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The Red River Half-Breed: A Tale of the Wild North-West

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Title: The Red River Half-Breed: A Tale of the Wild North-West

Author: Gustave Aimard

Editor: Percy B. St. John

Translator: Henry Llewellyn Williams


        
Release date: March 1, 2014 [eBook #45047]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED RIVER HALF-BREED: A TALE OF THE WILD NORTH-WEST ***
THE RED RIVER HALF-BREED

A TALE OF THE WILD NORTHWEST

BY

GUSTAVE AIMARD

AUTHOR OF "PRAIRIE FLOWER," "THE TREASURE OF PEARLS,"
"PIRATES OF THE PRAIRIES," &c., &c.

LONDON

JOHN and ROBERT MAXWELL

MILTON HOUSE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET

AND

35, ST. BRIDE STREET LUDGATE CIRCUS


(From the Collected Novels--1860-1885)

(Translation by Henry Llewellyn Williams - edited by: Percy B. St John.)





CONTENTS

         I. THE CREST OF THE CONTINENT
        II. THE FALSE PILOT
       III. THE MOUNTAINEER'S SNUG CABIN
        IV. THE MAN WHO RAN RIGHT INTO TROUBLE
         V. THE LONE MAN'S STORY
        VI. IN HOSTILE HANDS
       VII. CHEROKEE BILL RECRUITING
      VIII. THE GOLD GRABBERS
        IX. THE RED RIVER HALF-BREEDS
         X. THE STORM KING
        XI. THE IRRESISTIBLE BAIT
       XII. UNDER THE MARK
      XIII. THE BEAUTIFUL PRISONER'S FRIEND
       XIV. THE COMPACT
        XV. AN INGENIOUS INTRODUCTION
       XVI. THE THORN OF ROSES
      XVII. HOW "FRENCH PAUL" GOT HURT
     XVIII. ROSARIO BEGINS TO HOPE
       XIX. THE NEST OF TRAITORS
        XX. THE UNDERMINER
       XXI. THE BEST WAY TO LEARN IS TO LOOK AND LISTEN
      XXII. THE LATE VISITOR TO THE LADIES
     XXIII. A FOREST LETTER
      XXIV. THE YAGER'S "TREATY TALK" WITH OUR HERO
       XXV. WE HEAR FROM CHEROKEE BILL
      XXVI. THE ALL-POWERFUL EMBLEM
     XXVII. THE MOUNTAIN MAN IS REINFORCED
    XXVIII. DRAWING TO A HEAD
      XXIX. ON THE EVE OF THE ATTACK
       XXX. THE HALF-BREED DIES GAME
      XXXI. THE WOMEN'S CAMP




CHAPTER I.

THE CREST OF THE CONTINENT.


We stand on the loftiest peak of the Big Wind River Mountains, that
highest and longest chain of the Northern Rockies, a chaos of granite
fifteen thousand feet towards the firmament from the sea.

Around us the lesser pinnacles hold up heads as fantastic in shape as
an Indian's plumed for battle, and, below a little, diamonds of ice
deck the snowy ermine of the colossal giant's robe.

Far beneath, the mosses are grown upon by sparse grasses, and they
by scrub evergreens, gradually displaced in the descent to the warm
alcoved valleys by taller and taller pines, spruce, larch, and cedar.
But the ancient ocean wash here shows lines alone of the constant west
and southwest winds, which never bring a seed or grain into this calm
frigidity.

In the placid afternoon, the beats are audible of the wings of the king
of the air, that proud eagle which Milton chose as the finest emblem
of the American people who, in their vigorous youth, had lit their
eyes in the unclouded sunbeams; and the song of the Arctic bluebird,
startled by the unwonted squeaking of the dry ice powder intermixed
with ground fossils and granite, as horses in the uneven line of a new
and breakneck trail crunch antediluvian shells to atoms as they follow
a daring man up the heights along chasms of ten thousand feet, from the
western acclivity to the actual summit divide, not two yards wide.

It was November, a time when the almost impossible crossing was alone
in the power of man, since in the thaws of summer the ravines are choke
full of resistless water, and, later, the snowstorms are overwhelming.

The guide of the little train stood on the monstrous pedestal, firm
and unblenching as a statue, and contemplated with an impassioned but
unflinching eye the sublime spectacle four hundred miles in diameter.
Like the jags of a necklace, the peaks of the sierra protruded, and
like gems glittered the pure lakes of the mountain tops, those that
feed to both hands the western and eastern rivers: towards the Pole,
the Athabasca's Devil's Punchbowl, and the Two-world Pond under our
eyes, into which the salmon trout leap from the Orient, and flash down
into the Missouri for the Mexican Gulf!

Like steps of an immense staircase, the Plains of the Missouri,
Cheyenne, and Laramie extended, monotonous, drying up the mountain
flow in insatiate rocks and sands, and heaving up stone barriers to
the prairie ocean. Like a thin thread of water gleams the rails of
the Pacific Railroad, twenty thousand miles of metal over which the
dolefully hooting steam engine capers to connect the Iron and Coal
States with those of Gold and Corn.

But the presumptuous pigmy soon ceases to be impressed with the
grandeur and the magnificence, and lets an admiring glance dwell on
the shining face of the never-freezing Lake of the Yellowstone Valley,
and seems to feel no such awe as an Indian would have at viewing the
inimitable hues and fanciful wreaths of smoke which overhung the
mysterious Firehole Basin--the Geyser land of the scientific, the haunt
of the red man's demons and gods.

"Huh-la!" he cries to the horses and mules, and up they come in his
dauntless footsteps, and, the loads telling on them in the rarity of
the air, gladly snicker as they take the downward path at last, spite
of the peril.

Sunset impends, and the adventurer still urges the train till the last
arrival appears, goaded by a second pioneer, who seems of Indian blood.

The two men silently exchange a grasp of the hand, as if their task
were nearly accomplished, and plunge into the darkness, commencing to
climb the steeps as they commence what appears a mad descent. The stony
spires and domes glow like orange shaded lamps at a Chinese festival
along the chain for hundreds of miles, and, after one moment of
mezzotint, so scant is the twilight here, the stars of the Great Bear
stand out sparkling so near and so detached in the dark blue ether,
that the sound of the auroral lights dancing seems the crackle of the
orbs' own axles.

Surely it is worth while to follow two men so daring as to surmount the
greatest obstacle of Nature, and who carry themselves as if they, and
not the grizzly bear and eagle, were monarchs of this weird domain.




CHAPTER II.

THE FALSE PILOT.


To the north of the trappers, approaching, but out of their reach of
vision, a singular train was skimming over the snows. From a distance
one might have supposed it a flight of birds, for no four-footed
creatures could have travelled at that surprising pace.

But it was a procession of _carrioles_, or dog sledges, preceded by two
large ones. These were impelled by the wind alone, caught in sails,
which would be the tent canvas by night, fastened to masts set in the
breadth of the beam like that of an "ice yacht." The runners, on the
principle of a mail coach's, shoes were formed of thin wood turned
up in front; their width prevented the sledges sinking materially.
But the speed was what saved them better from being submerged in the
twenty-five feet dead level snow. Moreover, the steersmen, so to call
them, of the queer craft, were both fitted for their posts. The second
sledge was governed, thanks to the adroit manipulation of a tough pole,
by one of those Scotch-Americans who are the indisputable rulers of
the Northwest. At the cold they never wince; they are sober, prudent,
rather silent than talkative, as firm as a rock in defence, and as
trusty as a dog.

In the foremost snow ship an Indian was pilot and helmsman too. Upon
him depended the lives of all in those two vehicles. Those following
might swerve off from any danger they met by whipping the dogs to turn
quickly.

This savage seemed less thickly clad than the white men, who, however,
crouched down, but he flinched as little from the cutting blast as a
bronze statue. Now and again a whirl of wind caught up the ice crystals
and encircled his erect figure within the cruel clouds. The next moment
he was seen again, his face as sternly set, his eyes as rigidly bent
ahead, as before his disappearance.

The sense of safety he inspired and the glorious thrill which the
rapidity of the course provided left the passengers in a placid joy.

The dog sledges contained the provisions necessary in these uninhabited
wilds, with the hunters, servants, and guards of the party leader.
The second snow ship carried the more valuable property and the "new
hands," who could not be trusted with the semiwild dogs; under the
steersman, it was commanded by the secretary of the chief.

This gentleman was in the foremost conveyance with his daughter and the
most "reliable" men.

He was an important man, as this escort, nearly thirty strong,
abundantly manifested.

Sir Archie Maclan was a retired shipping merchant, enriched by the
Eastern tea and silk trade. He was chairman of a land purchase company
that contemplated founding a city on the line of the British Pacific
Railway. He never invested his money on hearsay, and he would not
ask his friends to do so either. Hence, having volunteered to go and
investigate, at his own expense, the shareholders had voted him thanks
and unanimously approved.

He was a widower, and took with him the sole object of his affection in
his daughter.

Miss Ulla Maclan was one of those fair Northern beauties, born types
of "Norma," though the black-haired and swart-complexioned Italians do
their most to mar our proper conception of that ideal of the druidess.
At the officers' ball at Québec, and the Mayor and Council ball in
Montreal, she had carried away the palms for grace, amiability and
loveliness.

Ofttimes dreamy and somewhat superstitious, Ulla had insisted upon
not being left behind when her father prepared to push west for the
Red River. As she was indomitable, he compromised as usual when they
disputed. He put off the original project till spring; and, in the
meanwhile, assented to her wish to see something of the marvels which
were currently reported of the Yellowstone Basin. By the greatest good
luck, an Indian was at Fort Sailor King who had come up that way.
The officers recommended him. In a few days he had proven himself
weather-wise, brave, devoted, cautious as Sandy Ferguson himself, and
more ingenious than nine out of ten of his race.

Little by little he had risen in esteem till no one was hurt by his
having charge of the patron and his precious daughter, for whom any man
would gladly have died. If there were one exception to this universal
homage to talent in the scorned aborigine, it was the English secretary
of Sir Archie, and that distrust seemed to be caused by a kind of
jealousy at being consigned to the other sailing sledge, remote from
the charming girl. But then, had he exhaled any plaint, who would have
listened to him--a raw Old Country sportsman, who carried his rifle
slung across his shoulders when he went gunning?

There was one drawback to the full enjoyment of the fleet course: the
immense and oppressive silence. All the deer were stripping the trees
of bark and moss in secret coverts; even the Arctic fox kept secluded
behind the tops of trees buried in the snow, so that they seemed mere
topknots of Indians. The dogs wore no bells; the men talked in whispers.

Nevertheless, the complete desert offered no cause for alarm. But
the illimitable white field, the ice-clad mountains, the mighty
wind that hurried the two ponderous sledges onward as if they were
feathers--these struck the rudest with awe as the short day closed in.

As darkness threatened the men brightened in their chat. Visions of
hot tea made lips water, where, alas, the frost seized the moisture
instantly.

For hours the uninterrupted rush had been maintained. Few obstacles
cropped up which the Indian had not avoided with dexterity and warned
his successor of by a sharp cry.

The wind strengthened with the dusk. A faint dark blue line at length
revealed the limit of the snowy plateau. It was so swiftly "lifted"
that in an hour or so all believed they would be camping down in
shelter of a forest which would furnish the welcome fire.

The Indian himself relaxed his muscles, for they saw him faintly smile
too.

All at once he began to murmur, and then to utter audibly a curious
monotonous chant, which amused Miss Maclan. Her father had dozed off in
the warm furs that muffled them both.

"Oh, the Chippeway is singing," she remarked. "What a funny song! I
cannot call it lively, though."

"Lively be hanged!" burst out the Canadian at her elbow, who had never
been so rude before. "It's a death song. Look out, mates. _Au guet,
camarades!_" with a great shout, "This red nigger's turned 'bad!'"

The savage responded to the accusation by a defiant whoop. Fifty
different spots sent up its echo, and what seemed wolves bounded up out
of the snow here and there in the gathering gloom.

It was too late for the hunters to attempt a seizure of the steersman.
Already they were paralyzed, as they had partly arisen, by beholding
the snow plain unexpectedly end in a sheer descent. Two seconds after
the first sledge was over the precipice; in five the second followed.
Three or four men leaped out of this--of the other it was impossible
to do so in time, and it sank in the snow of which their leap broke
the crust. The conductors of the dog sledges began plying their whips,
and the yelping of the dogs rent the frosty air. Upon these fugitives,
scattered on each side, the fifty dark figures shot arrows with almost
a fatal aim.

By night, in about half an hour only, no living representative of the
party seemed forthcoming. Till then the assailing force had not relaxed
their murderous intentions. Dragging the dog sledges to a hollow,
where they could light a fire unobserved, they greedily feasted on the
provisions, with the additional dainty of one of the dogs roasted for
"fresh meat!"

In the morning they descended into the chasm where the Indian guide
had so deliberately wrecked the "canoes-that-slide-on-the-snow." None
of the fallen had survived the descent as far as they could be found
in the snow. They were smothered, or the cold had killed them in the
long night. Over the whites the Indians showed no emotion save a brutal
rejoicing. But it was different when they discovered the body of their
countryman. Not only were they a little perplexed how to regard a
suicide which so profited the tribe, for the Indian rarely commits that
crime, but Sandy Ferguson, chancing to be hurled near the villain, had
dragged himself, though his limbs were dislocated, so as to fall on
him, and had half torn off his scalp when death had fastened his icy
grip on him.

The joy of the victors was thus damped. They sang over their
martyr-hero, and, bestowing on his corpse the prizes he would have won
if alive, gave him a chief's burial.

"He was a great man, and _Ahnemekee_ (the Thunderbolt) gives up his own
trophy, the English gun, to adorn his last sleeping place. May the fear
inspiring Crow nation never know the son who would not do as much to
lead a prey into their grasp. Ahnemekee salutes thee!"

They had rigged up a kind of bed with crosspieces in the united apex of
fern pines. These were within reach of the men on the snow at present.
When the thaws came, the dead Crow, laid upon this platform, would be
forty feet in the air. About him was laid and hung his share of the
spoil due to his long and patient plotting.

In times of distress, the funereal offerings to any Indian of mark may
be as symbolical and worthless, intrinsically, as the cut paper of the
Chinese. But when valuables can be afforded, they themselves are left
with the dead, and dogs and horses are sacrificed.

On the completion of this mournful ceremony the Crows departed, sure
that they had made a clean sweep of the party, so skilfully and
daringly decoyed to their doom by the pretended Chippeway. Not till the
stealing up of the whitened wolves proved they had long since left the
wind untainted with their odour did the rubbish heap of a large decayed
tree move as if a gigantic mole were in operation, and the apprehensive
face of Miss Maclan showed itself.

Apparently she alone had escaped the butchery following the hurling of
the large sledges over into the snowy gulf.

Spilt out, like all the other occupants of the vehicle except two or
three, when it "turned turtle" in its leap, the sail had chanced to
embosom her in its folds as the circularly rising column of cold air
from below caught it and momentarily swelled it out. By this accident
the swiftness was lessened. Nevertheless, the sail was soon snatched
from her and rent to shreds, whilst she landed on the touchwood of the
storm felled cedar.

When she recovered consciousness it was night. She fancied she heard a
voice calling, but that may have been pure fancy. On the height above
she could hear only too plainly the ghoulish merriment of the Indians
over their carouse, and the moans of some wretch being tortured to add
a zest to their regale. All she had heard of the redskin's merciless
treatment of women captives impressed her. She crept still more deeply
into the cavity of the rotten tree, and waited with little hope. Not
a sound to cheer her in her neighbourhood. Absorbed in prayers, to
drive away the poignant anxiety for her father, she did not feel the
intense cold. As for that, she was well garbed in superb furs, the
double clothing which Canadian ladies had chosen for her with their
experience, when she announced her resolve to accompany her father.

When dawn came, her fears were harrowing. Around and even over her
head in her ambush, the ravenous foe scampered and scuttled like the
beasts of rapine and carnage they were. They probed the snow and every
cleft of the rocks to secure the hairy trophies from the hapless
crews of the snow ships. Not one could have been found alive, for at
each unearthing, Ulla judged by the tone that the finders experienced
disappointment. On the other hand, the spoil of the sledges was
embarrassing in its quantity for the band.

She dared not peep out; she dreaded that the feeble blue thread of
condensed breath from her nook would betray her. She did not see,
therefore, that, unable to bear away more than a tenth of the plunder,
the rest was hidden under the precipice.

At last came the time when hunger drove her forth. The desolation and
stillness in this hollow were overwhelming. The snow was trampled
and pulled about by the searchers. Dead bodies, gashed and unlimbed,
strewed the late virgin white expanse, amid the broken boxes and
disrupted cases.

Ulla shuddered to tread among these hideous corpses, where it was
impossible for her to recognise her late companions. To find her father
was a vain idea. She took a smashed tin of meat and some chocolate, and
ate ferociously.

On high, the stars glittered with a cold brightness, which revealed
they saw her misery and grief, but offered no consolation. On the edge
of the precipice, gorged wolves, that had devoured the _voyageurs_ up
there, were lazily contemplating the solitary form with motion in the
wreck, and among the human remains of the expedition so gay and gallant
fifty hours before.

Her ungovernable appetite appeased, and her thirst far from quenched by
sucking a snowball, she mournfully reflected on her plight.

A child of luxury, it was more a nightmare than reality that she could
be here, in the Northwestern desert, the great mass of the Rocky
Mountains looming up beyond, impressive, insurmountable, and on the
other three points, a thousand miles of snow! And she a young girl,
alone!

A company of sappers and miners would have had a week's work in the
ironbound soil under the snow to inter this mangled _débris_ of
mortality. For her to attempt the pious duty was a mockery.

Nevertheless, when the moon rose, a frenzied impulse to veil the poor
creatures, with at least a little shrouding snow, would have set her
in action. But at the first step towards the nearest corpse, with its
trunk bristling with arrows, and its eyeless sockets appealing to the
Creator against the barbarous outrage, Ulla stopped short.

She was fascinated by the spectacle presented at the junction of
protruding pines where the deceptive Indian guide reposed upon the
platform. The moon inundated it with tremulous beams.

Suddenly she was sure that the body was animated. So do the vampires
spring to life when the moon bathes them in radiance. Certainly the
figure sat up cautiously; the pale face was even visible; with a steady
hand some of the trophies which adorned the monument were unhanged
from the branches--the knife of Sandy Ferguson, the English rifle and
cartridge container of her father, diverse appurtenances which had been
left to equip the departing spirit for the happy hunting ground "over
the range" yonder.

Thus armed, the ghastly phantom leaped down, and threatened to march
upon the horrified observer. Already three wolves, descending the face
of the bluff, sniffed danger. As the spectre proceeded, the largest
squatted, and emitted a lugubrious howl. All the others echoed it. For
some minutes the scene was filled with this bloodcurdling concert, loud
enough to have awakened still more dead.

But Ulla did not hear the infernal chorus any longer. On beholding the
course of the appalling apparition to be aimed indubitably at her, the
conviction was too strong for her overtasked nerves. She murmured a
prayer, and turned to flee frantically; but the snow was treacherous,
and she slid down in a soft gap, where the feathery particles closed
over her head.

Perfectly unconscious, she did not hear the supposed Indian halt almost
at the edge of the sealed up cavity which concealed her from even his
eagerly questioning eyes.

"What a terrible tragedy," he exclaimed, with the deepest emotion, in
English.

It was the secretary of Sir Archie.

"All torn to pieces by those odious villains!" he continued. "On the
dead they vented their spite; on the goods they have inflicted all
the wanton damage possible, so that they might not benefit even some
starving traveller who came into this Pit of Abomination. That generous
old gentleman, these brave, patient, devoted, cheerful hunters and
campmen, that young lady never to be too much pitied! It brings the
tears into my eyes--miserable solitary mourner that I am to try to do
so much barbarity justice. Heaven knows that I came out here with no
prejudice against the red man. This same Indian who enlisted merely
to lure the expedition to destruction, accepted my courtesies with a
grateful mien. And yet he was a monster! I glory to have profaned his
resting place--to rob the robber of the weapons with which, God aiding
me, I shall avenge my massacred comrades!"

He perambulated the valley of death till sunrise. He called and
examined every spot with care; but all the time no response was given
him. Then, having made a meal on the height, where the same fatal tale
was displayed in the bones with which the wolves sported, he doggedly
took up the trail of the victors.

But at the woods, where the snow presented a different aspect and
was absent in tracts, he found that the wily savages were not to
be followed by an inexperienced man, however brave, vigorous, and
determined.




CHAPTER III.

THE MOUNTAINEERS' SNUG CABIN.


The two hunters, red and white, who had taken eight days to ascend
the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, were only one reaching a
reasonable approach to the level of the plateau of the Yellowstone
Basin.

A little above them shone the snow line belting the giants of granite,
and here the timberline spread in brown. The breath of numberless icy
caverns murmured of the stupendous crystal founts, sources of powerful
streams which would be on their way to enrich regions remote.

The declining sun glimmered along the smooth steeps and glittered on
the jagged ones, reflected from ice, softened by snows, sparkling in
torrents as the scattered diamonds leaped so far that finally they were
dissipated in humid dust.

Through all the difficulties of the way, where no trodden way existed,
the two guides and guards of the little train proceeded with the
perfection of experience to be acquired only by bearing fatigues and
danger with which that magnificent mountain chain abounds.

In fact, it was impossible, even among the host of Western pioneers,
more numerous than those imagine who never can see them collected, to
find two mountain men more keen, skilled, and resolute than "Old Jim"
Ridge and "Cherokee Bill."

