THE LONELY CAMP-FIRE.
The twinkling light of a camp-fire at such a time as this, and in
such a place, was enough to make any one cautious, and Egbert Rodman
approached it as stealthily as a Comanche would have done himself.
He was somewhat surprised when yet some distance away to observe that
there was a single person sitting near it, in the attitude either of
deep meditation or intense listening.
“There must be others close at hand, or else he is not aware of the
danger he runs,” muttered the young man, as he continued his advance.
“Strange, but there is something about him that reminds me of Lightning
Jo; and,” he added, the next moment, “Lightning Jo it is; helloa! old
fellow, how came you here?”
And forgetful of all else for the time, except his delight in seeing
the true and tried comrade, Egbert Rodman rushed forward to give him
appropriate greeting.
He saw at once that something was the matter with the scout. He was
sitting upon a large stone, with his rifle between his knees, and
supporting his chin, was looking absently into the fire, like one whose
thoughts were entirely removed from his present surroundings. He merely
looked up at the spontaneous greeting of the young friend from whom he
had become separated some time before, and staring at him for a moment,
again lowered his gaze without saying a word or shifting his position.
But, if he was in a sullen, thoughtful mood, Egbert was not, nor did he
intend to keep any prolonged silence in deference to such a whim. He
believed he understood the scout well enough to know how to approach
him, and in a cheery manner, free from any rude familiarity, he placed
himself beside him, and touching his shoulder, said:
“Come, Jo, don’t sit idle here. You seem to be depressed; but rally,
and tell me what the matter is.”
The scout seemed to appreciate the consideration shown him, and
straightening up, he heaved a great sigh, looked fixedly at his young
friend again, but still refused to speak. Egbert was determined to
press the matter.
“What is it that troubles you, Jo? Come, out with it; what are you
thinking about?”
“_Little Lizzie Manning!_” was the reply of the scout, in a voice that
was sepulchral in its solemnity.
The shaft of a Comanche’s poisoned arrow, driven to the heart of Egbert
Rodman, could not have startled him more than did this reply. He gave
a gasp as if of pain, and almost fell to the earth, before he could
compose himself sufficiently to sit down and collect his thoughts. When
he did so, he looked across from the opposite side of the camp-fire,
and asked, pleadingly:
“What about her, Jo? Is she living or dead? Can you tell me what has
become of her? Don’t keep me in suspense!”
“You didn’t seem in quite so much suspense a little while ago,” he
remarked, somewhat resentfully; and then, as if regretting the words,
he hastened to add, in a more considerate voice:
“That’s just the trouble, Roddy; you know when the fresh came, we
hadn’t any time to look after each other, but we went spinning down the
kenyon as if Old Nick was arter us. I heerd you yell, and of course you
heerd my answer, but there wasn’t much to be seen then, and so we each
kept on sailing on our own hook.”
“But Lizzie! Did you hear nothing of her?” inquired the breathless
lover.
“Yes; I did hear her,” replied Jo, with another sigh; “some time arter
that I heerd her call out somebody’s name.”
“Whose was it?” asked Egbert, with a painful throb of his heart, and a
staring, eager look that brought a wan smile to the face of Jo for the
instant, but passing instantly as he made answer:
“As near as I could make out, it was your’n. In course you didn’t
hear it, but as I did, I called back to her, and she know’d me on the
instant. I axed her how she was fixed, and she said she was on the
back of her horse, but had no idea where she was going, or how it was
possible for her to get out of this scrape. You can understand that it
wasn’t very easy to gabble at such a time, with the roar of the kenyon
in your ears. I told her to hang on to her hoss, no matter where he
went, and there was a chance of her getting through somewhere. At the
same time I didn’t think there was much chance of any one ever coming
out of that place alive. I could tell by the sound of the gal’s voice
that she wasn’t very far away, and I worked as never a poor wretch
worked before to get to her. I tired my hoss out, and when we got down
to that ’ere lake, or whatever you’re a mind to call it, I struck out
fer myself. The minute I left the mustang, I sung out to her, but I
didn’t hear any answer. I yelled ag’in and ag’in, but it warn’t no use,
and I swum ashore and made up my mind--well, no--confound it,” added
the scout, fretfully, “I haven’t made up my mind, either, that the
little gal has been drowned, and we ain’t never more to hear her sweet
voice. That’s what I’ve been feeling, and what I was thinking about
when you come sneaking up so sly that you thought nobody could hear
you.”
“You think, then, that there is a possibility that she may have
escaped, after all?”
“Well, there’s the trouble,” returned Lightning Jo, with something of
his old familiar look. “When I set to thinking about it, I can’t see
any way under heaven by which she could have come out alive, and I
s’pose I couldn’t have seen any way how you folks were ever to get out
of Dead Man’s Gulch, if I could have knowed how things were there. It
is mighty hard, and you feel it, too, if you thought half as much of
that little gal as I do.”
Poor Egbert was inexpressibly shocked at this remark, and looked
reprovingly at the scout. He made no reply and assumed a thoughtful
attitude upon the other side of the small camp-fire; but just then the
scout roused up.
“Confound it! what’s the use! I ain’t going to make a fool of myself!
This will never do!”
And stretching and yawning, he suddenly raised his voice, and emitted
his peculiar yell, that rung among and through the rocks, gorges and
ravines with a power that must have carried it a long distance over the
prairie.
“What in the name of heaven do you mean by that?” asked the astonished
Rodman, suspecting that he was out of his head.
