“And whereabouts in the mountains?”
“Near the head of the Platte River.”
“For gosh’ sake!” Freegift blurted. “We all jest come from there’bouts.
But you didn’t say nothin’, an’ we didn’t see no gold.”
“I didn’t remember.”
“Well, we won’t be goin’ back, though; not for all the gold in the
’arth. Were you all alone up there?”
“My father――he was there. Some other men had started, but they quit.
Then we met the Indians, and they were friendly till they stole me.”
“Did they kill your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a tall story,” Freegift murmured, to Terry; and tapped his
head. Evidently they didn’t believe it “Where do you think you are now,
then?” he asked, of Stub.
“I guess I’m with Lieutenant Pike. But where is he?”
“Well, we’ll tell you. You see, that yaller hoss an’ you went down
together. You got a crack on the head, an’ the hoss, he died. We had
to shoot him. But we picked you up, because you seemed like worth
savin’. The lieutenant put a bandage on you. Then he took the rest of
the outfit up out the canyon. The hosses couldn’t go on――there wasn’t
any footin’. But he left Terry an’ me to pack the dead hoss’s load an’
some other stuff that he couldn’t carry, on a couple of sledges, an’ to
fetch them an’ you on by river an’ meet him below. Understand?”
Stub nodded. How his brain did whirl, trying to patch things together!
It was as if he had wakened from a dream, and couldn’t yet separate
the real from the maybe not.
“We’d best be going on,” Terry Miller warned. “We’re to ketch the cap’n
before night, and we’re short of grub.”
So the sledges proceeded by the river trail, while Stub lay and
pondered. By the pain now and then in his head, when the sledge jolted,
he had struck his scar; but somehow he had a wonderful feeling of
relief, there. He was a new boy.
The trail continued as rough as ever. Most of the way the two men, John
and Terry, had to pull for all they were worth; either tugging to get
their sledges around open water by route of the narrow strips of shore,
or else slipping and scurrying upon the snowy ice itself. Steep slopes
and high cliffs shut the trail in, as before. The gaps on right and
left were icy ravines and canyons that looked to be impassible.
The main party were not sighted, nor any trace of them. Toward dusk,
which gathered early, Terry, ahead, halted.
“It beats the Dutch where the cap’n went to,” he complained. “He got
out, and he hasn’t managed to get back in, I reckon. Now, what to do?”
“Only thing to do is to camp an’ wait till mornin’,” answered Freegift.
“An’ a powerful lonesome, hungry camp it’ll be. But that’s soldierin’.”
“Well, the orders are to ketch him――or to join him farther down,
wherever that may be,” said Terry. “But we can’t travel by night, in
here. So we’ll have to camp, and foller out our orders to-morrow.”
It was a lonesome camp, and a cold camp, and a hungry camp, here in the
dark, frozen depths of the long and silent defile cut by the mysterious
river. They munched a few mouthfuls apiece of dried meat; Stub slept
the most comfortably, under a blanket upon the sledge; the two men laid
underneath a single deer-hide, upon the snow.
They all started on at daybreak. Stub was enough stronger so that he
sprang off to lighten the load――even pushed――at the worst places.
Indeed, his head was in first-class shape; the scar pained very little.
And he had rather settled down to being Jack Pursley again. Only, he
wished that he knew just where his father was. Dead? Or alive?
It was slow going, to-day. The river seemed to be getting narrower.
Where the current had overflowed and had frozen again, the surface
was glary smooth; the craggy shore-line constantly jutted with sudden
points and shoulders that forced the sledges out to the middle. The
slopes were bare, save for a sprinkling of low bushes and solitary
pines, clinging fast to the rocks. Ice glittered where the sun’s faint
rays struck.
This afternoon, having worked tremendously, they came out into the
lieutenant’s prairie. At least, it might have been the prairie he had
reported――a wide flat or bottom where the hills fell back and let the
river breathe.
“Hooray! Here’s the place to ketch him,” Freegift cheered. And he
called: “See any sign o’ them, Terry?”
“Nope.”
They halted, to scan ahead. All the white expanse was lifeless.
“I swan!” sighed Terry. “Never a sign, the whole day; and now, not a
sign here. You’d think this’d be the spot they’d come in at, and wait
for a fellow or else leave him word.”
“Yes,” agreed Freegift, “I would that. Do you reckon they’re behind us,
mebbe?”
