OVER THUNDER MOUNTAIN RIDGE
“Look out, Frank, he’s coming after us!”
Bob was trying vainly to get a decent aim as he shouted these words of
warning. He had spoken them in a mechanical way, and not because he
feared that his chum would not be on his guard.
Already were Bart and Scotty popping away with their guns, after the
fashion of cowboys, quick on the trigger. Then Bob suddenly noticed a
queer thing. This was nothing more or less than that the grizzly, while
still coming down the side of the mountain, and headed directly for the
spot where they stood, seemed to have swerved more or less. In fact he
was coming down tail foremost!
It was this singular fact that gave Bob his first suspicion of the
truth. Then, quick on the heels of this he discovered that Frank was
acting in a most peculiar fashion for a boy who ought to be greatly
concerned because a ferocious beast was about to attack them.
Frank seemed to double up like a hinge, and to the amazement of Bob he
saw that the other was laughing!
“Hold on, boys!” Frank managed to call out; “don’t waste your
ammunition, because you may need it. That bear is dead!”
Of course, upon hearing this surprising and agreeable news, both Bart
and Scotty stopped shooting.
“Did they kill him, or was it our first bullets that did the trick,
Frank?” Bob asked, as the body of the monster became wedged against an
uplifted spur of rock not ten feet away.
“We don’t take the credit, you understand,” announced Bart, positively,
and with a rather foolish grin at the recent panic he and Scotty had
indulged in.
“I reckon we don’t need to,” remarked the other cowboy, energetically.
“These here pop-guns don’t count much agin a grizzly. An’ when ye come
to look the critter over, I allow ye’ll find whar ye punctured his hide
right back o’ the foreleg, both bullets enterin’ thar.”
It proved to be a fact, upon examination; and Bob felt particularly well
satisfied to know that in such an emergency he had managed to acquit
himself so well. Such results seemed to show that his nerve was all
right.
“But we can’t let the old fellow lie here,” said Frank.
Bob looked surprised at this.
“Why, what harm can a dead bear do?” he asked. “I should think that all
the fight had gone out of him by now.”
“Sure it has,” answered his chum; “but you’d never get that skittish
herd past this spot, let me tell you. They would scent that bear fifty
feet away. Dead or alive, it wouldn’t make much difference to them, and
we’d be apt to have a stampede on our hands. How about that, Bart?”
“A dead certainty, Frank,” replied the foreman.
“Then how would it do to roll him over that precipice there?” suggested
Bob. “I’m sorry we can’t get his hide; but it will have to go this
time.”
“Just the idea,” declared Frank; “and it was smart of you to think of
it, Bob.”
“Then all come, and take hold, while we yank him around. It’ll take the
united strength of the bunch to slew him out of that crotch,” said Bart,
leading the way to the slain animal.
At any rate, the two boys were allowed to see just where their lead had
gone.
“Couldn’t ’a been better shots; no sir, not if it was the oldest b’ar
hunter of the Rockies!” declared Scotty, as he thrust a finger in the
holes and turned a look of genuine admiration on both Frank and his
chum.
Bob thought that praise was the limit. The memory of that exciting
little event would follow him always. In imagination he would many times
see that grizzly heading down the slope, bent on questioning their right
to progress along the mountain trail; and the quick action which he and
Frank had been compelled to take in order to meet the crisis.
“All together now, yo-heave-o! Here she goes, boys! Once more, and yet
another for good luck. Now, over with the old critter, ker-slam!” and as
Scotty spoke he led the last effort, by means of which the bulk was
pushed over the edge of the little precipice.
There was a heavy thud as the bear brought up far below.
Once more they could start out. The affair with the bear had occupied
only a few minutes, all told.
Scotty again took up the tracking of the marked hoof belonging to Old
Baldy. The trail still ran upwards toward the crest of the ridge, and
there no longer remained a single doubt in the minds of the two boys but
that the clever old steer had made his final escape from the secret
valley in this way.
They even began to cast their eyes aloft in the hope and expectation
that soon they might figure on just where the break in the rocky wall
was to be found, with a passage leading over to the other side of the
ridge.
“I think I see where we’re bound to bring up,” Frank presently remarked.
“Then show me, please,” said Bob, eagerly, for his eyes, being
unaccustomed to the looks of wild places, had not up to then been able
to accomplish much.
“Seems to me there is some sort of break just between those two spurs
that stand up yonder like sentries,” Frank declared.
“You’re correct, Frank!” cried Scotty; “I been watchin’ that same spot
myself for a while, now, and was just a-goin’ to mention it. That’s whar
she lies, Colonel, believe me! Frank’s got the eyes of a hawk, I do
declare. ’Tain’t much escapes him, now.”
“Well, we’ll get up there in a few minutes, won’t we?” demanded Bob.
“Easy,” affirmed Bart. “And I say just the same as the others. That’s
the place our old steer quit the valley, when he yearned to git back
home, and broke out of the wire corral. Now you can see it plain, Bob.”
Indeed, as they progressed further it became a positive thing; even Bob
was able to note the fact that there was some sort of little pass
between those two rocky horns.
