his haunches with his forelegs stiff and the
iron shoes scraping. He snorted and heaved and grew wet with sweat. He
tossed his head at some of the places. But he never hesitated and it was
impossible for him to go slowly. Whenever Slone came to corrugated
stretches in the trail he felt grateful. But these were few. The rock
was like smooth red iron. Slone had never seen such hard rock. It took
him long to realize that it was marble. His heart seemed a tense,
painful knot in his breast, as if it could not beat, holding back in the
strained suspense. But Nagger never jerked on the bridle. He never
faltered. Many times he slipped, often with both front feet, but never
with all four feet. So he did not fall. And the red wall began to loom
above Sloan. Then suddenly he seemed brought to a point where it was
impossible to descend. It was a round bulge, slanting fearfully, with
only a few rough surfaces to hold a foot. Wildfire had left a broad,
clear-swept mark at that place, and red hairs on some of the sharp
points. He had slid down. Below was an offset that fortunately prevented
further sliding. Slone started to walk down this place, but when Nagger
began to slide Slone had to let go the bridle and jump. Both he and the
horse landed safely. Luck was with them. And they went on, down and
down, to reach the base of the great wall, scraped and exhausted, wet
with sweat, but unhurt. As Slone gazed upward he felt the impossibility
of believing what he knew to be true. He hugged and petted the horse.
Then he led on to the roaring stream.
It was green water white with foam. Slone waded in and found the water
cool and shallow and very swift. He had to hold to Nagger to keep from
being swept downstream. They crossed in safety. There in the sand
showed Wildfire's tracks. And here were signs of another Indian camp,
half a year old.
The shade of the cotton woods was pleasant. Slone found this valley
oppressively hot. There was no wind and the sand blistered his feet
through his boots. Wildfire held to the Indian trail that had guided him
down into this wilderness of worn rock. And that trail crossed the
stream at every turn of the twisting, narrow valley. Slone enjoyed
getting into the water. He hung his gun over the pommel and let the
water roll him. A dozen times he and Nagger forded the rushing torrent.
Then they came to a boxlike closing of the valley to canyon walls, and
here the trail evidently followed the stream bed. There was no other
way. Slone waded in, and stumbled, rolled, and floated ahead of the
sturdy horse. Nagger was wet to his breast, but he did not fall. This
gulch seemed full of a hollow rushing roar. It opened out into a wide
valley. And Wildfire's tracks took to the left side and began to climb
the slope.
Here the traveling was good, considering what had been passed. Once up
out of the valley floor Slone saw Wildfire far ahead, high on the slope.
He did not appear to be limping, but he was not going fast. Slone
watched as he climbed. What and where would be the end of this chase?
Sometimes Wildfire was plain in his sight for a moment, but usually he
was hidden by rocks. The slope was one great talus, a jumble of
weathered rock, fallen from what appeared a mountain of red and yellow
wall. Here the heat of the sun fell upon him like fire. The rocks were
so hot Slone could not touch them with bare hand. The close of the
afternoon was approaching, and this slope was interminably long. Still,
it was not steep, and the trail was good.
At last from the height of slope Wildfire appeared, looking back and
down. Then he was gone. Slone plodded upward. Long before he reached
that summit he heard the dull rumble of the river. It grew to be a roar,
yet it seemed distant. Would the great desert river stop Wildfire in his
flight? Slone doubted it. He surmounted the ridge, to find the canyon
opening in a tremendous gap, and to see down, far down, a glittering,
sun-blasted slope merging into a deep, black gulch where a red river
swept and chafed and roared.
Somehow the river was what he had expected to see. A force that had cut
and ground this canyon could have been nothing but a river like that. The
trail led down, and Slone had no doubt that it crossed the river and led
up out of the canyon. He wanted to stay there and gaze endlessly and
listen. At length he began the descent. As he proceeded it seemed that
the roar of the river lessened. He could not understand why this was so.
It took half an hour to reach the last level, a ghastly, black, and
iron-ribbed canyon bed, with the river splitting it. He had not had a
glimpse of Wildfire on this side of the divide, but he found his tracks,
and they led down off the last level, through a notch in the black bank
of marble to a sand bar and the river.
Wildfire had walked straight off the sand into the water. Slone studied
the river and shore. The water ran slow, heavily, in sluggish eddies.
From far up the canyon came the roar of a rapid, and from below the roar
of another, heavier and closer. The river appeared tremendous, in ways
Slone felt rather than realized, yet it was not swift. Studying the
black, rough wall of rock above him, he saw marks where the river had
been sixty feet higher than where he stood on the sand. It was low,
then. How lucky for him that he had gotten there before flood season! He
believed Wildfire had crossed easily, and he knew Nagger could make it.
Then he piled and tied his supplies and weapons high on the saddle, to
keep them dry, and looked for a place to take to the water.
Wildfire had sunk deep before reaching the edge. Manifestly he had
lunged the last few feet. Slone found a better place, and waded in,
urging Nagger. The big horse plunged, almost going under, and began to
swim. Slone kept upstream beside him. He found, presently, that the
water was thick and made him tired, so it was necessary to grasp a
stirrup and be towed. The river appeared only a few hundred feet wide,
but probably it was wider than it looked. Nagger labored heavily near
the opposite shore; still, he landed safely upon a rocky bank. There
were patches of sand in which Wildfire's tracks showed so fresh that
the water had not yet dried out of them.
Slone rested his horse before attempting to climb out of that split in
the rock. However, Wildfire had found an easy ascent. On this side of
the canyon the bare rock did not predominate. A clear trail led up a
dusty, gravelly slope, upon which scant greasewood and cactus appeared.
Half an hour's climbing brought Slone to where he could see that he was
entering a vast valley, sloping up and narrowing to a notch in the dark
cliffs, above which towered the great red wall and about that the slopes
of cedar and the yellow rim rock.
And scarcely a mile distant, bright in the westering sunlight, shone the
red stallion, moving slowly.
Slone pressed on steadily. Just before dark he came to an ideal spot to
camp. The valley had closed up, so that the lofty walls cast shadows
that met. A clump of cottonwoods surrounding a spring, abundance of rich
grass, willows and flowers lining the banks, formed an oasis in the bare
valley. Slone was tired out from the day of ceaseless toil down and up,
and he could scarcely keep his eyes open. But he tried to stay awake.
The dead silence of the valley, the dry fragrance, the dreaming walls,
the advent of night low down, when up on the ramparts the last red rays
of the sun lingered, the strange loneliness--these were sweet and
comforting to him.
And that night's sleep was as a moment. He opened his eyes to see the
crags and towers and peaks and domes, and the lofty walls of that vast,
broken chaos of canyons across the river. They were now emerging from the
misty gray of dawn, growing pink and lilac and purple under the rising
sun.
He arose and set about his few tasks, which, being soon finished,
allowed him an early start.
Wildfire had grazed along no more than a mile in the lead. Slone looked
eagerly up the narrowing canyon, but he was not rewarded by a sight of
the stallion. As he progressed up a gradually ascending trail he became
aware of the fact that the notch he had long looked up to was where the
great red walls closed in and almost met. And the trail zigzagged up
this narrow vent, so steep that only a few steps could be taken without
rest. Slone toiled up for an hour--an age--till he was wet, burning,
choked, with a great weight on his chest. Yet still he was only halfway
up that awful break between the walls. Sometimes he could have tossed a
stone down upon a part of the trail, only a few rods below, yet many,
many weary steps of actual toil. As he got farther up the notch widened.
What had been scarcely visible from the valley below was now colossal in
actual dimensions. The trail was like a twisted mile of thread between
two bulging mountain walls leaning their ledges and fronts over this
tilted pass.
Slone rested often. Nagger appreciated this and heaved gratefully at
every halt. In this monotonous toil Slone forgot the zest of his
pursuit. And when Nagger suddenly snorted in fright Slone was not
prepared for what he saw.
Above him ran a low, red wall, around which evidently the trail led. At
the curve, which was a promontory, scarcely a hundred feet in an air
line above him, he saw something red moving, bobbing, coming out into
view. It was a horse.
Wildfire--no farther away than the length of three lassos!
There he stood looking down. He fulfilled all of Slone's dreams. Only he
was bigger. But he was so magnificently proportioned that he did not
seem heavy. His coat was shaggy and red. It was not glossy. The color
was what made him shine. His mane was like a crest, mounting, then
falling low. Slone had never seen so much muscle on a horse. Yet his
outline was graceful, beautiful. The head was indeed that of the wildest
of all wild creatures--a stallion born wild--and it was beautiful,
savage, splendid, everything but noble. Slone thought that if a horse
could express hate, surely Wildfire did then. It was certain that he did
express curiosity and fury.
Slone shook a gantleted fist at the stallion, as if the horse were
human. That was a natural action for a rider of his kind. Wildfire
turned away, showed bright against the dark background, and then
disappeared.
III
That was the last Slone saw of Wildfire for three days.
It took all of this day to climb out of the canyon. The second was a slow
march of thirty miles into a scrub cedar and pinyon forest, through which
the great red and yellow walls of the canyon could be seen. That night
Slone found a water hole in a rocky pocket and a little grass for
Nagger. The third day's travel consisted of forty miles or more through
level pine forest, dry and odorous, but lacking the freshness and beauty
of the forest on the north side of the canyon. On this south side a
strange feature was that all the water, when there was any, ran away
from the rim. Slone camped this night at a muddy pond in the woods,
where Wildfire's tracks showed plainly.
On the following day Slone rode out of the forest into a country of
scanty cedars, bleached and stunted, and out of this to the edge of a
plateau, from which the shimmering desert flung its vast and desolate
distances, forbidding and menacing. This was not the desert upland
country of Utah, but a naked and bony world of colored rock and sand--a
painted desert of heat and wind and flying sand and waterless wastes and
barren ranges. But it did not daunt Slone. For far down on the bare,
billowing ridges moved a red speck, at a snail's pace, a slowly moving
dot of color which was Wildfire.
* * * * *
On open ground like this, Nagger, carrying two hundred and fifty pounds,
showed his wonderful quality. He did not mind the heat nor the sand nor
the glare nor the distance nor his burden. He did not tire. He was an
engine of tremendous power.
Slone gained upon Wildfire, and toward evening of that day he reached to
within half a mile of the stallion. And he chose to keep that far
behind. That night he camped where there was dry grass, but no water.
Next day he followed Wildfire down and down, over the endless swell of
rolling red ridges, bare of all but bleached white grass and meager
greasewood, always descending in the face of that painted desert of bold
and ragged steppes. Slone made fifty miles that day, and gained the
valley bed, where a slender stream ran thin and spread over a wide sandy
bottom. It was salty water, but it was welcome to both man and beast.
The following day he crossed, and the tracks of Wildfire were still wet
on the sand bars. The stallion was slowing down. Slone saw him, limping
along, not far in advance. There was a ten-mile stretch of level ground,
blown hard as rock, from which the sustenance had been bleached, for not
a spear of grass grew there. And following that was a tortuous passage
through a weird region of clay dunes, blue and violet and heliotrope and
lavender, all worn smooth by rain and wind. Wildfire favored the soft
ground now. He had deviated from his straight course. And he was partial
to washes and dips in the earth where water might have lodged. And he
was not now scornful of a green-scummed water hole with its white margin
of alkali. That night Slone made camp with Wildfire in plain sight. The
stallion stopped when his pursuers stopped. And he began to graze on the
same stretch with Nagger. How strange this seemed to Slone!
Here at this camp was evidence of Indians. Wildfire had swung round to
the north in his course. Like any pursued wild animal, he had begun to
circle. And he had pointed his nose toward the Utah he had left.
Next morning Wildfire was not in sight, but he had left his tracks in
the sand. Slone trailed him with Nagger at a trot. Toward the head of
this sandy flat Slone came upon old cornfields, and a broken dam where
the water had been stored, and well-defined trails leading away to the
right. Somewhere over there in the desert lived Indians. At this point
Wildfire abandoned the trail he had followed for many days and cut out
more to the north. It took all the morning hours to climb three great
steppes and benches that led up to the summit of a mesa, vast in extent.
It turned out to be a sandy waste. The wind rose and everywhere were
moving sheets of sand, and in the distance circular yellow dust devils,
rising high like water spouts, and back down in the sun-scorched valley
a sandstorm moved along majestically, burying the desert in its yellow
pall.
Then two more days of sand and another day of a slowly rising ground
growing from bare to gray and gray to green, and then to the purple of
sage and cedar--these three grinding days were toiled out with only one
water hole.
And Wildfire was lame and in distress and Nagger was growing gaunt and
showing strain; and Slone, haggard and black and worn, plodded miles and
miles on foot to save his horse.
