"Well," said Apache Kid, the first to speak, "who's to night-herd the
horses?"
The man Dan rose up at that. It was he who alone of all my tormentors
on the cliff had spoken a word with anything of kindness in it.
"I 'll take the first guard, if you like," said he.
Farrell looked across at Apache Kid.
"One of your side, then," said he, "can take the next guard--share and
share--time about, I guess; eh?"
Apache Kid threw the end of his cigarette into the fire and, drawing out
his pouch, rolled another and moistened it before he replied.
"Why do you talk about sides at all?" he asked. "I thought we were a
joint stock company now?"
"Well, well," snapped Farrell, "I mean one of you three--you or one of
your partners."
"Quite so; I know what you mean. I understand your meaning perfectly."
There was a pause and then said he, taking a brand from the fire and
lighting his cigarette, so that I saw his full, healthy eye shine
bright: "If you are going to talk about sides in this expedition--then
so be it. But I don't think our side, as you call it, will bother with
any night-herding; indeed, I think we need hardly trouble about saddling
up or unpacking or cooking or anything--if you make it a matter of
sides." And he blew a feather of smoke. "I think my side will live
like gentlemen between now and the arrival at the Lost Cabin Mine."
Every eye was fixed anxiously on him.
"You see," he explained, "the fact is, you need us and we don't need
you. It's a case of supply and demand and--seeing you talk of sides,"
he said, with what must have been, to Farrell, an aggravating
insistence, "our side at present is wanted. It's almost a sort of
example of the workings of capital and labour. No!" he ended, with a
satisfied grunt, "I don't think there's any need for me to tend horses
at all, thanks. I 'm quite comfy by the fire."
There was a shrewd, calculating look on Farrell's face as he looked
Apache Kid cunningly in the eye a space. I could wager that he was
making himself certain from this speech that Apache Kid was the
principal in our expedition. I think he really believed that I could
say nothing of the Lost Cabin, even had I desired to, and from the way
he looked then to Donoghue and looked back again to Apache Kid it struck
me forcibly that he was wondering if it were possible that Larry
Donoghue was not "in the know" to the full, but merely of the company in
a similar way with myself.
Then he rolled an eye back again to Apache Kid, and I remembered the
sheriff of Baker City then, for Farrell's words were the very words I
had heard the sheriff use: "You 're a deep man," he said.
"And I 'm quite comfy, too," broke in Donoghue. "Thanks," he added.
"And as for this young man beside me, I think he wants a rest to-night.
A man that's had a snake wriggling at his nose for half of an afternoon
is liable to want a little sleep and forgetting."
Everybody cocked an ear, so to speak, on this speech; but no one of
those who did not understand asked an explanation.
Farrell looked with meaning at Mr. Pinkerton, who sat out of the affair,
but neither he nor the half-breed spoke a syllable, Pinkerton pulling on
his corn-cob pipe, and the half-breed rubbing the silver buckle of his
belt with the palm of his hand, and studying the reflection of
fire-light in it.
"No, no," suddenly remarked Apache Kid, "you could n't ask Mr. Pinkerton
to do that, nor Charlie either. We can't be so inhospitable as to ask
our guests of this evening to night-tend our horses."
"What the hell are you getting on about?" said Farrell, and then, as
though thinking better, and considering that a milder tone was more
fitting, he said: "I never asked them to."
"No, no; you did not ask them to," said Apache, in a mock-conciliatory
tone, and then, with a smile on his lips, he said gently: "But you were
thinking that, and I--know--every--thought--that passes through your
mind, Mr. Farrell."
You should have seen the man Pete at these soft-spoken words.
I must give you an idea of what this fellow looked like. To begin with,
I think I may safely say he looked like a villain, but more of the wolf
order of the villain than the panther; he had what you would call an
ignorant face,--a heavy brow, high cheek-bones, very glassy and
constantly wandering eyes, far too many teeth for his mouth, and they
very large and animal like. And if ever I saw superstitious fear on a
man's face, it was on the face of that cut-throat.
He looked at Apache Kid, who sat with his hat tilted back and his open,
cheery, and devil-may-care face radiant to the leaping
firelight,--looked at him so that the firelight made on his face
shadows, instead of lighting it; for he held his chin low and the mouth
open. His hat was off and only his forehead was lit up. The rest was
what I say--loose shadows. Then he looked at Farrell, as though to see
if Farrell were not at all fearful, and, "Say!" he said, "I 'll take
'herd' to-night."