“How’s a man to tell, in such a country?” Terry retorted. “They’re
likely tangled up, with half their hosses down, and the loads getting
heavier and heavier. But where, who knows? We’ll go on a piece, to
finish out the day. We may find ’em lower on, or sign from ’em. If not,
we’ll have to camp again, and shiver out another night, with nothing
to eat. Eh, Stub? At any rate, orders is orders, and we’re to keep
travelling by river until we join ’em. If they’re behind, they’ll
discover our tracks, like as not, and send ahead for us.”
“Anyhow, we’re into open goin’. I’m blamed glad o’ that,” declared
Freegift. “Hooray for the plains, and Natchitoches!”
“Hooray if you like,” Terry answered back, puffing. “But ’tisn’t any
turnpike, you can bet.”
Apparently out of the mountains they were; nevertheless still hard put,
for the river wound and wound, treacherous with boulders and air-holes,
and the snow-covered banks were heavy with willows and brush and long
grass.
After about four miles Terry, in the lead, shouted unpleasant news.
“We might as well quit. We’re running plumb into another set o’
mountains. I can see where the river enters. This is only a pocket.”
Freegift and Stub arrived, and gazed. The mountains closed in again,
before; had crossed the trail, and were lined up, waiting. Jagged and
gleaming in the low western sunlight, they barred the way.
“There’s no end to ’em,” said Terry, ruefully. “Heigh-hum. ’Pears
like the real prairies are a long stint yet. The cap’n will be sore
disappointed, if he sees. I don’t think he’s struck here, though.
Anyhow, we’ll have to camp――I’m clean tuckered; and to-morrow try
once more, for orders is orders, and I’m right certain he’ll find us
somewheres, or we’ll find him.”
So they made camp. Freegift wandered out, looking for wood and for
trails. He came in.
“I see tracks, Terry. Two men have been along here――white men, I judge;
travellin’ down river.”
“Only two, you say?”
“Yes. Fresh tracks, just the same.”
They all looked, and found the fresh tracks of two men pointing
eastward.
“I tell you! Those are the doctor and Brown hunting,” Terry proposed.
“Wish they’d left some meat. But we may ketch ’em to-morrow. Even
tracks are a godsend.”
They three had eaten nothing all day; there was nothing to eat,
to-night. To Stub, matters looked rather desperate, again. Empty
stomach and empty tracks and empty country, winter-bound, gave one
a sort of a hopeless feeling. He and Freegift and Terry trudged and
trudged and trudged, and hauled and shoved, and never got anywhere. For
all they knew, they might be drawing farther and farther away from the
lieutenant. But, as Terry said, “orders were orders.”
“Well, if we ketch the doctor he’ll be mighty interested in that head
o’ yourn,” Freegift asserted, to Stub. “He’s been wantin’ to open it
up, I heard tell; but mebbe that yaller hoss saved him the trouble.”
“He’ll not thank the hoss,” laughed Terry, grimly. “He’d like to have
done the job himself! That’s the doctor of it.”
Stub privately resolved to show the doctor that there was no need of
the “job,” now. He felt fine, and he was Jack Pursley.
Nothing occurred during the night; the false prairie of the big pocket
remained uninvaded except by themselves. They lingered until about ten
o’clock, hoping that the main party might come in.
“No use,” sighed Freegift. “We may be losin’ time; like as not losin’
the doctor. Our orders were, to travel by river till we joined the
cap’n.”
With one last survey the two men took up their tow-ropes and, Stub
ready to lend a hand when needed, they plodded on.
The tracks of the doctor and John Brown led to the gateway before.
The space for the river lessened rapidly. Soon the sides were only
prodigious cliffs, straight up and down where they faced upon the
river, and hung with gigantic icicles and sheeted with ice masses. The
river had dashed from one side to the other, so that the boulders were
now spattered with frozen spray.
The tracks of the doctor and John Brown had vanished; being free of
foot, they might clamber as they thought best. But the sledges made a
different proposition. Sometimes, in the more difficult spots amidst
ice, rocks and water, two men and a boy scarcely could budge one.
Higher and higher towered the cliffs, reddish where bare, and streaked
with motionless waterfalls. The sky was only a seam. Far aloft, there
was sunshine, and the snow even dripped; but down in here all was shade
and cold. One’s voice sounded hollow, and echoes answered mockingly.
The dusk commenced to gather before the shine had left the world above.
Stub was just about tired out; the sweat had frozen on the clothes of
the two men, and their beards also were stiff with frost.
Now they had come to a stopping-place. There was space for only the
river. It was crowded so closely and piled upon itself so deeply,
and was obliged to flow so swiftly that no ice had formed upon it
beyond its very edges. The cliffs rose abruptly on either side, not a
pebble-toss apart, leaving no footway.
