Winding here, winding there, using the axe frequently as the thin trees
I mentioned were passed, and we entered the virgin forest below, close
and tangled, we worked slowly down-hill; and it was with something of
pleasure that we came at last again onto what looked like a trail
through the forest. It was just like one of the field paths at home for
breadth; but a perfect wall of tangled bush and trees netted together
with a kind of tangled vine (the pea-vine, I believe it is called),
closed it in on either side.
We were on the track of the indomitable "buck" again, I thought. But it
was not so. His trail had kept directly on upon the hill, Apache Kid
told me.
"I thought you saw it from the knoll there," he said, and then with a
queer look on his face, "but you can't go back now to look on it. Man,
do you know that a hunger takes me often to go back and see just such
places as that on the summit there? I take an absolute dread that I
must die without ever seeing them again. There are places I cannot
allow myself to think of lest that comes over me that forces--aye,
forces--me to go back again for one look more. I love a view like that
more than ever any man loved a woman."
Donoghue looked round to me and touched his forehead and shook his head
gently.
"Rathouse," he said: "crazy as ever they make 'em."
"But this is a trail we have come onto, sure enough," I said.
My companions looked at it quietly and I noticed how they both at once
unslung their Winchesters from their shoulders, for Donoghue had again
taken his share of our burdens.
"Not exactly a trail," said Apache Kid, "at least, neither an Indian's
trail nor a buck's trail this time. What was that, Donoghue?"
A sharp crack, as of a branch broken near us, came distinctly to our
ears.
Donoghue did not answer directly but said instead:
"You walk first; let Francis here in the middle. I 'll come last," and
Donoghue dropped behind me.
Apache nodded and we started on our way.
Neither to left nor right could we see beyond a few feet, so close did
the underbrush still whelm the way.
The sound of our steps in the stillness was more eerie than ever to my
ears. I felt that I should go barefoot here by right, soundless,
stealthy, watching every foot of the way for a lurking death in the
bushes.
"Crack," sounded again a broken branch on our left.
"Well," said Apache, softly--I was treading almost on his heels and
Donoghue was close behind me--"twigs don't snap of their own accord like
that in mid-summer."
We kept on, however, not hastening our steps at all, but at the same
even, steady pace, and suddenly again in the stillness--"Crack!"
Again a branch or twig had snapped near by in the thick woods through
which we could not see.
*CHAPTER XVII*
_*The Coming of Mike Canlan*_
There was a cold shiver ran in my spine at that second crack, for it was
eerie to know that some live thing, man or beast, was following us up
through the bushes.
"It's a lion, sure thing," Donoghue said behind me, "and it's goin' at
this stalking of us darned careless, too. I wisht we could get to a
clear place and give him a chance to show himself."
"Lion?" asked I, astonished.
"Yes--panther, that is," said Apache Kid.
"In the phraseology of the country, that is," I suggested.
Apache looked over his shoulder at me.
"You are pretty cool for a tenderfoot," he remarked. "This is a bad
spot for us to be stalked by a beast like that. Let me come behind now,
Larry," he continued. "We are getting to a clear place, I think, and he
may spring before we get out."
"Not you," said Larry. "Just you go on ahaid and let the lad keep in
between."
Here the bushes thinned out considerably and when we reached this opener
part Donoghue bade us walk straight on.
"Don't look back," said he. "Let him think we don't know he's
followin'. Give him a chance to cross this here glade. We'll stop just
inside them further trees and if he shows himself there, we 'll get him
then, sure thing. What between men and beasts we suttingly have been
followed up some this trip, and I 'm gettin' tired of it. This here
followin' up has got to end."
But though we carried out Donoghue's suggestion, crossing the open
space, entering again on the path where it continued down-hill in the
forest again, and halting there, the "lion" did not show himself.
It was here, while standing a little space, waiting for the panther's
appearance, if panther it was that shadowed us, that Apache Kid pointed
a finger at the ground before us, where a tiny trickle of water, in
crossing the path, made it muddy and moist.
"See the deer marks?" he whispered. "Neat, aren't they? This, you see,
is a game trail from the hills down to the lake----"
"No good," broke in Donoghue. "He ain't going to show himself."
So we passed on, and soon the way became more precipitous; the
underbrush cleared; the trees thinned; and in a jog trot we at last went
rattling down the final incline and came right out with the impetus of
that run upon the open ground around the lake, though of the lake
itself, now that we were at its level, we could discern little--only
tiny grey glimpses, so closely was it thronged about by rushes, and they
so tall.
A thousand frogs were singing, making quite a din in our ears, so pent
in was the sound in that cup-like hollow. But weary as we were, we
rejoiced to have come to our desired camp and soon were sitting fed and
contented round the fire.
Of all our camps so far this seemed to me the most secure.
Consequently, it horrified me a little when Apache Kid remarked, taking
his cigarette from his lips:
"Where do you think Canlan will be to-night?"
Donoghue considered the burning log:
"Oh! Allowing for him getting on to us pulling out, even the day after
we left, and allowing for him starting out right then, he can't be
nigher here than a day's journey, coming in to the country the way he
would do it--over the shoulder of Mount Baker and in that ways."
"He 'll be over behind there, then," said Apache, pointing; "right over
that ridge, sitting by his lonesome camp and perhaps half a dozen
fellows dogging him up too, eh?"
"Like enough," said Donoghue; "but he's accustomed to bein' dogged up."
"Those who live in glass houses..." remarked Apache Kid, with a laugh
that had no real merriment in the ring of it.
Donoghue raised his eyes to Apache's across the fire and laughed back.
And they both seemed to fall into a reverie after these words. From
their remarks I gathered that they believed that Canlan really knew the
location of the mine. He had been simply waiting in Baker City, then,
for fear of my two partners. So I sat silent and pondering. Presently
Apache Kid snorted and seemed to fling the thoughts aside that had been
occupying him. But anon he fell brooding again, biting on his lip and
closing an eye to the glow.
It was after one such long, meditative gazing into the glowing and
leaping embers that he spoke to me, and with such a ring in his voice as
caused me to look upon him with a new interest. The tone of the voice,
it seemed to me, hinted at some deep thought.
"Where do you come from, Francis?" he asked. "What is your nationality?"
"Why, I'm a Cosmopolitan," said I, half smiling, as one is prone to do
when a man asks him some trivial matter with a voice as serious as
though he spoke of strange things.
"Yes; we all are," said Apache Kid, putting aside my lightness. "But is
n't it Edinburgh you come from?"
"Yes," said I.
He mused again at my reply, plucking his finger-knuckles, and then
turned an eye to Donoghue, who was already surveying him under his
watchful brows.
"Shall I tell him?" he asked.
"Tell him what?" said Donoghue, looking uncomfortable, I thought, as
though this mood of his partner's was one he did not relish.
"Tell him what we are--how we live--all that?"
From Apache to me and back again Donoghue glanced, and then: "Oh! tell,
if you like," said he. "There won't no harm come from telling him. He's
safe. He 's all right, is Francis."
Again there was a pause.
"Well," said Apache Kid, finally, ending his reverie. "The fact is that
we--Donoghue and I--except upon occasion, when we want to make some sort
of a character for ourselves, to show a visible means of support,--the
fact is, we are----"
"Spit it out," said Donoghue. "Spit it out. It ain't everybody has the
courage to be."