Farrell turned on him with a leer and laughed.
"I guess you 'd better go first then," said he, "before midnight comes,
and let Dan go second, after a three hours' tend. You 're the sort of
man that is all very good robbing a train, but when you get in among the
mountains with the boodle you get scared. And what for? For nothing!
That's the worst of you Cat'licks."
So Farrell pronounced the word, and the man flung up his head at that
with an angry and defiant air, so that one only saw there the bravo now,
and not the ignorant and superstitious savage. He was on the point of
speech, but Apache Kid said:
"Sir, sir! it is very rude, to say the least of it, to malign any
gentleman's religion. I presume from your remark that you are of the
Protestant persuasion, but my own personal opinion is that you are both
equally certain of winning into hell. If our Roman Catholic friend is
kind enough to offer to relieve us of the monotony of night-herding
duty, we can only thank him."
So Pete rose and tightened his belt, and went his ways; and that in no
less than time, for the horses were already restive, as though the
loneliness of the place had taken possession of them. Of all beasts I
know, I think horses the most influenced by their environment.
"Well, if this don't beat cock-fightin'!" I heard Mr. Pinkerton's voice
behind me, where he lay now, leaning on an elbow; and then he said a
word or two to the half-breed, who rose and departed out of the circle
of the fire-shine.
In a little space he returned, leading his own mount and Pinkerton's by
the lariats which were around their necks, and as he made fast these
lariats to a stone Farrell looked at Mr. Pinkerton across the glow, and
asked him, suspicious as ever, "What's that for?"
"Oh! Just so as not to be indebted to you," replied Pinkerton, and
coming closer to the fire he rolled his one grey blanket round him and,
knocking out the ashes of his pipe, lay down to rest, the half-breed
following suit. But after they had lain down, and when I, a little
later, at a word from Donoghue, suggesting I should "turn in," unpacked
my blankets, which I had found among the pile of our mixed belongings, I
saw the half-breed's eyes still open and with no sign of sleep in them.
"So," said I to myself, "Pinkerton and the half-breed, I expect, have
arranged to share watch and watch, without having the appearance of
doing so."
And indeed one could scarcely wonder at any such protective arrangement
in such a camp as this. Donoghue and Apache Kid, indeed, were the only
two there who could close their eyes in sleep that night with anything
like a reasonable belief that the chances of their awakening to life
again were greater than their chances of never breathing again the
sage-scented air of morning.
*CHAPTER XIV*
_*Apache Kid Prophesies*_
You may wonder how it was possible for me to lie down, to roll myself
round in my blankets, to fall asleep in such a camp, in such company as
that. I, indeed, wondered at myself as I did so, wondered how I came by
the heedlessness, for I cannot call it courage, that allowed me to
compose myself to slumber. Anything might have happened in the dark
hours, murder and sudden death; but I was excessively fatigued; my body
ached; my nerves too were unstrung by the torture of the cliff. Sleep I
must and sleep I did, on the instant that I stretched myself and laid
down my head. Perhaps the sigh with which I dismissed from my mind the
anxieties that might have kept me wakeful was more of a prayer than a
sigh.
Across the fire of smaller branches that had cooked our supper, in the
preparing of which each took part, a great log was laid, so that no
replenishing would be necessary.
It was the sound of Donoghue's voice that woke me to blue night,
starshine, and the red glow of the log. His position was unaltered. I
could have believed that he had not moved a muscle since my lying down,
and the stars told me I had slept some time. He reclined with his legs
crossed, his feet stretched to the glow, his hands in his coat pockets,
and his unloosened blanket-roll serving for a cushion to the small of
his back.
"There ain't no call for me to turn in," he was saying. "I don't have
to turn in to please you."
I snuggled the blankets under my chin and looked to see who he was
addressing.
All the others of the company were lying down, but it was evidently
Farrell who had made the prior remark, for he now worried with his
shoulders in his blankets to cast them from him, and rising on an elbow,
said: "O, no! You don't have to. But it looks to me mighty like as if
you was scared of us--that you don't lay down and sleep. We 're square
enough with you."
