OLD BOB TAKES A THRASHING.
Morris had not to wait more than fifteen minutes after Len’s departure
before he found his work at hand. The snow so softened the trail that
the sound of the horse’s hoofs were not heard until they had approached
within a few feet of the ambush, and amid the blinding flakes, it was
impossible to recognize the face of the well-muffled rider.
It was certainly Old Bob, however, who had been seen saddling the horse,
and Morris concluded that the man before him was he. Had it been Scotty,
he might have hardened his heart to almost any degree of severity, but
heretofore he had had no quarrel with Bob, for whom he felt contempt
chiefly, and he intended to let him off as easily as it would be safe to
do.
Rousing himself at the sound of the stumbling nag, Morris had but half a
minute to pause, before suddenly springing in front of the horse, with a
blow at the animal’s head and a yell like a wild Shoshone.
The startled and punished animal reared, spun round in the narrow trail
as nimbly as a deer could have done, slipped on the wet stones, and fell
headlong over the low bank at the edge of the trail, flinging his
astounded rider over his head into the creek.
Morris, delighted at the effect of his first charge, followed it up with
a second whoop, hearing which the horse picked himself up and rushed up
the trail at break-neck speed, frightened out of its senses.
Old Bob, panic-stricken, dumb-founded, and shocked by his fall, was just
rising from the shallow water, when Morris got down the bank. Leaping
upon him, he seized the wretched victim by collar, and shook him by both
hands as a terrier does a rat. Then snatching up his stick he began to
lay it vigorously over Bob’s shoulders, keeping at it until the old
fellow could find enough of his scattered wits and tangled legs to
enable him to run away.
“Get back in your hole, you old sarpint!” Morris yelled, as he flung his
cudgel after the retreating enemy. “Next time you thieves want to sneak
off to town, mind you get permission of your betters!”
To this Bob replied, as was expected, by a couple of shots from his
revolver, which, up to this time, he had fairly forgotten in the
surprise of the unexpected attack, but Morris dodged behind a rock at
the first flash, and no harm was done.
He did not return this random fire, but kept wide-awake for a few
minutes, thinking Bob might come back with his companions. This,
however, he did not do, and Morris lost no further time in starting
home.
Bob admitted afterward, that he thought that at least two men had
attacked him, which spoke well for Morris’s activity, and that it was
Max who was giving him the shaking. Wet, sore, chilled and altogether
dazed, he was in no condition to lead an attack against an ambushed
enemy in the middle of a snowy night, nor were his accomplices eager to
go and avenge his wrongs, preferring, so long as their own precious
skins remained whole, to stay where they were and scold at him for his
failure.
All this happened on Friday night, and to that fact the superstitious
miner attributed his misfortunes.
The storm ceased before daybreak. Then what a strange, new, glorious
landscape was that the sun rose upon! Its beams streamed athwart
limitless spaces of snow. Overhead, the height Sandy had partly ascended
rose in rounded outlines, a huge dome of unblemished white. Ahead, as if
a mighty drift had been heaped across the gap between the mountains, lay
the saddle over which the trail led through the woods; and inside the
gorge all the roughnesses were smoothed, all the bowlders and prostrate
logs, the boughs of the spruces and cottonwoods, bushes, ferns, and
weeds, were packed full and weighed down with the soft and flurry
flakes.
Beyond calling for a little shoveling inside the fort, the snow was no
hindrance, of course, to the underground work of the firm of B. B. & Co.
They hammered away at improving their tunnel all day on Saturday and
until late at night, and followed it by a pleasant Sunday’s rest, in
spite of their cramped quarters and tedious guard-duty.
The case was far different with the unfortunate jumpers, who, at the
Aurora, had no shelter, and no way of getting free from the snow and the
wet.
This misfortune was doubled by a thaw on Sunday afternoon, suddenly
letting loose a great flood of melted snow, and turning the creek into a
torrent, which, before Monday morning, had so swollen as to cover the
trail and ford with a rushing flood six or eight feet deep, that it
would have been madness to cross.
Old Bob and his companions, therefore, were not only very uncomfortable,
but between the impassable creek and the unscalable wall on one side,
and the rifles of our friends on the other, they were really prisoners.
“I reckon they’re getting hungry over yonder, too,” remarked Morris,
when a heavy rain on Monday night had produced a second flood in the
creek. “I don’t believe they have grub enough to last much longer. They
couldn’t have brought a great deal with ’em, and it must be about used
up.”
That was the fact of the case. Rations were growing very short in the
enemy’s camp, and if the end had not come pretty soon they would have
been obliged to surrender, since it was impossible to get to where their
provisions had been cached with such great labor preparatory to this
campaign.
Even to our friends, who had no such miseries to fret them, the
situation was becoming extremely monotonous and annoying. Max was glum
and anxious. Sandy had lost his humor. Morris would growl softly at
himself first for letting Old Bob get away with a single unbroken bone,
and then for having allowed that kid, as he called Len, to go on alone
to town in the storm. It was tedious enough to be shut up in this cabin,
in the midst of such miserable weather, and in hourly danger of a bullet
in one’s brain, but when to that was added the worry over Len’s safety,
the suspense became nearly unendurable.
THE FIGHT AT THE FORD.