Slone felt that it would be futile to put the chase to a test of speed.
Nagger could never head that stallion. Slone meant to go on and on,
always pushing Wildfire, keeping him tired, wearied, and worrying him,
till a section of the country was reached where he could drive Wildfire
into some kind of a natural trap. The pursuit seemed endless. Wildfire
kept to open country where he could not be surprised.
There came a morning when Slone climbed to a cedared plateau that rose
for a whole day's travel, and then split into a labyrinthine maze of
canyons. There were trees, grass, water. It was a high country, cool and
wild, like the uplands he had left. For days he camped on Wildfire's
trail, always relentlessly driving him, always watching for the trap he
hoped to find. And the red stallion spent much of this time of flight in
looking backward. Whenever Slone came in sight of him he had his head
over his shoulder, watching. And on the soft ground of these canyons he
had begun to recover from his lameness. But this did not worry Slone.
Sooner or later Wildfire would go down into a high-walled wash, from
which there would be no outlet; or he would wander into a box canyon; or
he would climb out on a mesa with no place to descend, unless he passed
Slone; or he would get cornered on a soft, steep slope where his hoofs
would sink deep and make him slow. The nature of the desert had changed.
Slone had entered a wonderful region, the like of which he had not
seen--a high plateau criss-crossed in every direction by narrow canyons
with red walls a thousand feet high.
And one of the strange turning canyons opened into a vast valley of
monuments.
The plateau had weathered and washed away, leaving huge sections of
stone walls, all standing isolated, different in size and shape, but all
clean-cut, bold, with straight lines. They stood up everywhere,
monumental, towering, many-colored, lending a singular and beautiful
aspect to the great green and gray valley, billowing away to the north,
where dim, broken battlements mounted to the clouds.
The only living thing in Slone's sight was Wildfire. He shone red down
on the green slope.
Slone's heart swelled. This was the setting for that grand horse--a
perfect wild range. But also it seemed the last place where there might
be any chance to trap the stallion. Still that did not alter Slone's
purpose, though it lost to him the joy of former hopes. He rode down the
slope, out upon the billowing floor of the valley. Wildfire looked back
to see his pursuers, and then the solemn stillness broke to a wild,
piercing whistle.
* * * * *
Day after day, camping where night found him, Slone followed the
stallion, never losing sight of him till darkness had fallen. The valley
was immense and the monuments miles apart. But they always seemed close
together and near him. The air magnified everything. Slone lost track of
time. The strange, solemn, lonely days and the silent, lonely nights,
and the endless pursuit, and the wild, weird valley--these completed the
work of years on Slone and he became satisfied, unthinking, almost
savage.
The toil and privation had worn him down and he was like iron. His
garments hung in tatters; his boots were ripped and soleless. Long since
his flour had been used up, and all his supplies except the salt. He
lived on the meat of rabbits, but they were scarce, and the time came
when there were none. Some days he did not eat. Hunger did not make him
suffer. He killed a desert bird now and then, and once a wildcat
crossing the valley. Eventually he felt his strength diminishing, and
then he took to digging out the pack rats and cooking them. But these,
too, were scarce. At length starvation faced Slone. But he knew he would
not starve. Many times he had been within rifle shot of Wildfire. And
the grim, forbidding thought grew upon him that he must kill the
stallion. The thought seemed involuntary, but his mind rejected it.
Nevertheless, he knew that if he could not catch the stallion he would
kill him. That had been the end of many a desperate rider's pursuit of a
coveted horse.
While Slone kept on his merciless pursuit, never letting Wildfire rest
by day, time went on just as relentlessly. Spring gave way to early
summer. The hot sun bleached the grass; water holes failed out in the
valley, and water could be found only in the canyons; and the dry winds
began to blow the sand. It was a sandy valley, green and gray only at a
distance, and out toward the north there were no monuments, and the slow
heave of sand lifted toward the dim walls.
Wildfire worked away from this open valley, back to the south end, where
the great monuments loomed, and still farther back, where they grew
closer, till at length some of them were joined by weathered ridges to
the walls of the surrounding plateau. For all that Slone could see,
Wildfire was in perfect condition. But Nagger was not the horse he had
been. Slone realized that in one way or another the pursuit was
narrowing down to the end.
He found a water hole at the head of a wash in a split in the walls, and
here he let Nagger rest and graze one whole day--the first day for a
long time that he had not kept the red stallion in sight. That day was
marked by the good fortune of killing a rabbit, and while eating it his
gloomy, fixed mind admitted that he was starving. He dreaded the next
sunrise. But he could not hold it back. There, behind the dark
monuments, standing sentinel-like, the sky lightened and reddened and
burnt into gold and pink, till out of the golden glare the sun rose
glorious. And Slone, facing the league-long shadows of the monuments,
rode out again into the silent, solemn day, on his hopeless quest.
For a change Wildfire had climbed high up a slope of talus, through a
narrow pass, rounded over with drifting sand. And Slone gazed down into
a huge amphitheater full of monuments, like all that strange country. A
basin three miles across lay beneath him. Walls and weathered slants of
rock and steep slopes of reddish-yellow sand inclosed this oval
depression. The floor was white, and it seemed to move gently or radiate
with heat waves. Studying it, Slone made out that the motion was caused
by wind in long bleached grass. He had crossed small areas of this grass
in different parts of the region.
Wildfire's tracks led down into this basin, and presently Slone, by
straining his eyes, made out the red spot that was the stallion.
"He's lookin' to quit the country," soliloquized Slone, as he surveyed
the scene.
With keen, slow gaze Slone studied the lay of wall and slope, and when
he had circled the huge depression he made sure that Wildfire could not
get out except by the narrow pass through which he had gone in. Slone
sat astride Nagger in the mouth of this pass--a wash a few yards wide,
walled by broken, rough rock on one side and an insurmountable slope on
the other.
"If this hole was only little, now," sighed Slone, as he gazed at the
sweeping, shimmering oval floor, "I might have a chance. But down
there--we couldn't get near him."
There was no water in that dry bowl. Slone reflected on the uselessness
of keeping Wildfire down there, because Nagger could not go without
water as long as Wildfire. For the first time Slone hesitated. It seemed
merciless to Nagger to drive him down into this hot, windy hole. The
wind blew from the west, and it swooped up the slope, hot, with the odor
of dry, dead grass.
But that hot wind stirred Slone with an idea, and suddenly he was tense,
excited, glowing, yet grim and hard.
"Wildfire, I'll make you run with your namesake in that high grass,"
called Slone. The speech was full of bitter failure, of regret, of the
hardness of a rider who could not give up the horse to freedom.
Slone meant to ride down there and fire the long grass. In that wind
there would indeed be wildfire to race with the red stallion. It would
perhaps mean his death; at least it would chase him out of that hole,
where to follow him would be useless.
"I'd make you hump now to get away if I could get behind you," muttered
Slone. He saw that if he could fire the grass on the other side the wind
of flame would drive Wildfire straight toward him. The slopes and walls
narrowed up to the pass, but high grass grew to within a few rods of
where Slone stood. But it seemed impossible to get behind Wildfire.
"At night--then--I could get round him," said Slone, thinking hard and
narrowing his gaze to scan the circle of wall and slope. "Why not? . . .
No wind at night. That grass would burn slow till mornin'--till the wind
came up--an' it's been west for days."
Suddenly Slone began to pound the patient Nagger and to cry out to him
in wild exultance.
"Old horse, we've got him! We've got him! We'll put a rope on him before
this time to-morrow!"
Slone yielded to his strange, wild joy, but it did not last long, soon
succeeding to sober, keen thought. He rode down into the bowl a mile,
making absolutely certain that Wildfire could not climb out on that
side. The far end, beyond the monuments, was a sheer wall of rock. Then
he crossed to the left side. Here the sandy slope was almost too steep
for even him to go up. And there was grass that would burn. He returned
to the pass assured that Wildfire had at last fallen into a trap the
like Slone had never dreamed of. The great horse was doomed to run into
living flame or the whirling noose of a lasso.
Then Slone reflected. Nagger had that very morning had his fill of good
water--the first really satisfying drink for days. If he was rested that
day, on the morrow he would be fit for the grueling work possibly in
store for him. Slone unsaddled the horse and turned him loose, and with
a snort he made down the gentle slope for the grass. Then Slone carried
his saddle to a shady spot afforded by a slab of rock and a dwarf cedar,
and here he composed himself to rest and watch and think and wait.
Wildfire was plainly in sight no more than two miles away. Gradually he
was grazing along toward the monuments and the far end of the great
basin. Slone believed, because the place was so large, that Wildfire
thought there was a way out on the other side or over the slopes or
through the walls. Never before had the farsighted stallion made a
mistake. Slone suddenly felt the keen, stabbing fear of an outlet
somewhere. But it left him quickly. He had studied those slopes and
walls. Wildfire could not get out, except by the pass he had entered,
unless he could fly.
Slone lay in the shade, his head propped on his saddle, and while gazing
down into the shimmering hollow he began to plan. He calculated that he
must be able to carry fire swiftly across the far end of the basin, so
that he would not be absent long from the mouth of the pass. Fire was
always a difficult matter, since he must depend only on flint and steel.
He decided to wait till dark, build a fire with dead cedar sticks, and
carry a bundle of them with burning ends. He felt assured that the wind
caused by riding would keep them burning. After he had lighted the grass
all he had to do was to hurry back to his station and there await
developments.
The day passed slowly, and it was hot. The heat-waves rose in dark,
wavering lines and veils from the valley. The wind blew almost a gale.
Thin, curling sheets of sand blew up over the crests of the slopes, and
the sound it made was a soft, silken rustling, very low. The sky was a
steely blue above and copper close over the distant walls.
That afternoon, toward the close, Slone ate the last of the meat. At
sunset the wind died away and the air cooled. There was a strip of red
along the wall of rock and on the tips of the monuments, and it lingered
there for long, a strange, bright crown. Nagger was not far away, but
Wildfire had disappeared, probably behind one of the monuments.
When twilight fell Slone went down after Nagger and, returning with him,
put on bridle and saddle. Then he began to search for suitable sticks of
wood. Farther back in the pass he found stunted dead cedars, and from
these secured enough for his purpose. He kindled a fire and burned the
ends of the sticks into red embers. Making a bundle of these, he put
them under his arm, the dull, glowing ends backward, and then mounted
his horse.
It was just about dark when he faced down into the valley. When he
reached level ground he kept to the edge of the left slope and put
Nagger to a good trot. The grass and brush were scant here, and the
color of the sand was light, so he had no difficulty in traveling. From
time to time his horse went through grass, and its dry, crackling
rustle, showing how it would burn, was music to Slone. Gradually the
monuments began to loom up, bold and black against the blue sky, with
stars seemingly hanging close over them. Slone had calculated that the
basin was smaller than it really was, in both length and breadth. This
worried him. Wildfire might see or hear or scent him, and make a break
back to the pass and thus escape. Slone was glad when the huge, dark
monuments were indistinguishable from the black, frowning wall. He had
to go slower here, because of the darkness. But at last he reached the
slow rise of jumbled rock that evidently marked the extent of weathering
on that side. Here he turned to the right and rode out into the valley.
The floor was level and thickly overgrown with long, dead grass and dead
greasewood, as dry as tinder. It was easy to account for the dryness;
neither snow nor rain had visited that valley for many months. Slone
whipped one of the sticks in the wind and soon had the smouldering end
red and showering sparks. Then he dropped the stick in the grass, with
curious intent and a strange feeling of regret.
Instantly the grass blazed with a little sputtering roar. Nagger
snorted. "Wildfire!" exclaimed Slone. That word was a favorite one with
riders, and now Slone used it both to call out his menace to the
stallion and to express his feeling for that blaze, already running
wild.
Without looking back, Slone rode across the valley, dropping a glowing
stick every quarter of a mile. When he reached the other side there were
a dozen fires behind him, burning slowly, with white smoke rising
lazily. Then he loped Nagger along the side back to the sandy ascent,
and on up to the mouth of the pass. There he searched for tracks.
Wildfire had not gone out, and Slone experienced relief and exultation.
He took up a position in the middle of the narrowest part of the pass,
and there, with Nagger ready for anything, he once more composed himself
to watch and wait.
Far across the darkness of the valley, low down, twelve lines of fire,
widely separated, crept toward one another. They appeared thin and slow,
with only an occasional leaping flame. And some of the black spaces must
have been monuments, blotting out the creeping snail lines of red. Slone
watched, strangely fascinated.
"What do you think of that?" he said, aloud, and he meant his query for
Wildfire.
