A HUMILIATING DISCOVERY
RETURNING to the cabin, the boys excitedly split up a box and, binding
the dry splinters together, thrust one end into the stove. A moment
later, Ross, brandishing this improvised torch, and followed by Leslie,
bearing the gun in hands none too steady, ran down to the seven spruces.
This group of trees, full grown and broad limbed, interlocked their
branches at the foot of the mountain in the path of the high winds which
roared through the canon as through a funnel between the high mountains.
The trunks formed a windbreak for the storms that left their load of
snow heaped to the branches on the upper side at the expense of the
lower side where the crust was swept as clear of loose snow as though
by a broom.
Here, in the shadow of these trees, Leslie, despite his earnest protest
to the contrary, half expected to see a wolf dead or wounded, but no
wolf appeared. Lowering the torch, the boys made their way warily around
the trees and the drifts heaped to leeward. The pile of snow had not
been disturbed, nor did they discover any tracks.
"Less, I'm not satisfied," exclaimed Ross finally. "Something broke that
window and something ran down here. There's enough loose snow over this
crust to show traces if----"
Here the speaker hastily interposed his body between a gust of wind and
the flaring torch.
"That's true," asserted Leslie, "but the snow is so light that this wind
has probably moved every particle of it since that window was broken,
and this crust is too hard to show a track."
Ross uttered a sudden exclamation and plunged forward, the torch's head
flaming against the crust.
"Quick, Less, see here!"
Leslie sprang forward and bent over the torch. "Blood!" he shouted. "I
did hit him for sure! There is a--no, see here, Ross, here are some more
drops, a neat little collection! I must have hit hard. Oh, we can track
him now easily!"
The telltale drops were scattered on the glistening face of the crust
just below the trees. There was one splash of red and a few inches
further along scattering drops. Sweeping the crust with the torch the
boys cautiously crossed the canon taking care to test the crust with the
heels of their shoes as they advanced. But, to their disappointment, no
more blood appeared, and no further signs of life. Slowly they zigzagged
back and forth, searching and listening, but to no purpose.
"He got away all right," said Leslie in a voice of deep chagrin. "Guess,
after all, I must only have scratched him."
"Yes, but it's queer that a scratch would have produced that much blood
and not another drop," returned Ross puzzled. "Such a wound would keep on
bleeding for a few moments at least. We ought to find more traces right
around here."
Convinced of the soundness of this reasoning, Leslie urged another
search. Stopping long enough to make a fresh torch they returned to the
blood spots and with them as a center carefully enlarged the circle of
their search until they had again covered the surface, inch by inch,
for yards around.
"He must have stopped and licked the wound clean right here and then
streaked it for the mountains," said Leslie at last.
Ross shook his head obstinately. "I don't believe it. With your shots
pattering around him he'd likely streak it for the mountains and attend
to his wounds later--only in that case there would be more blood."
Discouraged and cold, the searchers returned to the cabin. Nailing a box
cover over the window, and barring the door again, they went to bed.
The following morning dawned bright and still in the Canon of the Seven
Spruces as the boys had named their home. Tired out with the excitement
and exertion of the previous night they overslept, and not until the
sun had appeared above the eastern peaks were they ready for a further
examination of the neighborhood of the blood spots. They searched as
they had the previous evening and with no better results, until noon.
Then the unexpected happened!
They had given up the hunt disgustedly and were returning to the shack
for dinner, when passing to windward of the seven spruces, Leslie
chanced to pause beside the trunk of the outermost sentinel in the
group. Ross, in advance, turned and, simultaneously, the gaze of both
boys fell on another evidence that Leslie's gun had drawn blood the
night before. Half of each tree trunk was covered with snow and on
the white envelope of the spruce beside which they stood appeared
four red streaks lying parallel and a couple of inches away around the
curve of the trunk a faint red blotch. The second of the four streaks
contained the deepest stain.
"I say, Ross!" cried Leslie.
"Less, here you are again!" ejaculated Ross.
For an instant they both stared at the tree trunk motionless. Then Ross,
with a sudden narrowing of his eyes and upward tilt of his square chin,
strode forward, drew off his mitten and extended his arm. The marks were
shoulder high. Leslie gave an exclamation as Ross grasped the trunk, his
four fingers covering the four streaks of blood, his thumb pressed on
the fainter blotch. Then his hand fell to his side.
"A man!" gasped Leslie. His face turned white. "Ross, did I shoot a man?"
"That would account for things," said Ross slowly. He looked back. Only a
few feet intervened between the tree and the blood on the crust. "If you
hurt his hand--and he steadied himself here at this tree, and then ran
on--perhaps before he realized that he was hurt--and then staunched the
flow in his mittens or on his clothes--anywhere----"
"It was Sandy!" exclaimed Leslie. His voice was weak, also his knees.
