AN INGENIOUS INTRODUCTION.
More uneasy about the Indians, whom Captain Kidd knew to be embittered
when repulsed at an almost victory, and about the trappers whom he
rightly conjectured to have interfered to save the Canadians from
annihilation, he moved leisurely to the rendezvous with the convict in
order to examine the ground. But nothing was visible to accentuate
his fears, and, spying the fantastic block of lava stone in question,
he hastened to congratulate Dick on the splendid lie by which the
gold seekers were given the credit of saving the Bois Brulés. As he
expected, the Englishman, not having his own cause to move slowly, was
already at the tryst. At all events, a figure in all points resembling
his was before the stone, clearly outlined against it, though he was
puzzled to account for a second object, human in form, but of an
abnormal flesh colour, like a "raw" corpse, pendant a foot or two from
the ground as if hung to a jutting point of the natural obelisk.
"Fool that I am!" suddenly ejaculated Captain Kidd, who had stopped
with a chill to the heart, "It's the strange light before nightfall
that is giving me a scare! Why, it's nothing but a young bear that he
has killed and flayed!--Bear's steak for supper! Ha, ha!"
Indeed, with their peculiar long paws, nothing more resembles a man,
excepting cousin monkey, than uncle bear, slim with wintering.
On a nearer approach, any doubt about Dick's identity with the form
calmly leaning on the rifle was impossible. Nevertheless, the silence
and the immobility of the bandit appalled the other, and the hanging
figure, drumming with its heels on the upright stone as the spinning
and unspinning of its cord of support oscillated it, increased in
ghastliness and its likeness to _homo_ rather than _ursa_.
Pausing again anew, he let himself be attracted to understand the
puzzle, and, as Dick made no movement, far less a reply to his now
frenzied appeal, he darted madly to the butte where the lava stone rose
like a monument. There the explanation was ample.
Some merciless hand had slain the Englishman, beheaded him, and flared
him, with the skin of the neck only left intact, and after suspending
the body like an artist's _écorché_ along the pillar, stuffed the human
hide out with snow so that not a wrinkle showed. The cold had frozen
this effigy into the semblance of a marble statue. Whilst the captain
gazed horrified, some scratches on the obelisk near the suspended
corpse caught his eyes. He read with redoubled apprehension:
"--, known as 'the Sydney Duck,' 'Sydney Dick,' and 'the
Convict,' escaped from Australian prisons, murderer of
Californian miners, of Don Gregorio Peralta, and of his
daughter, Mrs. Filditch, tried, found guilty, and executed
by Us,"
"THE MEN OF THE MOUNTAIN."
"_Hands off!_ This is the buzzard's bait, do you hear?"
Then the drawing of a rifle and crossed knives, and the fur trademarks
of Jim Ridge, Cherokee Bill, and the name "S. G. Filditch," firmly
graven.
At the end of reading this weird death sentence, which was a warning
too, Captain Kidd uttered a terrible execration, and clutching his
rifle and knife, as if he expected the wild justiceers to spring
out upon him from around the monolith, darted frenziedly from the
unhallowed eminence.
But he had no pursuers, and reflection came to him after half an hour's
mad floundering in the snow, that he would be safer among his men than
solitary. Besides, Lottery Paul had probably returned, and might, in
the chiefs absence, preach that doctrine of retreat to the gin palaces
of the frontier which was, on the face of it, superior to the present
outlook. His iron hand could alone contain the bandits if any could.
"Besides," murmured he, "what would 'Dave Steelder' say if he knew me
to turn such a skulk? After all, what a riddance that rough brute is!
As for me, I have had some very close calls, but fortune has carried me
through."
The grey sky was darkening, distant objects were already blending into
compact masses. Luckily, though not a proven trail finder, Kidd had
woodcraft in plenty, and soon hit on the proper homeward direction. On
spying an indubitable mark, he uttered a sigh of gratification, and
hurried to make up for lost time. He judged that within the hour he
would be in camp, when he came upon some fresh and bold prints in the
snow crust, hardening as the night brought coolness. No one could doubt
that they were made by a grizzly bear, not the black or the brown, but
the genuine "Uncle Ephraim" himself. This set the fugitive a-thinking.
A braver man than he does not foresee a meeting with Old Eph. without
pardonable misgiving.
The grizzly or the grisly--according to whether you name him after his
coat or the horror he inspires, is, far more than the lion, the king
of beasts, for he is perfect in courage, in strength, steadiness under
gunfire, and a noble good humour towards his folk. He is, perhaps, the
only animal that dances in sheer love of amusement, and his gambols at
a "bears' party" are the drollest sight a hunter ever knows. It is true
few have looked on and lived to tell. The Rocky Mountains are the home
of the veritable grizzly, and the frequency of his apparition among the
mines of the Sierra Nevada won the title of the Grizzly Bear State for
California.