Ridge was a taller man than ordinarily met, even in the West; but too
well proportioned, though a little spare, to reveal to the careless
eye how enviably he was gifted by nature. His features were handsome,
though worn and weather-beaten; after a course of Turkish baths and
fine toilet appliances, he would have eclipsed the showiest cavaliers
in a Paris, London, or Vienna opera house ball. His forehead, high and
broad, was creased rather by play of emotions than effect of age. His
blue eyes were mild enough in repose to charm the most timid maid; but
in action they became fierce and sharp as a buffalo's at bay. They were
eyes that could follow a trail without his getting out of the saddle or
leaning over much. His nose was long, rather curved than straight, with
pliant nostrils which rose and fell freely in his liberal respiration
for the supply of a massive chest. The mouth was full of teeth, strong,
sound and white, as only garnish those who are mostly meat eaters; the
lips were red, but almost concealed in a moustache and beard, trimmed
rarely, yet well kept, of a warm flaxen striped with silver; this tint
also gleamed in his long locks from under a blue fox skin cap. Erect,
something like a Mars who inclined towards Apollo rather than Hercules,
sturdy, firm, energetic, any beholder knew that he stood before an
exceptional man, full of goodness, courage, and simple belief in man
being no merely inspired _animal_.

In "citizen's dress" he would have seemed confined; hence, his hunting
costume suited him far better. It was--from the fur cap mentioned to
the moccasins fortified with rawhide soles--composed of a leather
frock, caught in at the waist to support his small arms by its belt,
fringed with its own buckskin; a red flannel shirt, with a black
silk neckerchief carelessly fastened by a diamond pin of California
gold, such as an ingenious miner himself may shape; the leggings were
also of buckskin, fringed like the frock, and similarly so "worked
up in grease" as to have lost the tendency to stretch in the wet
which plays the mischief with leather garments. Balancing a sword
bayonet on one hip, not unlike a machete, hung a hatchet, whilst his
six-shooters were of a size that promised damage at a longish range.
His gun was peculiar. It was a "yager," or short rifle of the old
United States dragoons, sending a large ball; he had had it converted
into a breechloader, a "fourteen shoot," with the availability to
reserve the store and load at the muzzle with any particular charge
independently. The stock was fortified with homemade rawhide bands.
Thanks to long and continual practice, knowing how to humour all "her
leetle peculiarities," as he would affectionately say, the rifle was
used by him afoot or on horse, offhanded or in a rest, with long and
calculated aim or at a snap shot with a fatality that made it dreaded.
As often as by any other title, Jim Ridge was called "the Yager of the
Yellowstone." As far south as the mysterious sun-worshipping Indians'
secluded homes, this name was the backbone of camp stories, in which
our mountaineer's marksmanship was not unduly praised.

Jim Ridge looked the man to make history, but his time had not come, he
would have modestly said, if reproached therefore.

As for his comrade, he was clad as an Indian rover, with better
underclothing and equipments than the red man obtains. His gun was
a formidable and costly Winchester rifle. He was tall and slender,
rather forbidding and haughty, gloomy and imperturbable; but his
small beadlike black eyes sparkled with daring cunning and a kind of
nourished hatred. Spite of his savage airs and war paint, the close
observer must have perceived that he had enjoyed civilisation at one
period. He was not an "unwashed Injin." Indeed, Cherokee Bill was the
best pupil in a St. Louis college, where his intelligence, courtesy
quite charming, kindliness, and devotion to study gained the esteem
of his tutor and the respect of the white students, who, Southerners
though they were, never objected to his blood.

One day, when he was about eighteen, an old Indian woman, whom he
passed at the college gate, followed him to a lonely street, and called
him affectionately. It was his mother, whom he had rarely seen, and
whose latest absence had lasted nearly a year. She had not wasted those
ten months; they were spent on his behalf.

She was a Cherokee, daughter of a chief; she had been united gladly to
the celebrated South and Northwestern trapper and mountain adventurer,
Bill Williams, one of those excellent shots whose gains in the fur
trade were seldom capped by any other three, though "there were giants
in those days"--1830-50. There was no doubt that he possessed some
secret knowledge of the winter refuges of the wild animals valuable in
commerce. Hither he went, always alone, to slay the pick at leisure.
Quaint, hearty, "whole-souled," "Old Bill" Williams had not an enemy,
spite of this "certainty," and even the hunters who tried to follow him
and discover the sources of his fortune, would turn away laughingly
when, at some mountain pass, where one man could keep back a multitude,
they would abruptly run up against Williams' trusty rifle, and hear him
challenge.

"D'ye h'ar, now, boys! Go 'way from fooling with the old mossback when
he has his shooting iron loaded--it may hurt some o' ye; mind that,
boys!"

Nevertheless, at last, Bill Williams failed to come to St. Louis or
Santa Fe with the well-known pack; and, as year after year passed,
the old hunters would sadly shake their frosting brows and feelingly
mutter, "Old Billy's gone up, sure! 'Tell 'ee for a true thing, they've
rubbed out the old marksman. See! H'yar goes for a sign on my stock;
I've a bullet for the nigger that sent him under, mind that!"

At length the mountains yielded up the mystery in part. Bill Williams'
squaw, penetrating snow filled gorges where, assuredly, no woman had
ever stepped, came into a glade where a skeleton of a horse gleamed
yellow like old alabaster in the icy crust. In a snowbank, half fallen
open like a split nut, was visible a kind of human figure, mummified
by dry cold. It was the veteran trapper. He was in the position of a
hunter awaiting a prowling foe ambushed in the shrub, his rifle in
advance, his shrunken face still leaning out eagerly. In the leather
shirt and breast, almost as tanned with sun and wind, was a bullet's
wound: the squaw could even chisel it out of the frozen flesh, where
blood had long since ceased to flow. That was the only clue to the
tracker and slayer of the trapper, and that was the single token and
heritage which altered the entire course of young Williams' life.
School and cities saw him no more; he took to the wilds, and lived on
the warpath as far as the still unpunished murderer of his father was
concerned.

He was rich, like Jim Ridge, for they had penetrated the very "mother
pocket" of the Rocky Mountains' gold store; but he, no more than his
pure white partner, would renounce the existence of peril, but also of
independence.

Suddenly a deep "Hugh!" of attention from Cherokee Bill attracted the
white man's ear.

"What?" said he, peering around, but seeing nothing to alarm him; nor
had the animals, usually acute observers, perceived anything even novel.

"A solitary man," answered Bill, who spoke good English, of course.

Ridge shook his head, not in doubt of his comrade's ability, but in
self-blame.

On the highlands, nothing but long habit endows one with the power
to calculate distances exactly. Rarefaction gives the atmosphere a
clearness which seems to bring the horizon to hand--the sight is
extended indefinitely, and masses of shadows in vast valleys look
like mere specks in the expanses of light, so that the space between
the standpoint and a distant object is usually mistaken. There are
also fantastic effects from the vapour being frozen or expanded, and
presenting apparently solid forms, where, in fact, unsubstantially
reigns.

"I am going for him," proceeded Cherokee Bill; "after all, it's no
odds--we are 'to home!'" with a smile at his own imitation of the
Yankee twang.

Wrapping his gun in his buffalo robes, taken off his pony, the
half-breed slid down the declivity at the side of the "road," so
to flatter it, and scrambling along an icy torrent of lovely blue
water, suddenly sprang in under the cascade from an arching rock and
disappeared.

Ridge did not even glance after him; besides, he had arrived, indeed.
He suddenly took the bell mare by the bridle, and swerved her into an
apparently impenetrable thicket--a "wind-slash," where the maze of
deadwood was increased by the prostration of many tough evergreens,
blown down by an irresistible tornado. But there had been traced here
a kind of way, through which the pack animals insinuated themselves
with the sureness of a cat, brushing off nothing of their loads. As
for the two horses, they were more familiar with the strange path, and
threaded its sinuosities like dogs tunnelling under the walls of a meat
smokehouse. It is probable they scented their stable, and knew rest
and food would shortly reward them for terrible toil and tribulation.
Having pierced the tunnel of vegetation, there was one of stone, still
more curious.

It was an almost regular tube, in black lava stone, four feet wide,
seven or eight in height, smooth as glass mostly. Invisible fissures,
however, must have supplied sweet air, for it was not hard breathing
in all the extent, nearer three quarters of a mile than a half on the
straight. No human hand had fashioned it; one must presume that, in
the days when Vulcan swayed over Neptune on the earth, a torrent of
lava was rushing down the steeps, when, suddenly, an immense snowfall
smothered the fiery river and chilled it into a casing of stone around
a still molten interior. That inner flow had continued, and left the
tubular crust intact.

The ground was a fine sand, heavy with iron, so that it did not rise
far. At the end of this channel a star suddenly gleamed, welcome in the
complete darkness, into which, assuredly, the bravest of men would have
hesitated to follow a foe. It was the outer air again, filling a basin,
rock-engirt to a great height. In this lonely spot there was not a
scrap of moss, not one blade of grass, and no shrub, however hardy. The
calcined "blossom rock" wore a yellow hue, streaked with red and black;
but here and there rose separate boulders of quartz, disintegrated by
time and rain and whirling winds, which danced these Titanic blocks
like thistles, and squeezed out those dull misshapen lumps. Those lumps
were gold, however; this was a "mother-source"--one of those nests of
Fortune for which the confirmed gold seeker quits home, family, wealth
itself in other mines that content the less ravenous. Ridge traversed
this placer--no pleasure to him, lonely Man of the Mountain--with a
foot as reckless as those of the string of animals. The night was
coming. He hurried them on into a second but short subterranean
passage, with a couple of turnings, which finally opened into a cavern.
At its far end a natural doorway afforded a view of the deep blue sky,
where the brilliant stars seemed all of a sudden to be strewn. In those
few moments the sun had gone down, and darkness come.

Ridge laid aside his gun, and started a fire, already laid, in a cavity
of the grotto. The walls gleamed back the rising firelight; here amber
studs in coal, there patches of mica-schist, varied gold and silver in
hue.

After unpacking the animals, whose stores he carefully placed in caves,
he sent them after the bell mare and the hunting horses, in through
a channel to a sort of enclosed pasturage. Returning, he put some
jerked meat down to broil, some roots to roast like so many potatoes,
and added to the setting-out of a rude but hearty meal several of the
delicacies brought in the train from Oregon. He was calmly smoking,
reclining at great ease, with the air of one who felt he had earned the
repose, lulled by the sweet murmur of underground streams, pouring out
of ancient glaciers. The approach of footsteps made him glance round.
The steps he knew to be Cherokee Bill's; so it was their being heavier
than usual that alone roused him.

The half-breed was carrying a man over his shoulder with no more
delicacy than if it had been a deer's carcase.

"Got him, Bill!" remarked Ridge.

"I should smile not to capture such a tenderfoot," was the rejoinder,
as he flung his human prize upon the cavern floor.




CHAPTER IV.

THE MAN WHO RAN RIGHT INTO TROUBLE.


The prisoner of the Cherokee half-breed was in a forlorn state, more
particularly as regarded apparel. Hardly suited for mountaineering at
their best, his clothes were sorry rags, which an attempt at mending
with bark fibre and rawhide had even rendered more lamentable. A
horsehair lasso, of remarkable fineness and strength, was wound round
and round him with a care which a Chinese would have envied. A handful
of moss was the gag which nearly choked him, but his eyes were more
full of rage than supplication, and they seemed to burn with enhanced
indignation when he found the Indian was in concert with a white hunter.

Young Bill Williams flung his captive down on some dry rushes, and,
laying aside his gun and the stranger's, which was broken, he sat down
at the fire.

"It was a coyote," he remarked, scornfully. "But the Cherokee did not
give him even time to yelp."

"Ah!" said Ridge, "I wonder you did not shoot him thar. Thar will
always be plenty of that game on the prairie for the greenhorn hunter,
I opine. It is all very well our discovering this country, but we don't
want any raw Eastern fellows, with Boston dressing, discovering _us!_"
Bill made no comment. He had pulled the soused bears' paws over to him,
poured out some coffee--from which the full aroma was extracted by a
sudden chill at the height of its boiling with cold water--and was thus
beginning his meal.

The silence that fell was broken only by the champing of the two men as
they repaid themselves for the travail since Monday. Each had a brandy
flask, and their supplies included spirits, but neither drank anything
but the sweet, pure water of the snow torrent. Ridge was naturally
abstemious, the half-Cherokee sober from having seen the mischief
wrought his mother's race by the firewater.

After the meal, the two smoked, and the white man faintly whistled a
lively tune. Neither gave heed to the prisoner, who had ample leisure
to gaze on the strange resort into which he had been unceremoniously
conveyed.

The firelight illuminated the grotto; several gaps were outlets or
storehouses; bales of furs, bundles of army and trade guns, kegs of
powder, pigs of lead, packages of fancy goods used in Indian trading,
harness, simple cooking utensils, these encumbered the place; but one
could guess that they would form a barricade at emergency in case the
enemy penetrated to this inmost hold. At first glance, and even at the
leisure gaze of the prisoner, it seemed the den of a bandit.

"What did you bring him into the ranche for, chief?" inquired Ridge, in
that pigeon-English of the Northwest, called the "Chinnook" dialect,
though composed of Chinnook, Scotch, English, and Canadian-French, as
well as hunters' English, to which confusing medley these two friends
imparted still another zest by an infusion of Cherokee, Creole, French,
and Spanish-American, for which good reason we forbear the sentences
verbatim.

"Because," replied the other, "it was too dark to see the trail, and
he must tell whether he is alone or the spy of a band. At all events,
it doesn't look as if he had been in to the fort for his pay lately,"
added Bill, with a quiet fleeting smile, "and bought any clothes!"

"You are right. Loose him, and we'll try him. By the way, that's a
beauty lariat, I can tell you."

Indeed, as before hinted, the lasso confining the captive was composed
of selected horsehair, and toilsomely and deftly plaited.

"I was still on the scout," said Bill, whilst engaged undoing the
bonds, rolling the man to and fro as suited his desires, "when suddenly
a movement of a scrub pine half a pistol shot off made me bring my
rifle to bear on it. I was just about to pull, when up pops my man,
crying: 'Hold hard, or you're a dead Injun!' _Me?_ It looked as if we
were going to make our bullets kiss in midair, but I reckon I was a
leetle the quicker, and while his ball whistled upon the top storeys
of the sierra, mine cut his barrel in half, right there at the stock,
which remained in his hand. So, as he staggered in surprise, I sprang
on him, took off from his belt the lasso--a real article, and no
mistake! Worth a war pony!--and girdled him like a papoose. Moreover,
I wrapped my robe round his head, so that he should not see how we
glide into the Rocky Mountain House, proprietors, Messrs. Ridge and
Williams, and here he is dumped down."

The man was hardly able to stand when unbound. He wiped his mouth with
the tattered sleeve of his old army overcoat, shook himself, and reeled
round toward the fire, whither the half-breed had given him a gentle
push.

"We don't often meet a white man away here," said Ridge, sitting up
like a judge. "Let me have a good long look."

The firelight fell full upon him. Already, whilst waiting, the stranger
had fortified himself: he was cold, calm, save for his lips curling in
a mocking smile, though he very well saw that his confronters were his
judges, and, possibly, executioners, if they determined on death.

He was a man about five and forty, rather tall, with legs "split up so
far" as to be as good a walker almost as Ridge himself. He was the more
gaunt from recent privations. His "weather skin" seemed newly assumed,
and, seen in the town, he would have been taken for a schoolmaster of
the Indian Reservations or a trader's bookkeeper.

"You are a white, an American, from the Eastern States," said Ridge,
after a couple of minutes. "You are not a hunter or trapper, a
gentleman sportsman, or a squaw man. What brings you out here up in the
mountains?"

"You are a white, an American of these Western States," returned the
other, quietly, "whence your right to pull me about and question me? If
this Indian is on the land of his forefathers, I will pay him tribute
as far as in my power. As for you, why stop my wandering? Have I sought
to run against you? Have I done anything more than essay to defend my
life when a firearm was levelled at my breast? State anything that
gives you a right to deal with a citizen of the United States in the
United States?"

"These are big words," replied Ridge, puzzled whether to be angry or
amused, though there was no doubt that Cherokee Bill felt the first
sentiment; "but I am not exchanging Fourth of July speeches with you,
but asking questions."

"To answer? 'Spose I don't choose?"

"You'll be made to, I guess," rejoined the mountaineer, hotly.

"You mean you two will cut my throat in this den, or hang me in my own
lasso! The latter will serve me right, as I took it at the cost of a
life from the redskin who hurled me off my horse with the same. Well,
suppose you do kill me, will you know more about me than you do now?"

"What! Killed an Indian for the rope?" said Ridge, turning to the
Cherokee. "What breed?"

"Comanche!" said the latter, examining the lasso critically.

"The lasso is of Comanche make," went on the mountain man, severely
frowning again. "And I'll swear your cheek has never been burnt south
of the Platte."

"That's so. It was a 'foot Indian' who tried to kill me. I boast no
knowledge of these gentry. That's one of his shoes. The other I wore to
death on these cursed flinty hills."

"Crow!" cried the Half-breed, with a glance at the moccasin. "Mountain
Crow! And a war shoe!"

"The Crows 'out,'" repeated Ridge, biting his lips. "You see, we are
getting information, though you are so stingy. Come, as your news leads
off so good, continue it. Who are you, I say? And what is your business
where few of us who are regular trappers venture?"

"A trapper?"

"An honest trapper! What did you take us for?--robbers and murderers?"
said the hunter, indignantly.

"Well, I kind o' don't know," rejoined the stranger, with a significant
glance at Cherokee Bill, whose savage eyes were not reassuring like the
other's. "My name is no value out here, four thousand miles from my
folks, I guess; but if you are a regular trapper--"

"I am called the Old Man of the Mountain," said Ridge, sadly rather
than proudly. "I am about the last of the old guard--I fear one of the
oldest men. I am Jim Ridge. That's the young man's best companion out
here, that's called the Yager--same name put on me, too, by the hearing
of it; the Yager of the Yellowstone. When I handled that first in '42,
I bent a trifle under the weight. Them was the grand, good old times!
The sort of men we get now don't grade up with the brand that passed
up to 1850. They don't hunt now--they butcher. They don't trap--they
surround and slaughter. They'll be clearing out a beaver lake with a
diving bell, next! I wonder! Yes, I am the Old Man, the Yager of the
Yellowstones," he repeated, a little piqued at his fame falling on a
dead ear--"Injin or white, they all know this child."

The stranger seemed easier; but, unfortunately, the ghost of a smile on
his wan features was assumed to be impudence.

"Answer, then," went on Ridge, testily, "for I don't want none of your
blood on my knife, though it is itching to be in at your ribs."

"Nonsense. You are neither hasty nor bloodthirsty, Mr. Ridge. One
question from me first, if you please--"

Old Jim waved his hand disgustedly at this polite address, and the
"Mistering."

"I just want to know if you know Mr. Brasher, of Varina?"

"Do I know 'Trading Jake?' Muchly; and ever so long. Those bales are
for him," pointing to a stack against the walls.

"Then I have a message for you, Mr. Ridge," went on the prisoner,
relieved entirely.

"A letter?"

"The letter is lost; I ate it up when a gang of Digger Indians played
the joke of making me exchange a good outfit for these rags. Luckily,
they thought it was a talisman, and that to cook me and eat me with
that medicine paper in my gullet was an error, and so I got away,
together with my gun. But I know the contents, and they are important,
Mr. Brasher said."

"Fire away!" said Ridge, more and more thawed out towards the speaker.

"But first, some proof I am not being deceived."

"Hang the man!" laughed Jim, amused at being an unknown to one person
in this world. "Show him my brand on those packs, Bill."

"'J. Ridge'--hem! Well," said the captive, "this is the communication:
'The man they call _Captain Kidd_ and a gang of border troublers slid
out of town with tools, stores, and firearms galore, and I want the
Old Man of the Mountain to know that they are bound for the Big Placer
in the Yellowstone Region.' That is what I was to tell every regular
hunter and trapper until Mr. Ridge heard of it."

"Oh, call me Jim! I am much obliged to Brasher. Well, stranger, you are
too deep for me if this is a getup of your'n. Resarve your own secret,
and meanwhile there's sage ile and snake grease for your bruises, and
fire and meat and Injin 'taters; and you can have whiskey if your
appetite calls that way. Fall on! As the soldiers say."

Then vacating the fireside, he drew aside with the Indian, and the two
eyed the captive inquisitorially while he devoured the supper, which
represented probably two or three meals he had missed.

"Drink free!" said Ridge, offering a horn cup. "You need fear nothing
now. One who has shared the trapper's hospitality has to be a precious
mean skunk to deserve kicking out."

"Nobody's going to say a word against your hospitality," retorted the
stranger, sarcastically. "The feed's capital, and the liquor a reviver,
for, though a temperance man, I need it as medicine, I can tell you.
But the way the trapper introduces guests to his hospitality by
shooting a welcome at him, trussing him up like a turkey, and tossing
him down on the floor like a roll of carpet to be beaten, is not what a
simple traveller from the Atlantic seaboard approves of."

"Stranger," said Ridge, sitting down on a buffalo skull stool covered
luxuriously with furs which a Russian grand duchess might give her
earrings to possess, "this is our home round here by all the rights the
first discoverer and the constant defender may claim. My _companyero_
was not to know with what intentions you were making yourself a
neighbour. You may think yourself lucky that his shot did not pierce
your brain or heart, and that he did not use the slipknot of your
lariat to decorate the nearest larch with you. It is necessary that
our mountain fort should be kept hid from everybody. Gentlemen like
Mr. Brasher do not know it, sir. Tell me your name, show that you are
no evildoer, and after you have rested you may equip yourself and go
your way. We can trust to your being led out, hoodwinked as you were
brought, to maintain our secret. So much I will do for Trading Jake's
messenger. Anything else, stranger?"