Donoghue looked at him in that insolent fashion of opening the eyes
wide, and then almost shutting them, and sneered:
"Well, well, what are you always opening your eyes up a little ways and
peepin' at one for? One would think you was scared o' me; and that
feller there, that Dan, or what you call him, he keeps waking up and
giving a squint around, too. You 're square with us? We 're square
with you, ain't we?"
Farrell flung the blankets back from him and cried out: "Do you know
what I'm goin' to tell you? I would n't trust you, not an inch. I got
my gun here ready, if you try any nonsense."
The gleam of an unholy satisfaction was on Donoghue's face then, and he
cried out: "Well, sir, if I find a man trust me, I 'm square with him;
but if he don't trust me, I don't play fair with him. That's right, I
guess, ain't it?"
This, to my mind, was a very faulty morality, but it seemed not so to
Farrell.
"Yes," he agreed. "I reckon that's generally understood," and then he
showed quite a turn for argument on his own plane of thought.
"But you don't trust me, neither," said he, "and if I was payin' you
back the way you talk about, I 'd up and plug you through the head."
Argument was not in Donoghue's line but he cried out:
"And where would I be while you were tryin' it on?"
Farrell did not answer, and in the pause Donoghue did indeed continue
the argument, unwittingly, to its logical conclusion:
"No, no, my boy," he said, "you would n't plug me here. You would n't
plug me till we got you what you wanted. O! I know your kind well.
You thought you held the trumps when you corralled the lad there," and
he jerked his head in my direction, "But you did n't."
"It seems to me like as we did," said Farrell, with a vindictive leer,
"else why are we here now?"
"Here now?" snapped Donoghue. "Why, you're here because my partner is
so durned soft, times. He would n't--go--on--and leave the lad," he
drawled contemptuously. "What good was the boy to you, anyhow?" he
asked. "Looks as if you knew you were trying it on with a soft, queer
fellow. I 'd ha' let you eat the boy if you wanted and jest taken a
note o' your ugly blue mug in my mind and said to myself: 'Larry, my
boy, when you see that feller ag'in after you 've got through with this
Lost Cabin Mine--you shoot him on sight!'"
"And what if the mug was to follow you up?" said Farrell.
All this while there was no movement round the fire, only that I saw
Apache Kid's hand drawing down the blankets from his face. Pinkerton
and the half-breed were a little beyond Donoghue and lying somewhat back
so that I did not know whether or not they were awakened by this talk.
And just then Dan sat up suddenly, glared out upon the plain to the four
points of the compass, and screamed out:
"The hosses! Where's the hosses?"
We were all bolt upright then, like jumping-jacks, and leaning on our
palms and twisting about staring out strained into the moon-pallid
plain.
Dan leapt to his feet.
"The hosses is gone!" he cried, and he rushed across to the two horses
that were tied with the lariats.
"Lend me a hoss," he cried. "We must go out and see where Pete has got
to with them horses."
"I lend you dis--you sumracadog!" said the half-breed in his guttural
voice and he flung up his polished revolver in Dan's face.
It was Apache Kid who restored some semblance of order to the camp.
"All right, Dan," he said. "Don't worry. It's too late now."
We all turned to him in wonder.
"Pete thought it advisable to take the whole bunch away. He agreed that
it was advisable to make what little capital he could out of his
expedition into this part of the country. On the whole, I think he was
sensible. Yes--sensible is the word," he said, thoughtfully wagging his
head to the fire and then looking up and beaming on us all.
"What you mean?" cried Farrell.
"Just what I say," said Apache Kid. "He simply walked the whole bunch
quietly away five minutes after he bunched them together out there."
"You saw him doin' that! You saw his game and said nothing!" cried
Farrell.
"Even so!" replied Apache Kid.
Farrell glared before him speechless.
"What in creation made him do that?" said Dan, going back like a man
dazed to his former place.
"You mean _who_ in creation made him do that?" Apache Kid said lightly:
"and I have to acknowledge that it was I."
"You!" thundered Farrell. "I did n't see you say a word to him. You
bought him off some ways, did you? How did you do it?"
"O!" said Apache Kid. "I simply gave him a hint of the terrors in store
for him if he remained here. You heard me; and he was a man who could
understand a hint such as I gave. I took him first, as being easiest.
But I have no doubt that you two also will think better of your
intention and depart--before it is too late. He went first. You, Mr.
Farrell, I think, will have the honour of going last."
"I don't know what you mean," said Farrell, like a man scenting
something beyond him.