As he watched the lines perceptibly lengthened and brightened and pale
shadows of smoke began to appear. Over at the left of the valley the two
brightest fires, the first he had started, crept closer and closer
together. They seemed long in covering distance. But not a breath of
wind stirred, and besides they really might move swiftly, without
looking so to Slone. When the two lines met a sudden and larger blaze
rose.
"Ah!" said the rider, and then he watched the other lines creeping
together. How slowly fire moved, he thought. The red stallion would have
every chance to run between those lines, if he dared. But a wild horse
fears nothing like fire. This one would not run the gantlet of flames.
Nevertheless Slone felt more and more relieved as the lines closed. The
hours of the night dragged past until at length one long, continuous
line of fire spread level across the valley, its bright, red line broken
only where the monuments of stone were silhouetted against it.
The darkness of the valley changed. The light of the moon changed. The
radiance of the stars changed. Either the line of fire was finding
denser fuel to consume or it was growing appreciably closer, for the
flames began to grow, to leap, and to flare.
Slone strained his ears for the thud of hoofs on sand.
The time seemed endless in its futility of results, but fleeting after
it had passed; and he could tell how the hours fled by the
ever-recurring need to replenish the little fire he kept burning in the
pass.
A broad belt of valley grew bright in the light, and behind it loomed
the monuments, weird and dark, with columns of yellow and white smoke
wreathing them.
Suddenly Slone's sensitive ear vibrated to a thrilling sound. He leaned
down to place his ear to the sand. Rapid, rhythmic beat of hoofs made
him leap to his feet, reaching for his lasso with right hand and a gun
with his left.
Nagger lifted his head, sniffed the air, and snorted. Slone peered into
the black belt of gloom that lay below him. It would be hard to see a
horse there, unless he got high enough to be silhouetted against that
line of fire now flaring to the sky. But he heard the beat of hoofs,
swift, sharp, louder--louder. The night shadows were deceptive. That
wonderful light confused him, made the place unreal. Was he dreaming? Or
had the long chase and his privations unhinged his mind? He reached for
Nagger. No! The big black was real, alive, quivering, pounding the sand.
He scented an enemy.
Once more Slone peered down into the void or what seemed a void. But it,
too, had changed, lightened. The whole valley was brightening. Great
palls of curling smoke rose white and yellow, to turn back as the
monuments met their crests, and then to roll upward, blotting out the
stars. It was such a light as he had never seen, except in dreams. Pale
moonlight and dimmed starlight and wan dawn all vague and strange and
shadowy under the wild and vivid light of burning grass.
In the pale path before Slone, that fanlike slope of sand which opened
down into the valley, appeared a swiftly moving black object, like a
fleeing phantom. It was a phantom horse. Slone felt that his eyes,
deceived by his mind, saw racing images. Many a wild chase he had lived
in dreams on some far desert. But what was that beating in his
ears--sharp, swift, even, rhythmic? Never had his ears played him false.
Never had he heard things in his dreams. That running object was a horse
and he was coming like the wind. Slone felt something grip his heart.
All the time and endurance and pain and thirst and suspense and longing
and hopelessness--the agony of the whole endless chase--closed tight on
his heart in that instant.
The running horse halted just in the belt of light cast by the burning
grass. There he stood sharply defined, clear as a cameo, not a hundred
paces from Slone. It was Wildfire.
Slone uttered an involuntary cry. Thrill on thrill shot through him.
Delight and hope and fear and despair claimed him in swift, successive
flashes. And then again the ruling passion of a rider held him--the
sheer glory of a grand and unattainable horse. For Slone gave up
Wildfire in that splendid moment. How had he ever dared to believe he
could capture that wild stallion? Slone looked and looked, filling his
mind, regretting nothing, sure that the moment was reward for all he had
endured.
The weird lights magnified Wildfire and showed him clearly. He seemed
gigantic. He shone black against the fire. His head was high, his mane
flying. Behind him the fire flared and the valley-wide column of smoke
rolled majestically upward, and the great monuments seemed to retreat
darkly and mysteriously as the flames advanced beyond them. It was a
beautiful, unearthly spectacle, with its silence the strangest feature.
But suddenly Wildfire broke that silence with a whistle which to Slone's
overstrained faculties seemed a blast as piercing as the splitting sound
of lightning. And with the whistle Wildfire plunged up toward the pass.
Slone yelled at the top of his lungs and fired his gun before he could
terrorize the stallion and drive him back down the slope. Soon Wildfire
became again a running black object, and then he disappeared.
The great line of fire had gotten beyond the monuments and now stretched
unbroken across the valley from wall to slope. Wildfire could never
pierce that line of flames. And now Slone saw, in the paling sky to the
east, that dawn was at hand.
IV
Slone looked grimly glad when simultaneously with the first red flash of
sunrise a breeze fanned his cheek. All that was needed now was a west
wind. And here came the assurance of it.
The valley appeared hazy and smoky, with slow, rolling clouds low down
where the line of fire moved. The coming of daylight paled the blaze of
the grass, though here and there Slone caught flickering glimpses of
dull red flame. The wild stallion kept to the center of the valley,
restlessly facing this way and that, but never toward the smoke. Slone
made sure that Wildfire gradually gave ground as the line of smoke
slowly worked toward him.
Every moment the breeze freshened, grew steadier and stronger, until
Slone saw that it began to clear the valley of the low-hanging smoke.
There came a time when once more the blazing line extended across from
slope to slope.
Wildfire was cornered, trapped. Many times Slone nervously uncoiled and
recoiled his lasso. Presently the great chance of his life would
come--the hardest and most important throw he would ever have with a
rope. He did not miss often, but then he missed sometimes, and here he
must be swift and sure. It annoyed him that his hands perspired and
trembled and that something weighty seemed to obstruct his breathing. He
muttered that he was pretty much worn out, not in the best of condition
for a hard fight with a wild horse. Still he would capture Wildfire; his
mind was unalterably set there. He anticipated that the stallion would
make a final and desperate rush past him; and he had his plan of action
all outlined. What worried him was the possibility of Wildfire's doing
some unforeseen feat at the very last. Slone was prepared for hours of
strained watching, and then a desperate effort, and then a shock that
might kill Wildfire and cripple Nagger, or a long race and fight.
But he soon discovered that he was wrong about the long watch and wait.
The wind had grown strong and was driving the fire swiftly. The flames,
fanned by the breeze, leaped to a formidable barrier. In less than an
hour, though the time seemed only a few moments to the excited Slone,
Wildfire had been driven down toward the narrowing neck of the valley,
and he had begun to run, to and fro, back and forth. Any moment, then,
Slone expected him to grow terrorized and to come tearing up toward the
pass.
Wildfire showed evidence of terror, but he did not attempt to make the
pass. Instead he went at the right-hand slope of the valley and began to
climb. The slope was steep and soft, yet the stallion climbed up and up.
The dust flew in clouds; the gravel rolled down, and the sand followed
in long streams. Wildfire showed his keenness by zigzagging up the
slope.
"Go ahead, you red devil!" yelled Slone. He was much elated. In that
soft bank Wildfire would tire out while not hurting himself.
Slone watched the stallion in admiration and pity and exultation.
Wildfire did not make much headway, for he slipped back almost as much
as he gained. He attempted one place after another where he failed.
There was a bank of clay, some few feet high, and he could not round it
at either end or surmount it in the middle. Finally he literally pawed
and cut a path, much as if he were digging in the sand for water. When
he got over that he was not much better off. The slope above was endless
and grew steeper, more difficult toward the top. Slone knew absolutely
that no horse could climb over it. He grew apprehensive, however, for
Wildfire might stick up there on the slope until the line of fire
passed. The horse apparently shunned any near proximity to the fire, and
performed prodigious efforts to escape.
"He'll be ridin' an avalanche pretty soon," muttered Slone.
Long sheets of sand and gravel slid down to spill thinly over the low
bank. Wildfire, now sinking to his knees, worked steadily upward till he
had reached a point halfway up the slope, at the head of a long, yellow
bank of treacherous-looking sand. Here he was halted by a low bulge,
which he might have surmounted had his feet been free. But he stood deep
in the sand. For the first time he looked down at the sweeping fire, and
then at Slone.
Suddenly the bank of sand began to slide with him. He snorted in fright.
The avalanche started slowly and was evidently no mere surface slide. It
was deep. It stopped--then started again--and again stopped. Wildfire
appeared to be sinking deeper and deeper. His struggles only embedded
him more firmly. Then the bank of sand, with an ominous, low roar, began
to move once more. This time it slipped swiftly. The dust rose in a
cloud, almost obscuring the horse. Long streams of gravel rattled down,
and waterfalls of sand waved over the steppes of the slope.
Just as suddenly the avalanche stopped again. Slone saw, from the great
oval hole it had left above, that it was indeed deep. That was the
reason it did not slide readily. When the dust cleared away Slone saw
the stallion, sunk to his flanks in the sand, utterly helpless.
With a wild whoop Slone leaped off Nagger, and, a lasso in each hand, he
ran down the long bank. The fire was perhaps a quarter of a mile
distant, and, since the grass was thinning out, it was not coming so
fast as it had been. The position of the stallion was halfway between
the fire and Slone, and a hundred yards up the slope.
Like a madman Slone climbed up through the dragging, loose sand. He was
beside himself with a fury of excitement. He fancied his eyes were
failing him, that it was not possible the great horse really was up
there, helpless in the sand. Yet every huge stride Slone took brought
him closer to a fact he could not deny. In his eagerness he slipped, and
fell, and crawled, and leaped, until he reached the slide which held
Wildfire prisoner.
The stallion might have been fast in quicksand, up to his body, for all
the movement he could make. He could move only his head. He held that
up, his eyes wild, showing the whites, his foaming mouth wide open, his
teeth gleaming. A sound like a scream rent the air. Terrible fear and
hate were expressed in that piercing neigh. And shaggy, wet, dusty red,
with all of brute savageness in the look and action of his head, he
appeared hideous.
As Slone leaped within roping distance the avalanche slipped a foot or
two, halted, slipped once more, and slowly started again with that low
roar. He did not care whether it slipped or stopped. Like a wolf he
leaped closer, whirling his rope. The loop hissed round his head and
whistled as he flung it. And when fiercely he jerked back on the rope,
the noose closed tight round Wildfire's neck.
"I--got--a rope--on him!" cried Slone, in hoarse pants.
He stared, unbelieving. It was unreal, that sight--unreal like the slow,
grinding movement of the avalanche under him. Wildfire's head seemed a
demon head of hate. It reached out, mouth agape, to bite, to rend. That
horrible scream could not be the scream of a horse.
Slone was a wild-horse hunter, a rider, and when that second of
incredulity flashed by, then came the moment of triumph. No moment could
ever equal that one, when he realized he stood there with a rope around
that grand stallion's neck. All the days and the miles and the toil and
the endurance and the hopelessness and the hunger were paid for in that
moment. His heart seemed too large for his breast.
"I tracked--you!" he cried, savagely. "I stayed--with you! An' I got a
rope--on you! An'--I'll ride you--you red devil!"
The passion of the man was intense. That endless, racking pursuit had
brought out all the hardness the desert had engendered in him. Almost
hate, instead of love, spoke in Slone's words. He hauled on the lasso,
pulling the stallion's head down and down. The action was the lust of
capture as well as the rider's instinctive motive to make the horse fear
him. Life was unquenchably wild and strong in that stallion; it showed
in the terror which made him hideous. And man and beast somehow
resembled each other in that moment which was inimical to noble life.
The avalanche slipped with little jerks, as if treacherously loosing its
hold for a long plunge. The line of fire below ate at the bleached grass
and the long column of smoke curled away on the wind.
Slone held the taut lasso with his left hand, and with the right he
swung the other rope, catching the noose round Wildfire's nose. Then
letting go of the first rope he hauled on the other, pulling the head of
the stallion far down. Hand over hand Slone closed in on the horse. He
leaped on Wildfire's head, pressed it down, and, holding it down on the
sand with his knees, with swift fingers he tied the nose in a
hackamore--an improvised halter. Then, just as swiftly, he bound his
scarf tight round Wildfire's head, blindfolding him.
"All so easy!" exclaimed Slone, under his breath. "Who would believe it!
Is it a dream?"
He rose and let the stallion have a free head.
"Wildfire, I got a rope on you--an' a hackamore--an' a blinder," said
Slone. "An' if I had a bridle I'd put that on you. Who'd ever believe
you'd catch yourself, draggin' in the sand?"