The ex-prisoner was surprised at so much confidence, and the promise to
place him on a fair footing for the task upon his shoulders.

"You will do this, eh?" cried he with frank joy; "A good rifle instead
of that broken musket, food and powder, clothes against this searching
air?"

"Jim Ridge never yet broke his word," remarked the Cherokee, for the
first time relenting in his suspicion so as to address his late captive.

"My name goes for nothing, but I will tell you my mission out here, and
why your gift will put me under a great obligation. Besides, you have
the experience which I lack, and who knows but that your comments on my
story may be of service."

"Make yourself at home, then," said the old mountaineer, pleasantly;
"there's a pipe for you, too, and the night is only begun. We so seldom
have company, eh, Bill? that a couple of hours for a storyteller will
be a real treat. Stranger, we listen, if the grub has put you in pretty
good shape again."

"One moment," demurred the other; "you talk of the need to guard this
place from spies. Now, I can't compliment you on your vigilance and
prudence when you squat here in the broad firelight with the cavern
gaping open yonder--an Indian boy could riddle us with arrows."

Ridge laughed.

"If you don't mind getting up and coming to the opening, you shall see
that--but not so near the brink--the crust is shaky. See, how readily
I detach a chunk. Don't lean forward. Look forth--it is a clear night."

It was serene and lovely. The stars shone unveiled, and that was all in
the deep indigo black, where, beneath, the deep-rooted pines could be
heard slowly swaying, not seen, like a field of grain in a zephyr.

"I see nothing."

"No trees, no rocks?"

"No. Nothing but stars."

"You would see nothing but stars if you were to step after that stone.
Hark!"

Jim trundled the rocky lump out of the cave; but not the faintest sound
or echo betokened that it touched bottom or anywhere.

"Heaven preserve us!" ejaculated the guest, recoiling. "'Tis the
Bottomless Pit!"

"Pretty nigh," answered the mountaineer, laughing; "that's fallen five
thousand feet. This is not a precipice sheer down, but a peak hollowed
out--a cut-off, _we_ say; the Injins say a devil's jump. Stranger, on
this side, we shall not be invaded. Now for your tale! Stir up the fire
brightly, Bill."

"Yes, for it is a dark and horrid story, gentlemen."




CHAPTER V.

THE LONE MAN'S STORY.


"Gentlemen," began the enforced guest of Jim Ridge and the half-breed,
"I was born in an Atlantic State, and my earliest memories relate to
home events of so little moment now, that I have almost forgotten them.
I remember, however, that a number of our young men formed a party
and went West, and that the reading of some of their letters home,
reflected into my boyish ears, fed the natural longings of one who
lived sufficiently remote from the crowded town to know what a lake and
the woods are like. Besides, an uncle of mine was said to have gone to
the same marvellous backwoods, and I used to be promised a real wild
Indian's bow-and-arrows at the least when he should return. All this is
common enough in the East. About the year 1850 my mother died, and my
father, as much to distract himself in his profound grief as to quench
a thirst for fortune which he shared with New Englanders, departed with
me, a stripling, around the Cape to California. Our ship was rather
better than those rotten tubs which unscrupulous men fitted out as
'superb clippers,' and we outstripped many vessels that had anticipated
our start. You must recall something of the sensation due to the
startling discovery of gold in the extreme West. Even the fables of old
whalers who visited the Pacific Coast, and who really had been blind,
were outdone by reality. With indescribable furious madness, people
flocked from the world's confines towards a tract hardly laid down
in charts. They seemed to have become monsters in human form, as the
playbooks say, with no impulse but avarice. We stepped ashore into a
field of carnage, though lately a peaceable grazing ground; men sought
to remove each other with steel and lead, whilst the few females, the
vilest of their sex, freely employed poison. Luckily, these demons slew
one another, and left no aftercrop of fiends and furies to blight the
Golden State."

"Father and I had no experience in gold seeking, and he saw that money
enough awaited an active, acute man, in supplying the returned miners
with table delicacies. He was used to fishing, trapping, and gunning,
and so we set to killing bears--any quantity on the Sierra Nevada
'spurs' then--and fishing in the Sacramento and San Joaquín. We built
a ranche on the banks of the former stream, in a lonely spot, and only
went to town to sell game and procure ammunition and other stores."

"One Saturday my father went on this duty, whilst I amused myself
with tracking a young grizzly, with the hope of securing him alive,
as a hotel keeper wanted a 'native attraction' for his barroom.
Unfortunately, a huge grizzly intercepted my course, and wounded me in
a scuffle, out of which I thought myself happy to escape so easily; and
almost made me lose my prize. However, as this wound stung me in pride
as well as flesh--for I daresay, gentlemen, you know how a grizzly's
claws leave a smart!" (the two hunters nodded animatedly)--"I pressed
on, after a circuit, at the tail of my first 'meat.' I overtook it at
dark, had to kill it--it was so stubborn--dressed it, and carried away
the paws and choice meat in the hide. The sun was down, and my load was
too heavy for me to show much speed, though I believed my father would
be impatiently awaiting me."

"It was nine o'clock when I sighted the ranche. The squally wind
presaged a tempest. As no light shone at the window, I concluded my
father, who must have got back, had gone to bed, weary of waiting. I
pulled up the latch, entered, flung down the game, and was making for
the hearth, to get a flare-up, when I heard a faint voice close by
falter--"

"'Is that you, Sam?' My father's voice! The tone sent a shiver all over
me till the blood ran cold from my heart."

"'Oh, that you had come an hour sooner!' he sighed."

"In an instant I had a blaze on the hearth with a handful of bears'
grease upon the embers."

"There lay the old man, having tried to crawl to his couch. His face
was livid; two wounds were on his breast--one of a firearm, one of
a knife; and he was scalped as well. The blood from these neglected
wounds painted him thickly and hideously. I fell on my knees beside
him, and tried, though vainly, to staunch those dreadful hurts."

"'It's no use, boy,' said he; 'nothing can fence off death. I thank
Heaven I was allowed to linger till you came. Now, dash away your
tears, and listen to me like a man. In half an hour I shall be no more;
but that will do if you mean to see justice done me.'"

"He had started for San Francisco at one, so as to be home early
enough to have a good meal against my return if I were out. He soon
got through his business, and was going to leave, when he met a native
Californian acquaintance--a _gambusino_, or confirmed gold hunter--a
man he liked very well. To have a friendly glass at leisure, they
dropped into the nearest public resort, the gamblers' and revellers'
hotel, called the 'Polka' saloon. The place was crammed with drinkers
taking their morning 'eye-openers,' or desperadoes relating their
night's exploits, or miscreants hatching fresh schemes. Several kept
'cruising' round my father and his friend."

"Both were objects of more general interest than either, perhaps,
believed; the Californian was suspected to have found more than one
gold vein worth tapping; and my father, as a hunter, was likewise
thought to have blundered upon the natural treasuries of the mountains
in his pursuit of b'ar. To both, schemes had been proposed by
blacklegs, and both had repulsed them--the Spaniard with pride, and
my father with some cutting jest or pure carelessness. Both had made
enemies thereby."

"Three of these enemies now buzzed round their table. One was
a Frenchman, known as 'Lottery Paul,' because he had drawn the
passenger's ticket of a Parisian 'draw,' to enable the chosen
subscriber to go free to San Francisco. He was a little bilious wretch,
low and sneering, a sort of lynx and fox in combination. His partners
were a huge English convict from Gibraltar, and called 'Quarry Dick,'
and a Mexican, who had committed so many homicides, that he was
glorified as 'Matamas the slayer.'"

"Perhaps it was too soon in the day for these debauched dogs to have
shipped enough spirit to fall foul of two men well armed. In any case,
they let my father and his friend leave the saloon unimpeded. The three
scoundrels hovered about them; but, finally, seemed to be disgusted at
their remaining on the alert, and left them."

"The two friends separated, and my father got home before dark without
alarm. He had hardly stepped indoors, however, than three men fell on
him, all in the dark. They were dressed like Indians; but, as they
threatened to kill him unless he revealed where he knew gold was
waiting for the digger, it was clear that was but a disguise 'for the
road.' My father had been doubled as a man by his mountain life, and
he gave them a serious half hour's diversion; twice he got free, and
laid about him with a long knife. At last, one shot and another stabbed
him; and, either from rage at having been baffled, or to carry out
their assumption of the Indian character, they scalped him. He had
the fortitude to pretend to be dead as he suffered this outrage. In
the encounter he had snatched away the scapulary worn by one ruffian,
laid open the cheek of another, and wounded a third in the side. The
latter might escape me; but I had a clue to the others. Then, urging
me to bring these murderers to justice, my father expired, the storm
overwhelming his latest prayer and blessing."

"I buried him under the hearthstone, and fired the ranche over his
head, determined that no one should dwell in the house where his
blood had mingled with the murderers'. I went to San Francisco, but
those three bandits were laid up from the effects of the struggle, or
in mere terror of me, for the authorities were not yet in power to
punish even the notoriously criminal. I continued the search without
discouragement, being rather a pertinacious man, till, one day, my
Mexican friend, as he had been my father's, warned me that I was in
error: these three men were now _hunting me_, having transferred their
enmity from my father to my head: and, in fact, it was a wonder I had
not yet fallen a victim in one of their vicious circles where I had
penetrated. Being on my guard from this out, our warfare continued
long without result. At last, I heard they had separated, and gone who
knows where--over the mountains, on the sea, up in the mines? Besides,
the Mexican had opened his house to me, a favour not often accorded an
American by one who reckoned us invaders and heretics and no blessing
to the country; and he had a fair daughter whom, in short, I wedded. I
allowed my task of vengeance to rest, and the hatred of my foes seemed
in the same way to be shelved."

"One summer, a French gentleman, who said he was on a scientific
expedition, offered me remarkably handsome terms to be his guide to
Oregon. I did not care to leave my wife, but my father-in-law was
interested in the steamer line to the Columbia River, and I accepted
the mission. However, a little over a week gave Monsieur all he wanted
of roughing it in the sierras, and he said he had changed his mind, and
wanted to back out. I made no difficulty, of course, and we took the
back track merrily. When we left, and he handed me a forfeit, he said,
kindly enough: 'I hope you will find Madame and the family all well at
home!' and yet some presentiment made me take it as ironical."

"Within two weeks I returned to my _pueblo_. The forewarning was sound:
my father-in-law's hacienda was devastated, and the farm buildings
reduced to ashes; under that black heap my father-in-law, my wife and
children were indistinguishably consumed."

As he got these words out by an effort, the speaker covered his face
with his hands, and sobbed rather fiercely than mournfully. His two
hearers remained quiet, fastening their eyes on the strong man in
resentment, with irrepressible pity.

"This time they had overfilled my cup of woe," he resumed, lifting
his head, and showing burning, tearless eyes. "I would not leave the
punishment of their slaughter to the sworn minister of justice, but
avenge my fourfold wrongs in person to the uttermost."

"I took a horse and galloped to San Francisco, where I sought the
French consul. He knew nothing of the pretended scientific explorer:
that was a sham; he was one of the gang! But he was really a newcomer,
and had no skill in hiding his tracks. I was on them without any
repose. They led me by nightfall to a lone ranche, where the roll of
the sea came softly, and mingled with the whinnying of two horses
picketed by the door, which welcomed mine. I rode him in at that door
which I carried off the hinges. Two men were on stools at a dying
fire, chuckling and drinking. One was Matamas, the other the Frenchman
who had engaged me as guide. They sprang up in amazement. I flew at
them with a tigerish yell. No doubt fury increased my forces, for in
ten minutes I had trampled one down and lassoed the other. Both lay
helpless under my knife."

"'Mister Frenchy,' said I, 'how much were you paid beyond the sum you
gave me for guidance to lure me aside whilst your employers burnt my
house and killed all those dear to me?'"

"'What, what!' said he, 'Is this the practical joke you played,
Monsieur Matamas?'"

"The Mexican said not a word; his teeth were chattering with the
general tremor. As the Frenchman saw I was merciless, and knew he was
in my power, he told me the whole tale of how he had been hired in an
hour of starvation to decoy me away from my home. He had no hand in the
extreme consequences, and I let him go with the warning that I might
not be so lenient if ever we met again. Whilst he rode away like mad, I
returned to Matamas, whose hand I tied, open, on a plank, and I said:"

"'Well named as 'the killer,' tell me all about this plot, or I
shall cut you up joint by joint!' and, though you shudder at the
thought, sir," he interjected to Ridge, while Cherokee Bill greedily
listened, "I should have done it; but at the third of his finger being
severed, the coward fainted, and, on coming to, as I sawed at another
articulation, he whined the complete confession. His was the scapulary
which my father had inextricably grasped in the death 'scrimmage.' If I
had regretted my cruelty, the list of his crimes would have steeled me
anew. Worse than I suspected remained to tell, for his two accomplices
had not only fled with the valuables of my father-in-law, but with the
heart treasures of mine, which I had till then believed buried beside
their mother: my son and my daughter, at present fifteen and seventeen,
were abducted by these villains, and are now slaves to them and their
kind in some robbers' ranche of the plains or whiskey mill shanty in
these mountains. Never can I rest, you see, till they are rescued from
these chains of vice, and their persecutors feed the turkey buzzards
like Matamas did himself."

"Now, in telling you that a band of gold hunters are on their way
hither, and that I have recently crossed Indian trails, I have served
you. Help me, now, my friends, with your practical counsel--how can I
soonest overtake those men?"

There was a long silence. Bill and Ridge conferred in the sign language
as if their thoughts were too full of action to be diluted into
verbiage.

"One question?" said the trapper. "In all your story you have
manifested the greatest heed not to mention names except of the
villainous. Those are no clue to me. But, may happen, those of yourself
and kinsfolk may enlighten us. Who are you?"

"My name is Filditch, Samuel George Filditch, my father's George W.,
and my father-in-law's Don Tolomeo Peralta, well known in California
and Sonora."

"Enough. What was the name of your father's brother, whom you never
saw, but whom you remember to have heard spoken of in childhood. Was it
not James? Come, come!" continued the old hunter, rising and kicking a
log so that the freshened flame should flood him with radiance: "They
used to say we were like as boys; can you see no trace of a likeness
to my brother George in these features? Still silent? Ridge is only a
'mountain name'; but believe me, and Cherokee Bill will bear me out
with gun and knife--there never was a deed of mine done under it which
my real name would not proudly cover. It is Heaven that has brought
you to my bosom, Sam! Come to my heart, where I had clean given up
dreams of having a loving head pillowed! Heaven knows this was a wish
long gnawing at my bones! We'll chip in together. Don't you carry any
heaviness at your heart now. Your interests are mine. I am not a young
chicken, but I am game, and with this new spirit, I feel thar's a lot
o' living in me yet! We start on this manhunt together. Thar's my hand,
Sam!"

"And here is mine!" added the Cherokee. "The Old Man and me always hold
together like burrs," he continued, in a kind of apologetic tone. "And
if this ain't the most remarkable fact I ever struck, then I don't want
my breakfast in the morning."

Thereupon was sealed between the trio a compact that would bring about
strange events, hidden under the veil of the future, so that the most
imaginative could not foresee the incidents, far more surprising than
this meeting of kindred, not at all an uncommon event in the West,
where congregate the members of the Eastern families, so wondrously
disrupted and attracted West.

Ridge--still to use that name--and his nephew were evoking home
memories, when suddenly the latter felt a touch on the shoulder.
Cherokee Bill was making the sign for silence, and pointing out of the
cave opening.

There was a novel sound, indeed, in the stilly night air: music as from
a seraphic choir, for a score of women's voices were singing a hymn at
a distance which the limpidity of the air materially diminished:

"Come, tell the broken spirit That vainly sighs for rest There is a
home in glory, A home forever blest; Still sound the gospel trumpet
O'er hill and rolling sea, From chains of sin and blackness, To set the
captive free!"

"Saints in the Mountain!" murmured Jim Ridge, astonished. "I never
heard the likes hereabouts. It carries me away back fifty year', when
I was a boy in the church! But what are white women doing here? I am
staggered. And tuning up like that, too. That's first-class bait for
Crows. The angels must ha' taken a fancy to them, or they are cracked
to sing at top of the v'ice, an' redskins on the loose. What do you
make of it, Bill?"

"See!"

The hunter stared forth. A yellow light appeared as a lining to a cold
fog over a vale.

"Ah, a powerful camp! No Crow men will attack that in a hurry--those
dogs want to be twenty to one, and, then, somebody has to kick them on
to it. Things are bound to be interesting, but, I judge, we can wait
till morning. At least, that's my way. I am ready to drop, myself."

"And I," said Filditch, indeed exhausted.

"I will take the first watch," observed the Cherokee, calmly.

In another few minutes, wrapped in fur and blankets, the two white men
were profoundly reposing. Ridge chose the flat ground to which the body
accommodates itself, whilst his newfound kinsman, less wise, made a
kind of bed. The son of the assassinated trapper guarded them who had
now the same vow as himself to be their life task.




CHAPTER VI.

IN HOSTILE HANDS.


When Ulla Maclan came to her senses she found herself in darkness, but
it was not that of the grave. The snow had been falling again, and all
the night through; but the warmth of her body had hollowed out a cave
around her, in the roof of which her breath had maintained an aperture.
But, cruelly enough, the same blanched mantle that preserved her from
freezing had sheltered her from the eager eyes of the only other
survivor of her father's party.

With a suffocated feeling, she broke open the shell, and warily emerged
into the more than ever wintry landscape. All the breakage of the
sledge loads had been smoothly buried with the remains of the hapless
Canadians.

Not a mark on the level snow revealed the substantiality of the form
which she believed in her terror the spectre of the Indian Chief, but
which we know as the secretary, so nearly discovering her, but going on
his fruitless way, brokenhearted.

The musical trickling of melting snow tantalised her palate, and
she scrambled through the soft drift to a cleft where a rivulet was
beginning to run. The cool draught was delicious. She then set to
reviving herself with a dash of it over her face, and was binding
up her hair, when a loud and coarse laugh made her start and turn,
blushing.

Three white men in hunters' garb stood on a crest of the rocks swept
clear of the snow, where they travelled as well to avoid leaving traces
as to be free of step. The mountains rose behind them, a sweet faint
azure, with an opal edge, which was the last night's snow.

Two of the strangers were about the same age, some five-and-thirty;
harsh and angular of feature, brutal and bullying, tall and burly. In
their half wild, half border town dress, they were not to be taken for
genuine trappers by anyone less new to this region than our heroine.
They were what is called hide hunters, or skin scalpers, whose least
shameful occupation is the slaughtering buffaloes for the hide alone,
or even collecting their bones to be sent East for the best ivory knife
handles.

The third and superior was more than ten years older, with piercing
grey eyes and low forehead, a dirty yellow beard and long hair; the
aspect of a confirmed rogue, sly, base, and wicked. They were all armed
to the teeth, and their arms were a great deal better kept than their
teeth, innocent of any attentions whatever, which did not add any
attraction to their grins at surprising the young lady at her toilet.

Somehow, she would almost have preferred to see the red men themselves
than these representatives of her race. Nevertheless, she named
herself, related the disaster, and implored their help for Heaven's
sweet sake.

"A da'ter of one of these top-shelf hunting gentlemen," remarked the
old man, laughing; "and wants help mighty sudden? She's terribly fine,
boys! Narrerly 'scaped being gobbled by the _friendlies_," in sarcasm,
"and _corralled_ all night by that equal-knocks-sial storm. Yes, it'd
gi'n me a deal of cramp; but see what it _are_ to be young and spry!
She's 'mazingly lovely!" he exclaimed again in an audible aside to
his fellows, amused at his playing the gallant. "I hain't seen no
sech since I was an inch high and an hour old! It almost tempts a
lone hunter not to 'bach' it anymore, but go into pardnership. She's
'prime fur.' Yes, Miss, you can come along o' us--you're the kind to
be welcome anywhar' without a cent! How it will shorten up the ride, a
'greeable gal like you! Jerusha! We shall go back full-handed on the
queen o' hearts!"

"Are you captain of some party, sir?"

"Why, not today, Miss. We 'lect our cap'en, and I did not treat the
boys well enough to head the polls. But I am chief of the scouts; yes,
that's my rank. However, it's a considerable show of white men. The
cap's a gentleman, and you'll be as safe as in the Mint as soon as the
captain sees you."

The others exchanged a merry look.

"A large party?" she repeated. "Was that your singing I heard in the
night, or was that a dream?"

"Well, no, Miss, you never heard any singing in our camp. Stop a bit,
when I went on my guard thar was some singing out of Quarry Dick,
because they had sneaked away his pillow, which it was a whiskey
bottle--no offence, Miss! No, no singing."

"It sounded like church music--a hymn."

"Church moosic? You must 'a been on the dream, sartin sure. 'Sides,
thar are Injins squandrin' round hyar, a right few, say a leetle less
than a thousand ton, over an' above the band you mentioned. This is a
hard season for the redskin, and he's come up here to warm himself at
the Firehole, I reckon. The only singer we hev is one young lady about
your age, and she only sings to herself in Mexican lingo."

"A young lady," repeated Ulla, somewhat reassured. "At least, I see,
you are not friends of the savages."

"No; we are our own friends!" returned the old man, grinning again,
"And, individooally, our friends is in our belt," slapping his pistol
and his knife as he spoke.

"And will your captain help me to learn the fate of my poor father, and
the brave men he engaged--if any escaped from that horrid massacre?"

