the doctor is agreeable to having his company, all right. You may
settle it between you.”
Settled it was, right speedily, for Doctor Robinson had a kind heart,
too.
“Here’s your pistol, then,” Hugh bade. “Wid wan load. Be sure ye get a
buff’lo, now.”
Stub nodded, and carefully stowed the long dragoon pistol in under his
belt. The curved handle crossed his stomach.
“I see him, I get him, Hugh.”
He and the doctor and Baroney set out, first.
“Down river; we’ll meet you down the Red River, Baroney, old hoss,”
called the men. “Here’s wishin’ you fat meat, doctor, sir――an’ the same
for the rest of us.”
“I’ll follow the main trail in two days and catch up,” the lieutenant
had promised. “But nobody is to wait for me until meat has been
secured. Do your best, doctor. There are rations for only forty-eight
hours.”
It was another lean day. Although the three did do their best, scouting
in advance from the river to the hills, and exploring the side draws,
oftentimes waist deep in the snow, they stirred never a hoof nor paw,
and rarely a feather. That was discouraging.
Now and again they saw the main party, who had crossed the river and
were toiling along, down the other flank of its winding course.
“Not a thing sighted by us, and not a gunshot heard from those other
fellows,” the doctor sighed, at evening. “Well, we’d better go over and
join them, for camp, and try again in the morning.”
They made for the fire that was twinkling, below and beyond; crossed
the river upon the ice, and arrived.
“Any luck, sir?” queried Sergeant Meek, of the doctor.
“None to-day sergeant; but we have hopes for to-morrow.”
“Yes, sir. The same here, sir.”
“So ye didn’t fetch in a buffler with that big pistol?” John Sparks
bantered, of Stub.
“To-morrow,” answered weary Stub.
“To-morrow is a grand time,” said Baroney. “If there wasn’t any
to-morrow, I don’t know what we’d do.”
The supper to-night was a scant meal, for all: just a few mouthfuls of
dried meat and a handful of parched corn. In the morning the doctor
decided briskly.
“You’ve rations for only to-day, sergeant?”
“Yes, sir; and scarce that, but we can make ’em do.”
“I feel sure that Baroney and the boy and I will find game before
night. If we do, we’ll come in with it. But you keep on, as Lieutenant
Pike ordered, until you kill meat or until he joins you, and never mind
our whereabouts. We’ll take care of ourselves somehow, and I don’t
propose to come in unless loaded.”
“You’ll likely stay out, in the hills, sir, you mean?”
“That depends on the day’s luck,” smiled the doctor. “But even if we
do, we’ll be no worse off than Lieutenant Pike and Miller and Mountjoy.
We’re all rationed the same, and there’s little to choose between
camping together and camping separately.”
But even Stub felt the seriousness of it when again he followed
the doctor and Baroney, for the second day’s hunt. If nothing was
killed to-day, then to-morrow they would begin to starve; pretty
soon they would be eating the horses, and next their moccasins, and
without horses and moccasins they would die before getting out of the
mountains.
XIII
MEAT FOR THE CAMP
Buffalo!
Stub stared hard. He scarcely could believe his bleared, aching eyes.
Was it really true? Buffalo? Now what to do?
This was early in the third morning after leaving the main camp. For
two days he and the doctor and Baroney had been hunting, hunting, from
dawn to dark; ranging up and down, among the hills and draws, and
wading the snow, on only one small meal. In fact, they practically had
had nothing at all to eat, in forty-eight hours. Through the two nights
they had tended fire and shiveringly dozed, without blankets, in the
best spot they might find, where they could secure a little protection
from the biting wind.
How they were going to keep on living if they discovered nothing to
eat, this day, he did not know; Baroney did not know; the doctor
hadn’t said. But they had told the sergeant not to expect them unless
with good news; the other men probably were famishing, too, and they
themselves might as well starve in one place as another.
Full of aches and pains (and that was all!) they had passed a bad
night, so that this morning they really had been glad to stagger up
and out again, into the bleak whity-gray, even though they might be
starting upon only another long day of fruitless tramping.
Baroney groaned.
“Ma foi! My legs move, my head thinks, but there is nothing between. I
have no stomach.”
“We’ll find meat to-day. Not only for ourselves but for the boys in
camp, remember,” encouraged the doctor. “They’re likely depending on
us, for we’ve heard no gunshots. We must separate and hunt widely.”
They had trudged forth, before sun-up. They had crossed the first
wooded ridge, to the next little valley.
“Stub, you follow up, along the high ground on this side,” the doctor
ordered. “Baroney will take the middle. I’ll take the farther side.