"No," said Apache Kid. "I understand that. You will require some other
method used upon you. I don't know if it was, as you suggested, the
gentleman's religion that was to blame for it, but he suffered from the
fear of man. That was why he went away. Now you, Farrell, I don't think
you fear man, God----"
"No! Nor devil!" cried Farrell.
"Nor no more do I!" said Dan, turning on Apache Kid. "Nor no more do I.
And if the loss o' the hosses don't cut any figure to you, it don't no
more to us, for we 're goin' through with you right to the end."
But I thought that a something about his underlip, as I saw it in the
shadows of the fire, belied his strong statement. Apache Kid was of my
opinion, for he looked keenly in Dan's face and remarked: "A very good
bluff, Daniel."
"Don't you Daniel me!" cried the man. "You 're gettin' too derned fresh
and frisky and gettin' to fancy yourself."
"That's right. A bluff should be sustained," said Apache Kid,
insolently, and then dropping the conversation, as though it were of
absolutely no moment, he rolled himself again in his blanket. And this
he had no sooner done--unconcerned, untroubled, heedless of any possible
villainy of these two men--than Pinkerton's voice spoke behind me:
"He 's a good man spoiled, is that Apache Kid. I could ha' been doin'
with a son like that."
"I think you 're kind o' a soft mark, right enough," sneered Farrell to
the now recumbent form of Apache Kid. "I think you 're too soft to
scare me."
Apache Kid was up in a moment.
"Soft!" he cried, "soft!"
And on his face was the look that he gave the Italian livery-stable
keeper at Camp Kettle, only, as the saying is, _more_ so.
I heard Donoghue gasp, you would have thought more in fear than in
exultation: "Say! When he gets this ways you want to be back out of his
way."
"Look at me!" said Apache, standing up. "You see I 've got on no belt;
my gun's lying there with the belt. I 've got no knife--nothing. Will
you stand up, sir, and let me show you if I 'm soft, seeing that I have
given you my word--not to kill you?" You should have heard the way
these last words came from him. "Will you stand up and let me just
hammer you within an inch of your end?"
Farrell did not quail; I will do him that justice. But he sat
considering, and then he jerked his head and jerked it again doggedly,
and, "No," he said, "no, I reckon not."
The fire of anger had leapt quick enough to life in Apache Kid, and it
seemed to ebb as suddenly.
"All right," he said. "All right. Perhaps it is better so. It would
dirty my hands to touch you. And indeed," he was moving back to his
place now, "lead is too clean for you as well."
He turned as he reached where his blankets lay.
"Farrell," he said, "it is at the end of a rope that you will die."
*CHAPTER XV*
_*In Which the Tables Are turned--at Some Cost*_
After that peace came, and I dozed again.
It was a shot, followed by a scream, that awoke me; and those kind gods
who guard us in our sleep and in our waking caused me even at that
moment not to obey the sudden impulse to leap up. Instead, I flung my
hand to my revolver and lay flat--and in doing so saved my life.
Beside me, with the first quick opening of my eyes, I saw Donoghue kick
in his blankets, like a cat in a sack, and then lie still, and the
second shot rang in my ears, fired by the man Dan from across the fire
and aimed at me. But truly, it was fated that Dan should go first of
these two who remained with us of his side, as Farrell had called it,
and it was I who was fated to do the deed. Let me put it in that way, I
beg of you. Let me say "fated" in this instance, if in no other, for it
is a terrible thing to slay a man. And then I saw what had befallen,
after my shot had gone home and Dan lay on his face where he had
fallen--dead, with the light of morning, of a new day, just quivering up
the eastern sky, and making the thing more ghastly.
Farrell and he must have quietly whispered over their plan where they
lay--to make a sudden joint attack upon us. Dan's part had evidently
been to put an end to Larry and to me, while Farrell attended to Apache
Kid; for there was Farrell now with a revolver in each hand, and both
were held to Apache Kid's head.
At hearing my shot, for a moment Farrell glanced round, and, seeing that
Dan had failed in his attempt, he cried out: "If you move, I kill Apache
Kid here, right off. Mind now! I kill him--and let the Lost Cabin Mine
slide. We 'll see who 's boss o' this round up!"
