HOW "FRENCH PAUL" GOT HURT.
"I am quite sure," said Kidd, "that the stories told to frighten
outsiders from the district, which lies there away, are invented by the
reds and by the few whites who have explored it, for the same end--to
keep its metallic treasures, perchance those of precious stones;
besides, here we shall perish in the storms. That horrid one nearly
laid us out stiff; I want to escape them. Within that charmed valley
volcanoes maintain the temperature of spring; grass is eternal for
cattle; the unfrozen ground can be broken up; the water always runs
for gold washing! I say, guide us into that natural garden; and in two
weeks, should no gold be found, you can depart. You shall name your
terms; and, with the goods and dollars, go your way. If we find gold,
you shall have your lot as a member of the band--reduced by losses,
so that the shares are not unreasonably many--as guide, and as the
leader's partner!"
"You are very frank. You do not understand that an English gentleman
does not let money influence him--"
"Bah, bah! An _hidalgo_, ay, a grandee of old Spain goes gold hunting
and never dreams of a reproach to his blue blood, for the royal metal
ennobles its seekers. That apart, if you are here for adventure, I
foresee that you will have no lack of that--more mustard than beef!"
"Allow me another remark: whatever my taste as regards money, there is
one thing I love more--my freedom."
"Great heavens! Then I am putting you in the place to be the freest in
the band. What a pilot is at sea, a guide is to a hunters' band. The
captain himself has to submit to many things onerous, which the guide
escapes. He gives no one an account of his doings when he has been
absent; he leaves at any hour and stays as long as he likes--the band
must await him or go on to the rendezvous which he arranged. You cry
'halt!' when you are tired, or hungry, or athirst, and we halt under
the tree you point out. Freedom? If I were not the captain, I'd rather
be the guide, upon my honour!"
"If that is how a guide can act," remarked Dearborn, as if wavering,
"I don't mind agreeing. It is fully understood that I accept out of
kindness, and because, having saved your life, I wish to complete the
work, and not leave you to be overwhelmed by a blizzard on the very
threshold of the Enchanted Valley, as you esteem it!"
The captain joined in the laugh.
"More frankness," he proceeded. "My men are rough rogues, not worth the
loop that will finish them, and I shall be the happier with a genuine
gentleman the more at my side. Whatever your conditions, I gladly will
pay them. Is it settled?"
"You shall be shown the Yellowstone Hole as if I were opening a drawing
room door, captain."
"When may we start?"
"Tomorrow, sunrise."
"That will be capital, for I expect a little reinforcement to come in."
"Then I shall give the word to start and go when I see you at dawn,"
observed the hunter, taking up his rifle as he rose.
"Do you mean you are going so untimely?"
"Yes. Look here, I haven't asked a question about the reinforcement you
mention, though that interests the guide. So don't you put any to me,"
returned Dearborn, ironically.
"Quite right. But whilst you may keep back what you please from the
chief, he must confide everything in the head scout. I am adding some
women and children to the band. They will weaken us, but be a tower of
strength by and bye. I can say no more at present."
"You need not have said so much."
"When you see them you will see all the women--that is, except a
companion of my dear niece--a Scotch lady, who came to our camp for
refuge from the Indians who destroyed her party."
"A regular 'squaw' band," remarked the Englishman, naturally enough
contemptuous if he had already imbibed the hunter's sentiments.
The captain approved with a smile, but Doña Rosario seemed to frown,
though she appreciated properly the sincerity of the speaker's raillery.
"Good hunting till tomorrow," said the bandit, seeing his friend and
partner clear to the outpost, and announcing his _status_ on the way to
all comers.
Without waiting for the captain's return, Rosario returned to her nook
in the rock.
"Good news, Ulla!" she exclaimed to the other girl, who was in some
anxiety. "I have had a perfect outbreak with our tyrant, but I have
seen your brave friend. What daring to walk into the camp among so many
villains! I declare I am quite proud of him myself, and you may well
be jealous till I have some idol of my own. Cheer up! Happiness is
beginning to smile on us!"