Slone, finding himself falling on the sand, grew alive to the augmented
movement of the avalanche. It had begun to slide, to heave and bulge and
crack. Dust rose in clouds from all around. The sand appeared to open
and let him sink to his knees. The rattle of gravel was drowned in a
soft roar. Then he shot down swiftly, holding the lassos, keeping
himself erect, and riding as if in a boat. He felt the successive
steppes of the slope, and then the long incline below, and then the
checking and rising and spreading of the avalanche as it slowed down on
the level. All movement then was checked violently. He appeared to be
half buried in sand. While he struggled to extricate himself the thick
dust blew away and, settled so that he could see. Wildfire lay before
him, at the edge of the slide, and now he was not so deeply embedded as
he had been up on the slope. He was struggling and probably soon would
have been able to get out. The line of fire was close now, but Slone did
not fear that.
At his shrill whistle Nagger bounded toward him, obedient, but snorting,
with ears laid back. He halted. A second whistle started him again.
Slone finally dug himself out of the sand, pulled the lassos out, and
ran the length of them toward Nagger. The black showed both fear and
fight. His eyes rolled and he half shied away.
"Come on!" called Slone, harshly.
He got a hand on the horse, pulled him round, and, mounting in a flash,
wound both lassos round the pommel of the saddle.
"Haul him out, Nagger, old boy!" cried Slone, and he dug spurs into the
black.
One plunge of Nagger's slid the stallion out of the sand. Snorting,
wild, blinded, Wildfire got up, shaking in every limb. He could not see
his enemies. The blowing smoke, right in his nose, made scent
impossible. But in the taut lassos he sensed the direction of his
captors. He plunged, rearing at the end of the plunge, and struck out
viciously with his hoofs. Slone, quick with spur and bridle, swerved
Nagger aside and Wildfire, off his balance, went down with a crash.
Slone dragged him, stretched him out, pulled him over twice before he
got forefeet planted. Once up, he reared again, screeching his rage,
striking wildly with his hoofs. Slone wheeled aside and toppled him over
again.
"Wildfire, it's no fair fight," he called, grimly. "But you led me a
chase. An' you learn right now I'm boss!"
FOOTNOTE:
[2] From _Wildfire_. Copyright, 1916, by Harper and Brothers, New York
and London. Reprinted by special permission of author and publisher.
[Illustration]
III.--The Hydrophobic Skunk[3]
_By Irvin S. Cobb_
THE Hydrophobic Skunk resides at the extreme bottom of the Grand canyon
and, next to a Southern Republican who never asked for a Federal office,
is the rarest of living creatures. He is so rare that nobody ever saw
him--that is, nobody except a native. I met plenty of tourists who had
seen people who had seen him, but never a tourist who had seen him with
his own eyes. In addition to being rare, he is highly gifted.
I think almost anybody will agree with me that the common, ordinary
skunk has been most richly dowered by Nature. To adorn a skunk with any
extra qualifications seems as great a waste of the raw material as
painting the lily or gilding refined gold. He is already amply equipped
for outdoor pursuits. Nobody intentionally shoves him round; everybody
gives him as much room as he seems to need. He commands respect--nay,
more than that, respect and veneration--wherever he goes. Joy riders
never run him down and foot passengers avoid crowding him into a corner.
You would think Nature had done amply well by the skunk; but no--the
Hydrophobic Skunk comes along and upsets all these calculations. Besides
carrying the traveling credentials of an ordinary skunk, he is rabid in
the most rabidissimus form. He is not mad just part of the time, like
one's relatives by marriage--and not mad most of the time, like the
old-fashioned railroad ticket agent--but mad all the time--incurably,
enthusiastically and unanimously mad! He is mad and he is glad of it.
We made the acquaintance of the Hydrophobic Skunk when we rode down
Hermit Trail. The casual visitor to the Grand canyon first of all takes
the rim drive; then he essays Bright Angel Trail, which is sufficiently
scary for his purposes until he gets used to it; and after that he grows
more adventurous and tackles Hermit Trail, which is a marvel of
corkscrew convolutions, gimleting its way down this red abdominal wound
of a canyon to the very gizzard of the world. Here, Johnny, our guide,
felt moved to speech, and we hearkened to his words and hungered for
more, for Johnny knows the ranges of the Northwest as a city dweller
knows his own little side street. In the fall of the year Johnny comes
down to the canyon and serves as a guide a while; and then, when he gets
so he just can't stand associating with tourists any longer, he packs
his war bags and journeys back to the Northern Range and enjoys the
company of cows a spell. Cows are not exactly exciting, but they don't
ask fool questions.
A highly competent young person is Johnny and a cow-puncher of parts.
Most of the canyon guides are cow-punchers--accomplished ones, too, and
of high standing in the profession. With a touch of reverence Johnny
pointed out to us Sam Scovel, the greatest bronco buster of his time,
now engaged in piloting tourists.
"Can he ride?" echoed Johnny in answer to our question. "Scovel could
ride an earthquake if she stood still long enough for him to mount! He
rode Steamboat--not Young Steamboat, but Old Steamboat! He rode Rocking
Chair, and he's the only man that ever did that and was not called on in
a couple of days to attend his own funeral."
We went on and on at a lazy mule trot, hearing the unwritten annals of
the range from one who had seen them enacted at first hand. Pretty soon
we passed a herd of burros with mealy, dusty noses and spotty hides,
feeding on prickly pears and rock lichens; and just before sunset we
slid down the last declivity out upon the plateau and came to a camp as
was a camp!
This was roughing it de luxe with a most de-luxey vengeance! Here were
three tents, or rather three canvas houses, with wooden half walls; and
they were spick-and-span inside and out, and had glass windows in them
and doors and matched wooden floors. . . . The mess tent was provided
with a table with a clean cloth to go over it, and there were china
dishes and china cups and shiny knives, forks and spoons. . . . Bill was
in charge of the camp--a dark, rangy, good-looking leading man of a
cowboy, wearing his blue shirt and his red neckerchief with an air.
That Johnny certainly could cook! Served on china dishes upon a
cloth-covered table, we had mounds of fried steaks and shoals of fried
bacon; and a bushel, more or less, of sheepherder potatoes; and green
peas and sliced peaches out of cans; and sour-dough biscuits as light as
kisses and much more filling; and fresh butter and fresh milk; and
coffee as black as your hat and strong as sin. How easy it is for
civilized man to become primitive and comfortable in his way of eating,
especially if he has just ridden ten miles on a buckboard and nine more
on a mule and is away down at the bottom of the Grand canyon--and there
is nobody to look on disapprovingly when he takes a bite that would be a
credit to a steam shovel!
Despite all reports to the contrary, I wish to state that it is no
trouble at all to eat green peas off a knife-blade--you merely mix them
in with potatoes for a cement; and fried steak--take it from an old
steak eater--tastes best when eaten with those tools of Nature's own
providing, both hands and your teeth. An hour passed--busy, yet
pleasant--and we were both gorged to the gills and had reared back with
our cigars lit to enjoy a third jorum of black coffee apiece, when
Johnny, speaking in an offhand way to Bill, who was still hiding away
biscuits inside of himself like a parlor prestidigitator, said:
"Seen any of them old Hydrophobies the last day or two?"
"Not so many," said Bill casually. "There was a couple out last night
pirootin' round in the moonlight. I reckon, though, there'll be quite a
flock of 'em out to-night. A new moon always seems to fetch 'em up from
the river."
Both of us quit blowing on our coffee and we put the cups down. I think
I was the one who spoke.
"I beg your pardon," I asked, "but what did you say would be out
to-night?"
"We were just speakin' to one another about them Hydrophoby Skunks,"
said Bill apologetically. "This here canyon is where they mostly hang out
and frolic 'round."
I laid down my cigar, too. I admit I was interested.
"Oh!" I said softly--like that. "Is it? Do they?"
"Yes," said Johnny. "I reckin there's liable to be one come shovin' his
old nose into that door any minute. Or probably two--they mostly travels
in pairs--sets, as you might say."
"You'd know one the minute you saw him, though," said Bill. "They're
smaller than a regular skunk and spotted where the other kind is
striped. And they got little red eyes. You won't have no trouble at all
recognizin' one."
It was at this juncture that we both got up and moved back by the stove.
It was warmer there and the chill of evening seemed to be settling down
noticeably.
"Funny thing about Hydrophoby Skunks," went on Johnny after a moment of
pensive thought--"mad, you know!"
"What makes them mad?" The two of us asked the question together.
"Born that way!" explained Bill--"mad from the start, and won't never do
nothin' to get shut of it."
"Ahem--they never attack humans, I suppose?"
"Don't they?" said Johnny, as if surprised at such ignorance. "Why,
humans is their favorite pastime! Humans is just pie to a Hydrophoby
Skunk. It ain't really any fun to be bit by a Hydrophoby Skunk neither."
He raised his coffee cup to his lips and imbibed deeply.
"Which you certainly said something then, Johnny," stated Bill. "You
see," he went on, turning to us, "they aim to catch you asleep and they
creep up right soft and take holt of you--take holt of a year
usually--and clamp their teeth and just hang on for further orders. Some
says they hang on till it thunders, same as snappin' turtles. But that's
a lie, I judge, because there's weeks on a stretch down here when it
don't thunder. All the cases I ever heard of they let go at sunup."
"It is right painful at the time," said Johnny, taking up the thread of
the narrative; "and then in nine days you go mad yourself. Remember that
fellow the Hydrophoby Skunk bit down here by the rapids, Bill? Let's see
now--what was that hombre's name?"
"Williams," supplied Bill--"Heck Williams. I saw him at Flagstaff when
they took him there to the hospital. That guy certainly did carry on
regardless. First he went mad and his eyes turned red, and he got so he
didn't have no real use for water--well, them prospectors don't never
care much about water anyway--and then he got to snappin' and bitin' and
foamin' so's they had to strap him down to his bed. He got loose
though."
"Broke loose, I suppose?" I said.
"No, he bit loose," said Bill with the air of one who would not deceive
you even in a matter of small details.
"Do you mean to say he bit those leather straps in two?"
"No, sir; he couldn't reach them," explained Bill, "so he bit the bed in
two. Not in one bite, of course," he went on. "It took him several. I
saw him after he was laid out. He really wasn't no credit to himself as
a corpse."
I'm not sure, but I think my companion and I were holding hands by now.
Outside we could hear that little lost echo laughing to itself. It was
no time to be laughing either. Under certain circumstances I don't know
of a lonelier place anywhere on earth than that Grand canyon.
Presently my friend spoke, and it seemed to me his voice was a mite
husky. Well, he had a bad cold.
"You said they mostly attack persons who are sleeping out, didn't you?"
"That's right, too," said Johnny, and Bill nodded in affirmation.
"Then, of course, since we sleep indoors everything will be all right,"
I put in.
"Well, yes and no," answered Johnny. "In the early part of the evening a
Hydrophoby is liable to do a lot of prowlin' round outdoors; but toward
mornin' they like to get into camps--they dig up under the side walls or
come up through the floor--and they seem to prefer to get in bed with
you. They're cold-blooded, I reckin, same as rattlesnakes. Cool nights
always do drive 'em in, seems like."
"It's going to be sort of coolish to-night," said Bill casually.
It certainly was. I don't remember a chillier night in years. My teeth
were chattering a little--from cold--before we turned in. I retired with
all my clothes on, including my boots and leggings, and I wished I had
brought along my ear muffs. I also buttoned my watch into my lefthand
shirt pocket, the idea being if for any reason I should conclude to move
during the night I would be fully equipped for traveling. The door would
not stay closely shut--the door-jamb had sagged a little and the wind
kept blowing the door ajar. But after a while we dozed off.
It was one twenty-seven A. M. when I woke with a violent start. I know
this was the exact time because that was when my watch stopped. I peered
about me in the darkness. The door was wide open--I could tell that.
Down on the floor there was a dragging, scuffling sound, and from almost
beneath me a pair of small red eyes peered up phosphorescently.
"He's here!" I said to my companion as I emerged from my blankets; and
he, waking instantly, seemed instinctively to know whom I meant. I used
to wonder at the ease with which a cockroach can climb a perfectly
smooth wall and run across the ceiling. I know now that to do this is
the easiest thing in the world--if you have the proper incentive behind
you. I had gone up one wall of the tent and had crossed over and was in
the act of coming down the other side when Bill burst in, his eyes
blurred with sleep, a lighted lamp in one hand and a gun in the other.
I never was so disappointed in my life because it wasn't a Hydrophobic
Skunk at all. It was a pack rat, sometimes called a trade rat, paying us
a visit. The pack or trade rat is also a denizen of the Grand canyon. He
is about four times as big as an ordinary rat and has an appetite to
correspond. He sometimes invades your camp and makes free with your
things, but he never steals anything outright--he merely trades with
you; hence his name. He totes off a side of meat or a bushel of meal and
brings a cactus stalk in; or he will confiscate your saddlebags and
leave you in exchange a nice dry chip. He is honest, but from what I can
gather he never gets badly stuck on a deal.
