THE MAN WHO RAN RIGHT INTO TROUBLE.
The prisoner of the Cherokee half-breed was in a forlorn state, more
particularly as regarded apparel. Hardly suited for mountaineering at
their best, his clothes were sorry rags, which an attempt at mending
with bark fibre and rawhide had even rendered more lamentable. A
horsehair lasso, of remarkable fineness and strength, was wound round
and round him with a care which a Chinese would have envied. A handful
of moss was the gag which nearly choked him, but his eyes were more
full of rage than supplication, and they seemed to burn with enhanced
indignation when he found the Indian was in concert with a white hunter.
Young Bill Williams flung his captive down on some dry rushes, and,
laying aside his gun and the stranger's, which was broken, he sat down
at the fire.
"It was a coyote," he remarked, scornfully. "But the Cherokee did not
give him even time to yelp."
"Ah!" said Ridge, "I wonder you did not shoot him thar. Thar will
always be plenty of that game on the prairie for the greenhorn hunter,
I opine. It is all very well our discovering this country, but we don't
want any raw Eastern fellows, with Boston dressing, discovering _us!_"
Bill made no comment. He had pulled the soused bears' paws over to him,
poured out some coffee--from which the full aroma was extracted by a
sudden chill at the height of its boiling with cold water--and was thus
beginning his meal.
The silence that fell was broken only by the champing of the two men as
they repaid themselves for the travail since Monday. Each had a brandy
flask, and their supplies included spirits, but neither drank anything
but the sweet, pure water of the snow torrent. Ridge was naturally
abstemious, the half-Cherokee sober from having seen the mischief
wrought his mother's race by the firewater.
After the meal, the two smoked, and the white man faintly whistled a
lively tune. Neither gave heed to the prisoner, who had ample leisure
to gaze on the strange resort into which he had been unceremoniously
conveyed.
The firelight illuminated the grotto; several gaps were outlets or
storehouses; bales of furs, bundles of army and trade guns, kegs of
powder, pigs of lead, packages of fancy goods used in Indian trading,
harness, simple cooking utensils, these encumbered the place; but one
could guess that they would form a barricade at emergency in case the
enemy penetrated to this inmost hold. At first glance, and even at the
leisure gaze of the prisoner, it seemed the den of a bandit.
"What did you bring him into the ranche for, chief?" inquired Ridge, in
that pigeon-English of the Northwest, called the "Chinnook" dialect,
though composed of Chinnook, Scotch, English, and Canadian-French, as
well as hunters' English, to which confusing medley these two friends
imparted still another zest by an infusion of Cherokee, Creole, French,
and Spanish-American, for which good reason we forbear the sentences
verbatim.
"Because," replied the other, "it was too dark to see the trail, and
he must tell whether he is alone or the spy of a band. At all events,
it doesn't look as if he had been in to the fort for his pay lately,"
added Bill, with a quiet fleeting smile, "and bought any clothes!"
"You are right. Loose him, and we'll try him. By the way, that's a
beauty lariat, I can tell you."
Indeed, as before hinted, the lasso confining the captive was composed
of selected horsehair, and toilsomely and deftly plaited.
"I was still on the scout," said Bill, whilst engaged undoing the
bonds, rolling the man to and fro as suited his desires, "when suddenly
a movement of a scrub pine half a pistol shot off made me bring my
rifle to bear on it. I was just about to pull, when up pops my man,
crying: 'Hold hard, or you're a dead Injun!' _Me?_ It looked as if we
were going to make our bullets kiss in midair, but I reckon I was a
leetle the quicker, and while his ball whistled upon the top storeys
of the sierra, mine cut his barrel in half, right there at the stock,
which remained in his hand. So, as he staggered in surprise, I sprang
on him, took off from his belt the lasso--a real article, and no
mistake! Worth a war pony!--and girdled him like a papoose. Moreover,
I wrapped my robe round his head, so that he should not see how we
glide into the Rocky Mountain House, proprietors, Messrs. Ridge and
Williams, and here he is dumped down."
The man was hardly able to stand when unbound. He wiped his mouth with
the tattered sleeve of his old army overcoat, shook himself, and reeled
round toward the fire, whither the half-breed had given him a gentle
push.
"We don't often meet a white man away here," said Ridge, sitting up
like a judge. "Let me have a good long look."
The firelight fell full upon him. Already, whilst waiting, the stranger
had fortified himself: he was cold, calm, save for his lips curling in
a mocking smile, though he very well saw that his confronters were his
judges, and, possibly, executioners, if they determined on death.