And so they found it shortly afterwards, when they entered the small
canyon, to pass quickly through, and see how the trail started down the
other side of the mountain.
“That settles it!” cried Colonel Haywood, showing that the strain had
eased up considerably in his mind. “We’ll be able to push the herd over
here. Trust some of the old steers for knowing that Baldy went ahead of
them. And there’s hope, boys, of our being down there on the plain long
before dark sets in.”
They turned back at once, and made all possible haste to arrive at the
spot where their comrades were watching the cattle.
“Everything seems to be all right down there,” remarked the stockman,
when at one point they managed to obtain a glimpse of the huddled herd,
with the cowboys on foot circling constantly around, in order to make
sure that no start was made toward a stampede.
“Hark! what does that mean?” cried Bob, as shots sounded in the valley.
“Somethin’ doin’ down by the camp, I reckon,” asserted Scotty. “P’raps
Mendoza is a-tryin’ to break out, and the boys are givin’ the rustlers
‘Hail Columbia.’”
After the few shots all was quiet again, a fact that seemed to satisfy
the rancher that nothing serious had come of the effort.
“I reckon they saw some sign of a break, and just sent in a few shots to
sort of remind the rustlers that they were still thar on the job,” Bart
suggested; but not being able to learn the facts they had to let that
theory stand.
Arriving at the place where the big herd awaited their coming, they were
soon busily employed getting the stock started. This was no easy task,
there on the mountainside, with only a dim trail ahead.
But these men were old hands at the business. They knew all the tricks
of the trade, and how to utilize the instincts of the cattle in carrying
out their designs.
Once the herd started upward, they seemed to begin to understand. One of
the big steers led the way, doubtless occupying much the same position
that Old Baldy had been accustomed to filling. Possibly the animal could
catch the scent of the preceding beast; though even Bob considered this
somewhat unlikely, since so much time had elapsed since Baldy passed
over the ground.
But in climbing upward the latter had always unerringly chosen what
seemed to be the only possible route; so once the herd started, it could
not easily go wrong.
Colonel Haywood had sent a messenger down to the camp with new word for
those two daring cowboys who were shouldering the difficult task of
keeping the rustlers penned up during the whole day.
They were to wait for night, and then slip secretly away. Their horses
would be left in a certain place for them, and they were ordered to
follow the broad trail of the herd until they overtook the main body of
drivers.
Up the mountain the drive continued. Constant vigilance was required in
order to keep the herd intact. Any little break might prove a serious
matter, with that precipitous slope below them, down which a frightened
animal would plunge to what must surely prove to be a fatal conclusion.
“I’ve been through some drives in my time,” Bart remarked, after they
had pushed along in this way for nearly two hours, and the crest of the
ridge was close at hand, “but this sure takes the cake. If we get this
herd safe down to level land again I’ll be mighty glad, I’m tellin’ ye,
now.”
Bob was himself well pleased when the last of the steers had passed
through the little canyon, and started down the outer slope.
The going here was better, somehow, as they all realized before they had
been ten minutes following the stock downward. Undoubtedly this was the
trail Old Baldy must have struck at the time he and several cows were
missing all winter. Following some instinct, he had thus discovered a
way into a Paradise of a valley, where the forage was fine through all
the winter months.
“The only thing that surprises me,” remarked Frank, later, when speaking
of the matter, “is that Baldy never tried the same game again when
winter came along. But perhaps there were reasons. He may have been shut
in a corral at the time. Once I remember he was suffering from a sore
leg, on account of tearing through a barbed wire fence. But things are
looking all right, dad, I should say.”
“Couldn’t be better, son,” replied the stockman, smilingly; “and all we
need now to make us happy is to feel our ponies under us.”
At those words every cowboy within hearing set up a shout. The very
mention of a bronco acted on them as might a tonic. This business of
climbing mountains on foot, and driving a herd the same way, was the
most trying experience possible. It would haunt them for many a long
day; and a mere mention of the trip over Thunder Mountain ridge from the
Lost Valley would be enough to make them content with their lot, no
matter what troubles they happened to be facing at the time.
Foreseeing that they would be slow about getting to the foot of the
descent, the stockman had sent a couple of men ahead to scurry around to
where they had left all their mounts.
If these could be waiting for them when they struck the level, it would
save considerable time, and add much to their comfort.
There were little accidents, to be sure, on the way down; but all things
considered they did remarkably well. But it was certainly a used-up
bunch of cowboys that, an hour or so before dusk, gave a screech as they
found themselves on the level once more, with no more climbing or
descending mountains ahead.
“Never want to see a mountain again!” declared Scotty, as he limped
along, his feet sore, and his lower limbs feeling as though they had
been scorched.
“But look there, isn’t that Jeff coming with the ponies?” asked Frank,
pointing.
It turned out to be so; and from that moment every driver quite forgot
all his aches in the wild desire to once more mount, and experience the
delight of being carried swiftly from place to place. Walking to a
cowboy is a waste of time and energy. And the saddle boys were also glad
to get their favorites again.