THE WOMEN'S CAMP.
Filditch and his son, with the other whites, crossed the gorge and
proceeded towards the bandits' camp, where some smoke was ascending in
a mass.
Men on the frontier are kept in so nearly the same condition by the
similitude of their habits, food, exercises, occupations, that when
a race for life ensues, the fugitive, with a reasonable start beyond
gunshot, is rarely overtaken. In this case, Kidd and his eight or ten
companions rather gained than lost by the pursuers being forced, for
prudence sake, not to rush on straight, but to circle each large stone
and tree stump where the enemy might have halted to fire.
At the end of the canyon Kidd's party were not only well ahead, but
they had even halted more than once to breathe freely. Two had fallen
and been secured, for the Indians had set up a yell of delight.
"Cheer up!" cried the captain, "We are out of the valley, and
the golden tract is only just beyond. The thing is fixed for our
satisfaction after all if we only press on pretty stiff."
But the words were hardly out of his pale lips and beginning to
inspirit his band as they emerged from the jaws of the long trough
before cheers arose behind them. From the high points Ridge and a few
Piegans saw a numerous corps of cavalry sweep round from the southeast,
clear the spurs of the east bluff, and gallop through the mad root
swamp to intercept the flying men.
Nevertheless, good cavaliers as were these Mexicans of Peralta, the
treacherous morass soon hampered and terrified the horses, and the
troop was thrown into disarray.
This sight warmed the frozen heart of Kidd once more.
"They are only 'greasers,'" cried he, scornfully. "And, after all,
better to perish having our revenge on them than waiting for those
murderous savages to come up. Who'll come on with me? Won't the fear of
hellish torture make any backward spirit brave? For the golden land,
right through the yallerfaces! Hurrah, boys!"
Whilst hesitating, two bullets of several shots whistled into the
bodies of a pair of his companions. The pursuers had arrived within
range. At this, more potent than the harangue, the gold grabbers ran
at the heels of their leader, straight along the firm ground forming
a natural bridge in the bog, firing at the floundering horsemen and
yelling to increase the alarm of the steeds.
Five ran the gauntlet successfully, though each was wounded by the
Mexicans' cutlasses, so close were the encounters. But Kidd seemed to
bear a charmed life. He turned, his bosom swelling with exultation. All
the foes were on the other side of him. The Yellowstone Region was at
his foot. Surely in his bounding heart he had not a doubt that he was
destined to conceal himself among the wonders in some enchanted cave,
in some petrified forest, in some hollow under a waterfall and baffle
the Yager of the Yellowstone himself.
Indeed, the trampling horses cut up the quaking morass; black water
and yellow slime oozed up and covered the grass. Where the bandits had
leaped along the mud rose, or the calamus root was sinking as if pulled
down by the hands of elves. The subtle obstacle was mysterious. All the
Indians paused on the solid ground, whilst Ridge and the trappers alone
were cool enough to assist the Mexicans to where they stood.
To add to the horror, bodies of the Crows slain in the previous battle,
till now submerged in the pitchy, sulfurous fen, slowly bubbled up, so
besmeared as but dimly to suggest the shapes of men.
Kidd and his companions, among whom was Margottet, the only Half-breed,
had impudently stopped, the swamp between. They were the more plainly
discernible as at their back the steam from a water volcano formed a
white veil.
Suddenly the wind died away. There was audible a mournful, tremendous
sound in the haunted realm, like a giant's breathing; it was the
pumping underground of the indescribable forces to extract and drive
to the surface tons upon tons of water for the colossal hot water
fountains, whose heat and moisture tempered the atmosphere even here.
Kidd made a contemptuous gesture, turned, and leisurely led the way
over the few score yards between the swamp's edge and the lovely
outskirts of an ever vernal wood. Already they caught glimpses of
startled but unterrified wild animals under beautiful boughs, fruit
laden, staring incredulously at the bloodstained, smoke blackened
strangers.
All at once they felt an excessive rise in temperature. They began
streaming with perspiration, and their wounds re-opened and bled
profusely. At each step a hollow sound arose. Then one foot, heavier
than another, sank as in a crust of snow in a calcareous soil. It was
no sooner drawn forth than the other was worse embogged, and those who
came to their comrade's help began to be mired. Kidd stopped; he looked
round to order a change of route, when a scream of terror burst from
his and every lip, frightening the animals into flight and curdling
the blood of the observers at the canyon's mouth. Margottet, both feet
entangled, had broken bodily through the unsafe surface, and where he
had been sucked down a flaming dust had been belched up, exactly as
when demons vanish down a trap on the stage.
With one accord, like men do instinctively upon thin ice, the wretches
threw themselves flat on the ground. With the same impulse--an
unaccountable one, stronger than mere interest in their disappeared
comrade--all heads were turned to the gap where he had found a gateway
to death. Blinded at first, their vision became accustomed to the
radiance that emanated from within. It seemed to them that they peered
into a chasm where a lake of pure glowing fire slowly moved in sullen
upheaval. Meanwhile, the heat increased. They were like men who had
crept into a limekiln for warmth, and by mischance were stupefied
by the fumes and were being roasted. They rolled away hither and
thither, only thinking to avoid contact, for the weight of two bodies
concentrated on one space might cause the repetition of Margottet's
fate. Their hair and beards were singed, their wounds were dried up now
and cauterised. They shrieked for help and mercy and that they would
surrender. Then unendurable anguish made them swoon. And helplessly
they were dragged thence by the lassoes of the Mexicans, who ventured
into the swamp to execute their deliverance this way.
