Wetherell took another tack. He told her to rest. "By and by I'll come
and rub your back again and fix your eyes. To-morrow you will feel
strong and well." To this she made no reply.
All the day Kelley kept his eyes on the back trail, expecting each
moment to see some dusky trailer break from the cover. As night began to
fall it was Wetherell who brought a brand and built a little fire near
the door to Pogosa's tent so that the flame might cheer her, and she
uttered a sigh of comfort as its yellow glare lighted her dark tepee
walls. He brought her bacon, also, and hot bread and steaming coffee,
not merely because she was useful as a guide, but also because she was
old and helpless and had been lured out of her own home into this gray
and icy world of cloud.
"Eddie," he said, as he returned to his partner, "we're on a wild-goose
chase. The thing is preposterous. There isn't any mine--there can't be
such a mine!"
"Why not? What's struck you now?"
"This country has been traversed for a century. It is 'sheeped' and
cattle-grazed and hunted and forest-ranged--"
Kelley waved his hand out toward the bleak crags which loomed dimly from
amid the slashing shrouds of rain. "Traversed! Man, nobody ever does
anything more than ride from one park to another. The mine is not in a
park. It's on some of these rocky-timbered ridges. A thousand
sheep-herders might ride these trails for a hundred years and never see
a piece of pay quartz. It's a big country! Look at it now! What chance
have we without Pogosa? Now here we are on our way, with a sour old
wench who thinks more of a piece of bread than she does of a hunk of
ore. It's up to you, Andy--you and your 'mash.'"
"Well, I've caught the mind-reading delusion. I begin to believe that I
understand Pogosa's reasoning. She is now beginning to be eaten by
remorse. She came into this expedition for the food and drink. She now
repents and is about to confess that she knows nothing about the mine.
She and Eugene have conspired against us and are 'doing' us--good."
"Nitsky! You're away off your base. The fact is, Pogosa is a Sioux. She
cares nothing for the Shoshoni, and she wants to realize on this mine.
She wants to go back to her people before she dies. She means
business--don't you think she don't; and if her running-gear don't
unmesh to-night or to-morrow she's going to make good--that's my hunch."
"I hope you're right, but I can't believe it."
"You don't need to. You keep her thinking you're the Sun-god--that's
your job."
It rained all that day, and when night settled down it grew unreasonably
warm for that altitude, and down on the marshes the horses stood,
patiently enduring the gnats and mosquitoes. They plagued Pogosa so
cruelly that Wetherell took his own web of bobinet and made a protecting
cage for her head and hands. Never before had she been shielded from the
pests of outdoor life. She laughed as she heard the baffled buzzing
outside her net, and, pointing her finger, addressed them mockingly.
Wetherell took the same joy in this that a child takes in the action of
a kitten dressed as a doll. To Eugene he said:
"You tell her Injun plenty fool. He don't know enough to get gold and
buy mosquito netting. If she is wise and shows me the mine she will
never be bitten again. No flies. No mosquitoes. Plenty beef. Plenty
butter and hot biscuits. Plenty sugar and coffee. White man's own horse
carry her back to her people."
It took some time to make the old woman understand this, and then she
replied briefly, but with vigor, and Eugene translated it thus: "White
man all same big chief. Go find mine, _sure_, for you. No want other
white man to have gold. All yours."
The morning broke tardily. The rain had ceased, but the gray mist still
hid the peaks, and now and then the pines shook down a shower of drops
upon the tent cloth as if impatient of the persistent gathering of
moisture. Otherwise the forest was as still as if it were cut from
bronze.
Kelley arose and, going outside, began kicking the embers together.
"Wake up, Andy. It's a gray outlook we have," he announced, after a
careful survey. "The worst sign is this warmth and stillness. We're in
the heart of the storm, and the mosquitoes are hellish."
As Wetherell was creeping from the tent door one of the pines quivered
and sent down a handful of drops, squarely soaking the back of his neck,
and a huge mosquito stuck savagely to the end of his nose. He was not in
the best of humor as he straightened up.