Next morning at breakfast Johnny and Bill were doing a lot of laughing
between them over something or other.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] From _Roughing It de Luxe_. Copyright, 1914, by George H. Doran
Company. Reprinted by special permission of author and publisher.
[Illustration]
IV.--The Ole Virginia[4]
_By Stewart Edward White_
THE ring around the sun had thickened all day long, and the turquoise
blue of the Arizona sky had filmed. Storms in the dry countries are
infrequent, but heavy; and this surely meant storm. We had ridden since
sunup over broad mesas, down and out of deep canyons, along the base of
the mountains in the wildest parts of the territory. The cattle were
winding leisurely toward the high country; the jack rabbits had
disappeared; the quail lacked; we did not see a single antelope in the
open.
"It's a case of hold up," the Cattleman ventured his opinion. "I have a
ranch over in the Double R. Charley and Windy Bill hold it down. We'll
tackle it. What do you think?"
The four cowboys agreed. We dropped into a low, broad watercourse,
ascended its bed to big cottonwoods and flowing water, followed it into
box canyons between rim rock carved fantastically and painted like a
Moorish facade, until at last in a widening below a rounded hill, we
came upon an adobe house, a fruit tree, and a round corral. This was the
Double R.
Charley and Windy Bill welcomed us with soda biscuits. We turned our
horses out, spread our beds on the floor, filled our pipes, and squatted
on our heels. Various dogs of various breeds investigated us. It was
very pleasant, and we did not mind the ring around the sun.
"Somebody else coming," announced the Cattleman finally.
"Uncle Jim," said Charley, after a glance.
A hawk-faced old man with a long white beard and long white hair rode
out from the cottonwoods. He had on a battered broad hat abnormally high
of crown, carried across his saddle a heavy "eight square" rifle, and
was followed by a half-dozen lolloping hounds.
The largest and fiercest of the latter, catching sight of our group,
launched himself with lightning rapidity at the biggest of the ranch
dogs, promptly nailed that canine by the back of the neck, shook him
violently a score of times, flung him aside, and pounced on the next.
During the ensuing few moments that hound was the busiest thing in the
West. He satisfactorily whipped four dogs, pursued two cats up a tree,
upset the Dutch oven and the rest of the soda biscuits, stampeded the
horses, and raised a cloud of dust adequate to represent the smoke of
battle. We others were too paralyzed to move. Uncle Jim sat placidly on
his white horse, his thin knees bent to the ox-bow stirrups, smoking.
In ten seconds the trouble was over, principally because there was no
more trouble to make. The hound returned leisurely, licking from his
chops the hair of his victims. Uncle Jim shook his head.
"Trailer," said he sadly, "is a little severe."
We agreed heartily, and turned in to welcome Uncle Jim with a fresh
batch of soda biscuits.
The old man was one of the typical "long hairs." He had come to the
Galiuro Mountains in '69, and since '69 he had remained in the Galiuro
Mountains, spite of man or the devil. At present he possessed some
hundreds of cattle, which he was reputed to water, in a dry season, from
an ordinary dish pan. In times past he had prospected.
That evening, the severe Trailer having dropped to slumber, he held
forth on big-game hunting and dogs, quartz claims and Apaches.
"Did you ever have any very close calls?" I asked.
He ruminated a few moments, refilled his pipe with some awful tobacco,
and told the following experience:
"In the time of Geronimo I was living just about where I do now; and
that was just about in line with the raiding. You see, Geronimo, and Ju,
and old Loco used to pile out of the reservation at Camp Apache, raid
south to the line, slip over into Mexico when the soldiers got too
promiscuous, and raid there until they got ready to come back. Then
there was always a big medicine talk. Says Geronimo:
"'I am tired of the warpath. I will come back from Mexico with all my
warriors, if you will escort me with soldiers and protect my people.'
"'All right,' says the General, being only too glad to get him back at
all.
"So, then, in ten minutes there wouldn't be a buck in camp, but next
morning they shows up again, each with about fifty head of hosses.
"'Where'd you get those hosses?' asks the General, suspicious.
"'Had 'em pastured in the hills,' answers Geronimo.
"'I can't take all those hosses with me; I believe they're stolen!' says
the General.
"'My people cannot go without their hosses,' says Geronimo.
"So, across the line they goes, and back to the reservation. In about a
week there's fifty-two frantic Greasers wanting to know where's their
hosses. The army is nothing but an importer of stolen stock, and knows
it, and can't help it.
"Well, as I says, I'm between Camp Apache and the Mexican line, so that
every raiding party goes right on past me. The point is that I'm a
thousand feet or so above the valley, and the renegades is in such a
hurry about that time that they never stop to climb up and collect me.
Often I've watched them trailing down the valley in a cloud of dust.
Then, in a day or two, a squad of soldiers would come up and camp at my
spring for a while. They used to send soldiers to guard every water hole
in the country so the renegades couldn't get water. After a while, from
not being bothered none, I got to thinking I wasn't worth while with
them.
"Me and Johnny Hooper were pecking away at the Ole Virginia mine then.
We'd got down about sixty feet, all timbered, and was thinking of
crosscutting. One day Johnny went to town, and that same day I got in a
hurry and left my gun at camp.
"I worked all the morning down at the bottom of the shaft, and when I
see by the sun it was getting along towards noon, I put in three good
shots, tamped 'em down, lit the fuses, and started to climb out.
"It ain't noways pleasant to light a fuse in a shaft, and then have to
climb out a fifty-foot ladder, with it burning behind you. I never did
get used to it. You keep thinking, 'Now, suppose there's a flaw in that
fuse, or something, and she goes off in six seconds instead of two
minutes? Where'll you be then?' It would give you a good boost towards
your home on high, anyway.
"So I climbed fast, and stuck my head out the top without looking--and
then I froze solid enough. There, about fifty feet away, climbing up
the hill on mighty tired hosses, was a dozen of the ugliest Chiricahuas
you ever don't want to meet, and in addition a Mexican renegade named
Maria, who was worse than any of 'em. I see at once their hosses was
tired out, and they had a notion of camping at my water hole, not
knowing nothing about the Ole Virginia mine.
"For two bits I'd have let go all holts and dropped backwards, trusting
to my thick head for easy lighting. Then I heard a little fizz and
sputter from below. At that my hair riz right up so I could feel the
breeze blow under my hat. For about six seconds I stood there like an
imbecile, grinning amiably. Then one of the Chiricahuas made a sort of
grunt, and I sabed that they'd seen the original exhibit your Uncle Jim
was making of himself.
"Then that fuse gave another sputter and one of the Apaches said, 'Un
dah.' That means 'white man.' It was harder to turn my head than if I'd
had a stiff neck; but I managed to do it, and I see that my ore dump
wasn't more than ten foot away. I mighty near overjumped it; and the
next I knew I was on one side of it and those Apaches on the other.
Probably I flew; leastways I don't seem to remember jumping.
"That didn't seem to do me much good. The renegades were grinning and
laughing to think how easy a thing they had; and I couldn't rightly
think up any arguments against the notion--at least from their
standpoint. They were chattering away to each other in Mexican for the
benefit of Maria. Oh, they had me all distributed, down to my suspender
buttons! And me squatting behind that ore dump about as formidable as a
brush rabbit!
"Then, all at once, one of my shots went off down in the shaft.
"'Boom!' says she, plenty big; and a slather of rocks and stones come
out of the mouth, and began to dump down promiscuous on the scenery. I
got one little one in the shoulder blade, and found time to wish my ore
dump had a roof. But those renegades caught it square in the thick of
trouble. One got knocked out entirely for a minute, by a nice piece of
country rock in the head.
"'Otra vez!' yells I, which means 'again.'
"'Boom!' goes the Ole Virginia prompt as an answer.
"I put in my time dodging, but when I gets a chance to look, the Apaches
has all got to cover and is looking scared.
"'Otra vez!' yells I again.
"'Boom!' says the Ole Virginia.
"This was the biggest shot of the lot, and she surely cut loose. I ought
to have been halfway up the hill watching things from a safe distance,
but I wasn't. Lucky for me the shaft was a little on the drift, so she
didn't quite shoot my way. But she distributed about a ton over those
renegades. They sort of half got to their feet uncertain.
"'Otra vez!' yells I once more, as bold as if I could keep her shooting
all day.
"It was just a cold, raw blazer; and if it didn't go through I could see
me as an Apache parlor ornament. But it did. Those Chiricahuas give one
yell and skipped. It was surely a funny sight, after they got aboard
their war ponies, to see them trying to dig out on horses too tired to
trot.
"I didn't stop to get all the laughs, though. In fact, I give one jump
off that ledge, and I lit a-running. A quarter-hoss couldn't have beat
me to that shack. There I grabbed my good old gun, old Meat-in-the-pot,
and made a climb for the tall country."
Uncle Jim stopped with an air of finality, and began lazily to refill
his pipe. From the open mud fireplace he picked a coal. Outside, the
rain, faithful to the prophecy of the wide-ringed sun, beat fitfully
against the roof.
"That was the closest call I ever had," said he at last.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] From _Arizona Nights_. Reprinted by special permission of publisher
and author. Copyright, 1907, by Doubleday, Page and Company.
[Illustration]
V.--The Weight of Obligation[5]
_By Rex Beach_
THIS is the story of a burden, the tale of a load that irked a strong
man's shoulders. To those who do not know the North it may seem strange,
but to those who understand the humors of men in solitude, and the
extravagant vagaries that steal in upon their minds, as fog drifts with
the night, it will not appear unusual. There are spirits in the
wilderness, eerie forces which play pranks; some droll or whimsical,
others grim.
Johnny Cantwell and Mortimer Grant were partners, trail mates, brothers
in soul if not in blood. The ebb and flood of frontier life had brought
them together, its hardships had united them until they were as one.
They were something of a mystery to each other, neither having
surrendered all his confidence, and because of this they retained their
mutual attraction. They had met by accident, but they remained together
by desire.
The spirit of adventure bubbled merrily within them, and it led them
into curious byways. It was this which sent them northward from the
States in the dead of winter, on the heels of the Stony River strike; it
was this which induced them to land at Katmai instead of Illiamna,
whither their land journey should have commenced.
"There are two routes over the coast range," the captain of the _Dora_
told them, "and only two. Illiamna Pass is low and easy, but the
distance is longer than by way of Katmai. I can land you at either
place."
"Katmai is pretty tough, isn't it?" Grant inquired.
"We've understood it's the worst pass in Alaska." Cantwell's eyes were
eager.
"It's awful! Nobody travels it except natives, and they don't like it.
Now, Illiamna--"
"We'll try Katmai. Eh, Mort?"
"Sure! They don't come hard enough for us, Cap. We'll see if it's as bad
as it's painted."
So, one gray January morning they were landed on a frozen beach, their
outfit was flung ashore through the surf, the lifeboat pulled away, and
the _Dora_ disappeared after a farewell toot of her whistle. Their last
glimpse of her showed the captain waving good-by and the purser flapping
a red tablecloth at them from the after-deck.
"Cheerful place, this," Grant remarked, as he noted the desolate
surroundings of dune and hillside.
The beach itself was black and raw where the surf washed it, but
elsewhere all was white, save for the thickets of alder and willow which
protruded nakedly. The bay was little more than a hollow scooped out of
the Alaskan range; along the foothills behind there was a belt of spruce
and cottonwood and birch. It was a lonely and apparently unpeopled
wilderness in which they had been set down.
"Seems good to be back in the North again, doesn't it?" said Cantwell,
cheerily. "I'm tired of the booze, and the street cars, and the dames,
and all that civilized stuff. I'd rather be broke in Alaska--with
you--than a banker's son, back home."
Soon a globular Russian half-breed, the Katmai trader, appeared among
the dunes, and with him were some native villagers. That night the
partners slept in a snug log cabin, the roof of which was chained down
with old ships' cables. Petellin, the fat little trader, explained that
roofs in Katmai had a way of sailing off to seaward when the wind blew.
He listened to their plan of crossing the divide and nodded.
It could be done, of course, he agreed, but they were foolish to try it,
when the Illiamna route was open. Still, now that they were here, he
would find dogs for them, and a guide. The village hunters were out
after meat, however, and until they returned the white men would need to
wait in patience.
There followed several days of idleness, during which Cantwell and Grant
amused themselves around the village, teasing the squaws, playing games
with the boys, and flirting harmlessly with the girls, one of whom, in
particular, was not unattractive. She was perhaps three-quarters Aleut,
the other quarter being plain coquette, and, having been educated at the
town of Kodiak, she knew the ways and the wiles of the white man.