He was a man about five and forty, rather tall, with legs "split up so
far" as to be as good a walker almost as Ridge himself. He was the more
gaunt from recent privations. His "weather skin" seemed newly assumed,
and, seen in the town, he would have been taken for a schoolmaster of
the Indian Reservations or a trader's bookkeeper.
"You are a white, an American, from the Eastern States," said Ridge,
after a couple of minutes. "You are not a hunter or trapper, a
gentleman sportsman, or a squaw man. What brings you out here up in the
mountains?"
"You are a white, an American of these Western States," returned the
other, quietly, "whence your right to pull me about and question me? If
this Indian is on the land of his forefathers, I will pay him tribute
as far as in my power. As for you, why stop my wandering? Have I sought
to run against you? Have I done anything more than essay to defend my
life when a firearm was levelled at my breast? State anything that
gives you a right to deal with a citizen of the United States in the
United States?"
"These are big words," replied Ridge, puzzled whether to be angry or
amused, though there was no doubt that Cherokee Bill felt the first
sentiment; "but I am not exchanging Fourth of July speeches with you,
but asking questions."
"To answer? 'Spose I don't choose?"
"You'll be made to, I guess," rejoined the mountaineer, hotly.
"You mean you two will cut my throat in this den, or hang me in my own
lasso! The latter will serve me right, as I took it at the cost of a
life from the redskin who hurled me off my horse with the same. Well,
suppose you do kill me, will you know more about me than you do now?"
"What! Killed an Indian for the rope?" said Ridge, turning to the
Cherokee. "What breed?"
"Comanche!" said the latter, examining the lasso critically.
"The lasso is of Comanche make," went on the mountain man, severely
frowning again. "And I'll swear your cheek has never been burnt south
of the Platte."
"That's so. It was a 'foot Indian' who tried to kill me. I boast no
knowledge of these gentry. That's one of his shoes. The other I wore to
death on these cursed flinty hills."
"Crow!" cried the Half-breed, with a glance at the moccasin. "Mountain
Crow! And a war shoe!"
"The Crows 'out,'" repeated Ridge, biting his lips. "You see, we are
getting information, though you are so stingy. Come, as your news leads
off so good, continue it. Who are you, I say? And what is your business
where few of us who are regular trappers venture?"
"A trapper?"
"An honest trapper! What did you take us for?--robbers and murderers?"
said the hunter, indignantly.
"Well, I kind o' don't know," rejoined the stranger, with a significant
glance at Cherokee Bill, whose savage eyes were not reassuring like the
other's. "My name is no value out here, four thousand miles from my
folks, I guess; but if you are a regular trapper--"
"I am called the Old Man of the Mountain," said Ridge, sadly rather
than proudly. "I am about the last of the old guard--I fear one of the
oldest men. I am Jim Ridge. That's the young man's best companion out
here, that's called the Yager--same name put on me, too, by the hearing
of it; the Yager of the Yellowstone. When I handled that first in '42,
I bent a trifle under the weight. Them was the grand, good old times!
The sort of men we get now don't grade up with the brand that passed
up to 1850. They don't hunt now--they butcher. They don't trap--they
surround and slaughter. They'll be clearing out a beaver lake with a
diving bell, next! I wonder! Yes, I am the Old Man, the Yager of the
Yellowstones," he repeated, a little piqued at his fame falling on a
dead ear--"Injin or white, they all know this child."
The stranger seemed easier; but, unfortunately, the ghost of a smile on
his wan features was assumed to be impudence.
"Answer, then," went on Ridge, testily, "for I don't want none of your
blood on my knife, though it is itching to be in at your ribs."
"Nonsense. You are neither hasty nor bloodthirsty, Mr. Ridge. One
question from me first, if you please--"
Old Jim waved his hand disgustedly at this polite address, and the
"Mistering."
"I just want to know if you know Mr. Brasher, of Varina?"
"Do I know 'Trading Jake?' Muchly; and ever so long. Those bales are
for him," pointing to a stack against the walls.
"Then I have a message for you, Mr. Ridge," went on the prisoner,
relieved entirely.
"A letter?"
"The letter is lost; I ate it up when a gang of Digger Indians played
the joke of making me exchange a good outfit for these rags. Luckily,
they thought it was a talisman, and that to cook me and eat me with
that medicine paper in my gullet was an error, and so I got away,
together with my gun. But I know the contents, and they are important,
Mr. Brasher said."
"Fire away!" said Ridge, more and more thawed out towards the speaker.
"But first, some proof I am not being deceived."