"I can stand cold and snow, or wet and cold, but this hot, sticky, dark
weather irritates me. Let's climb high and see if we can't reach the
frost-line."
"We'll be frosty enough when this storm passes," Kelley said,
comfortingly. Then in a note of astonishment and surprise, "Well, look
at that!"
Wetherell looked where he pointed, and beheld Pogosa squatting before a
meager fire at her tent door, her head carefully draped in her bobinet.
He forgot his own lumps and bumps, and laughed. "So doth the white man's
civilization creep upon and subdue the Amerind, destroying his robust
contempt for the elements and making of him a Sybarite."
Eugene appeared, grinning ruefully. "Heap dam' moskeets. Drink my blood
all night."
"I reckon you got gran'ma's share," said Kelley.
Pogosa met Wetherell's glance with an exultant smile and pointed at the
net as if to say: "See, I am safe. The angry brutes cannot touch me."
"The old girl is on her taps this morning. She deserves a reward. Wait a
jiffy. There"--and Kelley uncorked a flask and poured a wee drop of an
amber-colored liquid into the cup of coffee which Wetherell was about to
take to her--"say nothing and see what happens."
She ate a rousing breakfast and was especially pleased with the coffee.
Kelley repeated the dose, and she, much invigorated, ordered Eugene to
bring her pony to her. This tickled Kelley mightily.
"You see how it is! She's already the millionairess. Who ever heard of
an Injun getting up a horse for an old squaw? Look at Eugene!"
Eugene was indeed in open rebellion, and Wetherell, not caring to have
trouble with him, went down and brought up the pony himself. He also
gave the old woman his slicker and insisted on her wearing it, whereat
Eugene wondered again.
The rain was beginning as they took their way over the meadow, and
Wetherell was near to being bogged the first crack out of the box. "Do
we go up that cliff?" he asked.
Pogosa waved her forefinger back and forth as though tracing the
doublings of the trail.
Kelley scanned the wall narrowly. "I don't quite see it," he remarked,
openly, "but I reckon I can find it," and he spurred his horse to the
front.
"No! No!" screamed Pogosa in a sudden fury, her voice shrill and nasal.
Kelley stopped, and she motioned Wetherell to his place in the lead.
With a comical look in his eyes the trailer fell back. "'Pears like I
ain't good enough to precede her Majesty. Go ahead, Andy."
Wetherell, in much doubt of his ability to scale that cliff, started
forth. The old trail could be seen dimly, and also the recent tracks of
three horses. They were not precisely fresh, but they gave some
uneasiness.
"Who made 'em, Eugene, and when?" he asked.
"One man riding--white man," announced Eugene. "Two pack-horse--very
light pack--made--mebbe so--three days ago."
"The forest-ranger from the other side, possibly."
Wetherell, by watching the hoof-marks, by studying the conformation of
the cliff before him, and by glancing back now and again at Pogosa,
contrived to find the way. Slowly and for several hours they climbed
this vast dike. It was nearly eleven thousand feet above the sea here,
and Kelley himself breathed with effort as he climbed.
"I begin to see why people don't use this trail much," he said, as they
stopped to rest on one of the broad shelves. "I'm beginning to wonder
how we're going to pack our ore to market over this road."
"It will take mighty rich ore to pay its own freight," responded
Wetherell.
Pogosa seemed strangely excited. Her eyes were gleaming, her face
working with emotion.
"See the old girl!" said Kelley. "We must be hot on the trail of the
mine. It don't look like mineral formation, but gold is where you find
it."
"Go on," signed Pogosa.
The way seemed interminable, and at times Wetherell despaired of getting
his withered commander into the park which he was sure lay above this
dike. At noon they halted long enough to make coffee. Kelley flavored it
as before, and Pogosa was ready to go on an hour later.
As they rose above the dike and Bonneville's Peak came into view a low
humming sound startled the hunters. It came from Pogosa. With eyes lit
by the reviving fires of memory, she was chanting a hoarse song. She
seemed to have thrown off half the burden of her years. Her voice
gradually rose till her weird improvisation put a shiver into
Wetherell's heart. She had forgotten the present; and with hands resting
on the pommel of her saddle, with dim eyes fixed upon the valley, was
reliving the past.