“Some of the poor dogs may have managed to crawl out as did you, and
that’ll tell them where to look for me. What do you s’pose I kindled
this fire for?”
“To dry your clothes and keep the chill off.”
“Not a bit of it; the night ain’t cold, and there’s nothing in damp
clothes that you or I need mind. If it hadn’t been fur these sticks
burning, you’d never have found your way here, and it may do the same
for others. No, Roddy,” said Jo, in a more natural voice, “we’ve got
nothin’ to do but to wait where we are till morning. Then we’ll take
our reckoning, and make a search for the gal.”
“And never give up till we find her, dead or alive,” added Egbert, in a
low, earnest voice.
“That’s the style. I’m with you there. I s’pose you feel a little
hungry and tired?”
“I have hardly had time to think of such a thing as hunger, while
I have become sensible of the weariness only after seating myself
here--wondering all the time how it was you managed to have such a fire
in so short a time.”
“No trouble ’bout that; you see I come down ahead of all the rest, and
I wa’n’t in the basin two seconds afore I paddled out. I’ve been in
these hills so often before that I know ’em purty well, but there was a
little too much darkness for me to make out where I was. I pitched over
a half-dozen precipices something less than a mile high, and finally
lit here. It wa’n’t any trouble to start a fire, as this rain was a
quick and not a soaking one. Falling right on the top of things, it
floated off, and I found all the dried leaves I wanted; and after they
was started the rest was easy enough.”
It came out further, that overwhelmingly sudden as was the flood that
overtook them in the canon, it had not found Lightning Jo unprepared.
His rifle was securely “corked” at the muzzle, so as to keep out the
water, and his ammunition and a quantity of matches were all preserved
in waterproof casings, so that, barring the saturation of his garments,
he came out of the terrible bath as well as he went in.
True he had parted from his horse, but that cost him scarcely a
thought. The mustang was so well trained that if he succeeded in
escaping with his own life, he would manage to find his master with
little difficulty; and, in case he had perished, there was no dearth
of animals in the West, and there was little fear of Lightning Jo
suffering long for such a part of his outfit as a horse.
As Egbert saw his companion heap more fuel on the fire, he could not
avoid the thought that he was incurring great risk thereby, as both of
them were rendered the best of targets for any skulking foe.
There were trees growing around, most of them of a stunted nature--but
the light of the fire could be seen for quite a distance through the
hills. The night-wind soughed with a dull, desolate wailing, through
the branches, and the roar of the canon sounded distant and faint,
growing less every hour, and proving that it was being emptied as
rapidly as it was filled.
Finally Egbert Rodman could not forbear asking the question:
“Is there nothing to be feared in the shape of Indians, Jo?”
“No; there’s none here, except--except that _Thing_ that you saw on
his hoss. Didn’t I tell you that his coming was to give us notice that
something else was coming, and it was on us afore we knowed it. It’s
always so.”
“Then you have seen it before?” asked Egbert, who was rather curious to
hear what the scout had to say about the creature, which certainly had
caused him no little wonderment since he had first set eyes upon it.
“I should think I had,” was the reply, in a hurried voice. “It’s
five years since I first heard of it, though Kit Carson did tell me
something about some such thing as that being seen in the Apache
country more than ten years ago. But the chap that told me was the only
one that was left out of an emigrant party of over twenty. He said it
come up to their camp one night just as the sun was setting, and arter
looking at them for a few minutes rode away at a gallop, and it wa’n’t
two hours afore the red-skins was down upon ’em.”
“Is its appearance always the same?”
“I b’l’eve it is, but I ain’t sart’in. Leastways, I could never see any
thing different. It always had the blanket thrown over it, and its head
was as black as a stack of black cats. The first time I run ag’in’ it
was down in the Staked Plain, where a party of us were arter a lot of
Comanches that had made a raid on one of the settlements near the Texan
frontier. I remember there was a kind of a drizzling rain falling and
we was smoking our pipes, with our blankets drawn up round our chins,
when the critter rode down on us, and stopped jist as he did with you.
There was four of us that blazed away at him, each one aiming at the
spot where his heart would have been had he been like other animals;
and, when his horse turned about and galloped away with him, without
his showing the least oneasiness, you can make up your mind that we was
slightly surprised. There was several of us that heard of the Terror
of the Prairie, as he is called by some, and we concluded that this
was the gentleman, and that a row was sure to take place; so we made
ready for ’em, and we had one of the tallest scrimmages that night that
any of us ever got mixed up in; but you see we was used to that sort
of business, and it wasn’t good policy for the Terror to come down on
us and tell us to make ready. We was a little too much ready, and the
red-skins got a little more than they counted on. We riddled a dozen
of ’em, and got away without losing a man or a hoss, though most of us
have got scars that were made in that muss.”
“Wal,” added Jo, “I won’t take time to tell all I know ’bout that
critter, which ain’t much, ’cept in the way he has played the mischief
round the country. I s’pose when he took a look at you down in the
gulch, it meant that he and his folks was coming to visit you, and we
got there just ahead of ’em.”
“Captain Shields seemed to know nothing about him, at least he told
nothing of what you have just described.”
“Shields was in that party down on the Staked Plain, and got two
bullets in him, that he carries to this day: so I reckon he does know
something, arter all.”
“And he is somewhere in our neighborhood, unless he has taken a sudden
departure.”
“Yes,” added Lightning Jo, in a husky whisper, and with a wild, scared
look; “and he ain’t fifty feet from where you’re setting this minute.”