Move slowly and all together, and we’ll surely start something. Head
off anything that comes your way, Stub, and drive it down to us. Don’t
waste the load in your pistol.”
“Yes, I will drive,” answered Stub, patiently.
He waited, shivering, until Baroney had halted in the bottom, and the
doctor had toiled clear across to the other slope, and up. Then they
three moved on together――one searching either flank, the third in
between.
The valley was not wide. Its bottom was level and open except for
the snow-covered brush; its sides were dotted with cedars and pines.
Keeping near the top of his side, so as to drive anything down hill,
Stub hunted faithfully, hoping, too, that he would hear the doctor or
Baroney shoot. His eyes scanned every foot before and to right and
left, seeking tracks. Even a rabbit would be welcomed――yet he didn’t
wish to spend his bullet on a rabbit.
He saw nothing to make him draw his pistol. It weighed heavily and
rasped his stomach and thigh as he plodded on.
The sun was about to rise above the snowy ridges on the east. They had
been hunting for an hour, at least, and had heard never a sound. Then
he reached a place where his slope broke sharply into a side valley. A
fellow always expected something, at such places. So he stole forward
cautiously; he came to a ledge of rock, and peered down. What he saw
instantly almost stopped his heart-beating, and dazed his eyes with
sudden excitement.
Buffalo! Really? Yes, yes――buffalo! He was not dreaming.
It was more of a basin than a valley, in there: broadening to a snug
cup protected by rim-rock, just back of the opening into the main
valley, and thence tapering and climbing until it pinched out, on the
ridge. A few leafless aspens (sign of water) and sprawly evergreens
grew in the cup, and there was marsh grass, in weedy clumps. And the
buffalo.
Two――three, lying down and comfortable, like cattle, their legs under
them. The snow was well trodden; they had been in here some time.
Now what to do? He trembled, and thought his best. If he only might
take the time to signal Baroney and the doctor. But even as he peered
the sun flashed up, and the first beams streamed into the cup. One
large bull suddenly stirred, and all at once was on his feet, swaying
his shaggy head and sniffing the air. Was it the sun, or did the breeze
tell him something? He may have scented the doctor, or Baroney, or
Stub, or he might merely be thinking of breakfast and the day’s program.
There! The second buffalo was out of bed, and imitating the first. The
third seemed to be getting uneasy. Stub dared not delay, to signal. His
eyes roved rapidly. He was too far, for pistol shooting. The buffalo
might only start to graze――they might start to travel, warned by danger
smell――and they were as likely to go one way as another. He must get
down in behind them and drive them out where the doctor and Baroney
would see them.
He drew back, and crouching scurried on a half circuit, to slip into
the basin, above them. He struck a little ravine, leading down. All his
practice at scouting with the Pawnee boys stood him in good stead, now.
He moved fast but silently, darting from spot to spot, stepping with
care and listening for alarm sounds; and stealing more gently as he
arrived at the bottom, where the ravine ended in a cedar and a shoulder
of rock.
The upper edge of the basin was just around that corner. He planned to
step out, into sight. The buffalo would run in the other direction,
and the doctor or Baroney might be able to head them, and kill one at
least; then follow and maybe kill more.
But first he drew his big pistol, on the slim chance of a sure shot,
himself. Gradually he thrust his head beyond the cedar and the rock
shoulder――and jerked back in a jiffy. A fourth buffalo was standing
there almost within touch!
Stub’s heart beat furiously, and he sank trembling, to think. He must
look again; and he did, as gradually as a timid prairie-dog emerging
from its burrow.
Wah! It was a cow, turned broadside to him, half dozing as she bathed
in the sunshine.
Now he must steady down, and slide out a little farther, for a sure
shot. He huddled back, once more to take breath. He examined his flint,
and opened the pan, to stir the caked powder of the priming. Then
with both hands he cocked the heavy hammer――click-click! The noise
frightened him, and he hoped that it had not frightened the cow. Then
he extended the pistol in front of him, and began to follow it by
worming on, inch by inch, around the low-branching cedar.
Hoorah! The cow was still there, but she had heard or smelled. Maybe
she had heard the click-click. She had not moved; only, her head was
up, and she was gazing with her head turned in the direction of the
other buffalo.
He’d better shoot as quickly as possible. Another inch, and another, he
squirmed, for right position. Now! She was about fifteen paces――not so
near as he had thought, but this was the best that he might do with any
safety. So he leveled the long-barreled dragoon pistol, again with both
hands; held breath until the muzzle seemed to be pointing directly in
line with a spot just behind her fore shoulder――and while it slightly
wavered there, he pressed the trigger.
