"HANDS UP!"
A dull, leaden-grey sky; a few stray feathery flakes floating upon the
frosty air; an icebound stream; a dark serrated ridge rising to the
heavens on the one hand; on the other a lofty peak towering away into
the misty heights. The dull moaning noise of the wind through the
forest, and the distant howling of wolves, for the wintry evening is
rapidly closing in, renders the whole scene and surroundings
indescribably desolate and dreary.
A hoof-stroke on the frost-bound earth. Who is this riding abroad in
the weird wilderness at such an hour, with the snowstorm lowering
overhead, darkness and the multifold perils of the great mountains in
front! Phantom steed and phantom rider?
Whether visionary or material, however, the latter glances upward
anxiously from time to time. Darkness and the impending storm! What he
urgently needs is daylight and tranquillity. He reins in his powerful
black steed, and gazes intently for a few moments at the towering peak
half lost in the snow-cloud; then abruptly turning his horse, rides
about forty yards at right angles, and again sits contemplating the
lofty crag.
Somewhat of an extraordinary proceeding this. Why does not the man
hasten upon his way? A matter of but a few hours and these desolate
solitudes will be the theatre of such a strife and whirl of the elements
that any human being, one would think, would strain every effort to
reach a place of safety and comfort before the fury of the tempest is
upon him. But this man seems in no sort of hurry; indeed, were it not
for his occasional anxious glances heavenward, he might be deemed
ignorant of the impending cataclysm.
"There is Ma-i-pah, the Red Peak," he muses. "There is the forked pine,
and I have got them in line. So far good. The next thing is to find
the scathed tree. But--oh curse the snow-cloud! It may be months
before--"
"Cau-aak!"
A flap-flap of wings in the brake. A raven, rising almost under the
horse's feet, wings its way to the boughs of a neighbouring oak.
So sudden is the hideous croak, echoing upon the stillness of this
deathly solitude, that even the iron nerves of the horseman are not
proof against a superstitious thrill. But those nerves are strung up to
a pitch of suppressed excitement which is all engrossing.
"Cau-aak--Cau-aak!"
A second raven rises from the brake, and floats lazily off to join the
first, resembling in its grim blackness some foul demon of the
wilderness disturbed in his den of horrors. Struck with an idea, the
rider turns his horse and enters the covert. Following him, we seem to
have stood on this spot before.
There are the two crosses recently cut upon the huge pine-trunk, so
recently that the fresh resin exuding from them is all red and sticky as
though the very tree were weeping blood for the two hapless ones,
victims of a deed of blood, lying beneath it. There is the mound of
earth and stones. Stay! that mound has surely undergone a
transformation; for it is half overthrown, and the earth is rent and
burrowed, and cast up in all directions. And there, scattered around,
lie the bones of the murdered men, broken and picked nearly clean by the
carrion beasts and birds of the wilderness. By a ghastly coincidence,
the two scalpless heads, half denuded of flesh, lay side by side
grinning as if in agony, their sightless sockets, gory and half filled
with earth, gaping up at the intruder. An awful, an appalling sight to
come upon suddenly in the twilight gloom of that grisly forest--a sight
to shake the strongest nerves, to haunt the spectator to his dying day.
But he who now looks upon it is little concerned, though even he cannot
repress a slight shiver of disgust as he contemplates the horrid
spectacle. He dismounts, and leading his horse away from the mournful
relics, at which the animal snorts and shies in alarm, hitches him up to
a sapling, and then proceeds narrowly to scrutinise the ground.
The man's figure looks gigantic in the semi-gloom, as casting his ample
buffalo robe off one shoulder, he lays his rifle on the ground and
extracts something from the breast of his fringed hunting-shirt. It is
nothing less than a crumpled and dirty piece of paper, oblong in shape,
and containing what is evidently a plan of some sort, rudely drawn, and
undecipherable without the aid of a few words equally rudely written and
misspelt, clearly the work of some unlettered person.
"_Forkt pine, Red Peak, Blarsted tree, the creek where half-buried
rock_!"
"The plot thickens," murmurs the investigator excitedly, conning over
the laconic cipher. "Having established the relationship between the
forked pine and Ma-i-pah, otherwise the Red Peak, the next thing is to
discover the blasted tree, which should not be difficult, unless the
term represents obloquy rather than the effects of lightning. That
done, the rest will be easy."
A few steps further into the brake. Suddenly the blood surges into his
face. Something white and ghostlike glints athwart the gloom. A huge
pine, dead, and stripped of all its lower bark, clearly by several
successive strokes of lightning. This can be no other than the "blasted
tree" of the cipher. Almost trembling with excitement, once more he
unfolds the dirty sheet of paper and eagerly scans it.
"Hands up, stranger! Hands up! or you're a stiff 'un, by God!"
The harsh, threatening voice, cleaving the twilight solitude, where a
moment before Vipan had imagined himself absolutely alone, was enough to
unnerve a less resolute hearer. It proceeded from a tall,
sinister-looking man, who standing on a ridge or bank some
five-and-twenty yards off, and slightly above him, had him covered with
a rifle-barrel. There was no disputing the grim mandate. The other
held him at a complete disadvantage. Any hesitation to comply would
mean a bullet through his heart that instant. But while holding both
hands high above his head, his eyes were keenly on the look-out for the
smallest chance.