"The captain, miss, will do anything for a pretty face like yours. If
you'll step this way, we'll put you on a pony--there's no possibility
of your little feet gitting over this crust. It's not many miles, but
the milestones are pesky far apart in this country."

"I would prefer to walk."

"That's downright onpossible. Sol Garrod hyar's got a foot like an army
cartridge box lid; but even he would mire himself to the knees."

"Sol Garrod's foot can take care of itself, and you _sit down_ with
your opinions, unless you want to appreciate the beauties of it in
kicking!" growled the subject of the criticism.

"When a gentleman talks about kicking," returned the second man,
hitherto content to ogle the girl in silence, "he is to know that
'Niobraska Pete' is the champion kicker of the wide, wild West, and
hyar's my hat in the corral--"

"Close up!" thundered the eldest of the three, so very garrulous
himself, but not willing for the others to entertain the unfortunate
girl with their eloquence; "You have a mouth like a set beaver trap!
What's the drift of this stupid row? It's no use stringing it out, I
tell 'ee! We've enough to take the back track upon. Whar' do 'ee think
you are? Haven't we better things to do than go popping pistols off
when the rocks swarm with redskins who have made a raise?" and, as the
pair continued to glower at each other, their hands on their weapons,
he went on: "Must I knock you both down to l'arn you manners? Don't
you see we must cage this frightened bird, and then club up some of
the boys to see what the reds have left worth picking at the wreck of
the sporting swell? Ginerally these green 'galoots' yield up rich, and
those red idiots leave the best goods as beyond their comprehension.
Look at the gal trembling; what on airth must she think of your
broughtens up?"

"I am trembling with cold, not with apprehension," said Miss Maclan,
resolutely.

"Oh, hang her opinion; she's bright eyes, and she sees we are all
rogues!" Mr. Garrod observed carelessly.

"Don't you paint us so black, Sol," returned the old man, winking; "the
fact is, we only obey orders under our chief. If thar be any blame
flying about, it must fall on the captain. When we hand the young lady
over to the executive, I shall wash my hands of it, as she was a-doing
when we surprised her; and I advise you to do the same for your sweet
conscience!"

"You talk like an Injin orator, Mr. Cormick," said Sol Garrod; "if
ever we are put in the wrong box--ha, ha!--I shall let you conduct my
defence!"

"Come on, Miss," said Niobraska Pete; "in the meantime, them's the two
wust-eddicated brutes in the band, and no average specimen idiots!"

They had three horses in hiding, and the 'capture' was lifted upon one
behind Cormick, whom she was obliged to enclasp, spite of her loathing,
to save herself from falling. They rattled off at a good pace as long
as the soil was bare and stony. They soon had to traverse one of those
narrow vales between a couple of rocky "divides," which are commonly
halved themselves by a more or less broad ribbon of water, and which
terminate in a basin, a series of steps, or a "cutoff." The riders were
about to scramble down the ravine which yawned, in this case, to appal
less venturesome cavaliers, when Cormick ordered a pulling up.

"I want to look ahead, that's all," he said; "maybe, it's a fool
feeling; but we have been trotting along a leetle too smoothly for
Injin country, and too much quiet I reckon suspicious."

"Some joke o'your'n, to let our coffee and corn cakes git cold!"
sneered Pete.

"Say what you like; but let's have one of you scout up that hole."

"Very good, Cormick," said Garrod, tranquilly; "it's my turn. I'll
bring you back the nigger's top feather!"

"With his hair, too, my boy; but caution; caution never costs too much,
and it's a wise man that wakes up tomorrow morning, as the Spanish say."

"Oh, dry up, Cormick," cried Sol, impatiently reining in, after
starting. "Do you railly think the red devils would browse so near
_our_ camp?"

"Not I, my lad; only I repeat, you cannot poke the bushes with too much
prudence."

Garrod scrutinised the speaker's surly and scowling countenance with
a puzzled expression; but he must have been encouraged, for he pushed
his horse onwards and down, with a snatch of a Negro dance tune hummed
between his teeth, and a chew of tobacco.

"He's pretty much a daring chap," said Pete, with a mocking glance at
his companion as they slowly proceeded.

"Ay, ay, he does not go to market to sell courage with an empty
basket," replied the chief scout, with a dubious grin; "but I prefer
his showing the lead to this child."

Meanwhile Garrod had been spurred by the latter's air and tone into
taking the precautions indispensable on ground sown with hostilities.
His repugnance grew as he dived into the defile, though it was ample
for cavalry to have ridden two abreast. The sides were wooded with
pine, and gradually climbed to a fair height. The adventurer rode more
and more hesitatingly, looking about him on each hand, and as well
behind as before, his rifle ready to fire. But the complete calmness of
the untrodden wind trap mocked his fears. The gorge had many an awkward
turn; but nothing inimical appeared anywhere till the rider came clear
out on the edge of a plain, across which a daring smoke advertised the
site of his camp--one that defied attack, no doubt; for the wolf knows
his bones are not worth the picking.

"What trash!" he muttered, reining in testily. "Old Cormick is in a
cranky fit, or sick with too much alkali water in his whisky. Deuce
take me if I have seen anything to make a flying squirrel chatter! We
might have been at camp by this, where a darned good breakfast is about
ready. Hang the old scared crow!"

Perfectly reassured, but still grumbling, Solomon--without the wisdom
of his namesake--laid his rifle across his saddlebow, and slowly began
to retrace his steps. But hardly had he gone fifty strides, when his
horse's ears were trembling, and the animal pointed, like a dog, at the
head of an Indian, smeared with red clay and covered with feathers,
which arose in the thicket. Instantly a rude rope of bark fibre was
cast over the horseman's head, and he was pulled, half strangled, out
of the saddle, and dashed on the ground in the partly thawed mud and
snow. This done, a man leaped at the horse, and secured it before it
could turn away; when, no doubt, it would have exploded the gun against
the trees in its flight. The assailant was only a red man in looks--it
was Sir Archie Maclan's secretary. Thus far had he wandered, when he
perceived from the wind trap, where he was bewildered, the chief object
of his search. One glance at the ruffians, who affected to befriend
her, had enlightened him on their standing.

Mr. Ranald Dearborn was no fool, if he had not enjoyed prolonged
acquaintance with this region. The love for woodcraft had enlisted him
under the rich Scotchman's banner, almost as much as his great, though
sudden, admiration for his daughter.

For adventure, he had certainly a strong bitter taste at the outset;
and what immediately ensued bid fair to be worthy that sample in peril.

Ensconced by the path, he had seized an excellent moment to overthrow
Mr. Garrod.




CHAPTER VII.

CHEROKEE BILL RECRUITING.


Still upon the young Englishman were the rags which had been taken from
the dead Indian for the need of warmth. These he was glad to cast off,
donning in their stead, as a shade less repulsive, the outer garments
of the senseless scout.

He dragged him out of the way. He mounted the horse and, filled with
his idea of separating the two remaining bandits so as to have a
single-handed battle in the end for the young lady, he returned towards
the friends awaiting Garrod's report. They had come to a halt halfway
down the abrupt slope. As soon as he beheld them, Ranald waved Sol's
cap to beckon them to come on. The distance between, the gloom in the
defile, and the well-remembered garments and horse, sufficed to destroy
suspicion in any but Cormick.

"Thar you are," said Pete, laughing in relief, though he could not
descry the features of the horseman; "thar's Sol beckoning us on--he
hasn't been no time scouting the channel."

"He's been much too quick," objected Cormick, sulkily.

"Well, aren't you coming on? What's the matter? Does your _cayuse_ kick
at so little an added load as the young gal? 'Tell 'ee what, I'll be
proud to have the charge of her!"

The old ranger shook his head dubiously.

"Are you sure that's Sol?"

"Am I sure of my being in my boots? What new 'skeeter's bit you?"

"'Seems to this old man that Garrod bulks up larger in the saddle."

"So he will after the breakfast we are all sp'iling for. Let out your
pony--don't you see he is waving his hand that all's clear?"

"Why don't he come back all the way, then?"

"Because he's no such ass as to want double trouble. You'd tire out a
Salt Lake Saint, Cormick, you would! Car'fulness is the first thing
to put in your bag when you come out on the plains, but you don't
want to have car'fulness as pepper _and_ salt _and_ sugar in all your
messes, morn, noon and night; _and_ Thanksgiving, _and_ New Year's,
_and_ Independence Day! Why, old father, you're getting skeered o' your
shadder--which it ar' no beauty on the snow, by thunder! Here, I've had
my full measure of this hanging back from breakfast, and if you freeze
thar, I foller the thaw and let Sol carry me into camp."

"Go on, then!" replied Cormick. "I tell 'ee thar's some devilment awake
afore us this morning! And that's not Sol Garrod drawing us into a
trap. He's a bad egg, but he wasn't made to throw at a pardner's head.
You'll see, you'll see!"

"Eggs or no eggs, I am going on! Follow at your own pace! But mind! If
you gallop off with the young gal, in whose ransom I have my share as
the fellow finder, I'll report you to Captain Kidd--and you'll not be
safe this side o' the Jordan."

In very open order they resumed the march. The cavalier moved on away
as they started, stride for stride.

"Look at that!" cried Cormick, triumphantly; "See him ride away."

"Why should he not ride on in front of us, and keep the way clear? He
know's the picket's duty--a dragoon deserter, anyhow, he'd ought to."

Still wrangling, they penetrated the defile, where Niobraska Pete
taunted his elder to press on. At a third of the course, nothing
justified Cormick's apprehensions.

"Sol has got out of the way altogether now, though," he remonstrated.

"Pooh! He has darted on to tell cook to dish up, that's all."

"Well, I shan't be satisfied till I have had the first mouthful down,"
said the old man, with a still uneasy look around.

Presently he pulled up his horse, saying that he was in a good spot
for defence; the rising ground over a bulging root of a large cedar
crossing the narrowing path.

"You go on and give the call if all goes well and it is no bogus Sol,"
said he. "Here I stay till the way is safe to my belief."

"He's stubborn as a mule," muttered Pete. "A stamp crusher would not
shake him. Old man," he said, angrily, "I _shall_ git on, and tell the
captain you are up to some trick as regards the young lady. Don't you
fear, though, miss, the captain will stew him like a fish in the kettle
if he plays any tricks on the fair prize of the band represented by its
three scouters in company."

With that he disappeared in the forest cleft, and the snowy crust
ceased to crackle under his horse's hoofs.

The stillness became oppressive, broken only by the swishing of the
branches suddenly relieved of snowy burdens by the effect of the
sunbeams and springing up gaily. All the beasts were hibernating or
asleep; all the birds gone south except the Arctic robins and the
sedately soaring eagles, whose white heads seemed frosted and presented
to the sun to be freed of the chill.

Expectation weighed as poignantly upon the unfortunate girl as on the
old border ruffian. Insensibly yielding to the desire to battle anxiety
with even futile action, he was slowly pushing on his horse when a
peculiar sound at last in advance caused him to check it. Within a few
seconds, the horse of Niobraska Pete came back to its companion, with
no thought but refuge from some startling horror. Pete had not raised
an alarm; consequently that smear of blood on the mane denoted that
he had been unhorsed by a deathblow. Nor did Sol, nor his mysterious
personator appear, and Cormick felt assured that he was left alone, and
that foes were planted between him and the camp, of which he almost
inhaled the savory fumes. The situation was maddening.

"You are bad luck," he snarled at the girl, with the superstition of
the low sort of white men, who soon equal the reds in such fancies. "It
has cost two good men's lives just to have met you."

He waited a while longer, but there was no fresh alarm.

"Hark ye," said he, roughly. "I am going to put you on that horse, and
we must circle round out of this accursed glade. If you try to 'part
co.' I shall shoot you with my first shot. It strikes me, from the
way that we have been beset, it is because of you, and hence you are
worth as much money as I had concluded from your story; but thar's no
calculating on what anybody says nowadays."

As he drew the riderless steed towards him, and tried to make it sidle
up flank to flank, its ears were moved in affright. It sniffed some
alarming taint on the air, and set up so furious a kicking that the
headgear was detached, and left in the astonished bandit's grasp. Then,
emitting a scream like a maimed warhorse on the battle field, it dashed
into the first opening, and crashed on out of all perception.

"It smells the war paint, by all that's cruel! Injins!" muttered
Cormick. "But why did I hear no whoops when they made their 'coups' on
Sol and Pete?"

At the same instant, as if to warrant his reflection, a vibrating yell
of triumph burst forth so clearly as to seem at their elbows--a war
whoop of which Cormick had never heard the like. It was so provocatory
in tone that, irresistibly, at least a hundred savage cries answered it
inquiringly from all parts of the ravine traversed by the bandits.

"Why, it's a nest of them," groaned the old scoundrel, aghast, and only
mechanically restraining his plunging steed.

In the lull which followed--painful by contrast with that hideous
clamour--a horseman dashed into the glen and faced the paralysed
scout. The clothes were of Sol Garrod; but at the cry of "Oh, Mr.
Dearborn! You! Help, help!" from his saddle companion, Cormick was
relieved of any doubt as to his previous surmise of a deception.

"Ah, ah," grunted he, "now I know why he never came back."

With one man, and a young white only before him, he recovered full
sway of his homicidal acquirements, and his gun and that Ranald had
snatched from the burial place were levelled at each other.

"Don't fire!" appealed Ulla, though not in fear for herself, and "Don't
fire!" cried a louder and manly voice, as an additional personage for
the group leaped down from a rock and fell beside the restless horse.

How it reared at this unannounced apparition! That rearing disturbed
Cormick's aim, and whilst his shot passed above Dearborn's head, that
of the latter buried itself in his groin, after scarring the horse's
neck. The newcomer seized the bridle, and shook off the wounded man,
whilst Ranald gladly received the half-swooning lady.

"What the thunder did you fire for?" demanded he, angrily.

The young people stared at him in surprise. He spoke perfect English,
but, we know, Cherokee Bill as perfectly resembled a full-blooded
Indian when animated with ferocity. Besides, his buffalo robe was
tucked up into his belt to leave his legs free, and a ruddy scalp
dangled in a tuck of it.

"A dog of a Crow!" he explained, seeing that it caught their eyes.
"He'll beg no more powder and ball at the Agency to shoot the two
legged buffalo in 'store' clothes, that the wise style a _fresh_ from
the States."

Perplexed by this singular speech, so unlike either an Indian's or a
white man's, the young people had immediately turned their offended
eyes aloof. Ulla must have believed she was saved on ascertaining that
Dearborn had never relaxed his endeavours to come up with her and her
captors. She laughed and sobbed hysterically like one aroused from a
nightmare and excessively delighted; it was but a play of fancy. Alas!
There was to be another waking, and that not long delayed.

Suddenly the Cherokee's hand was laid upon the Englishman's shoulder,
and he said:

"Rouse, sir! That horse must have cantered into the gold seekers'
camp--they are already in the ravine."

"Gold seekers?"

"Robbers, thieves, and all that!" explained Bill Williams, hastily.
"There is no safety for you that way. On the other hand, there are the
Crows--four score at least. I have been counting their noses, so near
that I could have killed more than that one decently."

"Oh, what must we do?" ejaculated Miss Maclan.

"The lady asks you what'll we best do?" repeated the half-breed
sarcastically, eyeing the young man as if to "value him up."

"Cut our way through them!"

"That's good to say, but how can it be done? The gold seekers number
two hundred, and perhaps half of them are crowding in off the plain
now. You and I may trust these horses as far as horses can travel, but
encumbered with the lady, that one will run double risk as a bigger
mark of an arrow and bullet."

"I dare!" said Ulla simply.

But Dearborn shuddered at the idea.

"Take her, man! I will trust you," said he, "stranger though you are,
in all senses of the word; and leave me to detain them from an instant
pursuit."

"Oh, they have their own roasting pieces to spit," said Bill.

"What is your advice, sir? Your tone is that of a commander here," said
Ulla, regarding the Cherokee steadily as he bore himself nobly erect
and unaffected, though, better than either, he estimated the dangers of
the situation aright.

"I say, in the hands of these robbers you will run no risk for the
present, whilst I guarantee this man's safety if we but reach a certain
point on these horses."

"I flee, and abandon the lady into the power of disreputable men? No
such coward, sir!"

"Coward, when I want you to run the double gauntlet of Indians and
desperadoes! I don't see what she could despise you for. Hark! They
come on both sides--stealthily, but I hear them! The young woman cannot
accompany me where I must lead--are we all to be uselessly crumpled up,
or all to be saved?"

"Go!" said Ulla; "Who will save me if you are slain?" in a voice meant
for Dearborn's ear alone.

But the Cherokee overheard her, and instantly subjoined:

"You're the queen trump! I have offered to help you in this strait
because you are white, and your enemies are dogs! But now, on the soul
of my fathers! Supposed to be chasing the phantom buffalo in the aerial
realm which those mountaintops support--I swear to save you from this
hellish crew, or my bones shall swing in the hangman's loop!"

"I hear you, believe you, and I thank you!" exclaimed Miss Maclan,
forcing a smile through tears. "But _our_ enemies come! Hasten away,
in Heaven's name! Dearborn, we shall meet again under that heaven, or
within its golden gates!"

She threw him a kiss with a pretence of playfulness, and bounded away
in the direction of the plain, crying:

"Do not shoot! It is only a woman! I surrender!"

At the same time Cherokee Bill leaped on the free horse over the tail
up, _à l'Indienne_, and catching the other reins, plunged into the
thicket, bidding the Englishman bend low to elude thorns and missiles,
and heedless of his reproaches. In their rapid course, it seemed to the
latter that he saw groups and pairs of grappling men plying clubs and
knives, but no reports of firearms cracked the icicles off the boughs.
Each contesting party showed a respectful dislike to bringing on a
regular engagement.

"What's your horse good for still?" queried the half-breed in a whisper.

"Five or six minutes more at this headlong pace."

"We are nearing an ambush, through which we must cleave our way. Do no
less than I do, and we shall be safe!"

"With heaven my aid, I shall do more!"

The half-breed found a broad way by a miracle of knowledge and
faultless application.

"To the right--wheel to the right!" vociferated he abruptly, as half a
dozen arrows and a light spear or two whizzed under the noses of the
suddenly turned horses.

"Ride them down! Now! Hurrah!"

"Hurrah!" cried Dearborn, firing a shot and hurling his gun in his
frenzy at the row of dark faces that grinned with flaming eyes like a
wall before him.

Few men, except with a long spear, can steadily receive cavalry. Only
one Indian really awaited the English youth on his approach; his lance
snapped in in the horse's chest. It fell on him, enclosing him between
the forelegs. Dearborn was dismounted; but Bill was before him, on the
ground, steadied him as he rose, put a revolver in his hand, and bade
him fire "low and fast." They had passed through the ambuscade at the
cost of the two horses, and the ten shots they poured forth enabled
them to have a start in their retreat on foot. They were speedily in a
hollow of the rocky bluffs, where no sane Indian would follow an armed
foe. The ground was sandy, now mingled with dry snow as hard, and at
random rose needles of stone of varied dimensions, among which the half
Indian trapper serenely threaded his way. At the foot of a nearly
perpendicular mountain they were brought to a standstill. The face
seemed smooth as if polished at first glance, but there ran a ledge, or
cornice, as Alpine climbers call it, along that level spread.

"I see now why a woman could not have accompanied us in our flight,"
said Dearborn.

"No, you don't quite," replied Bill, drily, as he led the young man
slowly upwards on this narrow footway. No quadruped could have mounted,
for these men had to proceed with their backs to the wall, or face to
it, in the case of the inexperienced Englishman. (He feared vertigo if
he looked out or down on the abyss.) At last the ledge ended abruptly.
But, about breast high, the granite was cracked horizontally, just wide
enough for one's finger to be hid in it.

"Watch me," said Bill, calmly. "If you do not think you can follow me
in such a spider's way, cling where you are till I bring a friend and a
lasso that we may swing you over here. It was necessary that we should
leave no trail those dogs dare pursue," he added apologetically.

"Go on," said Ranald, who felt his blood boil with the determination to
show this strange hybrid that he had, at least the bravery of the white
race, if not the athletic craft of the aborigines.

Thus adjured, the Cherokee inserted his hands in the prolonged crevice,
let his body hang at the end of his arms with no other hold; and
gradually worked himself along some twenty feet.

The watcher suffered more than he with the suspense. After a period
seeming immeasurable, the way was clear; the rock was untenanted
save by the young man, and he might have believed he was abandoned
in this horrific site by a deluding demon. He looked up: a thousand
feet of granite seemed bowing out to fall and entomb him; he looked
outward--miles of ether intervened betwixt him and the tops of gigantic
trees; he looked down, just for an instant's fraction, and felt his
heart shrink; he was some three thousand feet over a cup of frozen
water--a lake diminished thus by the space.

"Come!" said the Cherokee's voice, designedly emotionless that he might
not affect the young man in any way.

The latter breathed a prayer to live for the sake of the bereaved
daughter of his patron, and steadily swung himself over the chasm by
his eight fingers alone; the thumbs seemed useless; the cliff fell away
insensibly beneath him, so that his feet failed to touch. It was the
dream of a man-fly acted out.

Finally, the end of the crack was attained. Here the climber without an
assistant was a doomed man, unless he could retreat as he came--almost
an impossibility. But, on this occasion, Cherokee Bill was waiting,
with the loop of a counterbalanced rope in his hand, which he lowered
over the young man and drew up so as to engirdle him. More than his
pair of arms were not needed, considering the size of the boulder which
weighed the farther end of the cord; but, none the less, two other
men were hauling on it. In a few minutes the young man stood on the
threshold of the cavern of the Old Nick's Jump. This was the only other
way in.