The trail had ended.
“I cry ‘Enough,’” Terry panted, as the three peered dismayed. “We
can’t go on――and we can’t spend the night here, either. We’ll have to
backtrack and find some way out.”
“The doctor an’ Brown must ha’ got out somewheres,” Freegift argued.
“They never passed here. Let’s search whilst there’s light. If we can
fetch out we may yet sight ’em, or the cap’n. An’ failin’ better, we
can camp again an’ bile that deer-hide for a tide-me-over. Some sort o’
chawin’ we need bad.”
“Biled deer-hide for supper, then,” Terry answered. “It’ll do to fool
our stomicks with. But first we got to get out if we can.”
They turned back, in the gloomy canyon whose walls seemed to be at
least half a mile high, to seek a side passage up and out. Freegift was
ahead. There were places where the walls had been sundered by gigantic
cracks, piled with granite fragments. Freegift had crossed the river,
on boulders and ice patches, to explore a crack opposite――and suddenly
a shout hailed him.
“Whoo-ee! Hello!”
He gazed quickly amidst his clambering; waved his arm and shouted
reply, and hastened over.
“Somebody!” Terry exclaimed. He and Stub ran forward, stumbling. They
rounded a shoulder, and joining Freegift saw the lieutenant. In the
gloom they knew him by his red cap if by nothing else. He was alone,
carrying his gun.
“I’ve been looking for you men,” he greeted. “You passed us, somehow.”
“Yes, sir,” Freegift admitted. “An’ we’ve been lookin’ for you, too,
sir. We didn’t know whether you were before or behind.”
“And begging your pardon, sir, we’re mighty glad to see you,” added
Terry. “Are the men all behind, the same as yourself, sir?”
“Part of them.” The lieutenant spoke crisply. “The doctor and Brown
are still ahead, I think. I haven’t laid eyes on them. You three were
next. The rest of the party is split. From the prairie back yonder I
detached Baroney and two men to take the horses out, unpacked, and find
a road for them. We have lost several animals by falls upon the rocks,
and the others were unable to travel farther by river. The remaining
eight men are coming on, two by two, each pair with a loaded sledge. I
have preceded them, hoping to overtake you. The command is pretty well
scattered out, but doing the best it can.” His tired eyes scanned Stub.
“How are you, my brave lad?”
“All right, sir. But my name’s Jack Pursley, now. That knock I got made
me remember.”
“What!”
“You see, sir,” Freegift explained in haste, and rather as if
apologizing for Stub’s answer, “when he come to after that rap on the
head he was sort o’ bewildered like; an’ ever since then he’s been
claimin’ that he’s a white boy, name o’ Pursley, from Kaintuck, an’
was stole from his father, by the Injuns, up in that very Platte River
country where we saw all them camp sign.”
“Oh!” uttered the lieutenant. “You were there? How many of you? All
white? Where’s your father? How long ago?”
“About three years, I think,” Stub stammered. “Just we two, sir. We
were hunting and trading on the plains, with some Kiowas and Comanches,
and the Sioux drove us into the mountains. Then we joined the Utahs,
and after a while they stole me. They hit me on the head and I forgot a
lot of things――and I don’t know where my father is, sir.”
“Hah! I thought we were the first white men there,” ejaculated the
lieutenant. “The first Americans, at least. It’s a pity you didn’t come
to before. You might have given us valuable information.”
“He says they found gold in that Platte country, sir,” said Terry.
“Yes? Pshaw! But no matter now. We’ll pursue that subject later. First,
we must get out of this canyon. You discovered no passage beyond?”
“No, sir. Never space to set a foot.”
“Have you any food?”
“Had none for two days, sir. We were thinking of biling a deer-hide for
our supper.”
“You’re no worse off than the others. The whole column is destitute
again, but the men are struggling bravely, scattered as they may be.
The doctor and Brown came this way. You haven’t sighted them?”
“No, sir; only their tracks, back a piece.”
“Then they got out, somehow. We must find their trail before dark, and
follow it up top, where there’s game. Search well; our comrades behind
are depending on us.”
They searched on both sides of the canyon. Stub’s Indian-wise eyes made
the discovery――a few scratches by hands and gun-stocks, in a narrow
ravine whose slopes were ice sheeted. That was the place.
They all hurried to the sledges, took what they might carry, and
clawing, slipping, clinging, commenced to scale the ravine. It was
a slow trail, and a danger trail, but it led them out, to a flat,
cedar-strewn top, where daylight still lingered.
“The doctor and Brown have been here,” panted the lieutenant. “Here are
their tracks.”
