LONE MOUNTAIN
When night closed in round the little camp in the forest, Warwolf lit
the pipe of peace, and after gravely puffing away in silence for a
few minutes began to tell his story.
'It was when this moon was young, my brother, when it was no more
than a thin silver boat sailing through the dark night, that
Hilcomax, the medicine-man of the Blackfeet, warned the chiefs in
council of great events about to happen. Hilcomax the healer had
been away from the camp of his tribe for many suns, collecting herbs
and preparing great medicine against Okeeheedee, the evil one, when
one morning he saw the sky darkened by great wings, and, looking up,
he saw the destroyer pass over him far, far up among the shuddering
clouds of heaven. Slowly the great wings came down until their
shadow darkened the forest, and Hilcomax saw them glide towards the
burial-grounds of our fathers on the Lone Mountain.
'In the darkness of night Hilcomax crept back towards the home of his
people, and warned the chiefs in council of what he had seen.'
Here Warwolf paused for a moment or two, blowing out a great cloud of
blue smoke from his pipe, and watching it thoughtfully as it melted
away in the night air.
'Youth, my brothers,' he continued, 'is light as that smoke, and
every wind carries it away. I would not listen to the medicine-man's
warnings, but came to the foot of the "Lone Mountain," trapping. For
my folly the Crows caught me--the white-hearted, hare-lipped chief of
the Crows--and would have taken me to his squaws to torture, had not
my brothers rescued me. He, too, has seen the bird which hovers over
the graves of the Blackfeet, and his woman's heart froze at the
sight.'
'And has the chief seen this bird himself?' asked Dick Wharton.
'Warwolf has seen it,' he replied.
'And that is about all he means to tell you,' muttered Snap aside,
and Snap was right.
In spite of all Wharton's ingenious pumping the Indian would tell no
more, except that the Lone Mountain was accursed, that the white
spirits of dead chiefs were wandering about it, bewailing the trouble
that was to come, and that far up above the graveyards of the Indians
brooded this great white bird. As to what the bird was like, though
he had seen it, he would say nothing. Indians are always very loth
to discuss what they call medicine, _i.e._ magic and things relating
thereto, and this bird was the spirit of evil incarnate.
'All gammon, I suppose, Dick?' asked Frank later on.
'Well, no, not altogether,' replied he; 'of course I can't explain
what he is driving at, but you may bet there is some truth at the
bottom of his story--a trick, most likely, of his own rascally
medicine-man; but, whatever it is, neither Crows nor Blackfeet will
be about here as much as usual for some time, and that's bully for
us.'
The next three days were spent in looking for the most suitable spot
on which to erect the hut in which to pass the winter, and in hunting
and drying the flesh of the beasts they killed. Warwolf remained
with them, lending a hand and giving advice, whilst his strength
gradually returned, and the deep cuts made by the thongs of the Crows
healed over and disappeared.
On the fourth day all were busy in camp, preparing the winter
quarters, except Frank, who had been sent out to get fresh meat, and,
being a poor and inexperienced hand at stalking, had apparently been
led far from home before getting his shot. Towards evening, however,
the crack of his rifle was heard again and again.
'By Jove!' cried Towzer, 'Major has got amongst them now, at any
rate.'
'Yes,' remarked Wharton; 'I wish as he'd remember that we haven't got
a cartridge factory handy, though.'
'By George! how he is wasting them!' added Snap as report after
report rang out in the distance.
All this time Warwolf stood still as a stone, listening.
'My brothers had better be ready,' he now said; 'Frank fired once
half an hour ago. Warwolf heard him. Those last shots were not
fired by the white hunter.'
'Who fired them then?' cried Towzer.
'The Crows,' replied the chief.
'The Crows! then----' and the boy stopped and his face fell.
'Come, Dick,' said Snap, catching up his rifle. 'Warwolf is right,
but we may save him yet, and if not----'
'No,' interrupted Warwolf, 'the white warriors will wait here.
Warwolf will go and find out what has happened. The white hunter
lives still. If the Crows had got a fair shot at him they would have
fired once and my brother would have died. If he had been surrounded
he would have fought, his rifle would have answered theirs, and we
should have heard it. But he escaped as soon as the Crows discovered
him; those shots were fired when our brother dashed into the forest.
I go to meet him.' And so the Indian glided away and was gone.
'Best leave him have his own way,' said Wharton, 'he knows more than
we do, and he'll give his own hair to save Frank's.'
The two boys could not deny the justice of what old Wharton said, but
the waiting for news was weary work for all that, and even Wharton
was making preparations to start on a search for his two comrades,
when they came back to camp, Frank pale and bleeding, leaning heavily
on Warwolf, whose hunting-shirt was soaked with the boy's blood.