With a cordial wave of the hand, Cherokee Bill presented his protégé to
Jim the Yager and Mr. Filditch.

"A recruit," said he, laconically, "and _A one!_ We are going to have
some rare tussles, right soon and right here; but this friend o' ours
will keep up his end o' the board, and don't you forget who says so!"




CHAPTER VIII.

THE GOLD GRABBERS.


The Cherokee and his young friend had barely vanished from the defile
before some twenty men rushed in upon Miss Maclan. They had left
her in a growing trepidation lest she had committed a great blunder
in not sharing their flight. The newcomers were on horse and afoot.
In this rugged way, expert footmen could keep pace with the riders.
The principal was a tall, thin man, about fifty, rather bowed than
straight; his tawny hair fell in locks thickly upon his shoulders in
the style of the adopters of the Indian fashion; his face was bloodless
in the third part not hidden by a red beard; as a guard against snow
blindness, he wore green goggles, which gave him the air of a student
or professor on a most guileless scientific enterprise. Spite of this,
he was the Western desperado who had taken the notorious name of
"Captain Kidd," that of the most ferocious pirate known on the Atlantic
coast in the 18th century. He had already seen Sol Garrod inanimate,
and the view of Old Cormick, a much more prized member of his band,
doubled the malignity of his scowl. Nevertheless, he was surprised into
some courtesy on seeing nobody but the young lady, for he removed his
fur cap a little, and faltered:

"Who are you? This is never your work, is it?" pointing to the dead
bandit. "Oh, I see," he went on, quickly. "The rogues quarrelled over
the plum, and they would have deprived their captain of his option to
redeem it at the band's estimation."

"Sir," said she haughtily, "you are right to call them rogues; they
professed no great respect for me, and they have been punished for it
by men who, on the contrary, have acted like honourable gentlemen."

"That will do. This is no time or place for such pages out of the Book
of Elocution! What is it, my boys?" as his men returned quickly from
the track of the horses.

An uproar in the woods, where the flyers burst through the Indians,
enlightened them on the danger of prosecuting their researches too far.

"Our red brother!" he exclaimed, jestingly. "You'd better fall back
before he extends the tomahawk of friendship."

"But the slayers of our mates and stealers of their horses are not
Indians," added a scout who most recently came in.

"Never mind. Return to camp. Neither in the sky or along the land now
is the lookout serene, and we shall meet any mishap better there. Two
of you take care of that saucebox. Hang me if she be not, though fair
as a lily, as pert and disdainful as a Mexican."

Lighting a cigar, he rode back, meditatively smoking, among his sullen
and apprehensive men, without appearing to remember he had made a
prisoner.

They were not the kind of characters to whom a young lady's protection
should have been confided. On the contrary, their dissipated faces,
truculent carriage, and noisy talk, proclaimed them the scum of the
dross of the mining camp. Not worthy the name of gold seeker, they
deserved that of horse thief, secret stabber, and "gold grabber."

For her part, Ulla was overcome by violent emotions, after the brief
hope of being free of persecution. The persistent devotion of Mr.
Dearborn impressed her. Others who may have escaped apparently looked
to their own safety, but he had armed himself merely to follow her
steps and seek to deliver her against any odds. She ruefully reviewed
the events during which she had passed through hope, fear, and pain,
till plunged into a despair greater than any since her father's death.
On marking the number of her escort, and their villainous visages and
robust physique, she saw little possibility of her only friend, however
energetic his new associate, to save her from a miserable fate.

The retreating bandits did not seem to draw the Indians after them.
There was no event on the way, and the watch at their camp had none to
report.

The adventurers' "fort" presented a semicircle, the horns resting
on marshland and on an inaccessible ravine respectively. It had an
improvised musket battery gun, such as Prince Maurice of Holland
invented years ago, and modern armourers have perfected and adorned
with their generally unpronounceable names. Its rows of barrels, two
deep, could be fired simultaneously, and a light, strong, broad-wheeled
carriage allowed it to be quickly shifted in position. It defended the
only breach in a barricade of pickets. But it was evident the gold
seekers were fairly well content to entrust their surety to their
rifles and strong arms.

Captain Kidd responded carelessly to the questions of the men in camp,
waved them to stand back, and proceeded towards the rocks of the
ravine. Soon he stopped, alighted, and offered to assist Miss Maclan
down from a horse which a rider had resigned to her. She made no answer
to his speech of welcome, more or less satirical, and eluded his hand
by leaping lightly to the ground. He turned pale, frowned, and cried:

"Take her to the señorita. They are proud cats alike, and tell Doña
Rosario that you bring her a companion or a slave--I care not which she
makes of her."

"But, sir!" interrupted Miss Maclan, more alarmed at being thrown into
the power of a woman than heretofore, "You must know that I am the
daughter of Sir Archie Maclan! That he--"

"Oh, the frontier barrooms are full of such sirs!" he replied,
brutally. "I care not who you are, since you would not be civil. Know
that here you are like one of those tent poles--something I can snap
asunder and toast my cheese with. Take her away! Three men lost because
of her. I am _half froze for hair!_" and he made with his finger in the
air near her forehead the atrocious pantomime of scalping her.

She did not shrink, but looked at him steadily with her cold blue eyes,
and, with a lofty mien, followed the man in whose charge she was placed.

"And now that we have the petticoats out of the way," said one of the
bandits hastily, "I suppose we can launch out and punish those who have
wiped out poor Sol and his 'pardners?'"

"You will do nothing of the sort, Dick," replied Captain Kidd to the
coarse Englishman who addressed him.

"Why not? Are you afraid of the Crows who infest the wood? So it
appears."

"No, nor of the Blackfeet who are also in the neighbourhood."

"Of the Red River Half-breeds, then, who are camped yonder? Pooh, I
could eat the lot, three at a bite."

"No."

"Of the sledging train, whose unconcealed traces abounded to the
northeast, as Lottery Paul reported two days ago?"

"Of them still less. If this young woman's tale be true, they came
scooting along with sails on their sledges--what a notion! And scooted
into a cutoff! They were smashed, and the reds and the wolves have left
no more than their bones."

"I know now! You are afeard o' running up against the Old Man of the
Mountains!"

"Jim Ridge--"

"And his red-nigger companyero, Cherokee Bill!"

"No!" answered the captain, more warmly than with any of his negatives
before.

"'Tis the Yager and his blood brother! I am sure we are near that haunt
of theirs which no one has yet wormed out, and yet scores of daredevils
have left the settlements to try to discover their places, as we are
doing."

"My dear 'pal' Dick," replied Captain Kidd. "I do not underrate Old
Jim. He is wise, expert, brave, with an enormous influence over
all the prairie and mountain rangers from the Great Lakes to the
Waterless Desert of the Apache Country. I defy anyone to tell certainly
beforehand whether he will have the enmity or support of even those red
men who most hate us whites as a rule. He must be our prisoner--our
guide, by any means, mark, to the treasures of this region. Though
it is a hard task to master him, he shall fall into our clutches,
I promise you. But my fear is no more of him than of Canadians,
Blackfeet, or Crows."

"Of whom, then, captain?"

"Have you seen any eagles on the sierra today?"

"No!"

"Or wild beasts in the glens?"

"No! But yesterday they were out of their retreats."

"I believe it. The eagles were whetting their beaks; and the bears,
wolves, and wolverines sharpening their claws."

"Very like, because they have seen us and so many other gangs almost
jostling in these wilds, and they know there will be meat."

"No, Dick; our conflicts will not furnish them with a glut. It will
be a mightier devastator--one that we cannot resist, and we will be
lucky to dodge. See the clouds rolling over and over on the top of the
Rockies--above the snowbelt! That is the blizzard concentrating for a
rush down upon the valleys and plains. Go and set the men to making all
weatherproof. We shall be snowed up! And may the devil take care of his
own!"




CHAPTER IX.

THE RED RIVER HALF-BREEDS.


Whilst Ranald and Filditch reposed, the more restless trappers went out
reconnoitring all the day.

There was a rising wind, which boomed in the hollows, rattled the loose
stones, and soughed among the ice coated boughs.

Their first find was the lodgement of the Crow Indians. For over twenty
hours these had remained in a fireless camp in a gulch eastward, living
on "cold bites," so as not to betray themselves, and sending out no
scouts till the recent snow should be hardened.

At half past five in the morning, Cherokee Bill had heard a murmur in
this camp, like that of the bees in swarming, and thus it was pointed
out. The two crept as near as they dared. They could distinguish the
forms of the more prominent leaders as they drilled their followers,
and could recognise the head chief.

It was Ahnemekee--noted, though young. He was bold, vain of his good
looks and long hair, and very rapacious. His people esteemed him a
hero; but the frontiersmen set him down as one of the biggest thieves
in creation--which, by the way, is much the same thing. Ahnemekee made
a speech to his troop, rather at length, and with a confident bearing.
The two beholders conjectured, from the gestures, that he was planning
an attack on a grand scale. The subchiefs, having also addressed their
bands, a war whistle sounded the order to depart, and all the warriors
left the camp, except a strong guard over their few horses. Being
Mountain Crows, they were accustomed to fight on foot.

The two hunters had no more to learn there; but, by following the first
party, whose trail they came upon, they soon judged whither they all
converged; and running on in advance, by a wide circuit to the same
point, they discovered an encampment, and thereby the cause of the
hymns in the midnight.

At first sight, it looked like a caravan of emigrants. There were
carts, waggons, horses, oxen, mules, and even sheep, calves, and pigs.
The guardians of this valuable train, so far up in the mountains, were
nearly a hundred in number. There were many women, about the same age,
but few or no children; and, coming to examine closely, while the
men were all of an age, also, their dark tint was quite contrary to
the complexion of their charges. The conveyances showed a variety of
construction and brands, which showed to the acute scouts that it was
no legitimate grouping, but rather a conglomeration of spoil from a
raid on the edge of civilisation.

"It will be dog eating dog," observed the Yager; "for here is the
target of 'the Thunderbolt.' What do you make them out to be?"

"Red River Half-breeds," answered Bill--"_Bob Rulies_, sure as a gun.
The Crows will have a tough dinner to tackle if they trouble them!"

"Bob Ruly" is a burlesque pronunciation of _Bois Brulé_, or "burnt
wood;" that is to say, men of the colour of the red of a fire stick
between the black end and the unfired portion. It is applied to the
Half-breeds of Canada, French and Indian, who refused to accept their
transference under the Anglo-French treaty of 1763 to the English
flag, and withdrew to the west. Their realm of retirement, called the
Red River Territory, or Manitoba, is geographically in the British
Dominion; but they flourished there in freedom till the development
of Canada, and the project of a North Pacific Railway compelled the
Canadian Government to enforce their submission. At this time, it was
supposed that the Bois Brulés would maintain their independence, if
more or less helped by American adventurers, until the intervention of
the United States would confirm it, preliminary to their absorption
into the Great Republic. No one foresaw that the British troops, under
Sir Garnet Wolseley, would quickly suppress the rebels, and that
the United States Civil War would direct the Washington statesmen's
attention elsewhere.

The Bois Brulés, through their Indian blood, are friendly with many
northwestern tribes; and, being good trappers, and gay and easygoing
spirits, keep on pleasant terms with the white rovers.

"Tell 'ee what, chief," said Ridge, after prolonged observation,
"they're a band of villains there! Either they have been robbing, or
they are consignees of plunder. If it were not for those poor women,
whom anyone can tell are prisoners, I should cheer the Crows on to 'em!"

"Yes; Ahnemekee is a murderous thief--he thinks nothing of killing
women and babes--a bad Indian, Jim! He must not be let have his way
here!"

"We must hold a 'medicine council,'" continued the Old Man of the
Mountain; "so back to our friends!"

They had to take their return route with more caution than in coming,
since the Crows were no doubt at hand. But their intimate knowledge of
the ground enabled them to avoid any contact. Thanks to the detour they
traced, and to the infinite pains with which they scanned every square
yard of the scene, they perceived that a small party had come to a halt
in the rocks. These were not Blackfeet; and they thought at the first
that they might be the Crows, of whose presence Filditch's moccasin had
given an intimation. In any case, they crept up to the shallow dug out
den in the side of a shale and sandstone cliff, and, when the faces
were distinguishable, rose out of the cover, and boldly went forward,
waving their open right hands in token of peaceful intentions.

Indeed, the group of seven men was friendly. Two more were collecting
wood for a fire, luckily for them not yet burning.

It was the remnant of Sir Archie Maclan's hapless expedition.

Usually, a meeting place at a distance is agreed upon by a troop, in
order that, after dispersal by an attack, the rally may be made for a
reprisal or to affording a strong front in retreat. This precaution had
not been taken by the English gentleman's heterogenous company. Still,
by some natural law prevailing in the wilderness, the few who escaped
the savages had come together. Lame, weaponless, imperfectly clothed,
driven to eat roots painfully scratched out of the frozen soil, they
regarded the two trappers as almost superhuman, glowing, as they were,
with health, and formidably armed, and quite at home in the desolation.

At their first words--thanks to Ranald's account of the disaster--the
newcomers knew with whom they had to deal. These were, save one (a
Surcee Indian), the Scotch hunters. Though the Hudson's Bay Company men
are instructed to show no cordiality towards free trappers in actual
practice, they usually hobnob when they meet. Here, as Jim Ridge at
once promised them supplies if they would accompany him to a _cache_,
the fraternisation was speedily perfect, and when Cherokee Bill, bound
to the mountain home to bring back Ridge's nephew and Mr. Dearborn,
left the rejoicing fugitives, they were toasting the Old Yager in
trading whisky, and vowing to follow him to the edge of the Firehole
Basin, and then over.

Two hours afterwards, the Cherokee returned with the whites, and
the reception of Ranald was hilarious by his comrades, now equipped
and crammed to repletion. Whilst these lost ones "_found_ in every
comfort," as they said, were still recompensing themselves for their
sufferings in the unconstrained mode of the desert, the chiefs of this
now redoubtable band conferred on the plan of action.

Filditch was alone his own master, and placed himself at his relative's
orders; Cherokee Bill judged that the "old hoss knew best;" Ranald,
freely appointed leader of the Scotch contingent, offered their
services as blindly, and Jim had only to debate with himself.

"Gentlemen," said he, "that either the Crows or the Bob Rulies should
slaughter one another in a fight is no item for my book. But those
white women are innocent creatures, wives, and sisters, I daresay,
of poor settlers, who are now lamenting their unknown fate. We are
not numerous enough to match either band now, but when they thin one
another out with a general shoot, one vigorous charge might place the
captives in our hands. When we so charge Bill will look to the horses;
and once we can ride off, I answer for a safe haven for the whole
_cahoot_ (cohort) in a nest in the mountains. Woe to any that follow
us, for I am conceited on not letting Tom, Dick, and Harry collect on
my front doorstep. Is that a good notion, brothers?"

"It will do."

"Then look to your guns, whet your knives, and all be ready to march."

In half an hour the start was made, the men being allowed to finish
their pipes as they proceeded in single file. Down sloping ground,
Ridge led them into a valley, where an unseen river gurgled like a pond
of sunfish. A beaver dam had intercepted this flow, but the beaver
meadow was one sheet of perfectly unruffled ice, under which the
running water could be seen by the bubbles at the airholes. Like so
many schoolboys, the men, with a start down the bank, shot themselves
across this expanse to the wood of tender trees among the stumps cut
by the industrious natural engineer. Here Cherokee Bill took the head
of the Indian file. For twenty minutes the string of men advanced in
absolute quiet, forbearing to snap a dry twig, dislodge a stone, or
crush the ice crust. Bill guided them so skilfully that they were
always well sheltered, till finally they came out into a hodgepodge of
boulders in a sand black and fine as gunpowder, resembling the remains
of bones and vegetables in a giant's stew kettle out of which he had
drained the broth. It occupied the centre of the end of the beaver
meadow, and protected the rivulet channel.

It was the halting post, and a more unscalable and defensible position
it were difficult to select. Under them in front the level ground
extended where the Bois Brulés' caravan had been drawn through,
hindrances which any but western wagoners would deem insurmountable.
The hunters were shielded on all sides, and invisible. On the white
patches of snow they descried the unsuspecting red men leisurely
nearing the palisades of the Canadians to take up position for the
storming. The stockade showed that the Half-breeds intended no move,
and as Indians almost never attack in darkness, the little force on
observation placidly lay down to await their cue to intervene.

Streaks of fog and a dull greyish yellow cloudbank closed in the
setting sun. In the night the wolves called to one another, and seemed,
in their language, to exchange information on the movements of so many
men in the solitude, and laughed at the prospect of carnage on the
morrow.

When the moon shone wan and cold, it not only was adorned with a livid
snow ring, but was accompanied by four "dogs," or weird images of its
pale self, which made the superstitious red men shudder. As for the
whites, hardy as the Scotch-American becomes, they luxuriated under the
blankets and furs which Jim Ridge had generously offered, and mocked
at the glacial chill of the morning frost. A few showers of fine ice,
rather than snow, fell on the lookouts of the mountain men's "fort,"
of the Crows and of the Canadians, suffering with the feverish wakeful
sleepiness to which soldiers, seamen, and hunters are subjected at the
worst stage in the darkest and coldest hours of dawn.

At length stripes of pallid gold and blue announced a sunless day. None
but a snow owl saluted it, and that was a sneering, melancholy hoot
borne on the gusty breeze, laden with sleet, ice, and sand.

The twilight was of a milky opal hue, which concentrated in a midair
layer, while the ground air cleared up and allowed a tolerably extended
view. It seemed an ominous pall over the threatened camps.

Suddenly a vivid glare reddened the plain. A war drum thundered, and
the Crow war whoop furiously resounded.

Ahnemekee's war whistle piped his band on with piercing notes.




CHAPTER X.

THE STORM KING.


On the several signals, the mountaineers saw the Crows spring up even
from coverts where they had not suspected them to lurk. They shook off
the snow like so many feathers off a shot bird, as well as their robes,
which would encumber their onset. Immediately firearms of all sorts,
for the red men are rarely armed uniformly, began and kept up the sharp
continuous crackle of a firing at will.

"Thar she blazes!" said Cherokee Bill, with a ferocious grin.

Besides their bullets, the Crows had flung fireballs and fire tipped
arrows upon the waggons, and had followed them in at the openings of
the interlocked carts. But they had no timid emigrants to deal with,
whatever they might have thought. Quite otherwise, for the Bois Brulés
were on the alert, employing all defensive measures in their full
knowledge available in that site. Their firing was only done when they
pushed the Indians with the muzzles, and it was dead or wounded whom
they thus blew back without the barrier.

This repulse did not dishearten the marauders. They came on again as
boldly, but with more method. Some carried bunches of resinous twigs
smeared with elk fat, and using them first as shields by which to reach
the waggon wheels, dropped them between them and fired them before
retiring. The camp defenders were forced to detach several to put out
these flames, which soon caught the waggon canvas covers.

At one gap about forty of the savages clambered in, and plied knives
and hatchets to reach the horses, which they hoped to stampede, and
so augment the confusion, whilst relieving the owners of the power to
depart speedily. Their whoops were already impressed with the tone of
victory.

The main body of the Red River Half-breeds surrounded a large tent
which undoubtedly contained their valuables, including the captive
women, whose psalms had been heard by the mountain men. The rest of the
Half-breeds resisted the rush towards the cattle.

All at once several Indians were seen setting upon a young Canadian,
who had a keg under one arm, which he defended with a woodman's axe.

"Whisky! Whisky! The firewater; ha, ha!" cried these savages, laughing
and yelling in his face under the very axe which menaced to leave them
no heads into which to gulp their beloved liquor.

"You asses, it's powder!" he returned, contemptuous of their stupidity.

At the same moment, whilst his and half a dozen other pairs of hands
wrenched the keg asunder, one of the gusts of wind swept towards the
group the blazing shreds of a tarpaulin of a waggon being pillaged.
A spark kindled the outpouring grains, the explosion ensued, and the
cluster of redskins was horribly scattered, while the Bois Brulés fell
limbed.

Though almost conquerors, the unsuppressible screams of the victims
of this ravage intimidated the Crows, and nothing but the prompt
encouragement of their chiefs prevented a panic. On the other hand, the
view of so much harm wrought by a single hand revived the Half-breeds'
courage. They saw that, at least, they would not perish without
retaliation, and that they could evade death by torture by blowing
themselves up.

The death dealing explosion acted as a signal for an armed truce of
scanty duration.

Meanwhile the Scotch allies of the mountain men had watched the
struggle from their aerie with the burning impatience of boarhounds who
hear the beast gnashing his tusks. All but Ridge seemed thus chafing to
take a share in the sanguinary game. They only controlled their warlike
instincts till the bursting of the gunpowder keg forced them to applaud
the Canadian victim. Then, without a word, they bounded from among the
rocks and rushed down on the 'Plat.' All that Ridge could do was get
them under some restraint, so as to "plunge in" orderly.

The combatants had their attention so engaged within the camp, that the
new arrivals ran up to the waggon hubs without being noticed. Therefore
the Yager halted them behind two stumps, of which the trunk and limbs
had helped fence the enclosure, and went half round it to inspect the
smoking ruins, where gashed and mutilated bodies proved that neither
Canadian nor Indian struck with daintiness. Rejoining his companions,
he briefly explained how he wished them to aim, and they impatiently
awaited his word of command.

The pause was now over, for Ahnemekee was flourishing his spiked war
club and sounding the charging cry. In another moment the redskins who
survived the last shots of the Bois Brulés would be in the tent of the
women and raining merciless blows on their unresisting forms.