"Or Weston," added Ross and scowled.
"He--they were looking in the window----" began Leslie.
"And slipped and fell against the glass," added Ross.
Only one more proof was needed to convince them that Leslie had drawn
human blood, and that proof they found where they had not thought to look
previously--beneath the window. There, in the loose snow blown against
the side of the shack, was the blurred impression of a snow-shoe.
"I believe," said Ross with conviction that night as they sat beside
the fire with their door barred and the window securely shuttered, "I
believe, Less, that it was Sandy and perhaps Waymart, coming to see if
Weston had done his duty by us."
"But where did they come from?" questioned Leslie. "Where are we? Can
they get over to Meadow Creek and from there here? Or is there another
way of getting here?"
It was months before that persistent question was answered, months of
a dull routine wherein the boys turned with more and more zeal to their
studies. Nights now, behind their barred door and shuttered window, they
listened, not for wolves, but for the return of their human caller,
but he did not come again. Day after day they looked sharply for prints
of snow-shoes, but looked in vain. Gradually as the spring advanced, the
wolves and coyotes retreated until the boys no longer carried the gun on
their wood-cutting excursions.
"I guess Sue will not see a wolf skin this year," Leslie complained in
March. "Even in that I have failed."
Ross, standing over the stove frying bacon, glanced over his shoulder.
"Brace up, Less," he gibed. "There's one thing you haven't failed in,
nor I either. We've got outside of more anatomy and physiology and----"
"That's so," Leslie interrupted brightening. "I've found out what I
want to do--after I've made my peace with father," soberly. "I guess
he'll not make any objections to a doctor in the family. It strikes
me," lugubriously, "that he'll be pleased to find out that I want to
be anything!"
March gave place to April, finally; but in the mountains April showers
do not have the effect they are popularly supposed to have elsewhere,
the showers being great downfalls of snow alternating with thaws which
threatened to turn the entire canon into a river and brought to their
ears daily the thunder of the snowslides. By the first of May the tops
of the tallest willows began to appear, but the boys knew that the roots
would not be visible for six weeks yet, so long does winter linger among
the Shoshones. On the mountainside above timber-line bowlders began to
push aside their dense white covering.
But with the softening of the great body of snow, the inhabitants of the
canon became more closely confined than ever. It was well that the hot
sun did away with the necessity for a fire during the day, because the
boys were able to cut and shovel their way only to the nearest trees.
"Things are getting worse instead of better," said Leslie gloomily one
day when May was two weeks old.
The boys sat in the doorway in the red glow of a warm sunset. At their
feet, only a few yards away, the narrow canon was transformed into a
river choked with ice and snow and mud flowing sluggishly among the
willows. For weeks the boys had looked in vain for the subsidence of
the water. On the steep slope of the mountain opposite lay a mass of
wet heavy snow waiting for its turn to come to plunge into the canon.
Ross, his eyes on this slope, gave a rueful laugh. "Less, if only we had
such a charge of dynamite now as we set off under Soapweed Ledge we might
have a little fun across there."
"Fun!" echoed Leslie miserably. "Never connect that piece of foolishness
with the word 'fun.' If it hadn't been for that shot we probably would
have been in Meadow Creek Valley now hard at work."
Ross gazed gloomily up the river-like canon. He wondered whether the
trail from Miners' Camp to Meadow Creek was clear yet, and whether the
McKenzies had returned to the valley; for in three weeks Weimer's fifth
year of work on the claims would close. He chafed with impatience at the
delay necessitated by that slowly moving stream. With the canon clear,
the boys had determined to start out and follow its windings until they
came to--Somewhere.
Late one afternoon of that same week Ross sat studying beneath the window
while Leslie was out trying to force a path to a fine spruce tree that
promised good fire-wood. The sun had long since hidden his face behind
the mountain against which the cabin rested, but his rays turned the snow
on the peaks opposite to gold. The day had been warm. The door stood
open, and the fire was almost out. Near the doorway, and only a few
feet from a solid bank of ice, blossomed a profusion of forget-me-nots
and yellow wild asters. The breeze which rocked their petals was the
breeze of summer that, nevertheless, carried the tang of the ice and
snow over which it passed.
Suddenly Ross, deep in his book, heard a sound, the crunching of the
pine cones and boughs with which the ground was strewn. A moment later a
shadow moved across his book. He sprang to his feet, the book falling to
the floor, and confronted a man in the doorway.
The man was middle-aged, large, and stoop-shouldered. His face was burned
and bearded and furrowed, but astonishment was stamped on every feature
and furrow.
"Hello!" he greeted Ross, as one familiar with his surroundings greets
a stranger.
