He was a dapper little man with a gray pointed beard, and he wore
knickerbockers and russet hunting gaiters, nearly new. A jaunty Alpine
hat was perched upon his head, and as he pursued his cautious way along
the cañon's edge it would be hard to fancy anyone less in touch with his
surroundings. He seemed uncertain of the trail, mistrustful of himself,
or unaccustomed to mountain atmosphere, for within the last hundred
yards of the camp he paused in every dozen steps to listen or to recover
breath.
There was no sound anywhere except the moan of pine trees, and no motion
but the perpetual trembling in the aspen undergrowth. The greater trees
nearly met above the cañon; the lesser clung along its brink, leaning
far out to catch the sun and send broken lights and colors to the water
far below. Contrasting with the unchanging twilight and boundless
solitude of the forest, the meadow where the tents were pitched seemed
to blaze with light, and the three small shelters took on the importance
of a settlement, whose visible inhabitants consisted of a pair of
mountain magpies possessed of an idle spirit of investigation.
The little man coughed a dry inadequate cough to herald his approach,
while his foot dislodged a pebble which, rattling down the cañon, sent
the magpies to a tree top in affected terror. From under the shelter of
his hand he cast a glance about the camp which mastered its small array
of unimportant details; two tents, wide open to the air, disclosed
elementary sleeping quarters for half a score of men, coarse blankets
covering heaps of twigs and pine needles, the bare necessities of a
bivouac. The third tent was closed.
Evidently perplexed, the visitor stood still. Had anyone been watching
him, say from behind the ragged canvas of the closed tent, he must have
seemed a nervous, apprehensive little man. There came a sound which
might have been a derisive chuckle and might have been a magpie in the
trees. The visitor controlled a start and clenched his hands as though
summoning courage. Then loudly as one who gives a challenge, he shouted,
"Is there anybody here?"
The voice was resonant for so small a body, and the echoes caught the
last word eagerly, and sent it back, clear from the cañon, faint from
where the snow peaks cut the blue, deep from the hollow of the timber.
"Here! Here!" as though a scattered army answered to a roll call.
Immediately there followed another and louder "Here!" distinctly not an
echo, and a gruff ungracious laugh.
The multitude of answers must have bewildered the stranger, for he
looked everywhere about him, almost stupidly, except toward the only
possible hiding place. It needed a second derisive laugh to guide him
to the tent whose half-closed flap concealed the only custodian of the
camp, a man so tall that in his little shelter he gave the impression of
a large animal inadequately caged or in a trap. His black hair fell
below the ears; his jaws were hidden by a heavy beard cut square,
through some freak of fancy, like the carved beards of human-headed
Assyrian beasts.
"Ahem! I beg your pardon," began the little man after another cough.
"What do you want?" returned the other without looking up. He bent above
a tin pan of dough, kneading the pliant stuff almost fiercely, with red
knotted knuckles and sinewy forearms.
"My name," replied the visitor, "is Sands--Professor Sands of Charbridge
University."
The man in the tent rolled his dough into a cannon ball and held it up
at arm's length. "Sands," he repeated. "Charbridge University?" And
striking his dough with his palm as though it could appreciate a joke,
he added, "Well, you look it!"
He wiped his hands upon a strip of burlap bagging which served him as
apron, and deliberately surveyed the new comer. "How did you ever get so
far from home all by yourself?" he asked with open insolence. A fuller
view of his face disclosed incongruous tones of red about the roots of
hair and beard, and a long scar on the left cheek.
"I am connected with our geological expedition," Professor Sands
explained concisely. "We are camping in the valley, and this morning I
ventured to explore the cañon on my own account, and have been tempted
farther than I intended."
The large man put his hands upon his thighs and leaned against the tent
pole. "So that's it?" he commented patronizingly. "Well, if I was you,
I'd stick to camp, and not go roaming in the timber where you might get
lost."
"Quite so," the little man assented readily; "but I was told I should
surely come upon the railway survey somewhere in the cañon, and I have
had your stakes to guide me. The engineers are doubtless working
somewhere near here?" he added, taking off his hat to cool his head with
its thin gray hair.