"Fire into the brown of them!" roared Ridge, furious at the scene, not
unknown to him, which he imagined.

At the back of the Crows, then, through the smoke and a few idly
falling flakes of spotless snow, a dozen shots resounded, and at least
ten of them pitched headfirst towards the Canadians, whose balls
whizzed over them and strewed death among their surprised companions.

Taken between two fires, the Crows felt they had lost the day. The
Bois Brulés, without wasting time in seeking whence were their timely
deliverers, shouted "_Vive la Canadienne!_" and bravely took the
offensive. But, casting aside their empty guns, the Crows scattered
through the camp, and tried to scramble out of the environment with
even more alacrity than they had shown in entering. Shot down by the
unknown foe and cut to pieces by the reanimated Half-breeds--it was a
"fix." Weaponless, stripped almost naked for the action, debarred from
speeding to the spot where their garments were stored, the Indians
must have been slaughtered to a man on the frigid waste had not their
frantic appeals to the patron of their tribe seemed to have obtained an
intervention.

That storm which had been two days breeding, and was unmistakably
threatened overnight, flew over the mountain crest and burst on the
tablelands with unmeasured violence. It was the "blizzard," to which
East Indian cyclones, West Indian tornadoes, and what Europe calls
tempests, are zephyrs to fan a baby's brow. One of those cataclysms
which befall poor earth as if destined to destroy it, and rage in the
desert so furiously that the aspect of the whole tract for thousands
upon thousands of miles is often transformed in a few hours. The wind
came out of gorges like a compacted bolt, and basalt was pierced
like putty; the eddies, or "screw wind," uprooted hoary pines and
waltzed away with them in the distance. The snow and hail clouds
were compressed to the tree and hill tops, and condensed the lower
atmosphere so that breathing was difficult, and cattle stopped in
frantic flight as if a colossal hand were laid on their backs. The snow
fell in balled up masses, and light absolutely disappeared so far as
any ability to fix its source existed. All the eye could perceive was a
variation in the density of the seams of gloom. As for hearing, any one
of the portentous sounds must have deafened--the roar of the wind, the
crash of the dethroned peaks, the ripping of the trees, the rush of the
avalanches of snow, sand, and rocks.

The Indians had scattered over the plain, trembling and moaning their
prayers indiscriminately to the Great Good Spirit and the Little Bad
One. On they fled, trampling on birds and beasts, whose lifelong
lairs and nests were wrecked, and which grovelled flat in agony of
apprehension. Most dreadful of all, now and then a fugitive was balled
up in a thick gust, and the packing flakes around him rapidly gathering
additional layers, he was soon thrown down, and thence forth, the core
of a rolling hill spun on for leagues over the tablelands.

Ridge had time to raise the cry, "With me, on our only chance, boys!"
and by a miracle, blindly, yet surely, led the band back to their
late post, however precarious was that refuge, attained over new and
terrible obstacles in the thick snow.

The lately smooth-as-glass beaver meadow lake was rough with stones
that had smashed the mirror; the subterranean stream, vastly swollen,
rose up like an entombed snake, bursting the surface and splashed about
impetuously for outlets which continual changes of the rocky barriers
offered and withdrew. As the torrent rose to the hunters, the snow
massively came down. But they were hardened border men, and far from
letting even justifiable awe paralyse their courage, arched their backs
against the piercing north wind, and listened to judge by its sinister
voice where would open an escape from the enwrapping danger.

Fortunately, the very violence of these Rocky Mountain snowstorms
lessen their duration, and they calm down more rapidly than they break
out--suddenly and without a warning lull. This the adventurers knew,
except Filditch and Ranald alone, perhaps, and though they were knee
deep in icy water and mere snowmen, they dwelt statuesque without a
murmur.

During three hours they huddled up, clinging to each other, merely
shifting, so that every now and then the more exposed should be
replaced by the best sheltered--a living bulwark, that built and
unbuilt itself for its own protection.

"Hurrah, boys!" shouted the Yager, as the wind died away sharply,
"We have weathered it. Old Rocky is some, though, when he pitches
snowballs!"

The snowflakes were soft at last, and not intermingled with icy atoms
that cut the cheek, ay, and even the leather of their dress, like a
sandblast. Soon that ceased, and they could view the dreadful medley of
the devastated country.

All the landmarks were removed, and the new ones were frightfully
fantastic. Trees were stripped into logs, and flung upon the bluffs,
and boulders were perched in the crotches of dismantled trunks. The
grove where the hunters had been ambushed among the stumps, to succour
the Half-breeds' captives, no longer existed even to the roots. No
sound arose where no breathing creature remained. Four feet deep the
snow and sleet spread as a blanched shroud over the level ground.

The survivors waited an hour for the frothy torrent to go down, so that
they could ford it by offering an angular resistance, all supporting
the upstream leader against the still raging current. Then, rigging up
temporary snowshoes out of fragments of elder and their ragged robes,
they began to glide over the fresh floor, hardly firm enough yet to
support even their restless skimming. They were five hours reaching a
place of refuge near the secluded cave which Ridge did not wish to make
of public knowledge.

Of the Crows and the Bois Brulés there was not a trace. Such a storm
could have made one huge snowball of waggons and cattle, and trundled
it irresistibly down the steppes into the gullies of the Bad Lands of
Montana.




CHAPTER XI.

THE IRRESISTIBLE BAIT.


The band of gold grabbers, whose prisoner Miss Maclan had become, had
met the snowstorm supinely. They had, besides, obeyed their prudent
leader by remaining buried in its protective mantle until the day was
broken. The ravine crest had quickly been banked up, so that shielded
them; and the marshland, offering no poor resistance to the tempest,
had turned no gusts back. They had suffered the least of any exposed
in that time of anguish. The danger over, they set to cleaning the
camp with coarse jokes, and thronged to breakfast at a bugle call,
after having worked on a cup of coffee alone with the wolfish appetite
of sojourners in that high latitude. They were well provisioned, none
of the wormy "crackers," rank pork, and burnt horse bean coffee of
commerce, but good flour bread, deer and bear meat, and honest salt
pork. Captain Kidd would have lost half the troop in this onerous
wintry expedition with an inferior table.

For the leaders a marquee had been erected, raised of the canvas that
sheltered them nightly, in which a folding table stood on picket pins
for legs, so that the guests could squat around. Well loaded with
hearty fare and various liquors, it was the article of furniture most
prominent.

The captain and his lieutenants were received by a youth of eighteen,
who took their rifles with the address of an experienced servant, and a
Negro.

As soon as he arrived Kidd bade the latter withdraw.

"_¡Vamos!_ 'moosey!" he cried, "For your big ears are not wanted. _The
Drudge_ will do the waiting. Tell the señora to breakfast with her new
toy! I have a business conference to make with my partners. Mind, none
of your sneaking curiosity, or I'll sell you to the Blackfeet for a
slave. They are swarming out there!"

The Negro dived under a flap of canvas with a terrified face, as much
afraid of his threat as of his master, thus evading a tin plate that
was wantonly skimmed after him, and might have cut his head.

"Sit to it, gentlemen," said Kidd, rubbing his hands, "and don't let
the good things get cold."

They had not waited for this apology for grace to begin the meal like
so many carnivora. For about a quarter of an hour no one uttered a
word except "Pass the mustard," "Don't let that bottle go to sleep
thar!" and so on, whilst "Drudge" was kept on the trot.

He was only about eighteen, we repeat; but he appeared older from being
tall, large in the joints, muscular, and especially from the resolution
on his manly countenance; he was sallow, and his restless eyes dark.
He seemed a prey to incurable melancholy. Though he was too crafty to
let his true sentiments be exposed, it was clear that he served these
ruffians with inward repugnance, not to say hatred. Two of them in
particular filled him with disgust, and they always spoke in a scornful
and threatening tone; they even struck him and kicked him, as if they
considered him their thrall. These were "Quarry Dick" and "Lottery
Paul," Kidd's next men, of whom Mr. Filditch has made an unflattering
mention. Their more intimate acquaintance is about to be given.

The chief was the first to break the silence with a remark that summed
up the prevailing sentiment, no doubt, as all growled or grinned
approvingly.

"The storm was no feather," he said, "but it has blown over nicely. Old
Nick has taken first-rate care of his chicks."

"I don't think anything less would have pulled us through so far," said
his right hand neighbour sarcastically.

"And so he ought. We work mighty hard for him, you bet!" said his
opposite, emphatically.

"To say nothing of what we are going to do pretty soon 'on,'" concluded
the one facing the captain, upon which all four laughed.

"Yes, it's blown over, and our old friends in Texas are catching it
about this time. I hope it will wash the slate of some of my unpaid
scores in barrooms I could tell you of! But care killed a cat; I'll
have none of that in my tumbler. There's only one thing kept me awake
last night, and that was not the thought of the storm."

"What, my friend Corky Joe?" inquired the captain, who seemed to feel
peculiar affection for this lieutenant.

This singular, or even comic title, that of the wolverine, otherwise
_carcajieu_ of the Canadian trappers, the wickedest wild beast of
Northwest American _fauna_, seemed no misnomer for a daredevil,
spirited, malicious, alert, quick to whip out a knife or draw a pistol
to back his impudent and defiant speech. The finest shot with either
hand was he, the best horseman and the most tireless and reliable
sentinel of the band.

"I only would like to know who cut off our friends in the narrow ways."

"Oh, as for that, the girl whom we brought in alone knows; but I
am sure they knew we were 'no good settlers,' to have laid our
representatives low. I am reserving the questioning of that girl till
our more important 'talk' is over. Light your pipes, gentlemen, if you
are done polishing your eyeteeth, and let us hold the council."

"There's one thing sure," observed the Frenchman, "the more I look
on this forsaken country, through smoke or with a clear eye, whither
the Cap. has brought us, the more firmly I wish I had it well behind
me. It's enough to make a man wish he was a grizzly; nothing else can
thrive here."

"Come, come, Frenchy," remonstrated the leader, "we are no more
delighted than you. It is not here I mean to lay out Kiddville! But
there is no other way to the port whereto I steer."

"Port! More like alkali water; there's not an ounce of anything worth
a man's stooping to pick up over all the tracks we've crossed. The
fact is, the hangers round Varina have 'stuffed' you with yarns of the
wonderland which gets farther away the nearer you come to it! Gammon
about the valley covered with surface gold! I know what gold bearing
earth is, having been in Californy in the good old years!" with a smack
of the lips. "This volcanic tract is burnt out. Any metal has long
since melted and run away miles below. Either you have swallowed the
old trapper's drunken mouthings for gospel, or you have let Corky Joe
here get you in a coil! The bigger lies he tells, the more you like
him, I believe! I wouldn't copper his layout one _sou!_ You hear me!"

"You keep my name out of it!" cried the individual alluded to, with an
unfriendly tone.

"I'll kick you out of it if you lead us astray! I am not to be bluffed
off by you, ugly face! This is a free country, ain't it? And my opinion
is that you fawn on the chief to have the longest pull at his bottle of
select brandy!"

Scarcely were the words spoken before the Wolverine reached across the
low board with a gleaming bowie knife. Luckily, the Frenchman knew the
man he had taunted, and threw himself back, which gave Kidd time to
shove himself between.

"Put up your knives," he roared. "What do you friends want to waste a
stab and a cut for when we are literally surrounded by the enemy? It's
only when we have eaten the last round of horseflesh that we should
carve one another, and we have not come to that corner yet. Come, come,
don't rile _me_ with your snarling!"

"All right, old man, that's past now," returned the Parisian, "only
we'll come to a settlement before we come to the settlement, or I am
much mistaken--"

"Still at it, confound you!" cried the captain, laying his hand on his
revolver butt.

"Oh, no, that's only a leetle friendly caution. Here's his health! All
I have to say is that if you had listened to Dick and me, who wanted to
'clean up' the new mines at Deadman, Wyoming, instead of this uncombed
savage, the _carcajieu_, who bolsters you up in your obstinate fit to
keep on going ahead, we should not be where snowstorms rage. Why, you
knew us down south, but the Wolverine was no acquaintance of yours a
month before you gathered the gang; my pile on that for a fact!"

"That's so, Paul," returned the leader, dreamily.

"Why not even have gone through the Mormon country? We all know they
are 'temperance folk'; but, bless you! It's next door to a teetotal
town that one drinks the best tarantula juice."

"That's true!" said Dick.

"I daresay," replied the chief bandit, "that I have gone a trifle out
of my way, but you ought to know that I was bound to leave no 'pointer'
on my path as to my true aim. Things were getting too hot for us on
the border--we are well out of sheriffs' and vigilance committees'
curiosity. I do not like there being so many folks afoot just where I
believed we should find a desert, but perhaps last night's blizzard has
scattered them like so many loose pebbles. What do you think of our
scrape?" he demanded of Corky Joe.

"About as bad as they make 'em," was the unhesitating answer.

"What's your opinion, Dick?"

The English ex-convict shook his head sulkily.

"It's a beast of a country," he grumbled. "There's more snow falls in
an hour here than would fill St. James' Park for a week! It will be
almost a treat to be a roast at a redskin's torture fire."

"I concur," added Lottery Paul, laughing. "All right, Quarryman, we are
two of a pair, and I'll stick to you when you say we must claw out of
this trap."

"What's the use of this bullying bounce?" cried the captain, "We are
all in the same box, aren't we?"

"I don't know so much about that. Paul and me are new to this wild
tramping business, and never came to such passes as these deuced
mountain passes before. The Californian Sierra is molehills to it!"

"In short," took up the Frenchman, "we believe your gold mine is a
fraud. Your course so far tends to take us over the Rockies, where many
a better man has left his bones, and though a solid chunk of gold as
big as a house awaits me yonder, I have my reasons not to go over to
the Pacific coast."

"Same here," subjoined the English felon, scowling.

"What I go on to say is, every step forward means harder fare--the
tracts you assured us were desolate are growing Injins, your gold mine
does not show up, and so, give us a couple of hundred dollars apiece
for having escorted you so far, and we'll march off on our own hooks."

"That's my say, too," coincided Dick, delighted with the Parisian's
eloquence.

"I have heard you out," proceeded the captain, smoothing his brow with
an effort. "Now, hearken to me. You are green to these parts--very
well. From my youth up I have heard stories of a Wonderland on whose
threshold we now are. The Indians regard it with awe, and only peer
into it from afar; but trapper and hunter have penetrated it by design
or hazard, and all their tales cannot be campfire lies. Moreover, they
have brought palpable evidences to the border. At Santa Fe I gambled
with a trapper, whose jacket was bright with diamond buttons, stones
that he found in a marvellous garden where the berries were turned
to petrifaction as they grew; the chokecherries were rubies, the
blueberries turquoises, the pigeon berries garnets, the Indian pears
flawless crystal. He had collected a pouchful in half an hour, for
which a Jew at St. Peter's gave him eight hundred dollars as they were
turned over to him in the rough."

"Did you ever meet 'Oregon Ol,'[1] in your rustling about? He's a
Nor'wester who has traversed this region more than most; he never
wants for gold, and he hardly takes a trap out with him, and often
brings back the powder he started with. And Marcellin's Choctaw
Boy, and Hopeful Ed., and Simmins the Knifer, all familiar with the
Yellowstone River to its uppermost forks. They have lined their pockets
without handling the spade, on surface flakes alone. And Jim Ridge,
the father of the Old Birds of the Sierras--with his copper face
companion the Cherokee!" he went on, with a deep and sudden frown and
a baleful glance, "Look at their equipments, at the way they buy the
cream of everything, and take two or three trains a year up into the
highlands. What is all that for? Provisioning themselves for staking
out all the best spots in an auriferous region--the motherland of the
gold and silver of which mere washings go down thither by driblets!
Those mountaineers are leagued with the Yager, and they have found
an enormously rich hole in the Yellowstone Basin. There's enough to
make each of us twenty times, ay, fifty times a millionaire, and those
dozen hunters selfishly stand us off! Go your way, if you are bent on
it, without any dollars from me. I will persevere, though I am left
alone, in striving to wrest this secret from that crew. I tell you,
boys, I have had enough of a hard life with the prospect of walking off
a mule's back till a rope round my neck brings me to a short stop. I
want, with the worst kind of want, to go see Europe with a big draft
on the Bank of England, and have some of these Eye-talian princelings
black my boots before I die in 'em."

Then, seeing that he had kindled his hearers with cupidity, he
concluded:

"Who loves gold galore, comes along with Mr. Pirate King!"

"I catch on," cried Joe, as if inspirited.

"They do say, though, that the Yellowstone Valley is haunted--spirits
of Injin devils guard the incalculable treasures, spit hot poison at
the invader, smother him in scalding mud, shower rocks upon him from
tall bluffs--so if you are afraid of what hasn't daunted Old Jim and
his band, why, leave me and Joe to have the first chop 'rise' on you
when we meet in Nevada City, me and Joe regularly bulging out with
whisky, good hotel grub, and gold and diamonds, and you scraping the
gutter for the dimes swept out of the stores! Look here! If in ten days
we are not knee deep in golden sands, in a vale where eternal summer
reigns, then lead me out and shoot me!"

There was a pause: the Frenchman's eyes blazed like fanned coals,
the Englishman panted noisily and ground his teeth with a bulldog's
anticipatory glee.

"We are on a sure soft thing now," pursued the captain, clinching
the nail which he had driven home. "I don't know how it is, but I
am confident our vein of bad luck has fined out to a hair, and that
fortune is going to do a smile."

"All right," said Dick, after a glance at the Frenchman, who nodded,
"we'll tail on for ten days."

"Then another drink round. Joe, pick me out four or five fellows
who can use snowshoes without laying themselves up with the _mal du
racquet_ (snowshoe lameness), and let them scout about to see if the
Indian sign crops up over the new snows."

The lieutenant having left the tent, the captain pulled out a map on
sheepskin, and explained in detail where he surmised the treasure of
the trappers to be, and where he also hoped to surprise Jim Ridge in
his mountain recess. His enthusiastic promises and the effect of the
liquors restored the recalcitrant pair to good-humoured allegiance.

In two hours' time, one of the scouts returned, pleading that his
snowshoes were unable to help him over a snow coated _ciénaga_, or bad
swampy stretch, where he would have sunk and been smothered. But, in
the captain's ear, he whispered a communication which set that worthy
to reflection. At the end of it, he directed Lottery Paul to take the
rackets and go off investigating in a certain direction, ordered Joe to
keep good guard over the camp, and took Dick with him on an exploration
of his own.

Installed without any hostile spies at his elbow as provisional
commander, Corkey Joe smiled to himself, and muttering: "Nothing could
have been better; hang them all three!" he proceeded towards the rocks,
where Drudge was standing on guard over a mysterious doorway.


[Footnote 1: See The Treasure of Pearls in this series.]




CHAPTER XII.

UNDER THE MASK.


When Corkey Joe had almost come up beside Drudge, the latter exchanged
a knowing glance with him, and, drawing a sheet of tarpaulin aside from
the doorway in the rocks, glided like a serpent within. As the canvas
fell behind him, the bandit captain's representative calmly took the
sentinel's place.

Drudge entered a kind of passage between rocks, covered over with tree
stuff and mud, with the snow heaped on that again to hermetically
roof it in. Thus to a second doorway of a cave, he found a hanging of
buffalo robes fastened on a cottonwood rod.

He hemmed and hawed a couple of times to give a polite notification of
his approach, and after making sure he was alone, stepped within the
fur _portière._

Prairie travellers are like the Turks in carrying with them such
furniture as may transform a cave or a hut into a nest of luxury.
Captain Kidd had, therefore, had a delightful snuggery made of the
dugout, lined with rugs, blankets and furs, so that cold, damp, and
wind were excluded. In the centre of this lair, too, a large silver
chafing dish, which might have been stolen from some Central American
church treasury, contained clear pine knots, which diffused rather an
agreeable and, certainly, a wholesome odour. The low seats were all
folding, to be transported readily, but were heaped with furs. A couch
of the same valuable material was occupied by a sleeping girl: it was
poor Miss Maclan, making up with a prolonged rest for her exhaustion.

In a hammock of grass cloth, hung low, another girl, younger and
slighter, with a truly American complexion and contour, gently was
swinging. She was well within her teens; a sweet and lofty type of
beauty such as Raphael and Murillo painted in their most inspired
moments. Her large black eyes seemed to reflect thoughts oftener of
heaven than of earth; her transparent skin, fine as satin, showed the
blue network of the delicate veins, and offered a violent contrast
to black hair in thick and long tresses. Her irresistible charm was
heightened by the permanent sadness which covered her lineaments and
compelled pity. She smiled faintly on beholding Drudge, and bade him
welcome in a tuneful voice as she gave him her little hand.

"But I ought to scold you, friend," she said, "for coming too often. If
that hateful man, whose very slave I am, should catch you here, where
you could find no excuse to be, ill would befall you."

"That's so, señorita," the youth replied, lightly enough, "but you
need not be alarmed about me this time. My only danger is that you
will think me intrusive. Captain Kidd has left the camp, and the depth
of the snow makes going so slow, that I should not wonder if he made
a long stay of it. They have been having another jangle, all in my
hearing, for," he went on, with a bitter smile, "they reckon me as an
idiot, and go on as if nobody were by."

"Poor Leon!" she sighed, kindly.

"Don't be sorry about that, señorita," he hastened to proceed, "for
that's my safeguard. Otherwise I could not watch over you as over a
sister. The hour is nigh for me to prove my devotion, methinks."

"I very well know that I can count on Leon with entire trust. Is not
our cause, our hope, the same? Misfortune unites us. But I must own
that, knowing your implacable hatred for this wretch who holds us
in his power, I am often afraid that you will burst out into some
imprudence that will destroy you and leave me without a friend in the
world. Unless," she added, with a glance at the sleeper, whom their
subdued tones did not affect, "this is a new friend whom heaven has
accorded me in my distress."

