[1] Begun in No. 101, HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE.
Steve Harrison rose to his feet, and looked curiously along the ledge in
both directions.
It was not the first ore he had seen during his three years and more of
wandering with Murray and the Lipans, but never before had he tumbled
down upon anything precisely like it.
"Mine," he said to himself, aloud--"mine! But what can I do with it?"
"Do with it? What can you do with it?"
Murray was still kneeling upon the precious quartz, and fingering spot
after spot where the yellow metal showed itself, and the strange fire in
his eyes was deeper than ever.
"Steve!"
"What, Murray?"
"I thought it was all gone, but it isn't."
"Thought what was all gone?"
"The gold fever. I used to have it when I was younger. It isn't a love
of money; it's just a love of digging up gold."
"Can you feel it now?"
"Dreadfully. It burns all over me every time I touch one of those
nuggets."
"Let it burn, then."
"Why? What's the good of it?"
"Maybe it'll get strong enough to keep you from wasting the rest of your
days among the Lipans."
"Among the Lipans? You don't know, Steve. Didn't I tell you what keeps
me? No, I don't think I did--not all of it. You're only a boy, Steve."
"You're a wonderfully strong man for your age."
"My age? How old do you think I am?"
"I never guessed. Maybe you're not much over sixty."
"Sixty!"--he said that with a sort of low laugh. "Why, my dear boy, I'm
hardly turned of forty-five, white hair and all. The white came to my
hair the day I spent in hunting among the ruins the Apaches left behind
them for my wife and my little girl."
"Only forty-five! Why, Murray, you're young yet. And you know all about
mines."
"And all about Indians too. Come on, Steve; we must look a little
further before we set out for the camp."
Steve would willingly have staid to look at all that useless ledge of
gold ore, but his friend was on his feet again, now resolutely turning
his wrinkled face away from it all, and there was nothing to be gained
by mere gazing. A gold mine can not be worked by a person's eyes, even
if they are as good and bright a pair as were those of Steve Harrison.
Before them lay the broken level of the table-land, and it was clearer
and clearer, as they walked on, that it was not at all a desert.
It was greater in extent, too, than appeared at first sight, and it was
not long before their march brought them to quite a grove of trees.
"Oak and maple, I declare," said Murray. "I'd hardly have thought of
finding them here. There's good grass too, beyond, and running water."
"Hullo, Murray, what's that? Look! Are they houses?"
"Steve! Steve!"
It was no wonder at all that they both broke into a clean run, and that
they did not halt again until they stood in the edge of a second grove
not far from the margin of the full-banked stream of water which wound
down from the mountains and ran across the plateau.
Trees, groves, grass in all directions, and a herd of deer were feeding
at no great distance, but it was not at any of these that the two
"pale-faced Lipans" were gazing.
"Houses, Murray!--houses!"
"They were houses once, Steve. Good ones, too. I've heard of such
before. These are not like what I've seen in Mexico."
"They're all in ruins. Some one has started a settlement here and had to
give it up. Maybe they came to work my mine."
It was less than half an hour since he had stumbled over it, and yet
Steve was already thinking of that ledge as "my mine." It does not take
us a great while to acquire a feeling of ownership for anything we take
a great liking to.
"Settlement?--work your mine?" exclaimed Murray. "Why, Steve, the people
that built those houses were all dead and gone before even the Apaches
came here. Nobody knows who they were. Not even the wisest men in the
world."
That was a great relief to Steve, for if they had been forgotten so
completely as that, they were sure not to interfere with him and his
mine.
The two friends walked forward again until they stood in the shadow of
the nearest ruin.
It must have been a pretty large building before its walls began to
topple over with age and decay. Some parts that were yet standing were
three stories high, and all was built of rudely shaped and roughly
fitted stone. There was no mortar to be seen anywhere. If there had ever
been any, it was all washed away.
"There must have been quite a town here once," said Murray, "up and down
both banks of the run of water. It was a good place for one. It looks as
if there was plenty of good land beyond, and there's a great bend in the
line of the mountains."
"I wish I knew where it led to. I'd follow it."
"What for?"
"It might give me a chance to get away."
"It might, and then again it might not. There's a gap that seems to open
off there to the west, but then it won't do."
"Why won't it do? Couldn't I try it?"
"Try it? Yes; but you won't. I must look out for you, Steve. You're more
of a boy than I thought for."
"I'm man enough, Murray. I dare try anything."
"That's boy, Steve. Stop a minute. Have you any horse to carry you
across country?"
Steve looked down at the nearest pile of ruined masonry with a saddening
face.
"You have no horse, no blanket, no provisions, no supply of ammunition
except what you brought along for to-day's hunt. Why, Steve, I'm ashamed
of you. There isn't a young Lipan brave in the whole band that would set
off in such a fashion as that--sure to make a failure. You ought to have
learned something from the Indians, it seems to me."
Steve blushed scarlet as he listened, for he had been ready the moment
before to have shouldered his rifle and set off at once toward that
vague and unknown western "gap." It must be that the glimpse he had
taken of that golden ledge had stirred up all the "boy" in him.
"I guess I wouldn't have gone far," he said, "before I'd have run clean
out of cartridges. I've less than two dozen with me."
"When you do start, my boy, I'll see to it that you get a good outfit.
Now let's try for one of those deer. It's a long shot. See if you can
make it."