Cantwell approached her, and she met his extravagant advances more than
halfway. They were getting along nicely together when Grant, in a spirit
of fun, entered the game and won her fickle smiles for himself. He joked
his partner unmercifully, and Johnny accepted defeat gracefully, never
giving the matter a second thought.
When the hunters returned, dogs were bought, a guide was hired, and, a
week after landing, the friends were camped at timber line awaiting a
favorable moment for their dash across the range. Above them, white
hillsides rose in irregular leaps to the gash in the saw-toothed barrier
which formed the pass; below them a short valley led down to Katmai and
the sea. The day was bright, the air clear, nevertheless after the guide
had stared up at the peaks for a time he shook his head, then reentered
the tent and lay down. The mountains were "smoking"; from their tops
streamed a gossamer veil which the travelers knew to be drifting snow
clouds carried by the wind. It meant delay, but they were patient.
They were up and going on the following morning, however, with the
Indian in the lead. There was no trail; the hills were steep; in places
they were forced to unload the sled and hoist their outfit by means of
ropes, and as they mounted higher the snow deepened. It lay like loose
sand, only lighter; it shoved ahead of the sled in a feathery mass; the
dogs wallowed in it and were unable to pull, hence the greater part of
the work devolved upon the men. Once above the foothills and into the
range proper, the going became more level, but the snow remained
knee-deep.
The Indian broke trail stolidly; the partners strained at the sled,
which hung back like a leaden thing. By afternoon the dogs had become
disheartened and refused to heed the whip. There was neither fuel nor
running water, and therefore the party did not pause for luncheon. The
men were sweating profusely from their exertions and had long since
become parched with thirst, but the dry snow was like chalk and scoured
their throats.
Cantwell was the first to show the effects of his unusual exertions, for
not only had he assumed a lion's share of the work, but the last few
months of easy living had softened his muscles, and in consequence his
vitality was quickly spent. His undergarments were drenched; he was
fearfully dry inside; a terrible thirst seemed to penetrate his whole
body; he was forced to rest frequently.
Grant eyed him with some concern, finally inquiring, "Feel bad,
Johnny?"
Cantwell nodded. Their fatigue made both men economical of language.
"What's the matter?"
"Thirsty!" The former could barely speak.
"There won't be any water till we get across. You'll have to stand it."
They resumed their duties; the Indian "swish-swished" ahead, as if
wading through a sea of swan's-down; the dogs followed listlessly; the
partners leaned against the stubborn load.
A faint breath finally came out of the north, causing Grant and the
guide to study the sky anxiously. Cantwell was too weary to heed the
increasing cold. The snow on the slopes above began to move; here and
there, on exposed ridges, it rose in clouds and puffs; the cleancut
outlines of the hills became obscured as by a fog; the languid wind bit
cruelly.
After a time Johnny fell back upon the sled and exclaimed: "I'm--all in,
Mort. Don't seem to have the--guts." He was pale, his eyes were
tortured. He scooped a mitten full of snow and raised it to his lips,
then spat it out, still dry.
"Here! Brace up!" In a panic of apprehension at this collapse Grant
shook him; he had never known Johnny to fail like this. "Take a drink;
it'll do you good." He drew a bottle from one of the dunnage bags and
Cantwell seized it avidly. It was wet; it would quench his thirst, he
thought. Before Mort could check him he had drunk a third of the
contents.
The effect was almost instantaneous, for Cantwell's stomach was empty
and his tissues seemed to absorb the liquor like a dry sponge; his
fatigue fell away, he became suddenly strong and vigorous again. But
before he had gone a hundred yards the reaction followed. First his mind
grew thick, then his limbs became unmanageable and his muscles flabby.
He was drunk. Yet it was a strange and dangerous intoxication, against
which he struggled desperately. He fought it for perhaps a quarter of a
mile before it mastered him; then he gave up.
Both men knew that stimulants are never taken on the trail, but they had
never stopped to reason why, and even now they did not attribute
Johnny's breakdown to the brandy. After a while he stumbled and fell,
then, the cool snow being grateful to his face, he sprawled there
motionless until Mort dragged him to the sled. He stared at his partner
in perplexity and laughed foolishly. The wind was increasing, darkness
was near, they had not yet reached the Bering slope.
Something in the drunken man's face frightened Grant and, extracting a
ship's biscuit from the grub box, he said, hurriedly: "Here, Johnny. Get
something under your belt, quick."
Cantwell obediently munched the hard cracker, but there was no moisture
on his tongue; his throat was paralyzed; the crumbs crowded themselves
from the corners of his lips. He tried with limber fingers to stuff
them down, or to assist the muscular action of swallowing, but finally
expelled them in a cloud. Mort drew the parka hood over his partner's
head, for the wind cut like a scythe and the dogs were turning tail to
it, digging holes in the snow for protection. The air about them was
like yeast; the light was fading.
The Indian snowshoed his way back, advising a quick camp until the storm
abated, but to this suggestion Grant refused to listen, knowing only too
well the peril of such a course. Nor did he dare take Johnny on the
sled, since the fellow was half asleep already, but instead whipped up
the dogs and urged his companion to follow as best he could.
When Cantwell fell, for a second time, he returned, dragged him forward,
and tied his wrists firmly, yet loosely, to the load.
The storm was pouring over them now, like water out of a spout; it
seared and blinded them; its touch was like that of a flame.
Nevertheless they struggled on into the smother, making what headway
they could. The Indian led, pulling at the end of a rope; Grant strained
at the sled and hoarsely encouraged the dogs; Cantwell stumbled and
lurched in the rear like an unwilling prisoner. When he fell his
companion lifted him, then beat him, cursed him, tried in every way to
rouse him from his lethargy.
After an interminable time they found they were descending and this gave
them heart to plunge ahead more rapidly. The dogs began to trot as the
sled overran them; they rushed blindly into gullies, fetching up at the
bottom in a tangle, and Johnny followed in a nerveless, stupefied
condition. He was dragged like a sack of flour for his legs were limp
and he lacked muscular control, but every dash, every fall, every quick
descent drove the sluggish blood through his veins and cleared his brain
momentarily. Such moments were fleeting, however; much of the time his
mind was a blank, and it was only by a mechanical effort that he fought
off unconsciousness.
He had vague memories of many beatings at Mort's hands, of the slippery
clean-swept ice of a stream over which he limply skidded, of being
carried into a tent where a candle flickered and a stove roared. Grant
was holding something hot to his lips, and then--
It was morning. He was weak and sick; he felt as if he had awakened from
a hideous dream. "I played out, didn't I?" he queried, wonderingly.
"You sure did," Grant laughed. "It was a tight squeak, old boy. I never
thought I'd get you through."
"Played out! I--can't understand it." Cantwell prided himself on his
strength and stamina, therefore the truth was unbelievable. He and Mort
had long been partners, they had given and taken much at each other's
hands, but this was something altogether different. Grant had saved his
life, at risk of his own; the older man's endurance had been the greater
and he had used it to good advantage. It embarrassed Johnny tremendously
to realize that he had proved unequal to his share of the work, for he
had never before experienced such an obligation. He apologized
repeatedly during the few days he lay sick, and meanwhile Mort waited
upon him like a mother.
Cantwell was relieved when at last they had abandoned camp, changed
guides at the next village, and were on their way along the coast, for
somehow he felt very sensitive about his collapse. He was, in fact,
extremely ashamed of himself.
Once he had fully recovered he had no further trouble, but soon rounded
into fit condition and showed no effects of his ordeal. Day after day he
and Mort traveled through the solitudes, their isolation broken only by
occasional glimpses of native villages, where they rested briefly and
renewed their supply of dog feed.
But although the younger man was now as well and strong as ever, he was
uncomfortably conscious that his trail mate regarded him as the weaker
of the two and shielded him in many ways. Grant performed most of the
unpleasant tasks, and occasionally cautioned Johnny about overdoing.
This protective attitude at first amused, then offended Cantwell, it
galled him until he was upon the point of voicing his resentment, but
reflected that he had no right to object, for, judging by past
performances, he had proved his inferiority. This uncomfortable
realization forever arose to prevent open rebellion, but he asserted
himself secretly by robbing Grant of his self-appointed tasks. He rose
first in the mornings, he did the cooking, he lengthened his turns
ahead of the dogs, he mended harness after the day's hike had ended. Of
course the older man objected, and for a time they had a good-natured
rivalry as to who should work and who should rest--only it was not quite
so good-natured on Cantwell's part as he made it appear.
Mort broke out in friendly irritation one day: "Don't try to do
everything, Johnny. Remember I'm no cripple."
"Humph! You proved that. I guess it's up to me to do your work."
"Oh, forget that day on the pass, can't you?"
Johnny grunted a second time, and from his tone it was evident that he
would never forget, unpleasant though the memory remained. Sensing his
sullen resentment, the other tried to rally him, but made a bad job of
it. The humor of men in the open is not delicate; their wit and their
words become coarsened in direct proportion as they revert to the
primitive; it is one effect of the solitudes.
Grant spoke extravagantly, mockingly, of his own superiority in a way
which ordinarily would have brought a smile to Cantwell's lips, but the
latter did not smile. He taunted Johnny humorously on his lack of
physical prowess, his lack of good looks and manly qualities--something
which had never failed to result in a friendly exchange of badinage; he
even teased him about his defeat with the Katmai girl.
Cantwell did respond finally, but afterward he found himself wondering
if Mort could have been in earnest. He dismissed the thought with some
impatience. But men on the trail have too much time for their thoughts;
there is nothing in the monotonous routine of the day's work to distract
them, so the partner who had played out dwelt more and more upon his
debt and upon his friend's easy assumption of preeminence. The weight of
obligation began to chafe him, lightly at first, but with
ever-increasing discomfort. He began to think that Grant honestly
considered himself the better man, merely because chance had played into
his hands.
It was silly, even childish, to dwell on the subject, he reflected, and
yet he could not banish it from his mind. It was always before him, in
one form or another. He felt the strength in his lean muscles, and
sneered at the thought that Mort should be deceived. If it came to a
physical test he felt sure he could break his slighter partner with his
bare hands, and as for endurance--well, he was hungry for a chance to
demonstrate it.
They talked little; men seldom converse in the wastes, for there is
something about the silence of the wilderness which discourages speech.
And no land is so grimly silent, so hushed and soundless, as the frozen
North. For days they marched through desolation, without glimpse of
human habitation, without sight of track or trail, without sound of a
human voice to break the monotony. There was no game in the country,
with the exception of an occasional bird or rabbit, nothing but the
white hills, the fringe of alder tops along the watercourses, and the
thickets of gnarled, unhealthy spruce in the smothered valleys.
Their destination was a mysterious stream at the headwaters of the
unmapped Kuskokwim, where rumor said there was gold, and whither they
feared other men were hastening from the mining country far to the
north.
Now it is a penalty of the White Country that men shall think of women;
Cantwell began to brood upon the Katmai girl, for she was the last; her
eyes were haunting and distance had worked its usual enchantment. He
reflected that Mort had shouldered him aside and won her favor, then
boasted of it. Johnny awoke one night with a dream of her, and lay
quivering.
"She was only a squaw," he said, half aloud. "If I'd really tried--"
Grant lay beside him, snoring, the heat of their bodies intermingled.
The waking man tried to compose himself, but his partner's stertorous
breathing irritated him beyond measure; for a long time he remained
motionless, staring into the gray blurr of the tent top. He had played
out. He owed his life to the man who had cheated him of the Katmai girl,
and that man knew it. He had become a weak, helpless thing, dependent
upon another's strength, and that other now accepted his superiority as
a matter of course. The obligation was insufferable, and--it was
unjust. The North had played him a devilish trick, it had betrayed him,
it had bound him to his benefactor with chains of gratitude which were
irksome. Had they been real chains they could have galled him no more
than at this moment.
As time passed the men spoke less frequently to each other. Grant joshed
his mate roughly, once or twice, masking beneath an assumption of
jocularity his own vague irritation at the change that had come over
them. It was as if he had probed at an open wound with clumsy fingers.
Cantwell had by this time assumed most of those petty camp tasks which
provoke tired trailers, those humdrum duties which are so trying to
exhausted nerves, and of course they wore upon him as they wear upon
every man. But, once he had taken them over, he began to resent Grant's
easy relinquishment; it rankled him to realize how willingly the other
allowed him to do the cooking, the dish-washing, the fire-building, the
bed-making. Little monotonies of this kind form the hardest part of
winter travel, they are the rocks upon which friendships founder and
partnerships are wrecked. Out on the trail, nature equalizes the work to
a great extent, and no man can shirk unduly, but in camp, inside the
cramped confines of a tent pitched on boughs laid over the snow, it is
very different. There one must busy himself while the other rests and
keeps his legs out of the way if possible. One man sits on the bedding
at the rear of the shelter, and shivers, while the other squats over a
tantalizing fire of green wood, blistering his face and parboiling his
limbs inside his sweaty clothing. Dishes must be passed, food divided,
and it is poor food, poorly prepared at best. Sometimes men criticize
and voice longings for better grub and better cooking. Remarks of this
kind have been known to result in tragedies, bitter words and flaming
curses--then, perhaps, wild actions, memories of which the later years
can never erase.
