TWO STRANGE VISITORS.
Late one evening, when the savory odor of frying bacon, pancakes and
coffee mingled with the balsam-like aroma of the pines, and the river
was singing loudly its eternal murmuring song, Jack, who had wandered
a short distance from the others, came dashing back along a sort of
shaly trail made some time in the past by the feet of wandering
prospectors or trappers. They were camped up the river some distance
above the scene of Tom and Sandy's adventure.
"Well, what's up now?" demanded Tom, looking up with flushed face and
rumpled hair from the cooking fire.
The others regarded Jack questioningly.
"What is it, my boy?" asked Mr. Dacre, seeing that some unusual
occurrence was responsible for Jack's excitement.
"Visitors!" cried the lad.
"Visitors? I suppose Lady Wolf or Baroness Muskrat are coming to pay
us a call the noo," scoffed Sandy.
"Quit your joking, Sandy, these are real visitors. Regular company."
"Best bib-and-tucker folk?" demanded Tom.
"That's what. Better fry up some more bacon and get ready an extra
supply of other grub."
"Say, kindly have the goodness to explain what you are driving at,
won't you?" pleaded Tom.
"Just this. Two regular wild west customers are coming down the trail.
I kind of guess they'll be glad to accept any invitation we might be
inclined to give them."
Jack knew that in the wild places the hospitality of any camp is
gladly extended to the stranger, and that the news that visitors were
approaching would be a pleasant surprise to these sojourners in the
far north. It was long since they had seen strange faces.
"Of course they are welcome to the best the camp affords," said Mr.
Chillingworth heartily.
"You say that they are rather tough-looking customers, Jack?" asked
Tom rather anxiously.
Mr. Dacre set the lad's question aside with a laugh.
"Pshaw! You would hardly expect to find visitors in correct regalia
for calling in this section of the country," he said.
"Come down to that," agreed Tom, chiming in with his uncle's laughter,
"I guess that we are pretty hard-looking cases ourselves."
Before they had time to comment on this remark, which was unmistakably
a true one, the sound of footsteps coming down the loose, stony trail
could be plainly heard. A few minutes later two men came in sight.
Both were typical products of the region.
One was tall, strapping and sun-browned, six foot two in his
stockings. His round, good-natured face was topped with a thatch of
corn-yellow hair, which, with his light blue eyes and fresh
complexion, showed his Norse origin.
The other wayfarer was smaller and more compact, but as he bent under
his heavy pack they could see the tense muscles bulge and play under
his coarse blue shirt. He was tanned almost to a mahogany hue and, no
less than his companion, bore the stamp of a battler in the lonely
places. A certain quiet air of watchfulness, of self-reliance and
ruggedness sufficiently displayed this quality.
The two men introduced themselves. The fair-haired one was Olaf
Gundersen, for many years a dweller in the Yukon region. He had
packed, trapped, hunted and prospected for many seasons in the wildest
parts of Alaska. With his companion, Lafe Cummings, a wiry Iowan, he
was making a trail down the Yukon to be used later on when the two
established a pack train. From the proceeds of this venture they
hoped to reap a golden harvest, which their rough, adventurous lives
had so far failed to yield them.
They were bid a hearty welcome and before long the entire party,
re-enforced by the two newcomers, were seated about the fire devouring
their supper in a way that bade fair to call for a replenishment of
the larder in the near future.
"Ah-h-h-h! dase bane good grub," sighed Olaf, as he finished up a hunk
of cheese after disposing of two heaping saucerfuls of canned peaches,
the latter opened as an especial compliment to the company.
"You're dead right there, Olaf," agreed Lafe in a high, nasal tone.
"You folks done us white and no mistake."
They sat around the fire late that evening, and the boys' elders
explained the object of their presence in the region as freely as they
thought advisable. Lafe and his partner were equally open in
discussing their affairs, and the boys listened with rapt attention
to the budget of tales the two hardy pioneers had to tell of the Yukon
and its pleasures and perils. As they talked, the rushing voice of the
river and the deep sighing of the wind in the pines made a fitting
accompaniment to their Odyssey of the far north.
Lafe had just finished a picturesque tale of life in Dawson City in
the early days, when eggs were a dollar each and flour worth literally
its weight in gold, when, from the forest behind them, came a shrill,
unearthly cry. It was like the shriek of a human creature in mortal
agony and it cut the silence like a knife.
They all looked around, startled for an instant, and then Mr. Dacre
exclaimed:
"A wild-cat!"
"That's what it is. One of them pesky varmints, sure enough," declared
Lafe. "I mind me of a time in Nevady, when----"
But they were none of them listening to Lafe just then. Their eyes
were centered on Olaf.
An extraordinary change had come over the big, blonde Norwegian. He
glanced about him nervously, almost timorously. It was odd to see the
effect that the ululation of the wild cat crying out in the woods had
had upon the strapping frontiersman. His light eyes held, for an
instant, all the fear of a frightened child. Then the cry died out and
with its passing, the fear faded from his face.
By common consent they looked at Lafe, as if seeking an explanation
for the phenomenon. Olaf glanced uneasily about as if he was half
afraid of being ridiculed for his momentary exhibition of alarm.