They followed the tracks a short distance, and brought up at camp sign.
Evidently the doctor and Brown had stopped here, the night before; had
killed a deer, too――but there was nothing save a few shreds of hide.
“The birds and beasts have eaten whatever they may have left,” spoke
the lieutenant. “Too bad, my lads. However, we’re out, and we’ll make
shift some way. Fetch up another load, while I hunt.”
Out he went, with his gun. They managed to bring up another load from
the sledges. They heard a gunshot.
“Hooray! Meat for supper, after all.”
But when he returned in the darkness he was empty-handed.
“I wounded a deer, and lost him,” he reported shortly; and he slightly
staggered as he sank down for a moment. “We can do no more to-night.
We’ll melt snow for drinking purposes; but the deer-hide is likely to
make us ill, in our present condition. We’ll keep it, and to-morrow
we’ll have better luck.”
So with a fire and melted snow they passed the night. Nobody else
arrived. The doctor and Brown seemed to be a day’s march ahead; Baroney
and Hugh Menaugh and Bill Gordon were wandering with the horses through
this broken high country; and the other eight were toiling as best they
could, with the sledges, in separate pairs, seeking a way out also.
The lieutenant started again, early in the morning, to find meat for
breakfast. They went down into the canyon, to get the rest of the
loads, and the sledges――and how they managed, with their legs so weary
and their stomachs so empty, Stub scarcely knew.
They heard the lieutenant shoot several times, in the distance; this
helped them. He rarely missed. But he came into camp with nothing, and
with his gun broken off at the breech――had wounded deer, had discovered
that his gun was bent and shot crooked――then had fallen and disabled it
completely.
He was exhausted――so were the others; yet he did not give up. He rested
only a minute. Then he grabbed up the gun that had been stowed among
the baggage. It was only a double-barreled shotgun, but had to do.
“I’ll try again, with this,” he said. “You can go no further; I see
that. Keep good heart, my lads, and be sure that I’ll return at best
speed with the very first meat I secure.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll wait, sir. And good luck to ye,” answered Terry.
Sitting numb and lax beside the baggage, they watched the lieutenant go
stumbling and swerving among the cedars, until he had disappeared.
“A great-hearted little officer,” Freegift remarked. “Myself, I
couldn’t take another step. I’m clean petered out, at last. But
him――away he goes, never askin’ a rest.”
“And he’ll be back. You can depend on that,” put in Terry. “Yes. He’ll
not be thinking of himself. He’s thinking mainly on his men. He’ll be
back with the meat, before he eats a bite.”
They heard nothing. The long day dragged; sometimes they dozed――they
rarely moved and they rarely spoke; they only waited. Up here it was
very quiet, with a few screaming jays fluttering through the low trees.
Stub caught himself nodding and dreaming: saw strange objects, grasped
at meat, and woke before he could eat. He wondered if Freegift and
Terry saw the same.
The sun set, the air grew colder.
“Another night,” Freegift groaned. “He’s not comin’. Now what if he’s
layin’ out somewheres, done up!”
“If he’s still alive he’s on his feet, and seeking help for us,” Terry
asserted. “He said to wait and he’d come. You can depend on him. Orders
be orders. He found us, below, and he’ll find us here.”
“We’ve got to suck deer-hide, then,” announced Freegift. “It may carry
us over.”
They managed to arouse themselves; half boiled strips of deer-hide in a
kettle of snow-water, and chewed at the hairy, slimy stuff. But they
couldn’t swallow it.
“Oh, my!” Terry sighed. “’Tain’t soup nor meat, nor what I’d call
soldiers’ fare at all. We had hard times before, up the Mississippi
with the left’nant; but we didn’t set teeth to this. What’d I ever
enlist for?”
“The more I don’t know,” answered Freegift. “But stow one good meal in
us an’ we’d enlist over again, to foller the cap’n on another trip.”
Terry tried to grin.
“I guess you’re right. But, oh my! Down the Red River, heading for
white man’s country, is it? Then where are we? Nowhere at all, and like
to stay.”
Through the gnarled cedars beside the mighty canyon the shadows
deepened. The mountain ridges and peaks, near and far, surrounding the
lone flat, swiftly lost their daytime tints as the rising tide of night
flowed higher and higher. And soon it was dark again.
Now they must wait for another morning as well as for the lieutenant.
They had already sickened of the deer-hide, and could not touch it
again. So the morning was breakfastless. The sun had been up only a
few minutes, and Stub was drowsing in a kind of stupor, when he heard
Freegift exclaim:
“He’s comin’, boys! Here comes the cap’n! Say! Don’t I see him――or not?”