The leader returned slowly to the tent. On the way he met the
Carcajieu, who was walking up and down sulkily as if he disapproved of
the new addition to the party, and the quasi-superiority accorded him.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing new yet!" was the grumbling reply.
"None of the scouts come in?"
"Part have, bringing what is left of Sydney Dick in two pieces. The
Injins have been playing high old pranks with him, hide and head! And
the rest are probing the snowdrifts for the Frenchman. It will be a
windfall for us that blew him into fifty feet of never-melting snows!"
"You don't seem to waste any affection on him!"
"It's a liar who'd say so."
"I love him no better. His treacherous face imported good to no one.
But we are in no such luck to be rid of him, too."
In taking "the last squint" around, they saw pitch pine knot torches
flashing on the plain.
"What did I say? The boys have found him, you be sure."
Retracing their steps to the pickets, they found the torches coming on
as slowly as in a funeral procession.
"One can never tell," observed Joe; "maybe they've had a brush with the
Injins."
"Not in the dark, lieutenant. Besides, those red devils must be still
stiff with the freezing. It's those confounded bears, wild at having
been robbed of me."
It was quite half an hour before the solemnly silent watch brought
the torches near enough for their light, falling on the scouts, to
reveal that they carried on a handbarrow of pine poles a figure vaguely
resembling a man's.
"Have you found the Frenchman?"
"Yes, captain, but in damaged condition!"
"Do you mean to say he is hurt?"
"Have a little patience--or lend a hand, if you are in such a hurry!"
cried the men.
They laid their burden down tenderly enough by a watch fire.
"A little more gently, burn your bones!" groaned Lottery Paul, throwing
off the buffalo robe coats and blankets kindly laid over him; "Don't
you want to leave me one whole bone among 'em."
"What's come to you, friend?" queried the captain.
"A stupid question; better ask _who_ came _at_ me?--I can reply to
that, after a fashion."
"Thunder! My poor boy, your accident seems to have soured your usually
sweet temper."
"Oh, you call that an accident, do you, old man? Much obliged for an
explanation of your notion of an accident. What's your name for the
fire of a battery of nine-pounders and a charge of dragoons?"
"Why don't you speak out! Tell us, or go to death your own way--if we
can't do any good to you."
"I know you can. Hand over the whisky!"
"You ass! That would be a gulp of 'sudden death' in fact."
"More nonsense! How do you know what state I am in before I tell you? I
am dying of thirst, that's just what ails me--so pass along the bottle,
or I'll speak nothing."
"Give it him, and let him choke himself," said Kidd, enraged at the
obstinacy.
Paul snatched the bottle and drank a long draught, his laugh mingling
with the gurgling.
"Whoop!" cried he, dropping the nearly emptied flask with a grin of
content. "I feel better already. A poor idea you have of a scout's
outfit, to send that cahoot out without a drink in the herd!"
"Will you talk up now, you brute?"
"Orders received for a Fourth of July oration!"
"Well, where are you hurt, to begin with?"
"All over--a bullet through the right arm, another grazed my ribs, the
small of my back caught a rap from the butt end of a rifle, and I offer
a complete collection of scratches and bruises from a drop into a snow
pit, where a fire had melted it twenty feet--"
"My fire," ejaculated the captain.
"Oh, have I to thank you for that trick! My spirit must be pretty
tightly boxed up in my body, after all, not to have been bounced out.
However, it looks as if I should get round after a bit, and then
somebody will ask who exploded a giant cartridge next door to his
blanket."
"Who?"
"The man that served me so. Do you fancy I have been taking myself by
the throat and levelling the snow with me!"
"If you go on with such a rigmarole, we shall understand very little."
"That's so, captain. To put it short--you sent me out on the scout.
That's admitted?--Good. I spread myself to no purpose; not a trace on
the snow where even a witch wolf must have left some print. It got to
be after sun darkening, and my wolfish gnawing under my belt set me
campwards, a little careless I am afraid, for somebody heard me, and I
heard a nasty threatening voice challenge me with a 'Who goes there?'"
"'Twas a man," cried Captain Kidd.