It is but one prank of the wilderness, one grim manifestation of its
silent forces.
Had Grant been unable to do his part Cantwell would have willingly
accepted the added burden, but Mort was able, he was nimble and "handy,"
he was the better cook of the two; in fact, he was the better man in
every way--or so he believed. Cantwell sneered at the last thought, and
the memory of his debt was like bitter medicine.
His resentment--in reality nothing more than a phase of insanity begot
of isolation and silence--could not help but communicate itself to his
companion, and there resulted a mutual antagonism, which grew into a
dislike, then festered into something more, something strange,
reasonless, yet terribly vivid and amazingly potent for evil. Neither
man ever mentioned it--their tongues were clenched between their teeth
and they held themselves in check with harsh hands--but it was
constantly in their minds, nevertheless. No man who has not suffered the
manifold irritations of such an intimate association can appreciate the
gnawing canker of animosity like this. It was dangerous because there
was no relief from it: the two were bound together as by gyves; they
shared each other's every action and every plan; they trod in each
other's tracks, slept in the same bed, ate from the same plate. They
were like prisoners ironed to the same staple.
Each fought the obsession in his own way, but it is hard to fight the
impalpable, hence their sick fancies grew in spite of themselves. Their
minds needed food to prey upon, but found none. Each began to criticize
the other silently, to sneer at his weaknesses, to meditate derisively
upon his peculiarities. After a time they no longer resisted the advance
of these poisonous thoughts, but welcomed it.
On more than one occasion the embers of their wrath were upon the point
of bursting into flame, but each realized that the first ill-considered
word would serve to slip the leash from those demons that were straining
to go free, and so managed to restrain himself.
The crisis came one crisp morning when a dog team whirled around a bend
in the river and a white man hailed them. He was the mail carrier, on
his way out from Nome, and he brought news of the "inside."
"Where are you boys bound for?" he inquired when greetings were over
and gossip of the trail had passed.
"We're going to the Stony River strike," Grant told him.
"Stony River? Up the Kuskokwim?"
"Yes!"
The mail man laughed. "Can you beat that? Ain't you heard about Stony
River?"
"No!"
"Why, it's a fake--no such place."
There was a silence; the partners avoided each other's eyes.
"MacDonald, the fellow that started it, is on his way to Dawson. There's
a gang after him, too, and if he's caught it'll go hard with him. He
wrote the letters--to himself--and spread the news just to raise a
grubstake. He cleaned up big before they got onto him. He peddled his
tips for real money."
"Yes!" Grant spoke quietly. "Johnny bought one. That's what brought us
from Seattle. We went out on the last boat and figured we'd come in from
this side before the break-up. So--fake!"
"Gee! You fellers bit good." The mail carrier shook his head. "Well!
You'd better keep going now; you'll get to Nome before the season opens.
Better take dogfish from Bethel--it's four bits a pound on the Yukon.
Sorry I didn't hit your camp last night; we'd 'a' had a visit. Tell the
gang that you saw me." He shook hands ceremoniously, yelled at his
panting dogs, and went swiftly on his way, waving a mitten on high as he
vanished around the next bend.
The partners watched him go, then Grant turned to Johnny, and repeated:
"Fake! MacDonald stung you."
Cantwell's face went as white as the snow behind him, his eyes blazed.
"Why did you tell him I bit?" he demanded harshly.
"Hunh! _Didn't_ you bite? Two thousand miles afoot; three months of
Hades; for nothing. That's biting some."
"_Well!_" The speaker's face was convulsed, and Grant's flamed with an
answering anger. They glared at each other for a moment. "Don't blame
me. You fell for it, too."
"I----" Mort checked his rushing words.
"Yes, _you_! Now, what are you going to do about it? Welsh?"
"I'm going through to Nome." The sight of his partner's rage had set
Mort to shaking with a furious desire to fly at his throat, but
fortunately, he retained a spark of sanity.
"Then shut up, and quit chewing the rag. You--talk too much."
Mort's eyes were bloodshot; they fell upon the carbine under the sled
lashings, and lingered there, then wavered. He opened his lips,
reconsidered, spoke softly to the team, then lifted the heavy dog whip
and smote the Malemutes with all his strength.
The men resumed their journey without further words, but each was
cursing inwardly.
"So! I talk too much," Grant thought. The accusation struck in his mind
and he determined to speak no more.
"He blames me," Cantwell reflected, bitterly. "I'm in wrong again and he
couldn't keep his mouth shut. A fine partner, he is!"
All day they plodded on, neither trusting himself to speak. They ate
their evening meal like mutes; they avoided each other's eyes. Even the
guide noticed the change and looked on curiously.
There were two robes and these the partners shared nightly, but their
hatred had grown so during the past few hours that the thought of lying
side by side, limb to limb, was distasteful.
Yet neither dared suggest a division of the bedding, for that would have
brought further words and resulted in the crash which they longed for,
but feared. They stripped off their furs, and lay down beside each other
with the same repugnance they would have felt had there been a serpent
in the couch.
This unending malevolent silence became terrible. The strain of it
increased, for each man now had something definite to cherish in the
words and the looks that had passed. They divided the camp work with
scrupulous nicety, each man waited upon himself and asked no favors. The
knowledge of his debt forever chafed Cantwell; Grant resented his
companion's lack of gratitude.
Of course they spoke occasionally--it was beyond human endurance to
remain entirely dumb--but they conversed in monosyllables, about trivial
things, and their voices were throaty, as if the effort choked them.
Meanwhile they continued to glow inwardly at a white heat.
Cantwell no longer felt the desire merely to match his strength against
Grant's; the estrangement had become too wide for that; a physical
victory would have been flat and tasteless; he craved some deeper
satisfaction. He began to think of the ax--just how or when or why he
never knew. It was a thin-bladed, polished thing of frosty steel, and
the more he thought of it the stronger grew his impulse to rid himself
once for all of that presence which exasperated him. It would be very
easy, he reasoned; a sudden blow, with the weight of his shoulders
behind it--he fancied he could feel the bit sink into Grant's flesh,
cleaving bone and cartilages in its course--a slanting downward stroke,
aimed at the neck where it joined the body, and he would be forever
satisfied. It would be ridiculously simple. He practiced in the gloom of
evening as he felled spruce trees for firewood; he guarded the ax
religiously; it became a living thing which urged him on to violence. He
saw it standing by the tent fly when he closed his eyes to sleep; he
dreamed of it; he sought it out with his eyes when he first awoke. He
slid it loosely under the sled lashings every morning, thinking that its
use could not long be delayed.
As for Grant, the carbine dwelt forever in his mind, and his fingers
itched for it. He secretly slipped a cartridge into the chamber, and
when an occasional ptarmigan offered itself for a target he saw the
white spot on the breast of Johnny's reindeer parka, dancing ahead of
the Lyman bead.
The solitude had done its work; the North had played its grim comedy to
the final curtain, making sport of men's affections and turning love to
rankling hate. But into the mind of each man crept a certain craftiness.
Each longed to strike, but feared to face the consequences. It was
lonesome, here among the white hills and the deathly silences, yet they
reflected that it would be still more lonesome if they were left to keep
step with nothing more substantial than a memory. They determined,
therefore, to wait until civilization was nearer, meanwhile rehearsing
the moment they knew was inevitable. Over and over in their thoughts
each of them enacted the scene, ending it always with the picture of a
prostrate man in a patch of trampled snow which grew crimson as the
other gloated.
They paused at Bethel Mission long enough to load with dried salmon,
then made the ninety-mile portage over lake and tundra to the Yukon.
There they got their first touch of the "inside" world. They camped in a
barabora where white men had slept a few nights before, and heard their
own language spoken by native tongues. The time was growing short now,
and they purposely dismissed their guide, knowing that the trail was
plain from there on. When they hitched up, on the next morning, Cantwell
placed the ax, bit down, between the tarpaulin and the sled rail,
leaving the helve projecting where his hand could reach it. Grant thrust
the barrel of the rifle beneath a lashing, with the butt close by the
handle-bars, and it was loaded.
A mile from the village they were overtaken by an Indian and his squaw,
traveling light behind hungry dogs. The natives attached themselves to
the white men and hung stubbornly to their heels, taking advantage of
their tracks. When night came they camped alongside, in the hope of
food. They announced that they were bound for St. Michaels, and in spite
of every effort to shake them off they remained close behind the
partners until that point was reached.
At St. Michaels there were white men, practically the first Johnny and
Mort had encountered since landing at Katmai, and for a day at least
they were sane. But there were still three hundred miles to be traveled,
three hundred miles of solitude and haunting thoughts. Just as they were
about to start, Cantwell came upon Grant and the A. C. agent, and heard
his name pronounced, also the word "Katmai." He noted that Mort fell
silent at his approach, and instantly his anger blazed afresh. He
decided that the latter had been telling the story of their experience
on the pass and boasting of his service. So much the better, he
thought, in a blind rage; that which he planned doing would appear all
the more like an accident, for who would dream that a man could kill the
person to whom he owed his life?
That night he waited for a chance.
They were camped in a dismal hut on a wind-swept shore; they were alone.
But Grant was waiting also, it seemed. They lay down beside each other,
ostensibly to sleep; their limbs touched; the warmth from their bodies
intermingled, but they did not close their eyes.
They were up and away early, with Nome drawing rapidly nearer. They had
skirted an ocean, foot by foot; Bering Sea lay behind them, now, and its
northern shore swung westward to their goal. For two months they had
lived in silent animosity, feeding on bitter food while their elbows
rubbed.
Noon found them floundering through one of those unheralded storms which
make coast travel so hazardous. The morning had turned off gray, the sky
was of a leaden hue which blended perfectly with the snow underfoot,
there was no horizon, it was impossible to see more than a few yards in
any direction. The trail soon became obliterated and their eyes began to
play tricks. For all they could distinguish, they might have been
suspended in space; they seemed to be treading the measures of an
endless dance in the center of a whirling cloud. Of course it was cold,
for the wind off the open sea was damp, but they were not men to turn
back.
They soon discovered that their difficulty lay not in facing the storm,
but in holding to the trail. That narrow, two-foot causeway, packed by a
winter's travel and frozen into a ribbon of ice by a winter's frosts,
afforded their only avenue of progress, for the moment they left it the
sled plowed into the loose snow, well-nigh disappearing and bringing the
dogs to a standstill. It was the duty of the driver, in such case, to
wallow forward, right the load if necessary, and lift it back into
place. These mishaps were forever occurring, for it was impossible to
distinguish the trail beneath its soft covering. However, if the
driver's task was hard it was no more trying than that of the man ahead,
who was compelled to feel out and explore the ridge of hardened snow and
ice with his feet, after the fashion of a man walking a plank in the
dark. Frequently he lunged into the drifts with one foot, or both; his
glazed mukluk soles slid about, causing him to bestride the invisible
hogback, or again his legs crossed awkwardly, throwing him off his
balance. At times he wandered away from the path entirely and had to
search it out again. These exertions were very wearing and they were
dangerous, also, for joints are easily dislocated, muscles twisted, and
tendons strained.
Hour after hour the march continued, unrelieved by any change, unbroken
by any speck or spot of color. The nerves of their eyes, wearied by
constant nearsighted peering at the snow, began to jump so that vision
became untrustworthy. Both travelers appreciated the necessity of
clinging to the trail, for, once they lost it, they knew they might
wander about indefinitely until they chanced to regain it or found their
way to the shore, while always to seaward was the menace of open water,
of air holes, or cracks which might gape beneath their feet like jaws.
Immersion in this temperature, no matter how brief, meant death.
The monotony of progress through this unreal, leaden world became almost
unbearable. The repeated strainings and twistings they suffered in
walking the slippery ridge reduced the men to weariness; their legs grew
clumsy and their feet uncertain. Had they found a camping place they
would have stopped, but they dared not forsake the thin thread that
linked them with safety to go and look for one, not knowing where the
shore lay. In storms of this kind men have lain in their sleeping bags
for days within a stone's throw of a road-house or village. Bodies have
been found within a hundred yards of shelter after blizzards have
abated.
Cantwell and Grant had no choice, therefore, except to bore into the
welter of drifting flakes.
It was late in the afternoon when the latter met with an accident.