"Hang the man!" laughed Jim, amused at being an unknown to one person
in this world. "Show him my brand on those packs, Bill."
"'J. Ridge'--hem! Well," said the captive, "this is the communication:
'The man they call _Captain Kidd_ and a gang of border troublers slid
out of town with tools, stores, and firearms galore, and I want the
Old Man of the Mountain to know that they are bound for the Big Placer
in the Yellowstone Region.' That is what I was to tell every regular
hunter and trapper until Mr. Ridge heard of it."
"Oh, call me Jim! I am much obliged to Brasher. Well, stranger, you are
too deep for me if this is a getup of your'n. Resarve your own secret,
and meanwhile there's sage ile and snake grease for your bruises, and
fire and meat and Injin 'taters; and you can have whiskey if your
appetite calls that way. Fall on! As the soldiers say."
Then vacating the fireside, he drew aside with the Indian, and the two
eyed the captive inquisitorially while he devoured the supper, which
represented probably two or three meals he had missed.
"Drink free!" said Ridge, offering a horn cup. "You need fear nothing
now. One who has shared the trapper's hospitality has to be a precious
mean skunk to deserve kicking out."
"Nobody's going to say a word against your hospitality," retorted the
stranger, sarcastically. "The feed's capital, and the liquor a reviver,
for, though a temperance man, I need it as medicine, I can tell you.
But the way the trapper introduces guests to his hospitality by
shooting a welcome at him, trussing him up like a turkey, and tossing
him down on the floor like a roll of carpet to be beaten, is not what a
simple traveller from the Atlantic seaboard approves of."
"Stranger," said Ridge, sitting down on a buffalo skull stool covered
luxuriously with furs which a Russian grand duchess might give her
earrings to possess, "this is our home round here by all the rights the
first discoverer and the constant defender may claim. My _companyero_
was not to know with what intentions you were making yourself a
neighbour. You may think yourself lucky that his shot did not pierce
your brain or heart, and that he did not use the slipknot of your
lariat to decorate the nearest larch with you. It is necessary that
our mountain fort should be kept hid from everybody. Gentlemen like
Mr. Brasher do not know it, sir. Tell me your name, show that you are
no evildoer, and after you have rested you may equip yourself and go
your way. We can trust to your being led out, hoodwinked as you were
brought, to maintain our secret. So much I will do for Trading Jake's
messenger. Anything else, stranger?"
The ex-prisoner was surprised at so much confidence, and the promise to
place him on a fair footing for the task upon his shoulders.
"You will do this, eh?" cried he with frank joy; "A good rifle instead
of that broken musket, food and powder, clothes against this searching
air?"
"Jim Ridge never yet broke his word," remarked the Cherokee, for the
first time relenting in his suspicion so as to address his late captive.
"My name goes for nothing, but I will tell you my mission out here, and
why your gift will put me under a great obligation. Besides, you have
the experience which I lack, and who knows but that your comments on my
story may be of service."
"Make yourself at home, then," said the old mountaineer, pleasantly;
"there's a pipe for you, too, and the night is only begun. We so seldom
have company, eh, Bill? that a couple of hours for a storyteller will
be a real treat. Stranger, we listen, if the grub has put you in pretty
good shape again."
"One moment," demurred the other; "you talk of the need to guard this
place from spies. Now, I can't compliment you on your vigilance and
prudence when you squat here in the broad firelight with the cavern
gaping open yonder--an Indian boy could riddle us with arrows."
Ridge laughed.
"If you don't mind getting up and coming to the opening, you shall see
that--but not so near the brink--the crust is shaky. See, how readily
I detach a chunk. Don't lean forward. Look forth--it is a clear night."
It was serene and lovely. The stars shone unveiled, and that was all in
the deep indigo black, where, beneath, the deep-rooted pines could be
heard slowly swaying, not seen, like a field of grain in a zephyr.
"I see nothing."
"No trees, no rocks?"
"No. Nothing but stars."
"You would see nothing but stars if you were to step after that stone.
Hark!"
Jim trundled the rocky lump out of the cave; but not the faintest sound
or echo betokened that it touched bottom or anywhere.
"Heaven preserve us!" ejaculated the guest, recoiling. "'Tis the
Bottomless Pit!"
"Pretty nigh," answered the mountaineer, laughing; "that's fallen five
thousand feet. This is not a precipice sheer down, but a peak hollowed
out--a cut-off, _we_ say; the Injins say a devil's jump. Stranger, on
this side, we shall not be invaded. Now for your tale! Stir up the fire
brightly, Bill."
"Yes, for it is a dark and horrid story, gentlemen."