'Stand back, and don't worry him with questions,' commanded old Dick;
'and you, young 'un, if you want to help your brother, pile them rugs
up for us to bed him down on. What is it, Warwolf?' he added as he
lowered the boy, half fainting from loss of blood, on to the skins.
'The white hunter shot a buck near a camp of Crows. An Indian would
have seen their camp-fire before he saw the buck, but the white man
had only eyes for the buck. The Crows heard the shot, and their
braves stole round the hunter. Had he not been fleeter than the
pronghorn on the prairie, they would have scalped him before dusk.
As it is, he has only got a bullet through his arm. To-morrow he
will be rested and well;' and, so saying, the chief went on preparing
some herbs and simple remedies which he had drawn from a sack of
beaver-skin which he carried about him.
'Are there many of the Crows in camp?' asked Dick.
'A large party on the war-path,' replied Warwolf, bandaging up
Frank's arm in a kind of herb-poultice.
'What does my brother advise?' asked Dick.
'If the young hunter was strong enough to travel,' replied the
Indian, 'we might escape to-night and perhaps reach my tribe before
the accursed Crows overtook us. As it is, we must wait and fight
here. We shall kill many of them.'
'But,' said Snap, 'we cannot possibly beat off so large a party. It
will cost every one of us our lives.'
'It will,' replied the Indian grimly; 'but it will cost the Crows
more.'
'Oh, hang the Crows,' cried Dick, 'I don't think much of your plan,
chief, though I confess I can think of nothing better.'
'I can though, Dick,' said Snap.
'Out with it then, my boy.'
'Well, didn't Warwolf say that it was only six or seven miles from
here to the Lone Mountain?'
'That's so,' replied Wharton.
'And,' continued Snap, 'since this terrible bird has settled there,
no Indian will put foot on the mountain.'
'You've got it, Snap,' cried Dick enthusiastically, 'that's our
chance, we can carry Frank that far.'
Warwolf's face had been a study while the boy spoke, and now he broke
in with vehement endeavours to dissuade the whites from their rash
undertaking.
'No! no! Warwolf,' replied Wharton, 'you may believe in your great
bird if you like, but I guess the only birds as trouble me just now
are them tarnation Crows.'
'My brothers must please themselves,' replied the chief; 'Warwolf
will die with them, if they wish, here at the hands of the Crows, but
to enter the Lone Mountain now is madness. If my brothers will, they
must go alone.'
'Right you are, chief; this much you shall do for us,' said Snap:
'help us to take Frank on my pony to the foot of the mountain, then
do you take the pony and escape to your own tribe and bring them with
you to save us.'
'To avenge you?' said the Indian.
'Very well, to avenge us,' assented Snap, and so it was settled.
Frank was put on the Cradle's back, and in silence, with rifles at
the ready, they broke up their camp and crept through the forest
towards the haunted mountain.
The dawn was coming when the chief left them, his fine, fierce face
clouded with a sorrow which even his stoicism could not conceal. He
looked on his friends as going to their doom. He tried once more to
persuade them either to stop and fight the Crows in some extemporised
fort in the forest, or to trust to the Crows not catching them before
they could reach the Blackfoot village.
'It's no good, Warwolf,' said Dick, 'with a party as big as ours they
would catch us before to-morrow midday. You and the Cradle may get
off if you are clever, and they won't follow us up there,' pointing
to the peak, now showing in places through the morning mists above
the great pines.
Without a word the Indian turned and left them, backing the pony
carefully over the old trail; he had already risked more than a
thousand Crows in coming so near to the accursed spot, and he would
not wait to hear the air full of the rushing of wings and see
Okeeheedee stoop from his mountain crag and destroy the white men.
Frank's strength was coming back a little by this time, so that with
Snap and Dick to help him he was able to walk with the rest.
As the sun rose the little party emerged from the forest on to a
small prairie, from the further side of which rose the abrupt black
mass of the Lone Mountain, an isolated spur of the chain which
separated the land of the Crows from the hunting-grounds of the
Blackfeet. Round the foot of the great rock wound a rapid stream,
which had risen somewhere in the mountains beyond it, and perhaps a
thousand feet above the stream was a broad, grassy terrace covered
with tents, banners, and what looked in the faint light of dawn like
the figures of men.
'Sink down!' cried Snap as he caught sight of this encampment. 'The
Crows are there before us.'
'No, they aren't,' replied Dick; 'them's Blackfeet there.'
'Then we're safe, aren't we?' asked Frank with a sigh of relief.
'Not yet, my hearty,' replied Dick cheerily, 'but we soon shall be.
Them's dead Blackfeet up there, and I guess they'll skeer the Crows
more nor live 'uns.'
'Dead Blackfeet!' ejaculated Towzer.
'Yes, young 'un, just a graveyard, that's all!' replied Wharton.