And then it suddenly struck me as strange that they had not reckoned on
the other two who were with us,--Mr. Pinkerton and the half-breed. Even
as I was then considering their daring, there came a moan from beside
me. I flung round at the sound, and there lay Pinkerton with his hand
to his breast. Yes; I understood now. That sound that woke me was not
of one shot; it was two,--Dan's first shot at Larry, and Farrell's at
Mr. Pinkerton. But what of the half-breed? I bent to Mr. Pinkerton
and, with my hand under his neck, said: "O, Mr. Pinkerton! Mr.
Pinkerton! O, Mr. Pinkerton! can I do anything for you?"
He looked upon me with his kind eyes, full of the last haze now, and
gasped: "My girl! My girl! You will----" and he leant heavy in my arms.
"I will see to her," said I. "O, sir! this you have got for us. It is
through us that this has happened. I will see that she never wants."
These or some words such as these I spoke,--for I never could rightly
recall the exact speech in looking back on that sad affair.
"You--you are all right, my son," he said, "but if Apache Kid gets out
o' this--he 's--he's more fit like for----"
I saw his hand fumble again on his breast, and thought it was in an
attempt to open his shirt; but then I caught the agony in his eye, such
as you may have seen on a dumb man trying to make himself understood and
failing in the attempt. Something of that look, but more woeful, more
piteous to see, was on his face. He was trying to hold his hand to me;
when I took it, he smiled and said:
"You or Apache--Meg." And that was the last of this kindly and likeable
man who had done so much for us.
But what of the half-breed? Was he, too, slain? Not so; but he was of a
more cunning race than I am sprung of. When I laid back Mr. Pinkerton's
head and again looked around, the half-breed was gone from the place
where he had lain.
There, on his belly almost, he was creeping upon Farrell from the rear.
To me it seemed the maddest and most forlorn undertaking.
There was Farrell with the two revolvers held to Apache Kid's head,
talking softly, too quietly for me to hear, and Apache Kid replying in a
low tone without any attempt at rising. And Farrell cried out: "Nobody
try to fire on me! At a shot I fire too! My fingers is jest ready. I
'm a desperate man."
I crouched low, my breath held in dread, my heart pounding in my side,
at long intervals, so that I thought it must needs burst. I did not
even dare look again at that crawling savage, lest Farrell might perhaps
cast another such quick glance as he had already bestowed on me and,
seeing the direction of my gaze, realise his danger.
The result of such a discovery I dared not imagine. There was enough
horror already, without addition. It was just then that Donoghue gave a
queer little wheezing moan and his eyes opened; but even as I turned to
him, "crash!" went a shot and I spun round, a cry on my lips; and there
lay Apache Kid, as I had seen him before Donoghue's voice called me away
from observing him. But now he had clutched Farrell's right wrist in
what must have been a mighty sudden movement, and was pushing it from
him. He had leapt sidewise a little way, but without attempting to
rise.
There, thrusting away, in a firm grasp, the hand that held the smoking
weapon, he still looked up in Farrell's eye, the other revolver before
him so that he must have looked fairly into it.
"You durn fool!" said Farrell. "You think I did n't mean what I said?
Well, let me tell you that I run no more chances. Oh! you need n't
grasp this arm so fierce. I don't have to use it. But, Apache Kid, I
'm goin' to kill you now. I reckon that that there Lost Cabin ain't for
any of us,--not for you, for sure. Are you ready?"
"Quite ready," I heard Apache Kid say, his voice as loud as Farrell's
now, but more exultant still. It horrified me to hear his voice so
callous as he looked on death. I wondered if now I should not risk a
shot as a last hope to save him.
"There, then!" cried Farrell.
But there followed only the metallic tap of the hammer,--no report, only
that steely click; and before one could well know what had happened,
Apache Kid was the man on top, shoving Farrell's head down in the sand,
but still clutching Farrell's right wrist and turning aside that hand
that held the weapon which, on his first sudden movement, had sent its
bullet into the sand beside Apache.
"You goat!" cried Apache Kid. "When you intend to use two guns, see
that they both are loaded, or else don't hold the one that you 've fired
the last from right in front of----" He broke off and flung up his
head, like a wolf baying, and laughed.
