CAUGHT IN THE TRAP
Jean and Jack and Olive were cantering slowly through the fields about
an hour before breakfast the next morning. The spring air was so
delicious that they had not been able to resist it. Jack had waked
before dawn and had kept quite still to listen to the silvery song of
the wood thrush outside her bedroom window; she had not wished to go to
sleep again, for her mind was too busy with Jean's plan for their summer
holiday. When daylight came Jean was aroused by the noise of Jack's
movements in the room, and opened her eyes to find her cousin slipping
into her riding clothes. She too was eager for a ride, and when they
softly called to Olive to join them the three girls stole out together.
"Jack, you will have to broach the subject of our caravan trip to Jim
to-day; I am sure you will be all powerful," Jean suggested, as soon as
they were fairly on their way. "The more I am out of doors the more I
think of how utterly rapturous it will be to spend our summer in
traveling around and camping wherever we like. Tell Olive and me
something about the people who want to rent our ranch, Jack," Jean ended
curiously.
Jack shook her head slowly. "I am afraid I don't know very much about
them, Jean," she answered. "Mr. and Mrs. Harmon are New York people; he
is a stock broker and they are friends of Mrs. Post's and Laura's. Aunt
Sallie does not know them personally, but she says they have one son and
a daughter. The daughter is lame and an invalid; I believe they want to
bring her out west to see what the climate will do for her." Jack gave
an unconscious shudder of horror and sympathy and touched her pony
lightly with her whip. The girls were galloping over a part of the ranch
that was carpeted with wild prairie roses.
"Where are we going, Jack?" Olive queried, riding close beside her.
"If you and Jean don't mind, Olive, we are going over on the other side
of Rainbow Creek," Jack replied apologetically. "Jim and one of the men
set a trap over there yesterday to catch some animal that has been
worrying our sheep. You know I don't mind when the poor thieves are
killed outright for their bad behavior, but sometimes they catch their
legs in the traps and nearly pull them off." Jack flushed, but neither
Jean nor Olive smiled at her; they knew that she was like a boy in many
ways and was too good a sportsman to want anything to suffer
unnecessarily.
The girls crossed the creek at a spot where the water was lowest; the
spring rains had fallen and it was quite deep in many places. They rode
in silence along the familiar path that followed the creek bed, each, in
her own way, yielding her senses to the influence of the enchantment
that the rare summer morning had created.
Click! click! A curious noise came from somewhere farther down the bed
of the creek; it seemed to sound from behind a huge rock that rose up
alongside the stream and split into a small ravine. Click! click! The
sound was repeated.
Jack reined in her pony so suddenly that Jean almost ran into her. "What
was that?" Jack asked quickly, but Jean put her finger cautiously to her
lips and signaled for silence.
Click! click! click! The echo was louder and more puzzling, and Jack
slid softly off her horse, threw the reins to Olive and crept along the
path until she came to the far side of the great rock. The noise was
more distinct, but still she could see nothing; then she clambered up
the rock and peered over. A man stood with a little hammer in his hand,
chipping out small pieces of stone; a big pan filled with sand and
gravel and water from Rainbow Creek was resting on the ground by his
side.
A little murmur of surprise escaped Jack, and the intruder glanced up at
her; he had been so intent on his work and so sure of not being
discovered at that hour of the morning that he had not been disturbed by
Jack's approach.
"So it is you, is it?" he said calmly. "I hope you don't mind my having
a few pieces of these rocks as a souvenir of my visit to your ranch. I
know you and your overseer objected to my prospecting for gold about
here. That is the reason I pretended to drive away last night."
Jack at once recognized the speaker as the driver of the gypsy caravan
of the day before. "I don't see how I am going to prevent your having
the stones and pebbles now that you have already taken possession of
them," she answered indifferently. "But please don't let our overseer
find you lurking about, or he will be dreadfully angry."
The stranger laughed and shrugged his shoulders carelessly, and Jack
noticed that he seemed very sure of himself. "Oh, don't you worry about
John, Jim Colter I mean," he returned coolly. "I am not afraid of him,
though I won't trouble you any more than I can help."
"Did you ask the man if he found any signs of gold in our creek, Jack?"
Jean demanded eagerly, as the three girls rode off together again.
Jack shook her head. "No, silly, of course I didn't," she replied.