The other spat and eyed his visitor with amused contempt. "We don't lay
out railroads sitting round the fire," he volunteered. "The boys are
working up near timber line, and won't be back till dark, and the
teamster's gone to Freedom City for more grub."
"Ah!" remarked the scientist. "Then we are quite alone. I'll rest a
little, if I may."
He deposited an army haversack that he carried slung about his shoulder
upon a flat boulder just outside the tent door and sat down beside it.
"My geological specimens are rather heavy," he went on, wiping his brow.
"With your permission I should like to label them before I forget their
identity."
The other, with his hands in his overall pockets, took a slouching step
beyond the tent to overlook the sack's contents as they appeared--a
small steel sorting hammer, a heap of broken bits of float, and a large
flask with a silver top. He watched the geologist sort his specimens
with an idle interest mingled with contempt--for the trade he did not
understand, for the spotless handkerchief, for the physical weakness of
the man himself.
"I suppose that's some sort of acid you've got in your bottle?" he
speculated presently.
"I beg your pardon?" asked the professor, absorbed in his work; then
added as the question's meaning reached him, "Ah, the flask? No, that
contains whiskey. I always carry a supply in case of accident."
Whistling softly, he marked another specimen, ignoring his host's nearer
approach.
"Partner," the latter suggested, "if you'd like a bite to eat, you've
only got to say so. That's mountain manners."
The professor glanced up now and with an odd intentness in his look; no
doubt his mind was still with his specimens. "You're very kind, I'm
sure," he responded courteously; "but I have lunched already on my
sandwiches. Thank you, Mr.----" He paused for a name.
The other chuckled with new-found amiability. "You needn't 'Mister' me,"
he said. "I'm Budd, Jim Budd the Scorcher, and if any man in camp don't
like my grub he's got the privilege of going hungry."
"Ah, quite so, quite so," rejoined the scientist. "I'm very sure your
cooking is excellent."
"That's what the boys tell me," returned the scorcher; "but, by blood!
I've got 'em educated. I'll just set them biscuits to raise, and then
we'll have a chat." He re-entered the tent, limping noticeably, and
from the interior his voice was heard mingled with the clatter of
utensils in blasphemous denunciation of everything about him. During
this explosion the scientist from Charbridge made a rather singular
experiment.
He rose, and after a cautious glance behind him he crept to the verge of
the precipice, looked down into the water swirling over jagged rocks far
below, and pulling up a sod of wire grass let it drop, and watched it
sink and reappear in single straws that circled and sank again. This
done, he went back to his specimens.
The Scorcher's pibrock of vituperation had now changed to a tuneless
chant, scarcely less vindictive in its cadence:
Old John Rogers was burnt at the stake;
His poor wife cried until her heart did break!
he sang, and the professor's listening face took on an expression out of
keeping with the meaningless doggerel, the look of one who responds to
an inexorable call.
"'Until her heart did break!'" he murmured. But when Budd appeared
again he only asked if he was interested in geology.
"I am if it's the sort that's got silver in it," replied the cook.
"One does not look for silver in sandstone formation," the professor
explained.
"Do you mean to tell me the Almighty couldn't put silver in this here
red rock?" Jim demanded, from the stone on which he had seated himself.
"No," replied the professor guardedly: "I say only that He did not.
However, here is a bit of quartz----"
"Say!" interrupted the cook, "I'm a heap more interested in the specimen
you've got in that bottle." He was staring at the polished cap of the
flask.
"Indeed, are you?" the other smiled a a tolerant smile. "Then perhaps
you will do me the honor----"
Budd seized the flask without a second invitation and raised it to his
lips. He drank as dying men drink water, and when he stopped for lack
of breath his face was fiery but for the white scar. As he lowered the
bottle he met the professor's curious fixity of gaze, and wriggled
uneasily before it.
"Say, partner," he remonstrated, "your whiskey's all right; but I'm
hanged if I like your eye! By blood! it goes ag'in me!"
"I beg your pardon," said the professor without averting his look. "I
have the habit of close observation. And," he proffered the flask
afresh, "the more you drink of that, the less I'll have to carry home."