Johnny, who had taken a spell at the rear, heard him cry out, saw him
stagger, struggle to hold his footing, then sink into the snow. The
dogs paused instantly, lay down, and began to strip the ice pellets
from between their toes.
Cantwell spoke harshly, leaning upon the handle-bars: "Well! What's the
idea?"
It was the longest sentence of the day.
"I've--hurt myself." Mort's voice was thin and strange; he raised
himself to a sitting posture, and reached beneath his parka, then lay
back weakly. He writhed, his face was twisted with pain. He continued to
lie there, doubled into a knot of suffering. A groan was wrenched from
between his teeth.
"Hurt? How?" Johnny inquired, dully.
It seemed very ridiculous to see that strong man kicking around in the
snow.
"I've ripped something loose--here." Mort's palms were pressed in upon
his groin, his fingers were clutching something. "Ruptured--I guess." He
tried again to rise, but sank back. His cap had fallen off and his
forehead glistened with sweat.
Cantwell went forward and lifted him. It was the first time in many days
that their hands had touched, and the sensation affected him strangely.
He struggled to repress a devilish mirth at the thought that Grant had
played out--it amounted to that and nothing less; the trail had
delivered him into his enemy's hands, his hour had struck. Johnny
determined to square the debt now, once for all, and wipe his own mind
clean of that poison which corroded it. His muscles were strong, his
brain clear, he had never felt his strength so irresistible as at this
moment, while Mort, for all his boasted superiority, was nothing but a
nerveless thing hanging limp against his breast. Providence had arranged
it all. The younger man was impelled to give raucous voice to his glee,
and yet--his helpless burden exerted an odd effect upon him.
He deposited his foe upon the sled and stared at the face he had not met
for many days. He saw how white it was, how wet and cold, how weak and
dazed, then as he looked he cursed inwardly, for the triumph of his
moment was spoiled.
The ax was there, its polished bit showed like a piece of ice, its helve
protruded handily, but there was no need of it now; his fingers were all
the weapons Johnny needed; they were more than sufficient, in fact, for
Mort was like a child.
Cantwell was a strong man, and, although the North had coarsened him,
yet underneath the surface was a chivalrous regard for all things weak,
and this the trail madness had not affected. He had longed for this
instant, but now that it had come he felt no enjoyment, since he could
not harm a sick man and waged no war on cripples. Perhaps, when Mort had
rested, they could settle their quarrel; this was as good a place as
any. The storm hid them, they would leave no traces, there could be no
interruption.
But Mort did not rest. He could not walk; movement brought excruciating
pain.
Finally Cantwell heard himself saying: "Better wrap up and lie still
for a while. I'll get the dogs underway." His words amazed him dully.
They were not at all what he had intended to say.
The injured man demurred, but the other insisted gruffly, then brought
him his mittens and cap, slapping the snow out of them before rousing
the team to motion. The load was very heavy now, the dogs had no
footprints to guide them, and it required all of Cantwell's efforts to
prevent capsizing. Night approached swiftly, the whirling snow particles
continued to flow past upon the wind, shrouding the earth in an
impenetrable pall.
The journey soon became a terrible ordeal, a slow, halting progress that
led nowhere and was accomplished at the cost of tremendous exertion.
Time after time Johnny broke trail, then returned and urged the huskies
forward to the end of his tracks. When he lost the path he sought it
out, laboriously hoisted the sledge back into place, and coaxed his
four-footed helpers to renewed effort. He was drenched with
perspiration, his inner garments were steaming, his outer ones were
frozen into a coat of armor; when he paused he chilled rapidly. His
vision was untrustworthy, also, and he felt snow blindness coming on.
Grant begged him more than once to unroll the bedding and prepare to
sleep out the storm; he even urged Johnny to leave him and make a dash
for his own safety, but at this the younger man cursed and told him to
hold his tongue.
Night found the lone driver slipping, plunging, lurching ahead of the
dogs, or shoving at the handle-bars and shouting at the dogs. Finally,
during a pause for rest he heard a sound which roused him. Out of the
gloom to the right came the faint complaining howl of a malemute; it was
answered by his own dogs, and the next moment they had caught a scent
which swerved them shoreward and led them scrambling through the drifts.
Two hundred yards, and a steep bank loomed above, up and over which they
rushed, with Cantwell yelling encouragement; then a light showed, and
they were in the lee of a low-roofed hut.
A sick native, huddled over a Yukon stove, made them welcome to his mean
abode, explaining that his wife and son had gone to Unalaklik for
supplies.
Johnny carried his partner to the one unoccupied bunk and stripped his
clothes from him. With his own hands he rubbed the warmth back into
Mortimer's limbs, then swiftly prepared hot food, and, holding him in
the hollow of his aching arm, fed him, a little at a time. He was like
to drop from exhaustion, but he made no complaint. With one folded robe
he made the hard boards comfortable, then spread the other as a
covering. For himself he sat beside the fire and fought his weariness.
When he dozed off and the cold awakened him, he renewed the fire; he
heated beef tea, and, rousing Mort, fed it to him with a teaspoon. All
night long, at intervals, he tended the sick man, and Grant's eyes
followed him with an expression that brought a fierce pain to Cantwell's
throat.
"You're mighty good--after the rotten way I acted," the former whispered
once.
And Johnny's big hand trembled so that he spilled the broth.
His voice was low and tender as he inquired, "Are you resting easier
now?"
The other nodded.
"Maybe you're not hurt badly, after--all. God! That would be awful----"
Cantwell choked, turned away, and, raising his arms against the log
wall, buried his face in them.
* * * * *
The morning broke clear; Grant was sleeping. As Johnny stiffly mounted
the creek bank with a bucket of water he heard a jingle of sleighbells
and saw a sled with two white men swing in toward the cabin.
"Hello!" he called, then heard his own name pronounced.
"Johnny Cantwell, by all that's holy!"
The next moment he was shaking hands vigorously with two old friends
from Nome.
"Martin and me are bound for Saint Mikes," one of them explained. "Where
the deuce did you come from, Johnny?"
"The 'outside.' Started for Stony River, but--"
"Stony River!" The newcomers began to laugh loudly and Cantwell joined
them. It was the first time he had laughed for weeks. He realized the
fact with a start, then recollected also his sleeping partner, and said:
"Sh-h! Mort's inside, asleep!"
During the night everything had changed for Johnny Cantwell; his mental
attitude, his hatred, his whole reasonless insanity. Everything was
different now, even his debt was canceled, the weight of obligation was
removed, and his diseased fancies were completely cured.
"Yes! Stony River," he repeated, grinning broadly. "I bit!"
Martin burst forth, gleefully: "They caught MacDonald at Holy Cross and
ran him out on a limb. He'll never start another stampede. Old man Baker
gun-branded him."
"What's the matter with Mort?" inquired the second traveler.
"He's resting up. Yesterday, during the storm he--" Johnny was upon the
point of saying "played out," but changed it to "had an accident. We
thought it was serious, but a few days' rest'll bring him around all
right. He saved me at Katmai, coming in. I petered out and threw up my
tail, but he got me through. Come inside and tell him the news."
"Sure thing."
"Well, well!" Martin said. "So you and Mort are still partners, eh?"
"_Still_ partners?" Johnny took up the pail of water. "Well, rather!
We'll always be partners." His voice was young and full and hearty as he
continued: "Why, Mort's the best fellow in the world. I'd lay down my
life for him."
FOOTNOTE:
[5] From _The Crimson Garden_. Copyright, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1916, by
Harper and Brothers. Reprinted by special permission of publisher and
author.
[Illustration]
VI.--That Spot[6]
_By Jack London_
I DON'T think much of Stephen Mackaye any more, though I used to swear
by him. I know that in those days I loved him more than my brother. If
ever I meet Stephen Mackaye again, I shall not be responsible for my
actions. It passes beyond me that a man with whom I shared food and
blanket, and with whom I mushed over the Chilcoot Trail, should turn out
the way he did. I always sized Steve up as a square man, a kindly
comrade, without an iota of anything vindictive or malicious in his
nature. I shall never trust my judgment in men again. Why, I nursed that
man through typhoid fever; we starved together on the headwaters of the
Stewart; and he saved my life on the Little Salmon. And now, after the
years we were together, all I can say of Stephen Mackaye is that he is
the meanest man I ever knew.
We started for the Klondike in the fall rush of 1897, and we started
too late to get over Chilcoot Pass before the freeze-up. We packed our
outfit on our backs part way over, when the snow began to fly, and then
we had to buy dogs in order to sled it the rest of the way. That was how
we came to get that Spot. Dogs were high, and we paid one hundred and
ten dollars for him. He looked worth it. I say _looked_, because he was
one of the finest-appearing dogs I ever saw. He weighed sixty pounds,
and he had all the lines of a good sled animal. We never could make out
his breed. He wasn't husky, nor Malemute, nor Hudson Bay; he looked like
all of them and he didn't look like any of them; and on top of it all he
had some of the white man's dog in him, for on one side, in the thick of
the mixed yellow-brown-red-and-dirty-white that was his prevailing
color, there was a spot of coal-black as big as a water bucket. That was
why we called him Spot.
He was a good looker all right. When he was in condition his muscles
stood out in bunches all over him. And he was the strongest-looking
brute I ever saw in Alaska, also the most intelligent-looking. To run
your eyes over him, you'd think he could outpull three dogs of his own
weight. Maybe he could, but I never saw it. His intelligence didn't run
that way. He could steal and forage to perfection; he had an instinct
that was positively gruesome for divining when work was to be done and
for making a sneak accordingly; and for getting lost and not staying
lost he was nothing short of inspired. But when it came to work, the
way that intelligence dribbled out of him and left him a mere clot of
wobbling, stupid jelly would make your heart bleed.
There are times when I think it wasn't stupidity. Maybe, like some men I
know, he was too wise to work. I shouldn't wonder if he put it all over
us with that intelligence of his. Maybe he figured it all out and
decided that a licking now and again and no work was a whole lot better
than work all the time and no licking. He was intelligent enough for
such a computation. I tell you, I've sat and looked into that dog's eyes
till the shivers ran up and down my spine and the marrow crawled like
yeast, what of the intelligence I saw shining out. I can't express
myself about that intelligence. It is beyond mere words. I saw it,
that's all. At times it was like gazing into a human soul, to look into
his eyes; and what I saw there frightened me and started all sorts of
ideas in my own mind of reincarnation and all the rest. I tell you I
sensed something big in that brute's eyes; there was a message there,
but I wasn't big enough myself to catch it. Whatever it was (I know I'm
making a fool of myself)--whatever it was, it baffled me. I can't give
an inkling of what I saw in that brute's eyes; it wasn't light, it
wasn't color; it was something that moved, away back, when the eyes
themselves weren't moving. And I guess I didn't see it move, either; I
only sensed that it moved. It was an expression,--that's what it
was,--and I got an impression of it. No; it was different from a mere
expression; it was more than that. I don't know what it was, but it gave
me a feeling of kinship just the same. Oh, no, not sentimental kinship.
It was, rather, a kinship of equality. Those eyes never pleaded like a
deer's eyes. They challenged. No, it wasn't defiance. It was just a calm
assumption of equality. And I don't think it was deliberate. My belief
is that it was unconscious on his part. It was there because it was
there, and it couldn't help shining out. No, I don't mean shine. It
didn't shine; it _moved_. I know I'm talking rot, but if you'd looked
into that animal's eyes the way I have, you'd understand. Steve was
affected the same way I was. Why, I tried to kill that Spot once--he was
no good for anything; and I fell down on it. I led him out into the
brush, and he came along slow and unwilling. He knew what was going on.
I stopped in a likely place, put my foot on the rope, and pulled my big
Colt's. And that dog sat down and looked at me. I tell you he didn't
plead. He just looked. And I saw all kinds of incomprehensible things
moving, yes, _moving_, in those eyes of his. I didn't really see them
move; I thought I saw them, for, as I said before, I guess I only sensed
them. And I want to tell you right now that it got beyond me. It was
like killing a man, a conscious, brave man who looked calmly into your
gun as much as to say, "Who's afraid?" Then, too, the message seemed so
near that, instead of pulling the trigger quick, I stopped to see if I
could catch the message. There it was, right before me, glimmering all
around in those eyes of his. And then it was too late. I got scared. I
was trembly all over, and my stomach generated a nervous palpitation
that made me seasick. I just sat down and looked at that dog, and he
looked at me, till I thought I was going crazy. Do you want to know what
I did? I threw down the gun and ran back to camp with the fear of God in
my heart. Steve laughed at me. But I notice that Steve led Spot into the
woods, a week later, for the same purpose, and that Steve came back
alone, and a little later Spot drifted back, too.
At any rate, Spot wouldn't work. We paid a hundred and ten dollars for
him from the bottom of our sa
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