"There are lots of people out west who are crazy about finding gold.
Don't you suppose if there had been any gold on our ranch father would
have made the discovery years ago?"
"I don't know," Jean returned quietly. "But you might have asked just
the same."
Jim had set his animal trap in some thick underbrush and covered it with
twigs and evergreens, but Jack remembered the exact spot, and the girls
now rode directly toward it. Jack carried her rifle with her, for if
they found an animal that had been caught and not killed she intended to
put it out of its misery.
Within a short distance of the trap, but before the girls could see it,
they heard a queer moaning that made them turn pale. The cry was not
like a child's and not like an animal's; it was a queer combination of
both.
Jean stopped her pony instantly. "I sha'n't go on any farther with you,
Jack," she declared resolutely. "Jim has caught something in that
wretched trap of his and it is suffering horribly. It won't do any good
for me to see it. Olive, please you go on with Jack; I simply can't, I
am such a wretched coward."
Olive and Jack both looked rather miserable at the prospect ahead of
them, but Jack would not turn back and Olive would not desert her. By
this time the strange sobbing had ceased and there was no further sound
of movement or struggle in the neighborhood of the snare until the two
girls rode up in plain sight of it.
"Good gracious, Olive, what is that?" Jack called quickly, almost
falling from her horse in her amazement.
Instead of discovering a wild animal staring at them with ferocious,
frightened eyes, the riders spied a small, brown figure crouched on the
ground in front of the wicked steel cage, as mute and motionless as a
hare when first startled by a hunter. The boy's back was turned to Olive
and Jack and he would not condescend even to look around at his captors.
Jack guessed at once what had happened. The child must have been
starving, for he had thrust his arm inside the opening of the trap for
the bait that had been put inside, and the spring had closed on his arm.
Both girls ran toward him, but Jack did not hear Olive's quick
exclamation. Fortunately she knew the trick of opening the trap, for the
moment the wires released their cruel hold on the boy, he fainted
quietly in Olive's outstretched arms. He was about ten or twelve years
old, incredibly thin, with coal-black hair that fell in straight lines
to his shoulders, strange, dark eyes with the look of far places in
them, and a skin the color of burnished copper.
"It is Carlos, little Carlos!" Olive exclaimed wonderingly. "Jack, don't
you remember my telling you about the Indian boy who helped me to come
home to you when I was stolen by old Laska? I wonder how in the world
he has managed to find us."
Jack did not wait to answer Olive. Running at once to the creek for
water, she signaled Jean to join them, and together the girls bathed the
boy's face until he returned to consciousness.
Then Carlos calmly explained to Olive that he always had meant to find
her some day. With her image ever before him and the names of the
Ralston girls and the Rainbow Ranch ever sounding in his ears, the lad
had remained quietly in the desert with his own people until the coming
of spring. When the nomad tribe started south, Carlos had journeyed with
them until they again struck camp, then he had traveled on alone, asking
hundreds of questions and covering more miles than he was able to count.
Unconscious of the fact he had come at length within the limits of
Rainbow Ranch, and when he most needed her, Olive, like a good angel,
had appeared to him. Yet Carlos took her coming calmly. Miracles are
every-day occurrences to the Indian. Wiser than the wisest of us, he
knows that, in spite of all the explanations of science, the rising and
the setting of the sun, the life of a flower, most of the things he
sees in his world, are nature's miracles. So the miracle of Olive's
discovery seemed to Carlos only another mysterious gift from the unknown
Father.
Scorning to have his wounded arm bandaged, the boy soon started homeward
with the girls. Jim and Frieda were waiting in front of the Lodge for
them to return to breakfast. Jim laughed and Frieda stared when they
beheld four figures on horseback instead of three.
"Well, Jack, who is your latest find?" Jim called out cheerfully, waving
his hand to Jack in token of peace and good fellowship.
The horses stopped, and the Indian boy slid off from behind Olive's
saddle and stood erect, facing Jim squarely. "I am Carlos, of the tribe
of the Blackfeet," he answered proudly. "Are you the Big Chief of this
ranch?"
Jim Colter shook his head gravely, although his eyes were smiling. "No,
I am Big Chief of nothing, sonnie," he replied kindly. "But you had
better come into the house with me; that is an uncommonly ugly wound you
have on your arm, and I've an idea you might be persuaded to eat a
little something."