Budd poured a generous portion into a tin cup and stared reflectively at
the bright cap. His next remark, mellowed by whiskey, had a genial
candor. "Say! if I'd a popped you over, as I had a mind to when you came
along the trail, just think what I'd a missed!"
"And so you had a mind to pop me over?" queried the other. "May I ask
why?" Having finished his labeling, he was at leisure to regard his
companion still more closely.
"There's fellers prowling in the timber I ain't got no use for," the
cook explained, drinking. "But you're all right! You haven't got a cigar
handy, now, have you?"
The scientist was well supplied, and as the cook bit off the end of a
large and black cigar he sighed with satisfaction.
"I get the horrors sometimes," he explained. "I get as scary as a
cottontail. Them quaking asps is enough to drive a feller crazy,
anyhow."
"There's nothing like a little whiskey in such cases," remarked the
professor, filling the extended cup.
"If this keeps up, one of us is liable to get drunk," remarked Budd.
"That's a handy flask of yours. Come all the way from New York?"
"From Richmond, I believe," responded the other. "My brother found it on
a battle field and sent it home to me."
"I take it you wasn't there yourself," the Scorcher chuckled.
"No," said Professor Sands. "I was in bad health at the time."
"So was a lot of others," sneered Budd. "I wasn't feeling what you might
call well myself; but I stuck to it till they biffed me in the leg--the
hounds!--and put me out of business."
"Of course, you draw a pension," ventured the professor.
"No," said the cook, "I never asked for no pension. They've given one to
about every feller what wasn't dead when the war broke out, but there
hasn't been a bill passed yet that takes me in."
"Indeed?" His listener was politely observant.
"Yes, that's the truth," went on the cook. "I declare I feel real dopy
or dotty or something. They pensioned every beat that came back with a
knapsack full of rebel watches, but they left out old Jim. He don't wear
no medals; he don't parade on Decoration Day to scatter posies; he
don't get no free beer while the band plays 'Georgia'--'Hurrah for the
flag that makes us free!'" he chanted hoarsely. "Hurrah for the Devil!
that's what I say. Hurrah for the man without a pension!"
"You interest me," interposed Professor Sands.
"Oh, do I?" cried the cook. "By blood! I've half a mind to interest you
more. But don't look at me like that--I tell you, I don't like your
eye!" He tried to shield himself from that unmoved gaze. "You're
interested, are you? You'd like to put my case before your influential
friends back East? You with your little bag of rocks and your little
hammer and your gloves! Did you ever in your life see anyone who wasn't
a nickel-plated angel? Did you ever run across a real live blackguard
out of a story paper? Did you ever see a man who couldn't show his face
in a settlement by the light of day, and had to take up any job that
kept him out of sight? I don't know why, but I've got to shoot my mouth
off now if it hangs me. I've got to blab or go stark mad!"
"I understand," said the professor.
"I was one of them patriots," Budd went on, speaking almost
mechanically, as though hypnotized, "who enlisted for the boodle and
then skipped out to work the racket somewhere else."
"In point of fact, a bounty jumper," his listener put in.
"Yes," agreed the cook, "that's what I was. They were paying three
hundred gold for likely men to go down South and head off bullets, and
that beat getting drafted, so I joined. Oh, those were great old days,
great old days!"
"How long were you in the service?"
"About an hour and a quarter the first time," Budd replied. "It happened
in New York, and when I'd signed the roll they put me in a squad to
march off somewhere to get our uniforms. The sergeant was a tall guy,
greener than spinach, who'd drifted down from Maine a week before, and
didn't know no more about New York than a bull calf knows about the New
Jerusalem; but he made a bluff and asked the feller next me, whose name
was Butch, to give him points at every corner. Well, Butch directed, and
His Nibs kept on commanding 'Column left!' and 'Column right!' till we
got down to the toughest sort of a district--gas works and lumber yards
and such. I didn't know the game, but I dropped to it quick enough when
Butch says in a whisper, 'Here's our chance!' and it happened to be the
neatest chance a new beginner ever had. You see, in those days when
there was a fire pretty near everybody was welcome to catch hold and
help pull the machine, and there was always a crowd that come along to
holler and keep up the excitement. Well, that's the sort of outfit we
come up against. They filled the whole street, yelling and pushing, and
a feller either had to turn and run with them or get knocked down. I
didn't stop to see what became of the balance of the squad. I sloped up
one street and down another, going like a jack rabbit, till I found
myself before a ferry boat. I paid my fare and crossed the river, just
to get a chance to think."
