THE ARROW MESSAGE.
Percy Vere explained this mission to the old hunter. His father had been
missing for years. He was an eccentric character, and professed
spiritualism, astrology, ventriloquism, and kindred sciences, dabbling a
little in magic and chemistry. In fact, he was a universal genius—a
jack-of-all-trades, and not doing well with any.
Percy’s mother was a woman of ability and good sense, a first rate
milliner, and her industry kept the wolf, which the father’s
eccentricities brought to the door, away. In other words, she was
obliged to support herself and son, and often furnish money to the
genius, who could not make it for himself with all his diverse talents.
He did not appear to be able to concentrate his forces so as to produce
any good from them. He was full of wild theories and startling
speculations, but he failed signally whenever he attempted to put them
to an application.
His wife expressed her opinion of him freely one day, and told him she
could no longer expend her savings in his wild schemes. He replied that
it was the fate of genius to be misunderstood, that he was destined to
be a great man, and she would live to see it; and having uttered this
ambiguous prophecy, left her.
He did not return the next day, or the next—a year passed away without
bringing Guy Vere home. His wife became alarmed at his prolonged
absence. She reproached herself with being too harsh with him and having
driven him away from her. He was a handsome man, and she had cherished a
warm affection for him, which his eccentricities had not destroyed. She
feared that she had driven him to commit suicide. But no tidings came of
his death.
She was obliged to keep her little millinery shop going for the support
of herself and son, and her sister’s child, who being left an orphan,
fell to her care. This was Percy Cute—who was just one year younger than
his cousin, his mother having been so pleased with the name of her
sister’s child, that she had bestowed it upon her own.
The little shop prospered, and the boys grew in years. Mrs. Vere could
not drive the image of her husband from her mind. If she could have
satisfied herself that he was dead, she would have been more content,
but she could not do that.
The impression among Guy’s neighbors when he was at home, was that he
was not in his right mind—“Luny,” they called him.
But many years passed away before she got any tidings of the missing
man, and then it came in a very vague shape.
Percy Vere got an Omaha _Herald_ one day, which had been sent as an
exchange to a St. Louis paper, and in it was the advertisement of an
astrologer who called himself “Professor Guy.”
He took it home to his mother, and said to her, “That’s father!”
These words put her all in a flutter. She took the paper and scanned the
advertisement eagerly.
“What makes you think so?” she asked.
“Father’s name was Guy, and he was a ‘professor’ of astrology!”
She smiled. “He was a professor of almost everything.”
“Suppose I go and see if it is my father,” he suggested.
She pondered over this.
“Would you know him, do you think?”
“Oh, yes, if the picture you have in your locket is any thing like him.”
“It was when it was taken.”
She took out the locket, which she wore constantly around her neck,
sprung it open, and regarded the two portraits it contained earnestly,
for it held her miniature likeness as well as his.
“I have not changed much,” she said, “and perhaps he has not, either. I
should really like to know if he is alive. Suppose I was to write to
this Professor Guy?”
Percy, who was a bright youth, shook his head dissentingly.
“If he is staying away of his own accord, it is no use to write to him
to come back,” he replied.
She breathed a sigh. “I suppose not,” she said.
“But if I was to go after him and have a talk with him, I might prevail
upon him to come back.”
Mrs. Vere was impressed by these words, but she answered: “How could I
trust you so far away from home?”
He smiled, and drew himself proudly up.
“Don’t you think I am big enough to take care of myself?”
She surveyed his tall, graceful figure, with a mother’s pride, saying:
“Perhaps; but you are so young.”
“I’m seventeen, and I feel quite a man.”
“But I don’t like to trust you so far from home alone.”
“Oh! I needn’t go alone; Percy can go with me.”
Mrs. Vere laughed.
“A great protection he would be—another boy like yourself!” she cried.
“There, there—let us not talk any more about it.”
But they did talk about it upon several occasions afterward, and Mrs.
Vere’s desire to hear from her missing husband overcame all other
considerations, and she consented to Percy’s request to go in search of
him. She thought that the sight of his boy would induce him to return
home.
Her business had proved prosperous, as I have said, and she was able to
fit out the boys in good style. She hung the locket that contained her
own and husband’s likeness around her son’s neck, and bade him a tearful
“good speed.”
The boys took passage upon a steamboat bound for Omaha, and steamed up
the Big Muddy, as the Missouri is called by the dwellers on its banks,
and reached that ambitious city in due season.
Upon making inquiries, Percy Vere learned that Professor Guy had found
Omaha dull for the exercise of his profession, and had joined a party of
adventurers—a mixture of hunters and gold-seekers—and gone with them to
Fort Benton.