"Unless the prairie dogs talk English," rejoined the Parisian, laughing
through a grimace of pain. "'It's a friend,' I answered, getting my gun
round to have first shot. 'Where from?' Here was a chance to get in
some big lie; but I thought a white man would be best bumped off by a
boast of our turnout. 'From the Montana Gold hunters! We're two hundred
strong, not twenty miles yonder.' 'I am no friend of scoundrels of your
kidney,' said this particular fellow. It looks as if he knew all about
us. 'Pull up and pull out while your scalp is on!' 'How long since you
staked out this territory,' said I, catching a glimpse of the muzzle of
his piece. 'I am not going to quit till you show me your papers,' and I
pulled the trigger. But the worst of it is, that when I could spy his
gun, he saw mine, and we fired together, with the shade of preference
to the stranger. That's about while I felt the ball through my arm, and
my gun had to drop. I had it up quick in my other hand, and leaped on
the shooter. But another bullet came on me in the side, from the flash,
and I was stretched on my back instantly. That fellow rushed right up
to me, and held me down with his foot till I had received this speech:
'You have your dose. The others will now get theirs; and, if it is a
little slow coming, it will be kept hot!'"
"The man said that?" cried Kidd.
"Clearly. That made me suppose, cap'n, that some of your acquaintances
are hovering round, and will stir you up yet."
"Go on," muttered the bandit chief, frowning, and becoming thoughtful.
"So did he--go on! I tried to get out my knife to learn how thick his
leggins were, when he turned me over and set to kicking me as if he was
bound to wear his boots out in the shortest possible time. I was rolled
over and over like a log towards the river, and he yelling out the most
abusive language. 'Take that, thief! And that, _pícaro!_ And that,
_voleur de trappes!_ And that, assassin!' There were enough and to
spare for ten apiece to all you rascals in the camp, captain included!
_Luckily_, in his blind fury, he kicked me over the ends of some burnt
logs, and down I fell into the pit which that fire of your'n had
melted. I thought it was an Injin b'ar trap when I came to my senses,
and I climbed out mighty rapid for fear either b'ar or Injin would drop
in on me. Somehow I crawled in the proper direction, afeared to raise
a woo-oo for Dick; and at last the boys hit upon me. Good boys, though
I have swore some at 'em. They deserve their quenchers, and, old man,
I'll take the balance in that flask."
He was given more drink; spirits is the panacea of such men.
"So," said Kidd, "you were unable to fulfil my charge, and have brought
back no information beyond this attack on you?"
"I saw nobody but that one man. If he who sent the second shot had
joined in that 'booting,' the boys would have only picked up a pancake."
"This is painfully strange!"
"Oh, I think it strangely painful!"
"What kind of man was your assailant?"
"That's the puzzle," replied the railing Parisian. "By the voice, a
white man. But I did not see him. It was so dark, and he was on me like
a tiger! And then he kept me rolling over and over, so that I had not
one fair peep at his nose. I shall only know him again by the length of
his foot and the tone of his voice."
"If that's all, bah!--We'll take care of him, mates."
After the excitement of his telling the misadventure, French Paul was
dull and lifeless; then he raved with pain, for he had not a dollar's
breadth of his body without a bruise. Yet he bore the dressing and
anointing with crude kerosene oil and snake juice with fortitude. Next
begging a drink, and "freezing" to the bottle, he went to sleep drunk.
His last words were: "Don't you fret, boys--any of you that I owe money
to. I shall come up smiling; for him that's borned to be hanged won't
be kicked to death no how."
Meanwhile Captain Kidd strayed into his tent very thoughtfully after
having enjoined Corky Joe to exercise the utmost vigilance.
For years upon years this desperado had struggled against society,
and sported with all laws and regulations; but now he saw the horizon
circle in upon him. He could not drive away the foreboding that the
hour of a terrible punishment was approaching. All night long he
walked up and down in the tent, revolving the most fantastic projects.
A few minutes before sunrise, a man coughed at the tent opening in
that warning way customary where men sleep with weapons in the hand,
and might, if abruptly awakened, put a bullet _mechanically_ in the
innocent arouser. The cloth was lifted and a man appeared, whom Captain
Kidd greeted with joy.
It was Dearborn.
At least here was a follower who punctually kept his word.