Bang! The pistol well-nigh jumped from his hands; a cloud of smoke had
belched――and dimly seen through the smoke, by his watering eyes, the
cow had given a great leap and had vanished.
She had run the other way, down the basin. Up Stub leaped, and ran,
too. The basin seemed to be still echoing with the report, but he heard
the thud and clatter of hoofs, also, and a fear that he had missed her
made his heart sick.
He panted into full sight of the little basin just in time to see a
half score――no, a dozen or more of the burly animals pelting through
for the other end, to gain the open of the main valley. He’d had no
idea that so many were in here. They’d been hidden from him, the most
of them――lying in cosy beds where he’d not happened to look.
Away they went, jostling and stringing out, bolting blindly. One, the
last in the flight, loped painfully――fell farther and farther behind.
It was his cow! He had hit her, and hit her hard. Hoorah! He darted for
the spot where she had stood. He trailed her for a few steps, and the
trampled snow was blotched red. Blood! Hoorah! He ran on, down through
the basin, to see her again. Now Baroney or the doctor might get her,
because she would grow weak.
He wondered if they had heard him shoot. The basin was empty, all the
buffalo had charged on into the valley――that was what he had wished
them to do, and maybe he had killed one and signaled, besides. He
hoped that the doctor would not be angry. Now if the buffalo only
turned down toward Baroney――――!
Hark! Another shot! Somebody out there had fired――Whang! He ran
faster――to the mouth of the basin――into sight of the main valley――and
again, hoorah!
The fleeing buffalo had blundered against Baroney. He had been not
far outside; he had shot one――it was down, in the snow; not the cow,
either, for the cow was down, too――there were the two black spots,
motionless, and the little herd were streaming across the valley, for
the other slope, with Baroney lumbering after――and yonder, on the
slope, the doctor was plunging toward the bottom, to get in a shot also.
Could he do it? Yes! He ran quartering, stumbling and lunging; the
leading buffalo sensed him, swerved, they all swerved; he knelt and
aimed and fired, quickly――around wheeled the buffalo, again alarmed,
and came pelting back for Stub’s side, as if to escape through their
basin――but one lagged, wavered, halted, and suddenly collapsed. That
made three!
The remainder of the herd were coming straight for Stub. He had no load
for his pistol; he could only dance and wave his arms and yell, to
stop them. This he did. Once more they tacked; Baroney had lain flat,
hoping; foolish things, they tacked almost for him――wait――wait――aha!
His gun puffed smoke, the report echoed dully, a buffalo had jumped
high and stiff-legged and Baroney was after him, loading on the run.
Down pitched the buffalo. That made four!
The doctor was running again, but the rest of the buffalo got away, up
the valley. All right; they had left plenty of meat. Hoorah!
Stub hastened forward, wild with joy. The doctor was coming. They met
Baroney, where two carcasses――a bull and Stub’s cow――were lying close
together.
“Hurrah!” cheered the doctor.
Baroney capered――“Hoozah! Hoozah!”
“Four! One to me, two to you――that’s good. And what about this other?
Who killed _her_?”
“The boy. Oui! I think he killed her, with that pistol,” Baroney
jabbered. “I hear one shot――bang! I do not know where. Then the buffalo
come running out. And before I can shoot, I see this cow tumble down,
and die. She has a hole in her――a bullet hole.”
“Did you shoot her, Stub? With your pistol?”
Stub nodded.
“First I see three. Down on bottom. They act scared. I go to drive them
out. She very close. I shoot her. She run, all run, I run. Then I hear
shooting. Baroney get one, you get one, Baroney get ’nother. Now lots
of meat. Hoorah!”
“The meat! The meat!” cried Baroney, as if reminded of great hunger.
Down he plumped, digging furiously with his knife and tearing with his
fingers. He wrested out a strip of bloody flesh and began to chew it
and suck it.
Stub, seeing red, likewise fell to. All of a sudden he could not wait
longer.
“Here, doctor.” And Baroney, his beard stained wolfish, passed him a
piece.
But the doctor straightened up.
“That’s enough. I must carry the news to the men. You two stay here and
butcher what you can till horses come from the camp. It may be a matter
of life or death for those other fellows. We ought to get this meat to
them without delay.”
And he was away, walking fast and running down through the valley, for
the river beyond and the main party somewhere along it.
“He’s one fine man,” gasped Baroney, gazing after. “We think only of
our stomach, he thinks of those others.”