"She singing old hunting song," Eugene explained. "Many years ago she
sing it. This heap fine hunting-ground then. Elk, big-horn, bear. All
fine things in summer. Winter nothing but big-horn. Sheep-eaters live
here many summers. Pogos' young and happy then. Now she is old and
lonesome. People all gone. Purty soon she die. So she say."
Even the unimaginative mind of Tall Ed Kelley thrilled to the tragic
significance of this survivor of a dying race chanting her solitary
song. Her memory was quickening under the touch of these cliffs and the
sound of these streams. She was retracing the steps of her youth.
Kelley interpreted it differently. "She's close to it," he called. "It's
here in this valley, in some of these ridges."
Resolutely, unhesitatingly, Pogosa rode down the first stream which ran
to the north, making directly for a low hill on which could be discerned
a low comb of deflected rocks of a dark color. At last, riding up the
ledge, she slipped from her horse and, tottering forward, fell face
downward on the grass beside an upturned giant slab of gray stone.
The men stared in wonder, searching the ground for evidence of mineral.
None could be seen. Suddenly lifting her head, the crone began to sing
again, uttering a heart-shaking wail which poured from her quivering
lips like the cry of the forsaken. The sight of her withered hands
strained together and the tears in her sunken cheeks went to the soul.
The desolate rocks, the falling rain, the wild and monstrous cliffs, the
encircling mountains, all lent irresistible power to her grief. She
seemed the minstrel of her race mourning for a vanished world.
"Come away," Eugene urged with a delicacy which sprang from awe. "_Her
husband buried there._"
Deeply touched to know that her grief was personal, and filled, too,
with a kind of helpless amazement at this emotional outbreak, the
gold-seekers withdrew down the slope, followed by the riderless pony,
leaving the old woman crouched close against the sepulcher of her dead,
pouring forth the sobbing wail of her song.
"This looks like the end of our mine," said Kelley, gloomily. "I begin
to think that the old witch led us up here just for the sake of visiting
that grave."
"It looks that way," responded Wetherell, "but what can we do? You can't
beat her, and we've done all we could to bribe her."
Eugene advised: "You wait. Bimeby she got done cryin'. To-morrow she got
cold--want meat, coffee--plenty bad. Then we go get her."
They went into camp not far away in the edge of a thicket of scraggly
wind-dwarfed pines, and put up their tents for the night.
"Wouldn't it put a cramp into you," began Kelley, as they stood beside
their fire, "to think that this old relict has actually led us all the
way up here in order to water the grave of a sweetheart who died forty
years ago?"
"It shows how human she is."
"Human! She's superhuman. She's crazy, that's what she is."
"It is all very wonderful to me, but I'm worried about her. She mustn't
stay out there in this rain. It's going to turn cold. See that streak in
the west?"
As Wetherell left the camp-fire and began to climb back toward the comb
of rocks he felt not merely the sheer immensity of this granite basin,
but the loneliness, its almost insupportable silence and emptiness. With
the feeling of one who intrudes he called to the old woman. He stooped
and put his arm about her. "Come," he said. "You will die here. Come to
the fire."
She suffered him to lead her away, but her head hung on her breast, her
arms were limp.
Back at the camp-fire, after seeing that Pogosa had been properly taken
care of, the men faced each other in gloomy silence.
"Right here we take our medicine, partner," remarked Kelley. "Here we
put a dot and double the line. I'd like to break over that divide and
see how it looks in there, but our lady friend seems indisposed, and I
guess we'll just toast our knees and think where we missed it."
"After all," said Wetherell, soothingly, "this morning may be merely
incidental. Let us be patient. She may recover." And at dark he carried
some hot drink over to her tepee, but found her sleeping, and decided
not to awaken her.
Back at their fire, as the night deepened, the men lighted their pipes,
and with blankets at their backs huddled close about it. An imperious
voice broke from Pogosa's tent. Wetherell looked around at Eugene.
"Did you speak?" he asked.