Captain Kidd recovered from the recent shock that had unhinged him
before a danger that required coolness to temper bravery. He shook his
head like a Newfoundland coming out of the water, and growled.
"This lumbering fool has smelt the camp, and has put himself exactly in
my way back. I wish he had given those Canadians a visit where there
are plenty of dead bodies."
He carefully examined his rifle, slipped in a second bullet in a
greased wad, and resumed his march, but with extreme caution. The
difficulty was not to stumble on his foe, who, with razor sharp claws
six or seven inches long, would make a man look as if he had gone
through a "system of saws" in a mill.
He had proceeded some five hundred yards, so as to nearly get out of
the tangle wood of deciduous trees, distorted and stunted by the cold
winds, when a prolonged cavernous grumbling, arising not far from him,
sent an icy shiver all through him. He stopped short, bent forward,
and took a wary look. Before attaining a clearing, there was a narrow
canyon to cross, profoundly cleft between two perpendicular sides,
two yards deep and twenty paces long. About a third of the way up
this channel, leisurely sprawling on the snow, in which he was partly
embedded on account of his great weight, a grizzly was licking his fore
paws and smoothing pine burrs out of his harsh coat. Suddenly, the
animal winked its little savage eyes, pricked its snub ears up, and,
without glancing round or caring to listen, set to sniffing. Its subtle
scenting faculty had been aroused by some unwonted and consequently
disquieting emanation. Nevertheless, a fact delighting the captain, it
was not he to whom the bear was paying any heed.
"Good luck to the stir in the air that saves me!" he thought. "The
creature never imagines that a man is treading on his tail. 'Tis a
splendid fur coat; but I am not hunting grizzly just at present, thank
you! I don't care for any on my toast!"
Hence, he was taking a backward step and looking about him to try to
manage a circuit to avoid the encounter, when he heard what seemed
an echo, _only a little more so_, of the bear's growl. It came from
behind him, and was so angrily intoned that he was most surprised to
see a second grizzly, no doubt the mate of the first, slouching along
towards him, its head lowered in his track.
To be the shuttlecock between two ursine battledores is one of those
experiences of which few victims narrate the incidents.
The second antagonist was certain to arrive at him by its unerring
scent, and, moreover, was the nearer as well as the larger beast.
To shoot and run for his life was all the course which his fright
counselled, so he lifted his gun, levelled it steadily at the grizzly's
eye, partly veiled by its shaggy fore hair, and pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately, whether the piece had been tampered with, or the snow
had eaten away the barrel, the charge hung fire, and the peculiar
and frightfully loud detonation betokened that the barrel had burst.
Without being wounded, the captain pitched forward head foremost into
the snow, from not meeting the recoil which he had nerved himself to
resist.
Both bears howled together, rattled their claws and gnashed their
teeth, and, with a loud snarling, bounded towards the hapless captain.
Mechanically, he drew his knife, but, on scrambling to his feet,
experienced a fear so inexpressibly appalling that he forgot his
determination to resist to the inevitable death, and leaped away in a
mad scamper.
Accustomed to riding, he was not a good pedestrian; his winter garments
were unsuitable, and he was no longer blessed with youth. Besides,
to get over such ragged ground, and among tough, thorny, scrubby
_conifera_, was impossible for one in blind haste. He could tell by
their breathing that the two bears were nearing him, bound for bound.
He had lost his knife, and his revolver having been torn out of his
belt by a briar too, he was absolutely at the mercy--an unknown
element--of his pursuers. He dared not turn his head; in hunters'
phraseology, he felt them ruffle his hair with their breath; and, in
truth, Old Ephraim and his spouse were not a dozen steps off. His own
hair stood up, spite of a cold perspiration, for he felt that he was
irremediably lost. In two or three minutes, say five at most, he would
become that not unique subject of a well-worn Western epitaph--granting
that he was left in _buriable_ tatters--Unknown man gobbled up by
grizzly.
He was stopped by the inability to make a further move; both bears
reared up, and the least towered a head and shoulders above him. He
was, by the force of education, striving to recall a prayer, when a
human hand unexpectedly clutched him by the collar and dashed him down,
crying in a voice most energetic:
"_Lay_ down, you fool, and give a man a chance to shoot, will you not?"
As the captain again was buried in the snow, two rapid reports of a
gun extinguished in their reverberations the growls of the grizzlies.