"Quite so," the professor sympathized.
"I never meant no harm," the cook protested--"not then. There wouldn't
have been much sense in going back, especially when there were other
recruiting offices right there in Jersey City. I got another three
hundred, but my new sojer clothes was spoiled when I fell off the
transport in the dark the night before we sailed--and got drownded. Oh,
it was easy enough those days, before a lot of duffers took to the
business. But it got so arter awhile that we professionals had to keep
away from cities and play the country stations--Citizens' Committees,
Women's Aid Associations, and the substitute racket. Sometimes I did the
farmer boy with cowhide boots and hayseed in my hair, and told about
the mortgage on the old place, and the kid that was expected; and there
wasn't anything they wouldn't do so I could leave the folks comfortable
when I went off to the war. Oh, those were great times. In one day, out
the next!"
"And--and was the getting out as easy?" his hearer asked.
"Not quite," Budd admitted; "but pretty near. Say you were at a camp of
instruction; then it might be a pass, or a little something to the
sentry, or a brickbat in the dark, if you could throw straight. I gave a
feller fifty to let me through once, and then the sucker peached on me,
the lowdown sneak! But I got even with him later on. So I went marching
out of Philadelphia with the band playing and the women crying and the
men what was too delicate to go themselves singing out 'God bless you,
boys!' I tell you what, professor, for a moment I come pretty near to
wishing I was playing square."
"A passing sentiment, I'm sure," said the geologist.
"Sure!" cried Budd, delighted with his hearer's sympathy. "I'd like to
see the sentiment that would hold out after a couple of nights building
intrenchments in the rain. How could I help it if when the sentry's back
was turned the pick flew out of my hand and clipped him right behind the
ear? It was the same cuss who had blocked my game the week before."
"Good!" laughed the professor.
"He dropped," went on the cook, "and that was all I wanted. I lit out
and lay around in barns and corn cribs, living on raw carrots and what
eggs I found in the straw, till I guessed they must be tired looking for
me, and then one morning early I crept out and scared an old black aunty
who was feedin' chickens into fits. But I reckon I wasn't the first
strange bird she'd seen that summer, for she fed me, and that night she
steered me to a friend of hers who was in the clothing business and did
a little bartering evenings. He charged a hundred for a suit of
hand-me-downs and twenty for a hair cut and a shave--we enlisters never
argued over trifles--and shipped me back to Pennsylvania. But maybe you
won't believe it--by that time I had sorter lost my nerve. I got a
notion in my head that every man who looked my way was spying on me. I
couldn't pass the time of day with anyone who didn't seem to talk about
deserters. I was afraid to get a gold piece changed, for all the gold
went out of sight about that time, and just to have one was suspicious.
So what do you think I did? I walked right into a recruiting station and
enlisted without getting a cent. 'Rah for the flag!' I says. 'Gimme a
gun. I want to fight.' That was in Pittsburgh."
The professor's start was too slight to break the narrative, but if
possible his watchfulness deepened; he leaned forward and his eyes held
those of Budd.
"Yes," the cook continued, "in Pittsburgh. Same old band; same old
handkerchiefs waving; same old 'God bless you, boys!' I thought at first
I was all right and 'twould be the same old game, but it wasn't. They
had me spotted with a lot of others, and they kept us guarded like a
parcel of wild beasts, for all we was enlisted regular in the 120th
Pennsylvania."
"The 120th Pennsylvania?" repeated the professor slowly.