"Rather a spy whom the odious captain thinks to plant in your
confidence," returned Leon, with jealousy and doubt. "Coming from the
captain, I would not take an angel as a being of light."

"You are wrong there. We have not exchanged many words, Leon, but
already we are sisters. Think! She has lost a father lately, and has
been hunted by Indians! Poor girl! Her fate is at least as dreadful as
mine, and her heart wounds still bleeding. We can trust her, though I
have not told her all."

"Tell her nothing superfluous," he cried. "The slave must be cunning
and prudent, or he will never have the chance to obtain his freedom.
Many a time, though, I have let go the chance to obtain it alone."

"You were right! For what would have become of a boy like you in these
deserts in a storm such as shook the earth last night? You would be a
mite!"

Leon the Drudge smiled disdainfully, and his pale face was set in an
expression of energetic will.

"That is not the fear that held me, señorita," he replied. "I am young,
but Indian boys go on the warpath at my age. I have broken in horses
that great men about this camp have shrank from backing, and can back a
mule or fire a shot to the centre with any of them. But for my double
oath, I should have been alone--yes, but free on the prairie, long
before this!"

"Explain! For you speak beyond my comprehension."

"Señorita, I made a vow to be revenged on this horde of villainous men,
and not to fly save with you. You have not been spared so long but for
some fiendish end which a man of honour is bound to loathe beforehand
and baffle when discovered. That is why I remain, and why, however
tempting the opportunities to slip away, I shall remain until it is
possible for you to follow me."

"Alas! I am too closely guarded for that. A princess could not be more
narrowly watched if she were affianced to the grandest king on earth
and by her hand her father would be saved from ruin."

"Maybe you are more free than you imagine, señorita."

"Now, pray do not fill me with any baseless hopes. And talk less loud,
lest you awake that poor slumberer. Alas! I weep, it being only a
girl--a child who is incapable of doing anything but wail and pray for
deliverance."

"Your defenders, if not deliverers, are at hand."

"At hand? I see no one but you, poor boy, and this sorrowing woman, who
can only pray with me."

"I talk of men--men determined, able, and daring--one of whom you have
seen."

"The man they call the Wolverine!" she ejaculated, hiding her eyes like
a child to whom Bogey was promised to appear, "A man that terrifies me!
He is the second self of this horrid Captain Kidd. His name pourtrays
him, and his sight fills me with dread."

Drudge smiled softly.

"What has his name and his appearance got to do with it?" he cried.
"Both may be put on! The gem and gold are not at all prepossessing
when natural. How does the domestic dog escape being devoured by
the prairie wolves when abandoned at a camp? He joins them, frisks
with them, and howls more loudly than they! If Corkey Joe resembled
a missionary, he would stand pretty conspicuous out from our gang of
Border Terrors. It is by putting on their style that he has hoodwinked
them."

"Oh, if I could be sure that you are not cheated, and that this fright
of a man is truly what you say!"

"I say so straight. The Carcajieu may or may not be a beauty, but his
look is only skin-deep anyhow. I'll answer for his faithfulness with my
own head. I know what he is worth."

"Then, tell me--"

"No, I cannot, señorita," he interrupted sharply. "I promised to keep
the secret. No more, beyond his being your most devoted."

"Now, Leon, do not fill me up with a belief of which the removal would
be heartbreaking!"

"No fear of that, señorita!"

"Very well; spite of the repulsion he causes, I will be polite to him,
kind--I will even speak to him--"

"Why not at once?"

"Oh, not at once!"

"I say that is best, for it's a first-rate chance, the captain and the
chiefs being out of the camp, and Joe the ruling spirit. Do you consent
to receive him?"

"But I would rather--that is, a little preparation. Let me consult with
this young lady."

"It is not her secret! Do you waver? Do you recoil?"

"No!" she cried, at the taunt, with a decisive tone, which startled and
thrilled him; "Let him come! Go, bring him, Leon!"

"He waits yonder, as the sentry in my stead."

"Let him come, and heaven grant that you are not deceived!"

As Drudge departed the young girl leaned breathlessly forward with an
anxious gaze for the person who replaced him in the doorway.

Behind Corkey Joe the screen fell, forming a dark background to set
his figure off. The right-hand man of the gold seekers' leader had
not modified his aspect or apparel, and yet there was a change which
elicited an exclamation of surprise from the girl. His step was firm,
his usually stern and spiteful face beaming with pity and frankness.
The features that had originated invincible repulsion were still
there, but, with the morose and mocking expression, had vanished all
foundation for distrust and dread. He stepped forward and saluted her
respectfully.

She glanced towards the sleeper.

"Let her repose," he observed, with even more sympathy in his eyes of
cold steel blue; "she will need her strength restored for what we all
may have to pass through."

"No doubt," she sighed. Fixing a clear gaze on the man, she smiled
faintly, and promptly held out her hand, saying, "Heaven bless you,
unsuspected friend, for being alone in this host of heartless men, to
take some interest in a poor orphan!"

"Señorita," answered Joe, in Spanish-American, which tongue she had
used, "I have only joined this bad set at the peril of my life, in
pursuance of my duty, incidental to which comes in the rescue of you."

"Leon told me so."

"Then he spoke the truth."

The brief silence was broken by the prisoner.

"I am almost sorry, though, that you have ventured to speak to me,"
she said; "the captain is so jealous a tyrant, that anything makes me
tremble. Still, your voice inspires a confidence of which I was very
much in want, and, notwithstanding your not engaging appearance--" for
the sunshine seemed to have left Lieutenant Joe's countenance again, so
that he glowered unpleasantly as ever--"something within tells me that
your heart is too good to deceive me, and that you really intend to do
me a good service."

"The little bird in your bosom sings the truth, señorita. If needs
must, I shall lay down my life to save yours--though that's no more
than an American is brought up to do for the fair sex. As for my looks,
those artist fellows don't come out here to paint tailor's models and
opera lobby heroes. Besides, if you ever saw a church procession in
Mexico, you may remember the Devil that the monks flog and the boys
pluck by the tail. He's no pattern of manly beauty; but, very often, he
is the widow's son and the best young man of the town, come to shuck
off his mask and shear off the claws. 'Shouldn't wonder," he went on,
smiling, "but that, without paint and powder, your bridegroom would be
pretty jealous if he had me for best man and I drew the bridesmaids'
eyes to my corner. At present, my ugly mug, and my talk, and my warpath
gait are too useful to be laid on the shelf. I thank you sincerely,
young lady, for the confidence you are kind enough to put there, in my
hand, and it will not be a parrot's age before I shall try to justify
it."

"I believe you, señor, and I, too, shall be glad to have the time come."

"And now, moments being counted, to business! We may never get such a
chance again."




CHAPTER XIII.

THE BEAUTIFUL PRISONER'S FRIEND.


In quick, clear tones, the double playing lieutenant of the prairie
pirate resumed his speech.

"A full explanation about me would lead us afar, so come to the
essential point," said he. "To begin with, when you want to ask or tell
me something, let Drudge know it. He is completely devoted to you."

"I know that, señor."

"And as we must look ahead, it being likely that Captain Kidd may
be in a whim, or for good reasons forbid you visitors, here is a
little scroll in Spanish, with what is called a Table of Second Sight
Signals, used by conjurors. The questions are innocent and commonplace
enough, but they stand for phrases of meaning. You can address me thus
direct on the march, and not a soul can suspect we are carrying on a
correspondence."

"I'll soon have that by heart, señor," she exclaimed.

"And teach this young friend the same. The captain will have his work
cut out with two women leagued against him and a spy in the garrison,
I promise you. Nevertheless, you must bear in mind that patience and
stratagem will alone bring us success. Keep up your bearing of dislike
to me, in order that nobody can guess we are secretly in tie."

"Understanding all the importance of that advice, I shall conform to
it."

"Captain Kidd is sly, and at the faintest hint of our relations, it
would be all over with me."

"I shall obey you in all ways, señor, and you shall be satisfied with
your pupil," she said, gently, but firmly.

"One question: what is Captain Kidd's behaviour towards you?"

"So, so; his is an overbearing character of self-will, and he is
insensible to sentiment; often days pass without his thinking to throw
a word, good, bad or indifferent towards me; but I must honestly
confess that he never forgets the respect due to my sex, age, and
education. However impulsive, absurdly freakish, and even passionate he
might be too, many a daughter is less ill treated than me his prisoner."

"It's a comfort to learn that there is one bright spot in that dark
heart. My plans as regards him depend on the information I heap up. So
tell me if you ever knew the captain before he stole you away from your
boarding school at New Orleans, kept by the Misses Featherley?"

"I really cannot answer you with a certainty, señor. Still, there is
now and then a tone of his voice, and even a look of his eyes (which I
remarked to be very strong to require spectacles) not altogether new to
me. I may be deceiving myself as to that, but I am pretty sure that he
is disguised more or less."

"If he were known to you in your earliest years, where would that be?"

"Why, señor, as I speak Spanish and English as if they were born in
me, having only had to acquire French at New Orleans, I have always
believed what was told me, that my father was an English merchant,
who married a Mexican lady, and that I lost both of them by an Indian
attack."

"Who introduced you at that school, where the terms were high, I have
heard say?"

"It was, indeed, a fashionable seminary. I was an orphan, true, but
some near kinsman was taking care of my future."

"Who was this?"

"I never saw him, and his steward only once. I cannot even describe
him, but an elder schoolmate pictured him as a middle-aged man, stout
and strong, not particularly tall, stern and dark, with a shifting eye
and rough skin."

"And his name?"

"This _major-domo_ was called Mathias Corvino. One of the Miss
Featherleys told me that he had become an independent gentleman, and
lived in New York in great style."

"Do you suppose that in the husk of Captain Kidd could abide this same
Mathias Corvino, señorita?"

"I have not the skill to say so, but when the captain is angry, I am
reminded of that man."

"Your information is to the point, and has its value. Well, whatever
the disguise of our friend the captain, depend upon it that in time I
shall have him at bay, and he will show his real traitorous face!"

"And now, may I just put one question to you, señor?"

"Go ahead."

"You know many things," she observed, very gravely, and lapsing into
English unwittingly. "Pray tell me, have I parents, have I kinsfolk?"

"Yes. A mother, no; a father, yes--if he has not passed away during a
year. A brother younger than you too!"

"A brother! Oh, tell me about him."

"I am sorry to say that I am quite ignorant of the fate of your brother
Lewis."

"Lewis!"

"But you must not despair, señorita. Mark this, whatever mishap your
brother ran, you have been watched by at least one friend of your
father's, and had the villain who abducted you from your home attempted
to suppress you by murder, an avenger, if not a defender, would have
appeared by your side in the New Mexican gentleman named Don Gregorio
Peralta."

"I know him, the grey headed gentleman who spoke to me when the school
was out on promenade. He told me he was my friend. Where is he? Pray
tell me."

"The accomplices of your abductor tried to kill him to prevent Captain
Kidd being followed. His wound, however, was serious without being
mortal. I will warrant that, as soon as he could fork a steed, he set
out on the pursuit of you."

"Oh, then you hope he will overtake us?"

"He or another will be at our side soon," answered the false
lieutenant, ambiguously.

"You are not trifling with me?"

"I am not that kind of Wolverine," answered Master Corkey Joe with a
forced laugh. "I say Don Gregorio, spite of his age, is on our track,
because he loved your father. Your father is also afoot, and, at last
accounts, hoped to enlist in his aid some mountain trappers. They
are not sordid men--often have they been known to lay aside a whole
season's harvest of incredible toil to rescue a man or woman of their
colour from the red men, or to flock to the border when the cry of an
Indian outbreak commanded all gun bearers to fill a loophole in the
forts. But this troop which surrounds us is bent on a mission hostile
to the first explorers of this region, and its stores of fiery spirit
and ammunition are intended to be sold to the Indians, clean counter
to the laws of the United States and British Dominion, and to the
regulations of the fur trade companies. So Captain Kidd's organisation
is doomed! And you must be saved when it is crushed."

"Have I, indeed, friends in this vast loneliness?"

"In the midst of those mountains draped in untrodden snows, in those
unfathomable canyons, upon the plain and within the caverns that
profoundly tunnel the glaciers, upwards of fifty brave, strong, and
honest men, are invisibly repeating my call to them."

"Your calls?"

"I have been talking to them whilst we were conversing here."

"I do not understand, señor."

"On these immense wastes, the voice is insignificant, but the clear air
allows the vision to travel far. Not only is there one general code of
signals by fire at night and smoke by day, but the trappers, who are
now independent since the ruin of the American fur companies, retain in
use the alphabet they employed. Since the captain left me control of
the camp, I have had the fires placed as I chose, and their position as
the columns of smoke ascend has telegraphed for miles around that one
of their allies--I--is here in want of assistance. Not a soul suspects
it, but already I am sure some of the hunters are carefully proceeding
hither and inspecting the camp. Soon I shall sally out and meet one or
other of them, and the end will be arranged for."

"Oh, señor, this incredible good news fills me with joy! At last I am
happy!" she exclaimed, with her eyes full of tears. "Oh, be true to me,
man whom I have misjudged, and yet who evinces so much devotion! Be
true to me, for if this, is a cheat, you might as well have driven a
dagger through my heart!"

"Keep faith in me, señorita. I mean to save you as surely as to punish
a great scoundrel! This I have sworn, or the buzzards will have a meal
off my bones."

"I will rely on you, my friend," giving him her hand cordially.

"Besides," said he, "it looks as if my friends were already at work.
Three of the band have been cut off already."

"Nay, sir," interrupted a third voice, "you are only half right now.
Who the remover of two of them is, I can tell you: not a dweller in
these parts, but a young Englishman, who has done so much out of
attachment to--to my father."

It was Miss Maclan. Her sleep had been interrupted at last by the
dialogue, and, sitting up, she had listened for a few minutes before
she presumed it meet to interpose.

In well-chosen words, she hastened to inform Corkey Joe fully on the
attempt at her rescue, and of the abrupt apparition of the Half-breed
who had dragged away Mr. Dearborn.

"Cherokee Bill!" ejaculated the false bandit, in great glee. "What did
I tell you, señorita? Why, we are living right among friends!"

He seemed to forget the ladies, who affectionately embraced, as he
reflected on the incident no longer a mystery to him.

"Farewell," he said at last, "above all, do not let this joyous hope
of yours be manifested. You must wear a mask, too, whatever singular
events may occur. This Cherokee Bill is an inseparable companion of
the oldest trapper of the Rocky Mountains, and there is no trick too
artful or impudent that he may not essay. Rest assured the Yager of the
Yellowstone Valley, as this trapper is called, will give Kidd a teaser
before long."

He bowed and left the excavation. Soon after he might have been seen
perambulating the camp, cold, calm, and wary, directing the nourishing
of the fires, and puffing easily at a huge meerschaum pipe with a very
short stem, secured by a string to his buttonhole against loss. No one
suspected what a chat he had with the beautiful prisoner.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE COMPACT.


After leaving his camping ground, Captain Kidd soon parted from the
Englishman, whom he sent on through a valley, where he disappeared.
Kidd had not much practice in using snowshoes, for he was a horseman
of southern plains life; and the inevitable pain at the instep forced
him to reach the higher land of the valley divide or crest, and trudge
on with the rackets at his back. Here the wind had left but an inch or
two of snow; and he walked for a couple of hours without noteworthy
inconvenience. Finally, he came within half a mile of the Red River
Half-breeds' ill-fated encampment.

When "Quarry Dick" preceded him there, he found the Canadians still
digging out the wagons, and binding up their wounds and frostbites. He
was much surprised at seeing so many women and girls; and, at the first
words addressed to him, was still further filled with astonishment.
Instead of going on to the place where--whether he knew it or not--the
Botany Bay convict had prepared an enviable reception, his captain
chose an elevated knoll, cut some long sticks with his hatchet knife,
laid them upon the snow, and across one another in strata, so as to
form a platform, and kindled a fire upon this greenwood, a tolerably
familiar act in the winter. Soon the flame sprang up, hot enough to
roast a buffalo whole; but he threw a couple of handfuls of stinkwood
upon it to cause a black pillar of smoke.

On spying this token that his leader was at hand, the "Sydney Duck"
remained in the Bois Brulés' camp as a hostage, according to usage,
though the precaution would have been waived, and their captain came
forth to confabulate with the other commander. Gliding along over the
snow with the Canadians' expertness on what are national footwear to
them, the Half-breed speedily hailed the man quietly seated at his fire.

"Who comes?" challenged the latter, cocking his rifle, for form's sake.

"Dagard, the Bois Brulé, one of the leaders of the Red River Rovers!"

"I am the leader of a large band of gold hunters," was the reply. "Glad
to see you; come on."

Captain Dagard was one of those independent spirits, who would always
be in conflict with the town authorities in civilisation; and also, in
the wilds, did pretty much as he pleased, and executed, with delightful
nonchalance, many an unjustifiable deed. His mixed blood made him now
hate the whites--now scorn the reds--but all the time resist government
in general, and the British Colonial one in particular. It is to be
borne in mind, too, that never were two more incongruous elements in
one country than the Scotch and the French settlers of Canada--the
one sober, steady, strict Puritans; the other volatile, indolent for
periods out of proportion to their fits of activity, and staunch
upholders of the feasts of the Church.

Unprejudiced beholders cannot see any difference in the treatment
by the rulers of either people; but still the French Canadians, and
principally these Half-breeds, never cease complaining that they do not
enjoy the same privileges as the conqueror race.

Kidd and the Manitoban sat down by one another.

"You might as well have come on into my camp," said l'Embarrasseur,
reproachfully, "though we are a little upset by the storm. The moment
I learnt from your adherent--a stout fellow, eh? Though a bit of a
brute!--That you were so kind as to help me when the Crows were in our
midst, you could be sure you were as my brother!"

"Yes, of course," stammered Kidd, at a loss to understand the allusion.
"I--I came in--in the nick, didn't I?"

"Like a miracle! We thought we were gone under, sure, when you poured
in that volley, and made the Crows take the back track. By all that's
blue! You gave them such a share that we have seen not a feather of
them since! That is one kind thing for which we are all grateful. Now,
is it in our power to repay you?"

"That depends."

"You are prospecting; is our local knowledge any use to you?--it is
freely yours, captain."

"I can say neither yes nor no now, for my comrades must be consulted.
We are going into the Yellowstone Basin after gold--"

"Ha, ha!" laughed Dagard; "Another dive into the famous Northern El
Dorado, where the way is paved with gold and silver, and the fishponds
are boiling water whence one draws the _poisson d'avril_ ready cooked!"

"Do you not believe it is likely?" queried Kidd, earnestly.

"As you say, neither yes nor no. We gave the 'Firehole' a wide berth,
for we are not at home in sulphur marshes, soda lakes, and burning
pits, like that of the bad place. If there be gold there, though--"

"I promise you that," returned Kidd, confidently; "all points to it.
Will you join us--sharing and sharing alike--if my men agree to the
union? There is enough and to spare for all of us. Besides, blood being
spilt of the Indians, I am afraid my men need be five hundred, and yet
prove feeble. These mountain Indians are hardy, not given to the rum
bottle, and warlike above all their brethren of the plains."

"They fought like devils incarnate, I repeat. Half my command is
disabled or dead, and we were lost irretrievably but for your
intervention. I say that again. But what am I to do with the women?"

"What women?"

"I have under my charge sixteen women, that is, those over twenty-five
years, and fourteen young girls, to say nothing of still tenderer
children--"

"Oh, pshaw! If you are dragging your families about with you," began
the gold hunter, contemptuously.

"You are off the track. These are valuables, not encumbrances,"
rejoined Dagard, tartly. "In two words, they are the captives of the
Dakotas, taken away from their burnt cabins in recent raids, and they
were placed in my charge so that the Indian agents might discover no
traces of them. Thus I have secured the friendship of the Sioux, and
if the English come to attack our little Red River Republic, they will
find us reinforced by plenty o' fighting men!"

"And," proceeded Kidd, with a chuckle, "if the redcoats defeat you
and you take flight back into Uncle Sam's territory, you can obtain
his protection by a handing over of the captives whom you charitably
snatched from the wigwam. Well conceived, Captain Dagard!"

"Well or ill conceived, it is not my invention."

"Well, anyway, no fool thought of it."

"That's where you are wrong. It's the idea of a lubberly man of mine,
Dave Steelder, 'Daft Dave.' He's an _innocent,_ as we Bretons say, an
idiot, if you prefer the word."

"Oh, Daft Dave!" exclaimed Kidd, with a sparkle of the eye under his
snow goggles.

"Do you know him?"

"I met him at the Humboldt Washup when the flume burst and carried away
his hut and savings. They say that drove him stupid. That was in 1869,
or so, but others make out he was cranky before."

"If he is an acquaintance of yours, perhaps you would like to see him.
Shall I whistle him over?"

"Well, no, some other occasion! He may have the delusion that I look
like one of the awkward cusses that broke a plank in the flume and let
the flood spoil the diggings. Astonishing what a family likeness the
red flannel shirt, the patched pants, and the high up boots gave us
all at the gold mines. I have often been taken for another!" concluded
Kidd, with a wink.

"How unfortunate!" said l'Embarrasseur, drolly laughing. "Then, I
should not advise you to run against Dave. He's apt to tear when he's
mad. Still, his strength makes him useful about a camp, though he's not
bright, and though he's not trusted on guard, he throws out valuable
hints now and again, as these dullards do. But this is wind work, mere
talk. What have you come over to propose?"