A fine buck with branching antlers, followed by two does, had been
feeding in the open space beyond the ruins. The wind was brisk just then
from that direction, and they had not scented the two hunters. They had
slowly drawn nearer and nearer, until they were now about three hundred
yards away. That is a greater distance than is at all safe shooting for
any but the best marksmen, and sometimes even they will lose their game
at it.
The stories so often told of "long shots" at deer and tigers and geese
and other terrible wild beasts are for the greater part of the kind that
are known as "fish stories," and Steve would have been glad if that buck
had been a few rods nearer. He knew his rifle was a good one, however,
for it was a seven-shooting repeater of the latest and best pattern, and
had been selected for him by Murray himself out of a lot the Lipans had
brought in, nobody knew from where.
"Steady, Steve. Think of the deer, not of the gold mine."
"I'll aim at him as if he were a gold mine," replied Steve, as he raised
his rifle.
"I'll try for one of the does at the same time," said Murray.
Crack! crack! Both rifles were discharged almost at the same instant;
but while the antlered buck gave a great bound, and then fell motionless
upon the grass, his two pretty companions sprang away unhurt.
"I aimed too high," said Murray. "I must lower my sights a little."
"I've got him," exclaimed Steve, "gold mine and all. But he'll be a big
load to carry to camp."
They found him so. They were compelled to take more than one
breathing-spell before they reached the head of the ravine, and there
they took a long one, right on the gold-bearing ledge.
"Splendid pair of horns he has--" began Murray, but Steve interrupted
him with,
"That's it! That's the name of this mine, when I come for it."
"What's that, Steve?"
"It's the Buckhorn Mine. They always give them a name."
"That'll do as well as any. The ledge'll stay here till you come for it.
Nobody around here is likely to steal it away from you. But there's more
ledge than mine just now."
So there was, and Steve's countenance fell a little as he and Murray
again took up their burden and began to toil under it from "stair to
stair" down the rocky terraces of the grand chasm.
"We won't go any further than we can help without a horse," said Murray
at last. "And there's the big-horn to carry in."
"Murray, that big-horn! Just look yonder!"
It was not far to look, and the buck they were carrying seemed to come
to the ground of his own accord.
"Cougar!" exclaimed Murray.
"The biggest painter I ever saw," said Steve, "and he's getting ready to
spring."
The American panther, or, as Murray called him, cougar, is not so common
among the mountains as he is in some parts of the forest-covered
lowlands, but the vicinity of the table-land above, with its herds of
deer, might account for this one. There he was now, at all events,
preparing to take possession of the game on the top of that bowlder
without asking leave of anybody.
"Quick, Steve! forward while he's got his eyes on the antelope. We may
get a shot at him."
Almost recklessly they darted down the caƱon, slipping swiftly along
from bowlder to bowlder, but before they had covered half the distance
the panther made his spring.
He made it magnificently. He had scented the blood of that antelope from
far away, and he may have suspected that it was not a living one, but
his instincts had forbidden him to approach it otherwise than with
caution. He would not have been a cougar if he had not made a spring in
seizing upon his prey.
They are nothing in the world but giant cats, after all, and they catch
their game precisely as our house cats catch their mice. If anybody
wants to know how even a lion or a tiger does his hunting, "puss in the
corner" can teach him all about it.
"He will tear it all to pieces!"
"No he won't, Steve. We can get a bead on him from behind that rock
yonder. He'll be too busy to be looking out for us for a minute or so."
That was true, and it was a bad thing for the great "cat of the
mountains" that it was so, for the two hunters got within a hundred
yards of him before he had done smelling of the big-horn, in which he
had buried his sharp, terrible claws.
"Now, Steve, I won't miss my shot this time. See that you don't."
Steve took even too much care with his aim, and Murray fired first.
He did not miss; but a cougar is not like a deer, and it takes a good
deal more to kill him.
Murray's bullet struck a vital part, and the fierce beast sprang from
the bowlder with a ferocious growl of sudden pain and anger.
"I hit him. Quick, Steve!"
The panther was crouching on the gravel at the bottom of the ravine, and
searching with furious eyes for the enemies who had wounded him.
The report of Steve's rifle rang through the chasm.
"I aimed at his head--"
"And you only cut off one of his ears. Here he comes. I'm ready. What a
good thing a repeating rifle is!"
It was well for them, indeed, that they did not have to stop and load
just then. It did not seem any time at all before the dangerous beast
was crouching for another spring within twenty feet of them.
It would not do to miss this time, but neither Steve nor Murray made any
remarks about it. They were too much absorbed in looking along their
rifle-barrels to do any talking. Both reports came together, almost like
one.
They were not followed by any spring from the cougar. Only by a growl
and an angry tearing at the gravel, and then there was no danger that
any more big-horns, living or dead, would ever be stolen by that
panther.
"Well, Steve, if this isn't the biggest kind of sport! Never saw
anything better in all my life."
"A buck, a big-horn, and a painter before sundown."
"It'll be sundown before we get them all in. We'd better start for some
ponies and some help. Tell you what, Steve, I don't care much for it
myself, but the Lipans would rather eat that cougar than the best
venison that ever was killed."
"I suppose they would; but I ain't quite Indian enough for that,
war-paint or no war-paint."
So, indeed, it proved; and To-la-go-to-de indulged in more than one
sarcastic gibe at his less successful hunters over the manner in which
they had been beaten by "No Tongue and the Yellow Head--an old pale-face
and a boy." He even went so far as to say to Steve Harrison, "Good shot.
The Yellow Head will be a chief some day. He must kill many Apaches.
Ugh!"
[TO BE CONTINUED.]