"One fears one thing, one is dead mortal scared of another,"
volunteered Lafe at length. "I knowed an old lady at home that
wouldn't go nigh a cat. 'Nuther feller I hev in mind was as bold as a
lion in everything but one, an' that was spiders. Yes'ir, let a spider
come anigh Spence Higgins and he'd come purty near hollering out like
a school gal that spied one of the critters on her best pink muslin."
"Yes, I suppose that we all have our pet dislikes," said Mr. Dacre.
"Wa'al, Olaf, he's got a heap more reason an' title to his dislike
than most of us, I reckon," said Lafe. "I'll bet a cookie right now
that you thought that thar critter was a mounting lion fer a minute,
na'ow, didn't yer, Olaf?"
The big Norseman smiled his slow smile.
"He bane sound powerful lake it, Lafe," he said at length, "an' das a
soun' you know I don't bane lake. No, sir, he skoll make me bane
planty scared all right, I tale you."
"You had some adventure with a mountain lion one time?" asked Mr.
Chillingworth, scenting a story.
"Aye. I skoll bet you may lafe, I bane have bad time with mountain
lion one tame long ago," said Olaf slowly. "I never forgate him, I
bate you, no not so long as I skoll live."
"Tell 'em about it," urged Lafe, "go on. Then they'll see why you've
no reason to like the critters, though there's none round hereabouts
that ever I heard tell of."
Olaf regarded the group about him with unblinking eyes and his slow,
good-natured smile.
"You lake I bane tale you why I no lake mountain lion?" he asked.
"Yes, please, by all means," urged Mr. Dacre, who knew that it could
have been no common adventure that had branded this big-limbed giant
with a dread of a creature which ordinarily is glad enough to give
human beings a wide berth.
"Then I bane tale you why Oaf Gundersen give mountain lion the inside
of the trail whenever as be I skoll meet him again," said the
Norwegian.
"It all happened a long time ago," he began, and in telling his story
we shall not try to reproduce his odd, broken idioms, nor his
inimitable style, "a long time ago when the boys here must have been
little fellows. It was back in Californy where the creatures were as
thick as blackberries and gave lots of trouble to the settlers and the
miners. I was working a small mine and trying to run a small mountain
ranch at the same time. My living I eked out by hunting and trapping
when I got a chance.
"One day while I was out hunting, a big mountain lion and his mate
came down on the ranch and killed the only horse I had. I hunted the
male for a week and then I found him and shot him down. But the
account was not yet even. I determined to kill his mate, too.
"I tracked her for days but could never get close enough to her for a
shot. The creature appeared to have an uncanny sense of my purpose of
revenge. She always evaded me with what appeared to be almost
supernatural skill. Time after time I thought that I had her at my
mercy, only to have her escape my rifle-fire unharmed.
"After some time devoted to this fruitless quest of vengeance, I
began to see the killing of this puma as a fixed purpose. Nothing else
seemed to matter much so long as I could kill the beast that had so
often evaded me.
"I used to start out early every day and return home only late at
night from the hunt, and always I was baffled. The she-puma still
lived in spite of my efforts. If she had been human I would have said
that she laughed at me, for sometimes at night I could hear her
screaming in the forest like a big wild-cat, as if in defiance of me.
"At such times I would grit my teeth as I lay in my bunk and say to
myself. 'All right, my lady. It's a long lane that has no turning, and
I'll never give up till I have killed you.'
"But the next day she would avoid me again, sometimes by not more than
a hair's breadth; but it was enough. She carried her hide whole and I
was still unrevenged for the death of my horse.
"One day I followed her trail to a part of the mountains where fallen
trees, underbrush and jagged stones made the traveling hard. All at
once, after some half hour of scrambling forward, I found myself
facing a cave, a black, narrow opening in a cliff of grayish stone
that towered high above the forest.
"I knew as if by instinct that I had found the mountain lion's lair.
But was she inside? That was the question. If she was, I determined to
lie there till she came forth, even if it took days, and then despatch
her without mercy.
"With this object in view I cast myself on my stomach in the midst of
a tangle of underbrush, and with my rifle all ready for instant use I
began my vigil.
"I lay there for quite some time," said Olaf, "and then, all at once,
I began to hear sounds that made me prick my ears up. From inside the
cave came whining little growls and mews almost like the crying of
kittens. Of course I knew almost instantly what caused the noise. The
puma had young ones. They were what I heard.
"'Aha!' thought I, 'so much the better. Now I know I have you, my
lady. When you come back to your cubs, I shall kill you and my revenge
will be complete.'
"The thought gave me much satisfaction and I lay there listening
feverishly for the slightest sound of the returning mother. But after
a while something happened that gave my thoughts a different trend.
Out of the cave mouth there came tumbling two fuzzy, fussy little
mountain lion cubs. They looked like yellow balls of down. They sat
there blinking in the sun for a while and then began playing just as
kittens do. It was a pretty sight, but I had other thoughts to occupy
me just then. An idea had suddenly come to me.
"Why not take the cubs and raise them? I would be able to sell them to
some menagerie or zoo for a good sum when they grew older, and I
would thus be repaid for the loss of my horse. The more I thought it
over, the better my plan appeared to me. I resolved to put it into
instant execution."