He stepped inside with that air of assurance which proclaims ownership.
His eyes left Ross, and swept the shack.
"What----" he began, and suddenly stopped, his gaze traveling back
curiously to the boy. "What----" he began again, but got no further.
Ross was the first one to complete a question, and it was an eager one.
"Where did you come from?"
"Cody," returned the stranger, reciprocating with "And you?"
"Meadow Creek."
"Meadow Creek!" in surprise. "Is the trail open now?"
Ross shook his head. "I don't know. I came last January."
"January!" The stranger stared, and stuffed his hands into his pockets.
"Do ye mean t' tell me ye've been here sence January?"
"Ever since then."
Briefly but excitedly Ross told the story of his coming.
The stranger, listening, leaned back against the door-post. Successively
he removed his cap, scratched his head, and contracted his bushy
eyebrows. When Ross finished he was grinning in grim humor.
"Young man," he began slowly, "this here is Wood River canon. Ye're only
seven miles from Miners' Camp. Ye could 'a' hoofed it down t' Gale's
Ridge in two hours on top of any crust that would 'a' held ye up."
Stepping to the door Ross raised a chagrined voice, "Leslie, ho, Less!
Come here!"
The boy's unexpected and welcome visitor was Terry Brown, the owner of
several adjacent coal claims. He had gone out of the mountains the first
of December, his preparations for departure consisting merely in closing
the door of his shack. He had expected to open it in June on the same
furnishings and provisions which he had left.
"I see how it was," Brown began as the three talked things over that
evening. "That 'ere Weston waits fer a storm a-purpose. Then he takes
ye a pretty chase around and up and among them little peaks over at the
head waters of Meadow Creek until he gits ye so mixed up that ye don't
know east from west. Then he slides ye over the cliff, and lands ye in
here; and you, thinkin' ye're miles away from ye don't know where,
with a heap o' danger spots between ye and anywheres, jest naturally
sets down here and behaves yerself. It was the only sensible thing to
do," added Brown approvingly.
"But in the face of the facts it doesn't look sensible now!" Ross burst
out.
[Illustration: "The Crooked Trail that Deceived Ross"]
"No," meditatively, "but without knowin' any of the facts, and with no
way t' know 'em, you acted with sense, plain hoss sense. But that 'ere
Weston, he sure done you dirt, all right."
Ross's fists doubled involuntarily. Seeing this, Brown's voice changed.
"Better fergit it, son. Chuck the hull matter. Ye've lost and they've
won; and, if what I hear of the McKenzies is true, it won't do ye
no good t' keep thinkin' of this. And when ye git down t' Camp I
wouldn't tell the first man I seen about this, nuther----"
"Because," Leslie broke in hotly, "they'd laugh at us for staying here
so near Camp all winter."
Brown made no reply, but a slow grin expressed his opinion.
"I say, Less," Ross broke out, "we don't look any bigger to ourselves
than we did when we found out what that blast under the Ledge had done
for us, do we?"
But Leslie did not hear. He sat with his elbows on his knees scowling
down at the floor. "If we're that near Camp," he reasoned, "it was
surely one of the McKenzies that came up to see if we were here yet that
night that I fired. He chose a night, you remember, when the snow was
light and the crust icy. No tracks left for us to follow."
Their visitor asked for no explanation to this. He was studying Ross's
face intently as the boy sat leaning forward, his hands clasped around
his knees.
"I say!" the older man broke out suddenly. "Ye look almighty like a
feller that rode up in the stage from Meeteetse yisterday--almighty
like 'im. They was two of 'em. They got out at Amos Steele's."
"Where did they come from?" asked Ross absently.
"I dunno. Sheepy Luther said they was Easterners."
"Sheepy Luther!" exclaimed Ross. "I know Sheepy. His wagon set on the
hill just back of the stage camp when I was there with Weston."
"Is that so? Wall, Sheepy is down on his luck. He's too old t' chase
sheep, and last winter he lost five hundred or thereabouts; so he got
his walkin' papers. He come up yisterday. Stopped at Steele's t' try
t' git a job with the Gale's Ridge Company. Steele may take 'im on to
wrangle the hosses, but he can't do more'n a boy's work. He's done
fer; only he don't know it."
In the pause which followed Brown again studied Ross. "This feller," he
began again suddenly, "was a bigger man than ye be; but I vum, ye're
alike even t' the way ye squint up yer eyes and mouth, 'n'----"
Ross came to his feet alertly, his interest at last aroused.
"His name?" he demanded eagerly.
Brown shook his head. "Didn't hear no names except the front ones. They
called each other 'Ross' 'n' 'Fred.'"
"Uncle Fred and father!" shouted Ross excitedly. "They came up yesterday,
you say, and stopped at Gale's Ridge!"