[Illustration: TOM PRESTON FOUND.]
THE
CAMP IN THE FOOT-HILLS
OR
_OSCAR ON HORSEBACK_
BY
HARRY CASTLEMON
AUTHOR OF “GUNBOAT SERIES,” “ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES,” “WAR SERIES,” ETC.,
ETC.
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA
PORTER & COATES
COPYRIGHT, 1893,
BY
PORTER & COATES.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. AT THE COLONEL’S HEAD-QUARTERS, 1
II. OSCAR’S OUTFIT, 10
III. BIG THOMPSON, 20
IV. PICKING OUT A PONY, 27
V. LARAMIE PLAINS, 36
VI. A RIDE THROUGH THE SAGE-BRUSH, 48
VII. ANOTHER UNEXPECTED MEETING, 54
VIII. TOM PRESTON, 63
IX. TOM’S STORY, 71
X. TOM LEARNS SOMETHING, 79
XI. TOM BECOMES DESPERATE, 88
XII. OSCAR TALKS TO THE COLONEL, 97
XIII. OSCAR WRITES A NOTE, 107
XIV. LEFT IN THE SAGE-BRUSH, 116
XV. THE HUNTING PARTY, 126
XVI. A CHASE AND A CAPTIVE, 137
XVII. COURSING AND STILL-HUNTING, 149
XVIII. “CLIMB DOWN, PARD!” 160
XIX. THE STOLEN MULE, 173
XX. INSIDE THE DUG-OUT, 183
XXI. THE RANCHMAN SAYS SOMETHING, 193
XXII. THE CAMP IN THE FOOT-HILLS, 202
XXIII. HUNTING THE BIG HORN, 212
XXIV. A FREE FIGHT, 222
XXV. OSCAR DISCOVERS SOMETHING, 232
XXVI. THE RIVAL HUNTERS, 244
XXVII. BIG THOMPSON FOLLOWS A TRAIL, 256
XXVIII. “OLD EPHRAIM,” 269
XXIX. A LUCKY SHOT, 280
XXX. OSCAR HAS A VISITOR, 292
XXXI. TOM AND HIS PARTNER, 307
XXXII. THE WOLFER’S PLAN, 318
XXXIII. LISH DECIDES TO MOVE, 329
XXXIV. A CLIMAX, 340
XXXV. WHAT OSCAR’S VISITOR DID, 354
XXXVI. THE TABLES TURNED, 365
XXXVII. BIG THOMPSON’S HUNTING DOG, 378
XXXVIII. FAREWELL TO THE HILLS, 389
THE
CAMP IN THE FOOT-HILLS;
OR,
OSCAR ON HORSEBACK.
CHAPTER I.
AT THE COLONEL’S HEAD-QUARTERS.
“I declare, I almost wish I was going with him!”
It was our old friend Oscar Preston who said this. He was standing on
the platform in front of the station at Julesburg, gazing after the
stage-coach in which Leon Parker, the disgusted and repentant runaway,
whose adventures and mishaps have already been described, had taken
passage for Atchison.
Oscar, as we know, had stumbled upon Leon by the merest chance, and
fortunately he was in a position to render him the assistance of which
he stood so much in need.
By advancing him money out of his own pocket he had put it in Leon’s
power to return to the home he had so recklessly deserted, and those who
have read “TWO WAYS OF BECOMING A HUNTER” know how glad the runaway was
to accept his proffered aid.
Up to this time Oscar had been all enthusiasm. There was no employment
in the world that he could think of that so accorded with his taste as
the mission on which he had been sent—that of procuring specimens for
the museum that was to be added to the other attractions connected with
the university at Yarmouth.
His head was full of plans. So anxious was he to make his expedition
successful, and to win the approbation of the committee who employed
him, that he had been able to think of nothing else; but when he saw the
coach moving away from the station he began to have some faint idea of
the agony Leon must have suffered when he found himself alone in that
wilderness, with no friend to whom he could go for sympathy or advice.
In short Oscar was very homesick. In a few days, if nothing unforeseen
happened, Leon would be in Eaton, surrounded by familiar scenes and
familiar faces, while Oscar himself would, in a short time, disappear as
completely from the gaze of the civilized world as though he had
suddenly ceased to exist.
Even with his inexperienced eye he could see that bad weather was close
at hand. Perhaps before he reached the foot-hills the winter’s storms
would burst forth in all their fury, blocking the trail with drifts, and
effectually shutting him off from all communication with those he had
left behind.
He had never been so far away from his mother before, and neither had
she ever seemed so dear and so necessary to him as she did now.
And then there was Sam—impulsive, good-natured, kind-hearted Sam
Hynes—who had so long been his chosen friend and almost constant
companion!
Oscar would have given much if he could have looked into his honest face
and felt the cordial grasp of his hand once more.
Some such thoughts as these passed through the mind of the young hunter
as he stood there on the platform with his hands in his pockets, gazing
after the rapidly receding stage-coach, and for a moment he looked and
felt very unlike the happy, ambitious boy who had left Eaton but a short
time before with such bright anticipations of the future.