He was a weird sight then, his face blackened from the shot he had
evaded. But by this time, I need hardly tell you, I was by his side,
helping to hold down the writhing Farrell--and the half-breed brought us
the lariat from his horse and we trussed Farrell up, hands and feet, and
then stood up. And as we turned from him there was Donoghue sitting up
with a foolish look on his face and the blood trickling on his brow;
and, pointing a hand at us, he cried out, "Come here, some o' you sons
o' guns, and tie up my head a bit so as I kin git up and see his hangin'
afore I die."
Farrell writhed afresh in his bonds as he heard Donoghue's cry, and in a
voice in which there seemed nothing human, he roared, "What! is that
feller Donoghue not killed?"
"No, sir!" Donoghue replied, his head falling and his chin on his
breast, but eyes looking up, with the blood running into them from under
his ragged eyebrows: "No, sir,--after you!" he cried, and he let out
that hideous oath that I had heard him use once before, but cannot
permit myself to write or any man to read.
*CHAPTER XVI*
_*Sounds in the Forest*_
We hanged Farrell in the morning, for he had broken the compact and he
was a murderer. And we laid Pinkerton to his rest in the midst of the
plain, with a cairn of stones to mark the spot.
Let that suffice. As for these two things you may readily understand I
have no heart to write. And indeed, it would be a depraved taste that
would desire to read of them in detail. I know you are not of those who
will blame me for this reticence.
When I told Apache Kid of Mr. Pinkerton's last words he was greatly
moved, as I could see, though he kept a calm front, and he told the
half-breed, who left us then, to convey to Miss Pinkerton our united
sympathy with a promise that we would visit her immediately on our
return from our expedition.
Then we set out again, a melancholy company, as you will understand,
Apache Kid and I carrying all the provisions that he thought fit to take
along with us; for Donoghue was too light-headed to be burdened with any
load, and lurched along beside us as we made toward the hills that
closed in the plain to north, lurched along with the red handkerchief
around his head and singing snatches of song now and again. The bullet
had ploughed a furrow along the side of his head, and though the
bleeding had stopped he was evidently mentally affected by the wound.
It was drawing near nightfall again when we came to the end of this
seeming cul-de-sac of a valley, and the hills on either side drew closer
to us.
Before us now as we mounted, breathing heavily, up the incline we saw
the woods, all the trees standing motionless, and already we could look
well into the hazy blue deep of that place.
"I have been here before," said Apache, "but not much farther. We
thought we might have to push clear through this place and try what luck
there was in getting a shelter beyond. They pushed us very close that
time," he said meditatively. But so absently did he speak this that,
though I could not make any guess as to who it was that was "pushing"
him "close" and who was with him on that perilous occasion, I forbore to
question.
You have seen men in that mood yourself, I am sure, speaking more to the
air than to you.
He turned about at the entering into the wood and we looked down on the
plain stretching below us. A long while he gazed with eyelids puckered,
scanning the shelving and stretching expanse.
"Two parties have followed us," he said in a whisper almost. "God grant
there be no more, else when we get the wealth that lies in store for us
we shall hardly be able to enjoy it for thinking of all it has cost us.
It has been the death of one good man already," he added. "Ah, well!
There is no sign of any mortal there. We must push on through this
wilderness before us."
He stopped again and considered, Donoghue rocking impotent and dazed
beside us.
"I wonder where Canlan is to-night," he said, and then we plunged into
the woods.
If the silence of the plain had been intense, we were now to know a
silence more august. I think it was our environment then that made
Apache Kid speak in that whisper. There was something in this deep wood
before us that hushed our voices. I think it was the utter lack of even
the faintest twitter of any bird, where it seemed fitting that birds
should be, that influenced us then almost unconsciously. Our very tread
fell echoless in the dust of ages there, the fallen needles and cones of
many and many an undisturbed year. It was with a thrill that I found
that we had suddenly come upon what looked like a path of some kind.
Apache Kid was walking first, Donoghue following, the knotted ends of
the handkerchief sticking out comically at the back of his head under
his hat.
"You see, we're on to a trail now," said Apache Kid, as he trudged
along. "You never strike a trail just at the entrance into a place like
this. Travellers who have passed here at various times, you see, come
into the wood at all sorts of angles, where the trees are thin. But
after one gets into the wood a bit and the trees get thicker, in feeling
about for a passage you find where someone has been before you and you
take the same way. A week, or a month, or a year later someone else
comes along and he follows you. This trail here, for all that you can
see the print of a horse's hoof here and there on it, may not have been
passed over this year by any living soul. There may not have been
anyone here since I was here last myself, three years ago--yes, that
print there may be the print of my own horse's hoof, for I remember how
the rain drenched that day, charging through the pass here and dripping
from the pines and trickling through all the woods."