"That's what I said!" Budd resented the interruption. "And I tell you it
was no way to treat men. There must have been forty of us shut up in a
baggage car with no light or air but from one door open at the end, and
there we was for days and nights, and a tough lot, too! Bounty men and
substitutes and drafted truck, slamming along to the front, cussing our
luck, and everyone of us ready to bolt at the first chance. I stood it
till I heard the guns roaring like sin, not five miles off. Say, did you
ever hear that sound? Did you ever hear a gun you knew was fired at
real men and sending them to Kingdom Come? I heard it once, and that
was enough. We was laying flat along the floor, side by side as though
we was dead already, and next me was a German-looking guy, what had been
praying and swearing, turn about, ever since we started. When he heard
the firing, he went clean off his nut; he'd have blown his brains out
rather than take the chance of letting somebody else do it for him; he'd
have fought the Union army single-handed sooner than listen to them
shots another minute. Well, to make a long story short, him and me we
fixed up a scheme."
The speaker caught his breath to listen, for the forest seemed suddenly
alive with sound and motion. A cloud swept down the valley of the North
Fork, so low that shreds of scud were caught in the topmost branches.
Hail pattered on the wire grass. The tent curtains flapped noisily, and
in the shadow the aspen leaves flashed white as though a mailed army
sprang from ambush.
"Go on!" the professor urged, and the cook held up a brawny fist and
shook it at the universe defiantly.
"I'll tell it now," he cried, "and all the winds that ever blew sha'n't
shout me down! Here's how it was." He faltered, and the professor
prompted him.
"There's where you lay," he said, making a gesture to indicate the ranks
of trembling men.
"There's where we lay," Budd echoed dully.
"And there was the door," said the professor softly. He pointed to a
tree at the cañon's brink.
"Yes, yes!" cried Budd, "there was the door. The platform was outside,
and there were two on guard. I was to spring out first--so," he jumped
up--"and tackle the one farthest off. The Dutchman was to grab the other
from behind. Mine was a stout young feller."
"A stout young fellow," repeated the professor.
"Yes," and the cook stood motionless as though some vision rose before
him. "I can see him now, with straight back and crisp curly brown hair."
"A little curly," murmured the other.
"Percy, they called him," said Budd.
"Percy?" echoed the professor. "You are sure it was Percy?"
"Sure as you're sitting there!" cried Budd. "'Keep your eyes open,
Percy, they're a bad lot.' That's what the corporal told him when he
went on guard. Lord! but it was a pity!" He chuckled inanely, swaying on
his feet.
"What then?" inquired the man from Charbridge, rising slowly.
Budd cowered before his questioner's eyes as he might have cowered when
those long silent guns were booming had the tall young fellow turned.
"Nothing!" he muttered sullenly. "Nothing, so help me God! I didn't do
it."
"You lie!" retorted the small man quietly.
Budd laughed a foolish laugh. "There's where we lay," he babbled, "just
where your foot is, me and the Dutchman and the balance of us, and here
was the door----"
He lurched toward the aspen tree and laid a hand upon its trunk to keep
from falling. The professor followed and stood close behind.
"What do you want?" cried Budd, wheeling in sudden panic.
"To learn the manner of my brother's death," the other answered between
lips that scarcely moved.
The voice of the pines was like the rumble of a railway train; the winds
boomed down from timber line like thunders of artillery; the hailstones
struck the aspens' leaves like bullets, and over all the laugh of Budd
rang in maniacal mirth.
The professor held his eye steadily; then abruptly: "Turn out the
guard!" he shouted.
"Choke him, you big Dutch fool!" Budd called back in response, as with
his bare arms he grappled with an invisible adversary.
He of the straight back and curly hair had been a strong young fellow,
but, taken unawares, the contest was bound to go against him. Once, it
seemed, he had brought Budd to his knees; once he had nearly hurled him
from the rocking car; but his knapsack must have hampered him, and his
musket and heavy cartridge box. The bounty jumper fought in silence and
with desperate method, gaining advantage every moment; while one hand
pinioned a phantom forearm, the other closed with murderous clutch upon
a ghostly throat. Meanwhile the professor stood by with folded arms
watching critically, one would have thought impartially.