As they drew near, the boys saw that he was right. The figures were
monuments of wood, carved like men sometimes, at others like quaintly
devised demons. The pennons floated from what were but dead men's
headstones, and in the white tents with open doorways lay chieftains
sleeping the last long sleep and waiting 'till the flush of morning,
the morning of another world, should break along their battlefield.'
Suddenly an exclamation from Towzer drew all eyes to a point a few
hundred feet above this camp of the dead. The boy's eyes were wide
open, and his jaw dropped in horror. His flesh crept as he looked.
Above the graveyard the rock rose sheer and steep, a wall of rock
like the side of a house, and yet as the boys looked in the misty
light they saw one after another a long train of white figures slowly
passing across it. One by one they paced along, sedate and slow,
their snowy whiteness coming out in strong contrast to the gloom of
their surroundings.
'What is it?' asked Snap in an awed under-tone.
'Bust me if I knows,' said Dick with savage earnestness, 'but, ghosts
or no, I am a-goin' to hide up there. I guess ghosts don't hurt as
much as Crows, anyway.'
Meanwhile Snap had brought his glass to bear on the rock.
'All right, Dick,' he laughed, 'you were pretty near. If they aren't
ghosts they are goats, which sounds something like it, though I never
heard of goats like 'em before.'
'Rocky Mountain goats! are they, by thunder?' ejaculated Wharton;
'wal, I've often heerd tell of 'em, but never seed any till to-day.
You're sure they are goats, Snap?'
'Yes, quite sure; but look for yourself,' and he handed the glasses
to Wharton.
'Well, they're rum-looking critters,' remarked Dick after a long
stare at the white procession now disappearing over a shoulder of the
rock; 'they're goats right enough, though they do look more like
little buffalo-bulls with that hump on their shoulders. But, all the
same, they're Warwolf's ghosts as well,' he added with a laugh.
After tramping round the foot of the mountain for a while, Towzer,
who was ahead of the rest, called out, 'And there's Warwolf's bird,
by Jupiter! our old friend the balloon!'
Even Frank managed to 'boil up' a trot when they heard this, to find
Towzer staring up to the highest peak, six or seven thousand feet
above where they then stood, over the very topmost stone of which a
great balloon seemed to hover.
No wonder that that great mass of white silk, rising and falling as
if all a-tremble with life, now darting out a few yards from its
eyrie, now settling slowly back again, had filled the simple Indians
with fear and awe. Even to the whites, who understood it, it was a
marvel. What was it doing there? Who brought it, and why did he
anchor his sky-ship in such a harbour? Where, too, was he, its
master mariner?
These, and a dozen questions such as these, passed through their
minds as they gazed. Reading his companions' unspoken thoughts and
answering them, Snap said at last:
'I reckon we had better go and see.'
'Yes!' said Dick, 'we should be pretty snug up there alongside
Okeeheedee as they call this bird of theirs; but it is a mighty stiff
climb, and I don't know how we shall get ourselves up, let alone
Frank here.'
'Leave me here, Dick,' said Frank; 'the Crows won't dare to come as
near the peak as this, and in a day or two I shall be strong enough
to come to you, if they are not sick of waiting for us by that time.'
'We'll see you sugared first, old fellow, and then we won't,' replied
Towzer. 'Come along out of that,' and, taking one arm, whilst Snap
took the other, he helped his brother along until they reached the
level of the graveyard.
Here the road grew worse, and it soon became a question of
rock-climbing, pure and simple. Then it was that the forethought
which becomes habitual with the North-western hunter showed itself.
From his waist Old Dick unwound a long lariat, and at the first
seemingly impossible place got the party out of their difficulties
easily enough by throwing the loop over a projecting point a great
many feet above them and climbing up by the ladder thus extemporised
to the little point itself. The boys followed him one after another,
and then Snap and Dick, having instructed Frank to make the rope fast
under his arms, hauled him up alongside of them. From here, by using
the dizzy little gallery along which the wild goats had gone, the
party managed to get to that shoulder over which they had seen the
goats disappear.
By this time the balloon was comparatively close to them. They could
see its car, and that it was anchored by a rope to the rocks over
which it hung. They could have seen a man, had one been there, but
they saw none. Hoping that if they could attract his attention he
would show them the road to his eyrie, the boys whistled again and
again. But no answer came, except the echo of their own whistles and
the shrill scream of a hawk which they had disturbed from its
look-out.
'Deuced odd!' said Snap.
'Asleep or dead, I should think,' said Frank, and the croak of a
great raven sailing by below them, so close that they could see its
bright yellow eye looking at them, seemed to echo 'Dead! dead!'
'Not a cheerful locality, even for a graveyard,' muttered Snap as the
sun was hidden for a second behind the cliffs; 'however, for'ard on!'