We did not make thirty-five miles that day, nor yet twenty-five, for
he had let me sleep. We made an early camp and tried some unsuccessful
fishing, over which he was cheerful, promising trout to-morrow when we
should be higher among the mountains. He never again touched or came
near the subject that was on his mind, but while I sat writing my diary,
he went off to his horse Monte, and I could hear that he occasionally
talked to that friend.
Next day we swung southward from what is known to many as the Conant
trail, and headed for that short cut through the Tetons which is known
to but a few. Bitch Creek was the name of the stream we now followed,
and here there was such good fishing that we idled; and the horses and
I at least enjoyed ourselves. For they found fresh pastures and shade in
the now plentiful woods; and the mountain odors and the mountain heights
were enough for me when the fish refused to rise. This road of ours now
became the road which the pursuit had taken before the capture. Going
along, I noticed the footprints of many hoofs, rain-blurred but recent,
and these were the tracks of the people I had met in the stable.
“You can notice Monte’s,” said the Virginian. “He is the only one that
has his hind feet shod. There’s several trails from this point down to
where we have come from.”
We mounted now over a long slant of rock, smooth and of wide extent.
Above us it went up easily into a little side canyon, but ahead, where
our way was, it grew so steep that we got off and led our horses.
This brought us to the next higher level of the mountain, a space of
sagebrush more open, where the rain-washed tracks appeared again in the
softer ground.
“Some one has been here since the rain,” I called to the Virginian, who
was still on the rock, walking up behind the packhorses.
“Since the rain!” he exclaimed. “That’s not two days yet.” He came and
examined the footprints. “A man and a hawss,” he said, frowning. “Going
the same way we are. How did he come to pass us, and us not see him?”
“One of the other trails,” I reminded him.
“Yes, but there’s not many that knows them. They are pretty rough
trails.”
“Worse than this one we’re taking?”
“Not much; only how does he come to know any of them? And why don’t he
take the Conant trail that’s open and easy and not much longer? One man
and a hawss. I don’t see who he is or what he wants here.”
“Probably a prospector,” I suggested.
“Only one outfit of prospectors has ever been here, and they claimed
there was no mineral-bearing rock in these parts.”
We got back into our saddles with the mystery unsolved. To the Virginian
it was a greater one, apparently, than to me; why should one have to
account for every stray traveller in the mountains?
“That’s queer, too,” said the Virginian. He was now riding in front of
me, and he stopped, looking down at the trail. “Don’t you notice?”
It did not strike me.
“Why, he keeps walking beside his hawss; he don’t get on him.”
Now we, of course, had mounted at the beginning of the better trail
after the steep rock, and that was quite half a mile back. Still, I had
a natural explanation. “He’s leading a packhorse. He’s a poor trapper,
and walks.”
“Packhorses ain’t usually shod before and behind,” said the Virginian;
and sliding to the ground he touched the footprints. “They are not four
hours old,” said he. “This bank’s in shadow by one o’clock, and the sun
has not cooked them dusty.”
We continued on our way; and although it seemed no very particular
thing to me that a man should choose to walk and lead his horse for a
while,--I often did so to limber my muscles,--nevertheless I began to
catch the Virginian’s uncertain feeling about this traveller whose steps
had appeared on our path in mid-journey, as if he had alighted from the
mid-air, and to remind myself that he had come over the great face of
rock from another trail and thus joined us, and that indigent trappers
are to be found owning but a single horse and leading him with their
belongings through the deepest solitudes of the mountains--none of this
quite brought back to me the comfort which had been mine since we left
the cottonwoods out of sight down in the plain. Hence I called out
sharply, “What’s the matter now?” when the Virginian suddenly stopped
his horse again.
He looked down at the trail, and then he very slowly turned round in his
saddle and stared back steadily at me. “There’s two of them,” he said.
“Two what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must know whether it’s two horses or two men,” I said, almost
angrily.
But to this he made no answer, sitting quite still on his horse and
contemplating the ground. The silence was fastening on me like a spell,
and I spurred my horse impatiently forward to see for myself. The
footprints of two men were there in the trail.
“What do you say to that?” said the Virginian. “Kind of ridiculous,
ain’t it?”
“Very quaint,” I answered, groping for the explanation. There was no
rock here to walk over and step from into the softer trail. These second
steps came more out of the air than the first. And my brain played me
the evil trick of showing me a dead man in a gray flannel shirt.
“It’s two, you see, travelling with one hawss, and they take turns
riding him.”
“Why, of course!” I exclaimed; and we went along for a few paces.
“There you are,” said the Virginian, as the trail proved him right.
“Number one has got on. My God, what’s that?”
At a crashing in the woods very close to us we both flung round and
caught sight of a vanishing elk.
It left us confronted, smiling a little, and sounding each other with
our eyes. “Well, we didn’t need him for meat,” said the Virginian.