They worked hard, cutting and hacking and hauling before the carcasses
got cold and the hides stiff. With Baroney’s hatchet they cracked a
marrow-bone apiece, so as to scoop out the fatty pith.
Presently the sun was high and warming. Two men were coming afoot up
the valley. They brought no horses――――
“Miller and Mountjoy, hein?” Baroney said, eyeing them as they drew
nearer. “Where is the lieutenant, I want to know?”
Terry Miller and John Mountjoy they were; and they staggered and
stumbled in their haste at sight of the meat.
“Did you lose the lieutenant? What?”
“No. He’s gone on for camp, with the doctor. He sent us in here to eat.
Give us some meat, quick.”
“Nothing but one turkey and a hare for the three of us, these four days
past,” panted Terry, as he and John sucked and gobbled. “And in the
last two days nothing at all.”
“Go far?” Stub queried, eager to know.
“Away up, twenty-five miles or two camps above where the rest o’ you
left us. Up to where the river petered out to a brook betwixt the
mountains. Then we turned back and traveled day and night with our
clothes froze stiff on us, and our stomachs clean empty, to ketch
the main camp. The cap’n was worrying more about the other men than
himself.”
“And sure, when we met the doctor, by chance, with news of this meat,
the little cap’n told us to come in and eat, but he wouldn’t. He went
on――him and the doctor――hungry as he was, to find the camp below,”
mumbled John. “They’ll send hosses. How many did you kill? Four?”
“Four,” assured Baroney. “Stub one, the doctor one, I myself had the
fortune to kill two. Stub, he found them; but it was the good God who
put them there, waiting for us.”
“I suppose we might have a bit of a fire, and eat like Christians,
whilst waiting?” Terry proposed wistfully.
“The marrow is strong; we must not get sick,” Baroney wisely counseled.
“Let us butcher, and be ready for the horses; and to-morrow we will all
have a big Christmas dinner.”
“To-morrow Christmas?” exclaimed John. “Right you are! Hooray for
Christmas!”
They cheered for Christmas; and with aching brain Stub puzzled over the
new word.
Toward the last of their butchering Corporal Jerry Jackson and Hugh
Menaugh arrived with two horses. The camp was famished, the lieutenant
and the doctor had toiled in, and now everybody there was waiting for
the buffalo meat. The camp had been out of food for two days.
“I told the doctor that the boy an’ his pistol would fetch him luck,”
Hugh declared. “An’ it surely did. Faith, a fine little hunter you be,
Stub, me lad.”
They loaded the horses, at full speed, and made for the starving camp.
It was a joyous place. John Sparks had come in with more good news――he
had discovered another buffalo herd and had killed four, himself! Men
and horses were out, to get the meat.
Now with eight buffalo on hand, Christmas Eve was to be celebrated
to-night, and Christmas Day to-morrow. They were American
feasts――feasts for the Spanish and French and all white people, too,
the doctor and Sergeant Bill said. Stub had heard the names before,
somewhere; perhaps from the French traders. But he quit thinking and
bothering. He was an American, they were his feasts now; Lieutenant
Pike looked happy, and that was enough.
XIV
A TRAIL OF SURPRISES
The lieutenant had explored the source of this Red River far enough. He
was ready to march on down, for the plains and the United States post
of Natchitoches above the mouth in Louisiana. Everybody was glad.
The big meals of buffalo meat had made several of the men, and Stub
also, quite ill; so that on the day after Christmas the march covered
only seven miles. The tent was turned into a hospital, and the
lieutenant and the doctor slept out in the snow.
The Great White Mountains, far to the east, had been in sight from
high ground; the river appeared to lead in that direction. But here at
the lower end of the bottom-land other mountains closed in. The river
coursed through, and everybody rather believed that by following it
they all would come out, in two or three days, into the open.
That proved to be a longer job than expected, and the toughest yet. The
river, ice-bound but full of air-holes, sometimes broadened a little,
and gave hope, but again was hemmed clear to its borders by tremendous
precipices too steep to climb. The poor horses slipped and floundered
upon the ice and rocks; in places they had to be unpacked and the loads
were carried on by hand.
Soon the lieutenant was ordering sledges built, to relieve the horses
of the loads; men and horses both pulled them――and now and then sledge
and horse broke through the ice and needs must be hauled out of the
water.
Twelve miles march, another of sixteen miles, five miles, eight miles,
ten and three-quarter miles, about five miles――and the river still
twisted, an icy trail, deep set among the cliffs and pinnacles and
steep snowy slopes that offered no escape to better country.