"It is a pass, then?" said I.
"Oh, yes," he explained. "It is what is called, in the language of the
country, a buck's trail. That does not mean, as I used to think, an
Indian trail. It is the slang word for a priest. You find these bucks'
trails all over the country. They were made by the priests who came up
from old Mexico to evangelise and convert the red heathen of the land. I
think these old priests must have been regular wander-fever men to do
it. Think of it, man, cutting a way through these woods. Aha! See,
there's a blaze on a tree there. You can scarcely make it out, though;
it's been rained upon and snowed upon and blown upon so long, year in,
year out. Turn about, now that we are past it, and you see the blaze on
this side. Perhaps the old buck made that himself, standing back from
the tree and swinging his axe and saying to himself: 'If this leads me
nowhere, I shall at least be able to find my way back plain enough.'
Well! It's near here somewhere that I stopped that time, three years
ago. Do you make out the sound of any water trickling?"
We stood listening; but there was no sound save that of our breathing,
and then suddenly a "tap, tap, tap" broke out loud in the forest, so
that it startled me at the moment, though next moment I knew it was the
sound of a busy woodpecker.
We moved on a little farther, and then Apache Kid cried out in joy:
"Aha! Here we are! See the clear bit down there where the trees thin
out?"
We pushed our way forward to where, through the growing dusk of the
woods, there glowed between the boles a soft green, seeming very bright
after the dark, rusty green of these motionless trees.
"There is n't much elbow room round about us here to keep off the
wildcats," said Apache Kid, looking round into the forest as we stepped
forth into this oasis and found there a tiny spring with a teacupful of
water in its hollow. The little trickle that went from it seemed just
to spread out and lose itself almost immediately in the earth; but it
served our purpose, and here we camped.
Donoghue had been like a dazed man since morning, but now, after the
strong tea, he was greatly refreshed and had his wits collected
sufficiently to suggest that we should keep watch that night, lest
another party were following us up. He also washed the wound in his
forehead, and, finding it bleeding afresh after that, pricked what he
called the "pimples" from a fir-tree, and with the sap exuding therefrom
staunched the bleeding again, and I suppose used one of the best
possible healers in so doing.
That there were wildcats in the woods there was no doubt. They screamed
half the night, with a sound like weeping infants, very dolorous to
hear. Apache Kid took the first watch, Donoghue the second, and I the
third. I was to waken them at sunrise, and after Donoghue shook me up
and I sat by the glowing fire, I remember the start with which I saw,
after a space, as I sat musing of many things, as one will muse in such
surroundings, two gleaming eyes looking into mine out of the woods--just
the eyes, upright ovals with a green light, turning suddenly into
horizontal ovals and changing colour to red as I became aware of them.
We were generally careful to make our fire of such wood as would flame,
or glow, without shedding out sparks that might burn our blankets; but
some such fuel had been put on the fire that night, and it suddenly
crackled up then and sent forth a shower of sparks. And at that the eyes
disappeared. I flicked the sparks off my sleeping comrades and then sat
musing again, looking up on the stars and alternately into the darkness
of the woods and into the glow of the fire, and suddenly I saw all along
the forest a red line of light spring to life, and my attention was
riveted thereon.
I saw it climb the stems of trees far through the wood and run up to the
branches. A forest fire, thought I to myself, and wondered if our
danger was great in that place. I snuffed the air. There was certainly
the odour of burning wood, but that might have been from our camp-fire
alone, and there was also the rich, unforgettable odour of the balsam.
But so greatly did the line of fire increase and glow that I stretched
forth my hand and touched Donoghue upon the shoulder. He started up,
and, following the pointing of my finger, glared a moment through the
spaces of the forest. Then he dropped back again.
"It is the dawn," he said, and drew the blankets over his head. "Wake
me in another hour."
But I sat broad awake, my heart glowing with a kind of voiceless
worship, watching that marvellous dawn. It spread more slowly than I
would have imagined possible, taking tree by tree, running left and
right, and creeping forward like an advancing army; and then suddenly
the sky overhead was full of a quivering, pale light, and in the dim
blue pool of the heavens the stars went out. But no birds sang to the
new day, only I heard again the tap-tap of a woodpecker echoing about
through the woods.