“A spike-horn, wasn’t it?” said I.
“Yes, just a spike-horn.”
For a while now as we rode we kept up a cheerful conversation about elk.
We wondered if we should meet many more close to the trail like this;
but it was not long before our words died away. We had come into a
veritable gulf of mountain peaks, sharp at their bare summits like
teeth, holding fields of snow lower down, and glittering still in full
day up there, while down among our pines and parks the afternoon was
growing sombre. All the while the fresh hoofprints of the horse and the
fresh footprints of the man preceded us. In the trees, and in the opens,
across the levels, and up the steeps, they were there. And so they were
not four hours old! Were they so much? Might we not, round some turn,
come upon the makers of them? I began to watch for this. And again my
brain played me an evil trick, against which I found myself actually
reasoning thus: if they took turns riding, then walking must tire them
as it did me or any man. And besides, there was a horse. With such
thoughts I combated the fancy that those footprints were being made
immediately in front of us all the while, and that they were the only
sign of any presence which our eyes could see. But my fancy overcame my
thoughts. It was shame only which held me from asking this question of
the Virginian: Had one horse served in both cases of Justice down at
the cottonwoods? I wondered about this. One horse--or had the strangling
nooses dragged two saddles empty at the same signal? Most likely; and
therefore these people up here--Was I going back to the nursery? I
brought myself up short. And I told myself to be steady; there lurked in
this brain-process which was going on beneath my reason a threat worse
than the childish apprehensions it created. I reminded myself that I was
a man grown, twenty-five years old, and that I must not merely seem like
one, but feel like one. “You’re not afraid of the dark, I suppose?” This
I uttered aloud, unwittingly.
“What’s that?”
I started; but it was only the Virginian behind me. “Oh, nothing. The
air is getting colder up here.”
I had presently a great relief. We came to a place where again this
trail mounted so abruptly that we once more got off to lead our
horses. So likewise had our predecessors done; and as I watched the two
different sets of footprints, I observed something and hastened to speak
of it.
“One man is much heavier than the other.”
“I was hoping I’d not have to tell you that,” said the Virginian.
“You’re always ahead of me! Well, still my education is progressing.”
“Why, yes. You’ll equal an Injun if you keep on.”
It was good to be facetious; and I smiled to myself as I trudged upward.
We came off the steep place, leaving the canyon beneath us, and took to
horseback. And as we proceeded over the final gentle slant up to the
rim of the great basin that was set among the peaks, the Virginian was
jocular once more.
“Pounds has got on,” said he, “and Ounces is walking.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, and he nodded as he fixed the
weather-beaten crimson handkerchief round his neck. Then he threw
a stone at a pack animal that was delaying on the trail. “Damn your
buckskin hide,” he drawled. “You can view the scenery from the top.”
He was so natural, sitting loose in the saddle, and cursing in his
gentle voice, that I laughed to think what visions I had been harboring.
The two dead men riding one horse through the mountains vanished, and I
came back to every day.
“Do you think we’ll catch up with those people?” I asked.
“Not likely. They’re travelling about the same gait we are.”
“Ounces ought to be the best walker.”
“Up hill, yes. But Pounds will go down a-foggin’.”
We gained the rim of the basin. It lay below us, a great cup of
country,--rocks, woods, opens, and streams. The tall peaks rose like
spires around it, magnificent and bare in the last of the sun; and we
surveyed this upper world, letting our animals get breath. Our bleak,
crumbled rim ran like a rampart between the towering tops, a half circle
of five miles or six, very wide in some parts, and in some shrinking to
a scanty foothold, as here. Here our trail crossed over it between two
eroded and fantastic shapes of stone, like mushrooms, or misshapen heads
on pikes. Banks of snow spread up here against the black rocks, but
half an hour would see us descended to the green and the woods. I looked
down, both of us looked down, but our forerunners were not there.
“They’ll be camping somewhere in this basin, though,” said the
Virginian, staring at the dark pines. “They have not come this trail by
accident.”
A cold little wind blew down between our stone shapes, and upward again,
eddying. And round a corner upward with it came fluttering a leaf of
newspaper, and caught against an edge close to me.
“What’s the latest?” inquired the Virginian from his horse. For I had
dismounted, and had picked up the leaf.
“Seems to be interesting,” I next heard him say. “Can’t you tell a man
what’s making your eyes bug out so?”
“Yes,” my voice replied to him, and it sounded like some stranger
speaking lightly near by; “oh, yes! Decidedly interesting.” My voice
mimicked his pronunciation. “It’s quite the latest, I imagine. You had
better read it yourself.” And I handed it to him with a smile, watching
his countenance, while my brain felt as if clouds were rushing through
it.
I saw his eyes quietly run the headings over. “Well?” he inquired,
after scanning it on both sides. “I don’t seem to catch the excitement.
Fremont County is going to hold elections. I see they claim Jake--”
“It’s mine,” I cut him off. “My own paper. Those are my pencil marks.”