Then arose a couple of painful lamentations from their hoarse throats,
and, as Kidd lifted his head, he beheld with stupefied eyes a man
disdainfully pursuing the bears and keeping them "on their run" with
panic by pelting them with snowballs and splinters of ice till they
disappeared over a mound and into some crevice, where the chaser deemed
it good sense not to follow further.
"What is this all?" the gold grabber demanded, sitting up, still half
dazed and wholly incredulous, and speaking Spanish, as one in dire
straits always uses the mother tongue.
"Talk English," responded the other, returning rapidly and recharging
his double-barrelled gun, according to hunters' rules, never to carry
unloaded firearms in a dangerous country. "And don't talk to me of the
courage of the grizzly any more. Are you alive? I mean, are you not
wounded?"
"I am not sure how I am," returned the chief of the gold seekers,
standing with difficulty, and staring at his rescuer.
It was Ranald Dearborn, clad as a regular hunter; but his face was not
burnt and weather beaten yet, like a veteran's, and he had an elegant
and almost dandified air, which his recent conduct belied.
He laughed as the captain brushed himself down, and "tried" all his
joints, doubtingly.
"Where are the bears?" inquired Kidd, anxiously.
"I drove them into a crack that probably leads to their lair. They shed
my shot and my bullet off like rain from a roof; but we may be more
lucky in another attack. Shall we have a turn at them?"
"Thank you very much, but I have had all I want of such diversion. Why,
when they reared, it was like looking up the side of a church! I am
sure their teeth were as long as a hunting knife. Who and what are you,
stranger?"
"A hunter--an Englishman wintering in Canada and hereabouts--came out
to this New World to see some sport."
"Alone!" cried Kidd, in the tone of one addressing a madman. "Stop,
though, I have heard--though I never believed it--that solitary hunters
of your nationality do come here with the notion that buffalo are
merely wild bullocks, the puma a large edition of the domestic cat, and
grizzly himself, a rough badger puffed into balloon size by _pinyon_
fruit. I say, friend," he went on, nervously glancing about, "kindly
lend me your arm as far as my encampment. I am in force here, and
promise you good entertainment. Not a man of my band but will welcome
the preserver of their leader. I owe my life to you doubly; you must
not go away till I shall have acquitted myself of the debt."
"Nonsense! It's all in the day's sport. You would do as much for me, if
it had been the other way about."
"I doubt it--I draw the line at grizzly. But you know that such a
service obliges the doer as much as the receiver. Come along."
"I tell you, I am used to camp down anywhere I feel sleepy. I have no
fear of rheumatism," returned the young man, gaily.
"I beg you to accompany me to my camp, for I am quite lame, and spend
at least a night there."
"Do you insist upon that?" inquired Dearborn, with a singular
expression.
"Certainly; we must drink to our better acquaintance;" dragging him
feverishly along.
"Have your own way."
"You Englishmen are all as rich as you are eccentric, but no man can be
too rich. I may be able to relieve myself of some of my obligation yet."
"Not a word of that! As for accompanying you to your camp, please to
observe that you entreated me to do so."
"I'd force you if I could."
"This is a queer world, and in this wilderness passions rule
unconstrained. Friends overnight shoot at one another at sight at noon
of the morrow! If we ever fall out, mind, you must not blame me, since
I wanted to be left alone, as I came."
"What trash! You are joking in that dry way which we Spanish well
understand. You have saved my life."
"It looks so, does it not? Still, I should feel more certain on that
point, and rate myself more of a hero if we had those bearskins--one
apiece!"
"I'll send twenty men to track them to the death, and you shall have
both. But come on."
Leaning upon the stranger's arm in an affectionate manner, Captain
Kidd pressed on as nimbly as his shattered nerves and really crippled
state permitted. Not one look behind did he give, and yet, had he been
able to see the other side of the rising ground, over which Ranald
had driven the terrified bruins, he would have been given food for
reflection.
In fact, sitting on their tails, without their heads, which they held
in their paws, the bears were laughing with supplementary inner mouths
belonging to quite human countenances. These bore a strong resemblance
to those of Cherokee Bill and Jim Ridge. They, of few men, had the
necessary knowledge of grizzly's fife and demeanour to play the part
which had completely deceived Captain Kidd, and would have succeeded
with a more skilled hunter. Presently the two disrobed themselves,
flung away the osier rods which had swelled out the skins, packed the
latter up, and winked drolly at one another.
"I say, Bill, mind you see the editor of the _Rocky Mountain
Squelcher_," observed the old trapper, humorously, "and insert the item
that Mr. R. Dearborn was introduced to Captain Kidd by Mr. and Mrs. G.
Bear!"