So I filled the can with water, which was a slow process at that very
tiny spring, and mixed the flour ready for the flapjacks and then woke
my comrades.
I must not weary you, however, recounting hour by hour as it came. I
have other things to tell you of than these,--matters regarding hasty,
hot-blooded man in place of a chronicle of slow, benignant nature.
On the journey of this day we came very soon to what seemed to be the
"height of land" in that part, and descending on the other side came
into a place of swamp where the mosquitos assaulted us in clouds. So
terribly did they pester us that on the mid-day camp, while Apache Kid
made ready our tea (for eatables we did with a cold flapjack apiece,
having made an extra supply at breakfast, so as to save time at noon), I
employed myself in switching him about the head with a leafy branch in
one hand, while with the other I drove off another cloud of these pests
that made war upon me.
No sooner had we the tea ready than we put clods and wet leaves upon the
fire, raising a thick smoke, a "smudge," as it is called, and sitting in
the midst of that protecting haze we partook of our meal, coughing and
spluttering, it is true; but the smoke in the eyes and throat was a mere
nothing to the mosquito nuisance.
I think that for the time being the mosquitos spurred us forward as much
as did our fear of being forestalled in out quest. Mounting higher on
our left where a cold wind blew, instead of dipping down into the next
wooded valley, we found peace at last. As we tramped along on this
crest, where our view was no longer cramped, where at last we could see
more than the next knoll before us or the next abyss of woods, I noticed
Apache constantly scanning the country as though he were trying to take
his bearings.
Donoghue, who was now more like his rational, or irrational self, soon
seemed to waken up to his surroundings, and fell to the same employ.
It was to the valley westward, now that we were upon the ridge, that
they directed their attention. Donoghue, his loose jaw hanging, his
teeth biting on his lips, posted on ahead of us and suddenly he stopped,
stood revealed against the blue peak of the mountain on whose ridge we
now travelled, in an attitude that bespoke some discovery. He was on a
little eminence of the mountain's shoulder, a treeless mound where
boulders of granite stood about in gigantic ruin, with other granite
outposts dotted down the hill into the midst of the trees, which stood
there small and regular, just as you see them in a new plantation at
home. He shaded his eyes from the light, looked finally satisfied, and
then sat down to await our coming.
Apache stepped forward more briskly; quick and eager we trotted up the
rise where Donoghue merely pointed into the valley that had now for over
an hour been so eagerly scanned. There, far off, in the green forest
bottom, the leaden grey glint of a lake showed among the wearisome
woods.
"Ah! We'll have a smoke up," said Apache, with an air of relief. So we
sat down on our blanket-rolls in the sunlight. There was a gleam in my
companions' eyes, a look of expectation on their faces, and after that
"smoke up" Apache spoke with a determined voice, dropping his cigarette
end and tramping it with his heel.
"We camp at that lake to-night," said he.
"To-night?" said I, in astonishment, for it seemed to me a monstrous
length to go before nightfall; but he merely nodded his head vehemently,
and said again: "To-night," and then after a pause: "We lose time," said
he, "there may be others:" and we rose to our feet.
"We could n't camp up here, anyhow," said Donoghue, looking round.
It was truly a weird sight there, for we could see so many valleys now,
hollows, gulches, clefts in the chaos of the mountains; here, white
masts of trees all lightening-struck on a blasted knoll; there, a rocky
cut in the face of the landscape like a monstrous scar; at another place
a long, toothed ridge that must have broken many a storm in its day.
Besides, already, though it was but afternoon, a keen, icy-cold wind ran
like a draught there and the voice of the wind arose and died in our
ears from somewhere in that long, rocky backbone, with a sound like a
railway train going by; and so it would arise and cease again, and then
cry out elsewhere in a voice of lamentation, low and mournful.
Apache Kid was looking round and round, his eyes wide and bright.
"I should like to see this in Winter," said he, "when leaves fall and
cold winds come."
"There 's no mortal man ever saw this in Winter," said Donoghue, "and no
man ever will."
I saw Apache Kid linger, and look on that terrible and awesome
landscape, with a half-frightened fondness; and then he cast one more
glance at the leaden grey of the lake below and another at a peak on our
right and, his bearings thus in mind, led the way downward into that
dark and forbidding valley.