I do not think that a microscope could have discerned a change in
his face. “Oh,” he commented, holding the paper, and fixing it with a
critical eye. “You mean this is the one you lent Steve, and he wanted
to give me to give back to you. And so them are your own marks.” For a
moment more he held it judicially, as I have seen men hold a contract
upon whose terms they were finally passing. “Well, you have got it back
now, anyway.” And he handed it to me.
“Only a piece of it!” I exclaimed, always lightly. And as I took it from
him his hand chanced to touch mine. It was cold as ice.
“They ain’t through readin’ the rest,” he explained easily. “Don’t you
throw it away! After they’ve taken such trouble.”
“That’s true,” I answered. “I wonder if it’s Pounds or Ounces I’m
indebted to.”
Thus we made further merriment as we rode down into the great basin.
Before us, the horse and boot tracks showed plain in the soft slough
where melted snow ran half the day.
“If it’s a paper chase,” said the Virginian, “they’ll drop no more along
here.”
“Unless it gets dark,” said I.
“We’ll camp before that. Maybe we’ll see their fire.”
We did not see their fire. We descended in the chill silence, while the
mushroom rocks grew far and the sombre woods approached. By a stream we
got off where two banks sheltered us; for a bleak wind cut down over the
crags now and then, making the pines send out a great note through the
basin, like breakers in a heavy sea. But we made cosey in the tent.
We pitched the tent this night, and I was glad to have it shut out the
mountain peaks. They showed above the banks where we camped; and in the
starlight their black shapes rose stark against the sky. They, with the
pines and the wind, were a bedroom too unearthly this night. And as soon
as our supper dishes were washed we went inside to our lantern and our
game of cribbage.
“This is snug,” said the Virginian, as we played. “That wind don’t get
down here.”
“Smoking is snug, too,” said I. And we marked our points for an hour,
with no words save about the cards.
“I’ll be pretty near glad when we get out of these mountains,” said the
Virginian. “They’re most too big.”
The pines had altogether ceased; but their silence was as tremendous as
their roar had been.
“I don’t know, though,” he resumed. “There’s times when the plains can
be awful big, too.”
Presently we finished a hand, and he said, “Let me see that paper.”
He sat reading it apparently through, while I arranged my blankets to
make a warm bed. Then, since the paper continued to absorb him, I got
myself ready, and slid between my blankets for the night. “You’ll need
another candle soon in that lantern,” said I.
He put the paper down. “I would do it all over again,” he began. “The
whole thing just the same. He knowed the customs of the country, and he
played the game. No call to blame me for the customs of the country. You
leave other folks’ cattle alone, or you take the consequences, and it
was all known to Steve from the start. Would he have me take the Judge’s
wages and give him the wink? He must have changed a heap from the Steve
I knew if he expected that. I don’t believe he expected that. He knew
well enough the only thing that would have let him off would have been
a regular jury. For the thieves have got hold of the juries in Johnson
County. I would do it all over, just the same.”
The expiring flame leaped in the lantern, and fell blue. He broke off
in his words as if to arrange the light, but did not, sitting silent
instead, just visible, and seeming to watch the death struggle of the
flame. I could find nothing to say to him, and I believed he was now
winning his way back to serenity by himself. He kept his outward man
so nearly natural that I forgot about that cold touch of his hand, and
never guessed how far out from reason the tide of emotion was even now
whirling him. “I remember at Cheyenne onced,” he resumed. And he told
me of a Thanksgiving visit to town that he had made with Steve. “We
was just colts then,” he said. He dwelt on their coltish doings, their
adventures sought and wrought in the perfect fellowship of youth. “For
Steve and me most always hunted in couples back in them gamesome years,”
he explained. And he fell into the elemental talk of sex, such talk
as would be an elk’s or tiger’s; and spoken so by him, simply and
naturally, as we speak of the seasons, or of death, or of any actuality,
it was without offense. It would be offense should I repeat it. Then,
abruptly ending these memories of himself and Steve, he went out of the
tent, and I heard him dragging a log to the fire. When it had blazed up,
there on the tent wall was his shadow and that of the log where he sat
with his half-broken heart. And all the while I supposed he was master
of himself, and self-justified against Steve’s omission to bid him
good-by.
I must have fallen asleep before he returned, for I remember nothing
except waking and finding him in his blankets beside me. The fire
shadow was gone, and gray, cold light was dimly on the tent. He slept
restlessly, and his forehead was ploughed by lines of pain. While I
looked at him he began to mutter, and suddenly started up with violence.
“No!” he cried out; “no! Just the same!” and thus wakened himself,
staring. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. He was slow in getting back
to where we were; and full consciousness found him sitting up with his
eyes fixed on mine. They were more haunted than they had been at all,
and his next speech came straight from his dream. “Maybe you’d better
quit me. This ain’t your trouble.”