Then he dashed away the mist that seemed to be gathering before his
eyes, pushed back his hat, which he had drawn low over his forehead, and
took himself to task for his weakness.
“A pretty hunter I shall make if this is the way I am to feel!” was his
mental exclamation. “I talked very glibly to Sam Hynes about going on a
three or four years’ expedition to Africa to collect specimens, and here
I am, homesick already, although I have been away from Eaton scarcely
two weeks. This will never do. I must get to work at once.”
Just at that moment the stage-coach reached the top of a high ridge over
which the road ran, and Leon turned in his seat to wave his farewell to
the boy who had befriended him.
Oscar waved his handkerchief in reply, and, having seen the coach
disappear over the brow of the hill, he sprang off the platform and bent
his steps toward the fort.
As he passed through the gate, the sentry respectfully brought his
musket to a “carry.” He had seen Oscar in familiar conversation with all
the high officers belonging to the post, and that made him believe that
the visitor, young as he was in years, must be a person of some
importance.
He was well enough acquainted with the men who commanded him to know
that they did not associate on terms of intimacy with everyone who came
to the post on business.
Oscar walked straight to the colonel’s head-quarters, and the orderly
who was standing in the hall opened the door for him.
The room in which he now found himself was not just such a room as he
had expected to see in that wilderness. The open piano, the expensive
pictures, the papered walls, and the richly upholstered easy-chairs that
were arranged in order about the table made it look almost too
civilized.
And yet there were a good many things in it to remind one of the plains.
There was no carpet on the floor, but there were rugs in abundance,
although they were not such rugs as we have in our houses. They were
made of the skins of the wild animals that had fallen to the colonel’s
breech loader.
The commandant was not only a brave soldier, a successful Indian
fighter, and a daring horseman, but he was also an enthusiastic
sportsman and a crack shot with the rifle.
The walls of his room were adorned with numerous trophies of his skill
as a hunter and marksman in the shape of antlers, skins, and deer heads
(the latter not quite so well mounted as they ought to be, Oscar
thought); and the brace of magnificent Scotch greyhounds, which were
lying at their ease on an elk skin in front of the blazing logs that
were piled in the huge, old-fashioned fireplace, were fair specimens of
the pack the colonel had imported for the purpose of coursing the
antelope that were so abundant on the prairie.
The weapons the colonel used in war and in the chase were conspicuously
displayed, and beside them hung Indian relics of all descriptions.
There was the shield that had once belonged to the hostile chief Yellow
Bear, who had given the soldiers and settlers a world of trouble, and
who was almost as celebrated in his day as Sitting Bull was a few years
ago.
It was ornamented with the scalps the chief had taken during his
numerous raids, and exactly in the centre of it was the hole made by a
bullet from the colonel’s rifle, which had put an end to one raid and
terminated the career of Yellow Bear at the same time.
Hanging on one side the portrait of a distinguished army officer was the
strong bow, made of elk horn, and braced with deer sinews, which the
colonel used when he went out to hunt coyotes; and on the other was the
tomahawk he had wrested from the hands of the warrior who had rushed up
to secure his scalp when his (the colonel’s) horse was shot under him.
It was by no means the terrible-looking weapon that Oscar had supposed
an Indian tomahawk to be. It was simply a plasterer’s hatchet, which the
former owner had purchased of a trader.
The colonel, who was sitting in an easy-chair, reading one of the papers
which Oscar had laid on his table the day before, looked up as the boy
entered and pointed to a seat on the opposite side of the fireplace.
“Well, you have seen your friend off, I suppose?” said he. “You arrived
in the nick of time, didn’t you? The doctor says he honestly believes
that Leon would have died of homesickness if you had not come just as
you did. He has told me the lad’s story, and I must say that, although I
have often read of such things, I never really believed that any living
boy could entertain notions so utterly ridiculous. Why, just look at it
for a moment! You will begin your life on the plains under the most
favorable circumstances. You will have the benefit of the experience of
every hunter about the post, both professional and amateur, be provided
with all the necessaries that money can buy, be looked after by a
competent guide, and yet before the winter is over you will wish a
thousand times that you were safe back in Eaton again. Leon could not
hope for the aid and comfort that will be so cheerfully extended to you.
He intended to go in on his own hook, using as a guide some trashy
novel, written by a man who probably knows no more about life on the
plains than you do, and the consequence was that his want of experience
got him into trouble at the very outset. That was a most fortunate thing
for him, for if one of our Western ‘blizzards’ had overtaken him he
never would have been heard of again. I hope his experience will be a
lesson to him.”
“I hope so, from the bottom of my heart,” said Oscar as he took the
chair pointed out to him, and patted the head of one of the greyhounds,
which arose from his comfortable couch, and, after lazily stretching
himself, came up and laid his black muzzle on the boy’s knee.