“There’s two of ’em!” cried Terry. “He’s found company. No! That ain’t
the cap’n. It’s somebody else. But our men, anyhow.”
Two men afoot were hastening in through the cedars, along the canyon
rim. They carried packages――meat! They were Hugh Menaugh and Bill
Gordon. Hooray!
“Hello to you!”
“Yes, we’re still here,” replied Terry. “And if you’ve fetched anything
to eat, out with it quick. Where’s the cap’n? Did you see him?”
Hugh and Bill busied themselves.
“Yes, we met up with him last evenin’, below, down river. He hadn’t
come back to you, ’cause he hadn’t killed anything. But Baroney and us
were packin’ buffalo meat and deer meat both, and he sent us two out
to find you first thing this mornin’, soon as ’twas light enough to
s’arch. After you’ve fed, we’ll help you on to camp.”
“Who else is there?”
“Just the cap’n and Baroney, but they’re expectin’ the doctor and
Brown. Them two are somewheres in the neighborhood. The cap’n fired a
gun as signal to ’em. We’ll have to look for the other fellers.”
“What kind of a camp, an’ whereabouts?” Freegift asked, as he and Terry
and Stub greedily munched.
“Oh, a good camp, in the open, not fur from the river.”
Hugh and Bill acted oddly――with manner mysterious as if they were
keeping something back. After the meal, Hugh opened up.
“Now that you’ve eaten, guess I’ll tell you what’s happened,” he
blurted. “You’ll know it, anyhow.”
“Anybody dead? Not the cap’n!”
“No. Nothing like that. But this ain’t the river.”
“Ain’t the Red River?”
“Nope.”
The three stared, dazed.
“What river might it be, then?” gasped Freegift.
“The Arkansaw ag’in. An’ camp’s located on that very same spot in the
dry valley where we struck north last December, scarce a month ago!”[G]
[G] That was the remarkable and disappointing fact. From the heads of
the Platte River they simply had passed southwestward to the head of
the Arkansas, had fought their way down through the Grand Canyon of the
Arkansas to the Royal Gorge, and crossing around this were completing a
big circle to the Cañon City region again.
“It’s certainly hard on the little cap’n,” Bill added. “Yesterday, his
worst day of all, when near dead he made out and espied the landmarks,
was his birthday, too.”
“What’s the date?” Terry queried. “I’ve forgot.”
“Fifth o’ January. To-day’s the sixth. It was December 10 when we
camped yonder before.”
XV
NOT YET DEFEATED
Helped by Hugh Menaugh and Bill Gordon they might now travel on for the
lieutenant’s camp. They had to cross several gulches and one or two
ridges; then they came out into view of the dry valley, at the foot
of which the Arkansaw issued from the mountains, to course eastward
through the foothills and down to the plains far beyond.
It was the same valley. They might see again the Grand Peak, distant in
the north, and mark the line of the river, nearer in the south. From
the ridges they had been enabled to sight the Great Snow Mountains,
also in the south and much farther than the Grand Peak in the opposite
direction. Yes, this was the Arkansaw, and the lieutenant had missed
his guess by a wide margin.
He was waiting at the camp. He greeted them kindly, but was haggard
and seemed much cut up over the result of all his hard marches. No one
could resist being sorry for him.
The doctor and John Brown were here, too. They had brought in six deer,
so that now there was plenty of meat on hand.
It was two more days before the last of the men had straggled in.
Meanwhile the doctor especially had been interested in the new “Jack
Pursley,” otherwise Stub; had examined his head, and together with the
lieutenant had asked him questions. But as Stub stuck to his story,
they had to accept it; appeared rather to believe it――the doctor in
particular.
Considerable of their talk, between themselves, Stub did not
understand. There was something about “removal of pressure,”
“resumption of activity,” “clearing up of brain area,” and so forth,
which really meant nothing to Stub, except that now he knew who he was
and the spot under his scar no longer burned or weighed like lead.
If he might only find his father, whose name, he remembered, was James,
and if the lieutenant might find the Red River after all, then he would
be perfectly happy.
The lieutenant acted somewhat worried. He did not know quite what to
do next. He did not like to waste time; but instead of having found
the Red River, after a month of search which had lost him horses and
crippled others and almost had lost him men also, here he was with
nothing gained except a little information about the mountain country
north.
But he was not a man to shilly-shally. He and the doctor, and sometimes
Baroney, talked earnestly together; on the day after the last of the
squads had arrived, and when everybody had eaten well and had rested,
he called a council.