The very eccentricity of this proceeding was a convincing proof to Percy
that this Professor Guy was indeed his father So he wrote to his mother,
and then he and Percy Cute sailed up the river in one of the
light-draught steamboats.
They reached Fort Benton without misadventure, but here, instead of
being at the end of their journey, they found it was just the
starting-point. The party to which the Professor had attached himself
had taken the trail that led into the wilderness, and it was necessary
to follow it, or abandon the search.
Percy Vere chose the former alternative, for he could never think of the
latter, and Percy Cute was always of his way of thinking—in fact,
thinking was irksome to his sluggish nature.
“I just tumble to any thing you say,” he told his cousin. “Follow your
leader—that’s my maxim. You lead and I’ll follow. Say! we might have
some high old fun among the Injuns, and bears, and things. Let’s invest
in a revolver and bowie-knife, and travel on our muscle!”
So Percy Vere, filled with a true spirit of boyish adventure, wrote his
intentions to his mother, and he and Cute made their preparations for a
journey into the wilderness.
At this juncture of affairs they made the acquaintance of the old
hunter, Gummery Glyndon. They told him their story, (or rather young
Vere did, for he was the spokesman on all occasions) and he promised to
aid them, and fulfilled his promise by attaching them to the surveying
party, though in the capacity of chain bearers; but the boys did not
mind that.
Such an opportunity to penetrate into the Indian country was not to be
neglected, and the first Percy, who was treasurer, wished to husband
their means, for there was no telling how long their search might last,
or whither it would lead them.
They made rapid journeys at first, as a portion of the “Northern Pacific
Railroad” had already been surveyed, and they were to take it up at, or
near, that point, where it was to connect in a south-easterly direction
with the “Union Pacific.”
As they passed the different Government forts their escort was changed,
until they were joined by Lieutenant Gardiner and his squad, from Fort
Walla Walla. He was to remain with them until they were through the
Yakima country.
Hitherto their journey had led through the land of the Nez Perces, who
were a friendly tribe, and they had been undisturbed; but when they made
this new camp Gummery Glyndon told them they might now expect trouble
from the Indians.
“There’s three tribes through here,” he said, “and there ain’t much
choice between ’em. There’s the _Cayuses_, the _Yakimas_, and the
_Umatillas_—a pesky set of murdering thieves the lot of ’em. They all
belong to the great Snake Nation, I believe—red sarpints, every mother’s
son of ’em.”
When he returned from his hunt he told them that he had seen “Indian
sign.”
“There’s Injuns watching us, and we shall hear from them,” he said.
“We’ll have to keep a sharp watch to-night, or they’ll stampede our
animals.”
The lieutenant and the surveyors did not neglect this warning. They had
great confidence in the old hunter’s judgment.
When the supper was disposed of the camp was placed in as good a
condition of defense as the locality would permit. The ground had been
well selected; it was a little grove on the river’s bank, a kind of
oasis among the cliffs, which rose beetling upon either side,
precipitously, and, apparently, inaccessible. These cliffs were some
distance—a long rifle-shot—from the little grove, and a kind of rocky
valley lay between them, devoid of vegetation in many places, where the
hard rocks cropped up. Through this valley must the foe come, or else
risk their necks, or a plunge into the river, by attempting to skirt the
cliffs.
The horses belonging to the party were secured in the grove. In the
center of the grove, in a kind of natural fireplace formed by the rocks,
the fire had been built, and its red embers were still glowing. Two
sentinels were posted at either extremity of the camp. Around the fire
the hunter, the surveyors, and the lieutenant were stretched in easy
attitudes, enjoying their pipes of tobacco—the great luxury of the
wilderness.
A short distance from them the two boys reclined upon a mossy bowlder,
listening to their conversation.
The sun had sunk, and the glorious twilight of that western land was
upon them. The scene was of calm tranquillity. But that tranquillity was
broken in a singular manner.
There came a hurtling sound in the air, and an arrow descended,
apparently from the heavens, and stuck quivering in the turf at
Lieutenant Gardiner’s head.
All started and grasped their weapons, instinctively, for the trusty
rifles were close at hand.
“An attack?” cried Gardiner.
“No—a message. See, there’s a scroll upon the arrow,” answered Gummery.
“Read it.”
He threw some brush upon the coals which speedily burst into a flame.
Lieutenant Gardiner undid the scroll of bark from the arrow, and spread
it open. It contained characters which he had no difficulty in
deciphering, for they were written in English.
“White men, begone! If you advance further into the land of the
Yakimas, certain destruction awaits you.
“Smoholler, the Prophet.”