"I don't seem to have the pleasure of your acquaintance, friend," he
answered coolly. What a fool he was to have parted company with his
Winchester, he thought.
"You don't?" yelled the man, amid a volley of curses. "You soon will,
though, I reckon, you pesky-white Injun. I'll learn you to set the red
devils on to scalp and knife my pardners. Now, you jest throw down that
hunk of paper, slicker nor greased lightning--mind me."
The tone was so fierce and threatening that there was no room for delay.
No man living was more keenly competent to realise the situation than
he who had now the worst of it.
"All right," he answered. "I'm standing on it. You'll see it when I
move my foot."
"Don't move a hair else then, or you're a stiff," was the grim
uncompromising reply.
"Now," went on the fellow, having assured himself that the paper was
there, "take six steps backward--six and no more. Quick march!"
With the deadly rifle-barrel still covering his heart, Vipan obeyed.
"Well! what's the next thing?" he said, and at the same time he noticed
that the other carried a lariat rope dangling in loose coils from his
left arm.
"The next thing, eh?" jeered the fierce aggressor. "I and some of the
boys have kept our eye upon you for a good while, and the next thing is
we're going to lynch you. Now--Turn round!"
The man in his eagerness had made a step forward, with the result that,
the little ridge of ground whereon he was standing being slippery with
the frost, he missed his footing, stumbled, staggered wildly in his
efforts to recover his balance, and finally rolled headlong almost at
Vipan's feet.
Crack!
The aggressor lay writhing in his death-throes. All this time warily on
the look-out for the smallest chance in his favour, Vipan, quick as
thought, had whipped out the little Derringer which he carried in his
breast-pocket, and sent a bullet through his adversary's brain.
"I think I've turned the tables on you with effect, my hearty," he said,
contemplating the dead man with a savage sneer. Now that there was no
further necessity for coolness, his blood boiled at the recent
humiliation this fellow had made him undergo. "Ha, ha! Go and tell
your two precious `pardners' what a sorry hash you made of it on their
account, you miserable idiot, and bait a few more Tartar traps down in
the nethermost shades. Ha, ha!"
The first thing he did was to pick up and secure the sheet of paper.
Then he searched the dead man lest anything bearing upon the cipher
might be in his possession, but without avail. He was about to leave
the spot, when an idea struck him.
For a moment he stood contemplating his late enemy. Bending down, an
expression of strong disgust in his face, he gripped the dead man by the
hair--a couple of quick slashes, and the scalp was in his hand. Then he
drew his knife across the throat of the corpse.
"The Sioux--his mark," he muttered, with grim jocosity. "Faugh! Now to
stow away this beastly thing," wiping the scalp upon its late
proprietor's clothing.
He removed the latter's weapons--rifle, revolver, knife--and keeping a
sharp look-out against any further aggression, regained his horse. In
mounting, he trod on something which crackled crisply. It was a dried
and shrivelled knee-boot, from which the leg-bone still protruded. And
his attention being once more attracted to these ghastly relics, it
almost seemed to him that the two heads had changed their position, and
were glaring at him with hideous and menacing scowl. The ravens, from a
neighbouring tree, renewed their lugubrious croak, as if resentful at
being so long kept away from their repulsive feast. Overhead, the sky
grew blacker and blacker, and the snowflakes whirled round the horseman
as he emerged from the gloom of that grisly brake.
"There's more carrion for you, you black devils," he muttered,
apostrophising the ravens. "Heavens! What had I to do with the brute's
unwashen `pardners'? If I'm to be held answerable for the scalp of
every idiot who goes to sleep with both eyes shut, I've got my work cut
out for me. Ha, ha! The red brother comes in mighty convenient
sometimes."
Thus musing, he had gained the crossing of a mountain torrent, at the
entrance to a long, narrow canon, whose sheer, overhanging walls were
gloomy and forbidding, even by the light of day. Dismounting, he took
out the scalp, and wrapping it round a stone, hurled it away into a
deep, swirling pool, whose centre was free from ice. The dead man's
weapons followed suit.
"There! Pity to throw away good serviceable arms,
but--`Self-preservation, etc.' I only treated the dog as he would have
treated me, but I don't want to establish a vendetta among his desperado
mates with myself for its object. A lot the scoundrels care about such
a plea as self-defence. No. Let them credit the reds with the job."
The rising gale shrieked wildly overhead, but within the black walls of
the canon the wayfarer was entirely protected from its force. The
snowflakes, large and fleecy, now fell thickly about him. And now there
was exultation in place of the former anxiety in his glance as ever and
anon he studied the dark and overcast sky.
"Better and better. Nothing like snow for covering up a trail, and by
the time it's open again there'll be not much left of yon carrion. Up,
Satanta! We'll soon be home now."
The black steed arched his splendid neck responsive to his master's
voice. And his said master, muffling himself closer in his buffalo
robe, settled himself down in his saddle with every confidence in the
ability of one or other, or both of them, to keep the right trail, even
through the pitchy blackness which was now descending upon them. The
driving snow, the shrieking of the gale, the howling of wolves in the
dark forest, the grisly sight left behind, the stain of blood, were
nothing to him who rode there--on--on through the night.