The horses were so crippled that some could scarcely walk; the men were
getting well bruised, too; the dried buffalo meat had dwindled to a few
mouthfuls apiece, and the only game were mountain sheep that kept out
of range. The doctor and John Brown had been sent ahead, to hunt them
and hang the carcasses beside the river, for the party to pick up on
the way.
From camp this evening the lieutenant and Baroney climbed out, to the
top, in order to see ahead. They came down with good news.
“We’ve sighted an open place, before,” said the lieutenant, gladly.
“It’s not more than eight miles. Another day’s march, my men, and I
think we’ll be into the prairie and at the end of all this scrambling
and tumbling.”
That gave great hope, although they were too tired to cheer.
But on the morrow the river trail fought them harder than ever. Toward
noon they had gained only a scant half mile. The horses had been
falling again and again, the sledges had stuck fast on the rocks and in
the holes, the ice and snow and rocks behind were blood-stained from
the wounds of men and animals.
Now they had come to a narrow spot, where a mass of broken rocks,
forming a high bar, thrust itself out from the cliff, into the stream,
and where the water was flowing over the ice itself. The horses balked
and reared, while the men tugged and shoved.
“Over the rocks,” the lieutenant ordered.
That brought more trouble. Stub’s yellow pony, thin and scarred like
the rest, was among those that still carried light packs. He was a
stout, plucky pony――or had been. Here he lost heart, at last. His hoofs
were sore, he was worn out. Terry Miller hauled at his neck-thong, Stub
pushed at his braced haunches. The line was in a turmoil, while
everybody worked; the canyon echoed to the shouts and blows and
frenzied, frightened snorting.
Suddenly the yellow pony’s neck-thong snapped; he recoiled threshing,
head over heels, before Stub might dodge from him; and down they went,
together, clear into the river. But Stub never felt the final crash. On
his way he saw a burst of stars, then he plunged into night and kept
right on plunging until he woke up.
[Illustration: BUT STUB NEVER FELT THE FINAL CRASH]
He had landed. No, he was still going. That is, the snow and cliffs at
either side were moving, while he sat propped and bewildered, dizzily
watching them.
His head throbbed. He put his hand to it, and felt a bandage. But whose
bowed back was that, just before? And what was that noise, of crunching
and rasping? Ah! He was on a sledge――he was stowed in the baggage upon
a sledge, and was being hauled――over the ice and snow――through the
canyon――by――by――――
Freegift Stout! For the man doing the hauling turned his face, and was
Freegift Stout!
Well, well! Freegift halted, and let the sled run on to him. He shouted
also; they had rounded a curve and there was another loaded sled, and a
man for it; and they, too, stopped.
“Hello. Waked at last, have ye?” spoke Freegift, with a grin.
“Yes, I guess so.” Stub found himself speaking in a surprisingly easy
fashion. A prodigious amount of words and notions were whirling through
his mind. “Where――where am I, anyhow?”
“Ridin’ like a king, down the Red River.”
“What for?”
“So’s to get out an’ reach Natchitoches, like the rest of us.”
Stub struggled to sit up farther. Ouch!
“What’s your name?” he demanded. Then――“I know. It’s Freegift Stout.
That other man’s Terry Miller. But what’s my name?”
“Stub, I reckon.”
“Yes; of course it is. That’s what they call me. But how did you know?
How’d you know I’m ‘Stub’ for short? I’m Jack. That’s my regular
name――Jack Pursley. I got captured by the Utahs, from my father; did
the Pawnees have me, too? Wish I could remember. I do sort of remember.
But I’m a white boy. I’m an American, from Kentucky. And my name’s Jack
Pursley――Stub for short.”
Freegift roundly stared, his mouth agape amidst his whiskers.
“Hey! Come back here, Terry,” he called. And Terry Miller came back.
“That crack on the head’s set him to talkin’ good English an’ turned
him into a white lad, sure,” quoth Freegift. “Did you hear him? Ain’t
that wonderful, though? His name’s Jack Pursley, if you please; an’ he
answers to Stub, jest the same――an’ if that wasn’t a smart guess by
John Sparks I’ll eat my hat when I get one.”
“I’ll be darned,” Terry wheezed, blinking and rubbing his nose. “Jack
Pursley, are you? Then where’s your dad?”
“I don’t know. We were finding gold in the mountains, and the Indians
stole me and hit me on the head――and I don’t remember everything after
that.”
“Sho’,” said Terry. “How long ago, say?”
“What year is it now, please?”
“We’ve jest turned into 1807.”