"Well, I am thinking that you and I might work in double harness."

"Strike a bargain, eh? There's no knowing! There will be a stir up on
the frontier--the Britishers are pressing on that railroad. I want all
the friends I can cluster. What's your proposal?"

"Assist me to find the gold hoard in the Firehole, and I, who am not
without friends in Congress, will engage to restore your captives in
so glorious a manner to their relatives, that you will become a hero
and have a monument in every Western city! It is true the Sioux will
sharpen their knives to punish your breach of faith, but I never heard
that there were many Sioux in the hotels of the Eastern States!"

"Then we unite! And instead of my being a poor leader of only a score
hale men, I become a subchief of over two hundred!"

"My lieutenant! The sooner I reinforce you the better, eh? White women
in the mountains and Indians within rifle range: it's a temptation they
can't withstand. I ought to add that another danger exists. They say in
the towns that that old rogue, Jim Ridge, boasts that he regulates this
chain of the sierras."

"His friends the trappers lynch a horse thief now and then, and shoot
offhand anyone robbing cachés, but that's sound trapper law."

"If he and his friends block our entrance into the Yellowstone 'Park,'
what would you do?"

"Oh, when there's a man between me and what my empty pocket gapes for,
either he or I go under!"

"You're the true colour," ejaculated Kidd, using a gold miner's phrase,
and not, of course, reflecting on his colloquist's complexion--a sore
point with mixed bloods. "I will send you a dozen men from the camp
the moment I return, and you can join me at our next tent pitching, of
which they will bear you word. By the way, tell Quarry Dick to make
straight for that Blackstone of a Negro head shape as well as hue.
I will meet him there by a circuit, for I can make no way on these
confounded snowshoes."

"It comes by practice, my brave captain," said Dagard merrily, "like
spending money. _Au revoir!_ Our rally word is--"

"Gold!"

"And the countersign?"

"Beauty!"

They drank each from the others pocket flask in token of absolute
trust, and the gold hunter was left to raise his little camp after
carefully smothering the fire to prevent firing the brushwood of the
vale beneath.




CHAPTER XV.

AN INGENIOUS INTRODUCTION.


More uneasy about the Indians, whom Captain Kidd knew to be embittered
when repulsed at an almost victory, and about the trappers whom he
rightly conjectured to have interfered to save the Canadians from
annihilation, he moved leisurely to the rendezvous with the convict in
order to examine the ground. But nothing was visible to accentuate
his fears, and, spying the fantastic block of lava stone in question,
he hastened to congratulate Dick on the splendid lie by which the
gold seekers were given the credit of saving the Bois Brulés. As he
expected, the Englishman, not having his own cause to move slowly, was
already at the tryst. At all events, a figure in all points resembling
his was before the stone, clearly outlined against it, though he was
puzzled to account for a second object, human in form, but of an
abnormal flesh colour, like a "raw" corpse, pendant a foot or two from
the ground as if hung to a jutting point of the natural obelisk.

"Fool that I am!" suddenly ejaculated Captain Kidd, who had stopped
with a chill to the heart, "It's the strange light before nightfall
that is giving me a scare! Why, it's nothing but a young bear that he
has killed and flayed!--Bear's steak for supper! Ha, ha!"

Indeed, with their peculiar long paws, nothing more resembles a man,
excepting cousin monkey, than uncle bear, slim with wintering.

On a nearer approach, any doubt about Dick's identity with the form
calmly leaning on the rifle was impossible. Nevertheless, the silence
and the immobility of the bandit appalled the other, and the hanging
figure, drumming with its heels on the upright stone as the spinning
and unspinning of its cord of support oscillated it, increased in
ghastliness and its likeness to _homo_ rather than _ursa_.

Pausing again anew, he let himself be attracted to understand the
puzzle, and, as Dick made no movement, far less a reply to his now
frenzied appeal, he darted madly to the butte where the lava stone rose
like a monument. There the explanation was ample.

Some merciless hand had slain the Englishman, beheaded him, and flared
him, with the skin of the neck only left intact, and after suspending
the body like an artist's _écorché_ along the pillar, stuffed the human
hide out with snow so that not a wrinkle showed. The cold had frozen
this effigy into the semblance of a marble statue. Whilst the captain
gazed horrified, some scratches on the obelisk near the suspended
corpse caught his eyes. He read with redoubled apprehension:

      "--, known as 'the Sydney Duck,' 'Sydney Dick,' and 'the
      Convict,' escaped from Australian prisons, murderer of
      Californian miners, of Don Gregorio Peralta, and of his
      daughter, Mrs. Filditch, tried, found guilty, and executed
      by Us,"

      "THE MEN OF THE MOUNTAIN."

"_Hands off!_ This is the buzzard's bait, do you hear?"

Then the drawing of a rifle and crossed knives, and the fur trademarks
of Jim Ridge, Cherokee Bill, and the name "S. G. Filditch," firmly
graven.

At the end of reading this weird death sentence, which was a warning
too, Captain Kidd uttered a terrible execration, and clutching his
rifle and knife, as if he expected the wild justiceers to spring
out upon him from around the monolith, darted frenziedly from the
unhallowed eminence.

But he had no pursuers, and reflection came to him after half an hour's
mad floundering in the snow, that he would be safer among his men than
solitary. Besides, Lottery Paul had probably returned, and might, in
the chiefs absence, preach that doctrine of retreat to the gin palaces
of the frontier which was, on the face of it, superior to the present
outlook. His iron hand could alone contain the bandits if any could.

"Besides," murmured he, "what would 'Dave Steelder' say if he knew me
to turn such a skulk? After all, what a riddance that rough brute is!
As for me, I have had some very close calls, but fortune has carried me
through."

The grey sky was darkening, distant objects were already blending into
compact masses. Luckily, though not a proven trail finder, Kidd had
woodcraft in plenty, and soon hit on the proper homeward direction. On
spying an indubitable mark, he uttered a sigh of gratification, and
hurried to make up for lost time. He judged that within the hour he
would be in camp, when he came upon some fresh and bold prints in the
snow crust, hardening as the night brought coolness. No one could doubt
that they were made by a grizzly bear, not the black or the brown, but
the genuine "Uncle Ephraim" himself. This set the fugitive a-thinking.
A braver man than he does not foresee a meeting with Old Eph. without
pardonable misgiving.

The grizzly or the grisly--according to whether you name him after his
coat or the horror he inspires, is, far more than the lion, the king
of beasts, for he is perfect in courage, in strength, steadiness under
gunfire, and a noble good humour towards his folk. He is, perhaps, the
only animal that dances in sheer love of amusement, and his gambols at
a "bears' party" are the drollest sight a hunter ever knows. It is true
few have looked on and lived to tell. The Rocky Mountains are the home
of the veritable grizzly, and the frequency of his apparition among the
mines of the Sierra Nevada won the title of the Grizzly Bear State for
California.

Captain Kidd recovered from the recent shock that had unhinged him
before a danger that required coolness to temper bravery. He shook his
head like a Newfoundland coming out of the water, and growled.

"This lumbering fool has smelt the camp, and has put himself exactly in
my way back. I wish he had given those Canadians a visit where there
are plenty of dead bodies."

He carefully examined his rifle, slipped in a second bullet in a
greased wad, and resumed his march, but with extreme caution. The
difficulty was not to stumble on his foe, who, with razor sharp claws
six or seven inches long, would make a man look as if he had gone
through a "system of saws" in a mill.

He had proceeded some five hundred yards, so as to nearly get out of
the tangle wood of deciduous trees, distorted and stunted by the cold
winds, when a prolonged cavernous grumbling, arising not far from him,
sent an icy shiver all through him. He stopped short, bent forward,
and took a wary look. Before attaining a clearing, there was a narrow
canyon to cross, profoundly cleft between two perpendicular sides,
two yards deep and twenty paces long. About a third of the way up
this channel, leisurely sprawling on the snow, in which he was partly
embedded on account of his great weight, a grizzly was licking his fore
paws and smoothing pine burrs out of his harsh coat. Suddenly, the
animal winked its little savage eyes, pricked its snub ears up, and,
without glancing round or caring to listen, set to sniffing. Its subtle
scenting faculty had been aroused by some unwonted and consequently
disquieting emanation. Nevertheless, a fact delighting the captain, it
was not he to whom the bear was paying any heed.

"Good luck to the stir in the air that saves me!" he thought. "The
creature never imagines that a man is treading on his tail. 'Tis a
splendid fur coat; but I am not hunting grizzly just at present, thank
you! I don't care for any on my toast!"

Hence, he was taking a backward step and looking about him to try to
manage a circuit to avoid the encounter, when he heard what seemed
an echo, _only a little more so_, of the bear's growl. It came from
behind him, and was so angrily intoned that he was most surprised to
see a second grizzly, no doubt the mate of the first, slouching along
towards him, its head lowered in his track.

To be the shuttlecock between two ursine battledores is one of those
experiences of which few victims narrate the incidents.

The second antagonist was certain to arrive at him by its unerring
scent, and, moreover, was the nearer as well as the larger beast.
To shoot and run for his life was all the course which his fright
counselled, so he lifted his gun, levelled it steadily at the grizzly's
eye, partly veiled by its shaggy fore hair, and pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately, whether the piece had been tampered with, or the snow
had eaten away the barrel, the charge hung fire, and the peculiar
and frightfully loud detonation betokened that the barrel had burst.
Without being wounded, the captain pitched forward head foremost into
the snow, from not meeting the recoil which he had nerved himself to
resist.

Both bears howled together, rattled their claws and gnashed their
teeth, and, with a loud snarling, bounded towards the hapless captain.
Mechanically, he drew his knife, but, on scrambling to his feet,
experienced a fear so inexpressibly appalling that he forgot his
determination to resist to the inevitable death, and leaped away in a
mad scamper.

Accustomed to riding, he was not a good pedestrian; his winter garments
were unsuitable, and he was no longer blessed with youth. Besides,
to get over such ragged ground, and among tough, thorny, scrubby
_conifera_, was impossible for one in blind haste. He could tell by
their breathing that the two bears were nearing him, bound for bound.
He had lost his knife, and his revolver having been torn out of his
belt by a briar too, he was absolutely at the mercy--an unknown
element--of his pursuers. He dared not turn his head; in hunters'
phraseology, he felt them ruffle his hair with their breath; and, in
truth, Old Ephraim and his spouse were not a dozen steps off. His own
hair stood up, spite of a cold perspiration, for he felt that he was
irremediably lost. In two or three minutes, say five at most, he would
become that not unique subject of a well-worn Western epitaph--granting
that he was left in _buriable_ tatters--Unknown man gobbled up by
grizzly.

He was stopped by the inability to make a further move; both bears
reared up, and the least towered a head and shoulders above him. He
was, by the force of education, striving to recall a prayer, when a
human hand unexpectedly clutched him by the collar and dashed him down,
crying in a voice most energetic:

"_Lay_ down, you fool, and give a man a chance to shoot, will you not?"

As the captain again was buried in the snow, two rapid reports of a
gun extinguished in their reverberations the growls of the grizzlies.
Then arose a couple of painful lamentations from their hoarse throats,
and, as Kidd lifted his head, he beheld with stupefied eyes a man
disdainfully pursuing the bears and keeping them "on their run" with
panic by pelting them with snowballs and splinters of ice till they
disappeared over a mound and into some crevice, where the chaser deemed
it good sense not to follow further.

"What is this all?" the gold grabber demanded, sitting up, still half
dazed and wholly incredulous, and speaking Spanish, as one in dire
straits always uses the mother tongue.

"Talk English," responded the other, returning rapidly and recharging
his double-barrelled gun, according to hunters' rules, never to carry
unloaded firearms in a dangerous country. "And don't talk to me of the
courage of the grizzly any more. Are you alive? I mean, are you not
wounded?"

"I am not sure how I am," returned the chief of the gold seekers,
standing with difficulty, and staring at his rescuer.

It was Ranald Dearborn, clad as a regular hunter; but his face was not
burnt and weather beaten yet, like a veteran's, and he had an elegant
and almost dandified air, which his recent conduct belied.

He laughed as the captain brushed himself down, and "tried" all his
joints, doubtingly.

"Where are the bears?" inquired Kidd, anxiously.

"I drove them into a crack that probably leads to their lair. They shed
my shot and my bullet off like rain from a roof; but we may be more
lucky in another attack. Shall we have a turn at them?"

"Thank you very much, but I have had all I want of such diversion. Why,
when they reared, it was like looking up the side of a church! I am
sure their teeth were as long as a hunting knife. Who and what are you,
stranger?"

"A hunter--an Englishman wintering in Canada and hereabouts--came out
to this New World to see some sport."

"Alone!" cried Kidd, in the tone of one addressing a madman. "Stop,
though, I have heard--though I never believed it--that solitary hunters
of your nationality do come here with the notion that buffalo are
merely wild bullocks, the puma a large edition of the domestic cat, and
grizzly himself, a rough badger puffed into balloon size by _pinyon_
fruit. I say, friend," he went on, nervously glancing about, "kindly
lend me your arm as far as my encampment. I am in force here, and
promise you good entertainment. Not a man of my band but will welcome
the preserver of their leader. I owe my life to you doubly; you must
not go away till I shall have acquitted myself of the debt."

"Nonsense! It's all in the day's sport. You would do as much for me, if
it had been the other way about."

"I doubt it--I draw the line at grizzly. But you know that such a
service obliges the doer as much as the receiver. Come along."

"I tell you, I am used to camp down anywhere I feel sleepy. I have no
fear of rheumatism," returned the young man, gaily.

"I beg you to accompany me to my camp, for I am quite lame, and spend
at least a night there."

"Do you insist upon that?" inquired Dearborn, with a singular
expression.

"Certainly; we must drink to our better acquaintance;" dragging him
feverishly along.

"Have your own way."

"You Englishmen are all as rich as you are eccentric, but no man can be
too rich. I may be able to relieve myself of some of my obligation yet."

"Not a word of that! As for accompanying you to your camp, please to
observe that you entreated me to do so."

"I'd force you if I could."

"This is a queer world, and in this wilderness passions rule
unconstrained. Friends overnight shoot at one another at sight at noon
of the morrow! If we ever fall out, mind, you must not blame me, since
I wanted to be left alone, as I came."

"What trash! You are joking in that dry way which we Spanish well
understand. You have saved my life."

"It looks so, does it not? Still, I should feel more certain on that
point, and rate myself more of a hero if we had those bearskins--one
apiece!"

"I'll send twenty men to track them to the death, and you shall have
both. But come on."

Leaning upon the stranger's arm in an affectionate manner, Captain
Kidd pressed on as nimbly as his shattered nerves and really crippled
state permitted. Not one look behind did he give, and yet, had he been
able to see the other side of the rising ground, over which Ranald
had driven the terrified bruins, he would have been given food for
reflection.

In fact, sitting on their tails, without their heads, which they held
in their paws, the bears were laughing with supplementary inner mouths
belonging to quite human countenances. These bore a strong resemblance
to those of Cherokee Bill and Jim Ridge. They, of few men, had the
necessary knowledge of grizzly's fife and demeanour to play the part
which had completely deceived Captain Kidd, and would have succeeded
with a more skilled hunter. Presently the two disrobed themselves,
flung away the osier rods which had swelled out the skins, packed the
latter up, and winked drolly at one another.

"I say, Bill, mind you see the editor of the _Rocky Mountain
Squelcher_," observed the old trapper, humorously, "and insert the item
that Mr. R. Dearborn was introduced to Captain Kidd by Mr. and Mrs. G.
Bear!"




CHAPTER XVI.

THE THORN OF ROSES.


It was going on seven o'clock when the unhappy Captain of the gold
seekers and his deliverer, as he emphatically termed him, reached the
former's camp.

The weather kept cold, and the frost was biting. The cloudless sky of a
clear night was lavishly sprinkled with the brightest stars.

Lieutenant Carcajieu was on the point of sending out some scouts to
find the captain and missing men as he reappeared. He was warmly
greeted. Not that his fellows doated upon him; but, being like seamen
navigating an unknown sea, they would have been in a quandary if he
had eloped. After thanking them, the leader gave an account of his
adventure, upon which the congratulations broke forth afresh for one
who had escaped two grizzlies. Three or four men, as they were fully
equipped, were directed to go out and bring in the remains of the
English convict.

"By the way, where's the Frenchman?" enquired Kidd, though desirous of
repose.

"Paul has not returned," responded the lieutenant, to his surprise.
"Though it's blamed late for scrambling round in the district
overflowing with b'ar."

"I hope nothing's befallen him," observed Kidd, gravely. "Double the
force of scouts, and let them move most warily."

Leaving Joe to govern the camp, and seeking the recuperation of which
he felt in need, the captain and Dearborn proceeded towards the tent.
Wearied, aching, and meditative, Kidd did not remark a quick peculiar
sign of "friend!" from the young hunter to his right-hand man. A plate
additional was set for Dearborn, and the captain plied a good knife
and fork. Soon he gave the Negro Samson an order. In five minutes its
purport was made manifest, for the black man ushered in under the
canvas flap, Doña Rosario. She came forward in a singularly embarrassed
way, a feverish blush on her face, and her eyes curiously enkindled.
She seemed struggling between interest in the stranger and a resolve
not to exhibit it.

This caution was so quickly mastered, that it was invisible by the time
she had taken a seat prepared for her between the two men. Dearborn had
gazed at her with no other sentiment than admiration, unless, also,
some pity was involuntarily betrayed.

Ordinarily Captain Kidd let no incident escape him; but he was too
bruised and too famished not to be exceedingly self-concentrated.
Happily for them, therefore, nothing met his eye.

"I must ask your forgiveness, _Niña_," he said in Spanish, in a voice
which he tried to soften, "I ought to have notified you of a stranger
guest."

"As the ruler, sir, you can do just as you please," she returned, with
indifference.

"Nay, nay, my sweet! I don't want the gentleman to have a poor opinion
of me, and suppose I act tyrannically over you."

"I beg pardon, Mr. Kidd," interrupted Dearborn, playing carelessly
with his knife, "as everybody has his hands full in minding his own
business, I make it a rule never to go out of my way supposing things.
At the same time, this foreign language before a guest is not what
I was educated to call the correct etiquette. Besides, if you must
discuss family matters with this young lady, whom I take to be your
daughter, would it not be better to put that by till we are through the
meal?"

"Oh, I thought you knew Spanish," returned the captain, smoothly. "The
lady is not my daughter, but my ward--a far-removed relative--but I
love her as if she were my own child; and there is nothing that depends
on me that should not be hers to satisfy her in any way."

The girl smiled mockingly. The captain never moved a muscle as he went
on thus:

"I was merely observing, my pet--_querida Niña_--that I never should
have invited a complete stranger hither--one I have only known a few
hours--to be our guest but for his having rendered me one of those
services utterly unpayable. In plain English, he has saved my life."

"Delighted to hear it," rejoined the young lady, nibbling at the sweet
biscuit.

"It is only too true," took up the hunter, laughing, "that, without any
vaunt, my interpolation in your trialogue with the grizzly bears alone
prevented the last repartee being rather fatal than otherwise to you."

"Ugh! The bare idea makes me shudder!" said the captain, with no
intention to jest. "I am gooseflesh all over now!"

"Did this gentleman really save you from the monsters?" queried she,
apparently at length interested in the conversation.

"Save is the word!" ejaculated the bandit chief. "I was under the very
claws, between the teeth of the horrible beasts. So shake again, Mr.
Dearborn," he added, with a fine tragi-comic offering of his hand. "We
are brothers right on till death do us part! I am not much given to
speechifying, but I have a rare memory for good and evil deeds done me,
and as I live, you may ask anything of mine, and halves we go in it,
though 'tis my gold placer in the--well yonder!"

"Mind, I'm booking that offer, captain." said the young man, with
an Englishman's hearty joviality; "I am not a man to forget easily,
either, and I am a great fellow for taking people at their word. So,
though I am for claiming nothing just now, do you see, I should not
wonder if someday I remind you of your pledge. So hold yourself ready
to meet the demand, and cash up."

"There is no reminder needed in my case," said the captain, rather
coldly and proudly. "You will find me ready to act up to my pledges."

"Therefore, I shall not dwell on that point. Let us change the subject.
You were laughing at me as a foolhardy son of fortune who renounces old
country luxuries, and penetrates the American wilderness, _quite by
himself_," he said with a stress meant for the auditress to mark the
phrase; "but what the plague brings you into desolation? You have not
the look of a merchant. You would not haggle and bicker with Messrs. Lo
& Co., as the Yankees playfully call the noble son of the forest."

"Quite so, I am not here to trade. Oh, dear, no! I am just jogging
along."

"But whither? I do not want to be rude; but where there are no roads, I
should imagine one's route led nowhere."

"The proof that your inquiry is not impertinent is shown in my freely
answering you. My course is public property. On the border, everyone
knows that my mates and I are going to the gold fields."

"Oh, after gold," repeated the other with well-feigned surprise. "Over
the range into California? In that case, if there's any reliance in
maps--though when maps are made by geographers at a desk ten thousand
miles off, I have not too much faith in maps myself--well, you _are_
askew! Granting you the finding of a pass in the Rockies, you will be
three weeks reaching the eastern slope of the Nevada Range, and if you
go that way and can climb the Oregonian Heights, you will be three
months getting down to Portland. Either way, you will have so heavy and
fatiguing a 'jog,' that I wonder very much that you take a delicate
young lady with you."

"What you say may be very true, sir; but, to begin with, do not
run away with the wrong notion. This young lady would not be in my
company--I may better say, one of my company--if it were not absolutely
her wish and will."

"Oh, now I curl back into my shell," said the English

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