"One of the wonders of the Yellowstone, gentlemen," said Jim Ridge. "I
never try to enter the Park that road."
"A manifestation of the Spirit of Fire," said Red Knife. "Where the
spirits of our fathers rove in enjoyment no such evil things could be
allowed to enter."
All was ended here. Leaving the miserable bandits to be brought on at
leisure, the chiefs retraced their steps to ascertain before nightfall
how the detachment sent to attack or outwit the reserve of gold
grabbers had executed their task. The column of smoke thence arising
must have a meaning.
The women's camp was in a flutter. Not only had all seen white jets of
smoke from the firearms on the opposite slope, amid patches of green,
brown, and grey, but Joe had, in passing among the captives, acquainted
Miss Maclan with the news that the final moment had come. Now or never
the joined forces of mongrels and ruffians were to be crushed on the
sill of the Yellowstone Region.
Suddenly Miss Maclan beckoned several of the more energetic women to
her side. Ferreting in one of the wagons, she had discovered packages
of weapons: there were cutlasses enough to arm all of them.
But hardly had she ranged the Amazons in defence before the war whoop
of the Cherokee split all ears as he and his band clambered upon the
plateau. It needed no more to start the ruffians into a rout, and those
deliverers not gone in hot pursuit were being thanked by the tearful
women.
In three days the victors had reposed from the strife, and the red men
feasted. In that period, too, the strange force from the north arrived,
being a band of Mormon "destroying angels," or police, in search of the
slayer of Gideon Kidd. Their captain was added to the tribunal formed
to try Kidd and Steelder, Jim's prisoner, sole survivors of the gold
grabbers' corps.
Both denied the charge that they were allies, forgers, horse thieves,
vendors of whisky to the Indians, and that they detained the women,
except to preserve them from the savages. But at the appearance of
the Carcajieu in the witness stand Kidd trembled and turned pale,
muttering, "I am a lost man!"
"Starr, detective," muttered Dave Steelder, only less disconcerted.
"Just so. John E. Starr, Chief of the U.S. Detective Police of
Louisiana," said the ex-Carcajieu, forcibly. "I have been hanging close
on you a long while, marking down everything you said and did. If you
will allow me, Judge, I'll _valet_ for these rogues."
Without giving time for anybody's opposition, he sprang upon the
two stupefied prisoners, tore off the false hair that muffled their
features, and rubbed their faces with his handkerchief, dipped in some
antigrease liquid. The "cleaning up process," as a miner would say,
resulted in a transformation even more remarkable than that of the
Government official from the bandit's lieutenant.
The judges immediately pronounced the pair worthy of death; only they
decreed that Kidd, or Hank Brown, or Mathias Corvino, should be the
Indians' prize for torture, and Steelder, or Don Miguel Tadeo, simply
hanged. At this, whilst Don Miguel smiled feebly, the rage of his
accomplice burst forth:
"Give me over to those red fiends!" he roared. "You must think me the
bigger villain, and I am not. I'll leave it to Bill Williams here. Is
any man so base as he who tracked a harmless old man up in the Lonely
Passes, and assassinated him, not for any grudge, but to possess the
secret lure by which beavers are decoyed into traps. Yes, gentlemen,
Don Miguel Tadeo, over thirty years ago, was plain 'Spanish Mike,' the
hanger-on at the Kansas trading forts. It was he who stole, upon old
Bill Williams and murdered him. Look in the deerskin shirt he wears,
and in the crescent piece at the armpit, which is double, you will
find the very recipe for mixing the beaver medicine, taken from the
old trapper's warm body. Now, am I to be torn to pieces for an Injin
holiday, and this cowardly slayer to be let off with a clean, easy,
smoothly greased rope? Come, Judge Lynch, fair play!"
All eyes turned towards Bill Williams, whose features were strongly
convulsed. By that moment of inattention the wretched Don Miguel
endeavoured to profit. He burst away from the guards, and bounded
thence in the only direction open. Alas, it led to the brink of the
abyss, for the tribunal was held at the Medicine Rock.
With a savage yell, the trapper's son leaped after him. The Californian
halted on the giddy verge. During that wavering the avenger reached
him, stabbed him, removed his scalp, lashed him in the face with it, so
that the blood blinded him, and, at the dagger point, goaded him on, on!
"Without pity for that old man, expect none now!" hissed the chief.
"Over! And be the sandworm's pickings!"
The unfortunate man walked into the air, and fell with a prolonged
scream.
Bill sat down on a projecting crag, muffled, his face in his blanket,
and seemed to sob convulsively. The white men regarded the mute
figure with awe and surprise. Taking advantage of this emotion, a
dozen Blackfeet rushed upon Corvino at a sign from Red Knife, and
overpowering him, despite a fierce resistance, bore him away to an
unspeakable fate.
EPILOGUE.--Sir Ranald and Ulla Maclan returned to the old country to
wed. But the memory of their American adventures does not fade, and
cannot perish and the parting words of the old hunter haunt them.
"The men with the felling axes and the railroad spike drivers are
tracking me up but I have not turned cold round the heart yet. I'll
name a big, bold mountain peak after you, sir, and a pure and pretty
lake after you, lady, and send you the newspaper with particulars. I've
nicked my rifle to that effect."
Leon, or Lewis, and his sister accompanied their father and Don
Gregorio to the latter's farms in Lower California, and dwell happily
there.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Red River Half-Breed, by Gustave Aimard