THE GIRL AND THE EMERALDS.
The fire roared on the pine levels overhead, and the girl and the
scout whom she had rescued from the fire talked.
They had much to talk about beyond the fact that she had saved the
scout, and the inevitable discussion as to how they were to get off
the ledge where they now were.
“Lena,” he said finally, and his tone showed hesitation, “I suppose
you are strong enough to hear unpleasant news?”
Her face, already pale, grew paler.
“My uncle?” she gasped. “Something has happened to him!”
The scout put his hand into an inner pocket and brought out a filled
buckskin bag.
“He asked me to send, or get, this to you.”
She looked at him, trembling.
“He--he is not dead?”
“Yes, Lena,” said the kind-hearted scout, his own voice shaking. “I
am sorry to have to tell you that he died two days ago. You know
he was not well when he last saw your father. I’ve been doing some
scouting work in the mountains. Thinking to visit him, I called at
the cabin, and found him seriously ill with fever, in fact, at the
point of death. I did all I could for him, but it was little enough,
and he died. He gave me this package to give to you, or send to you;
for he thought you had started for the East long ago. He thought you
would persuade your father to give up his mine and go home--he had
never heard of John Forest’s death.”
He put the buckskin bag in her trembling hands.
When she opened it she found it filled with what seemed to be bits of
broken green glass.
“Emeralds, and as fine as you’ll ever see,” he explained. “There’s a
fortune there, and he wanted me to see that they went to you. It’s a
queer place here to deliver them, and a strange----”
He stopped, for she was not looking at the emeralds; thinking of her
father, she had begun to weep.
“There was no letter from my uncle?” she said after a while.
“No; he was too weak to write. He sent his love and the emeralds. He
was looking for gold, you know. Well, his pick broke through into a
cave, and opened up a queer place that must once have been an Indian
temple, or medicine lodge. The emeralds had been round the neck of a
stone idol. The buckskin string that had held them was decayed, so
that they had fallen to the floor, and were covered with dust. He
found one, and then, by a search, got all of them.
“His first thought was that perhaps there were many more, and he made
a thorough search. I’m afraid that in that search he got the fever
that killed him. The place was horridly damp, as I afterward found;
for, after his death, I myself made a thorough exploration of the
cave, and discovered that fact, though nothing else. The only gems
were round the neck of the idol, I am sure.”
She heard him with heartbreaking interest.
“I must think about it,” she said; “I must have time to adjust myself
to it. It seems unbelievable. Oh, my poor uncle!”
She seemed almost to have forgotten her strange position on that
ledge, the rescue of the scout, and the roaring of the fire above.
For a long time she sat crouching, regaining her strength, while
she thought over the sad thing which had thus been brought to her
knowledge, and went back in memory to the past.
For two years she had lived in the mining cabin not far from this
cañon with her father. In many ways those two years had been hard
ones for both her and her father. They had been lonely years to her,
for he had been away from home a good deal, and his brother, now dead
also, had visited them very seldom.
But the loneliness had recently been broken by the visits of the
young man, to whom she had almost from the first given her heart.
Clayton was at Crystal Spring, where he intended to make a home for
her, and he was to have met her and accompanied her on her way back
to the fort, but she had missed him, and so had come alone.
The morning after her return she had seen the fire, and then had
discovered that Buffalo Bill, the friend of her lover, was in peril
on the high precipice.
As she sat in silence on the ledge, grieving over the death of her
uncle, she paid scant attention to the beautiful emeralds lying in
her lap; but finally she looked down at them, slowly placed them in
the buckskin bag, and then gave it to the scout.
“Keep them for me a while, until we get out of this danger,” she
requested. “I wonder how we are to get out, too?” She looked up at
the smoke floating over them in a thick cloud. “Have you thought of
any way?”
Buffalo Bill, while watching the changing face of the girl, had also
been looking at the rope at intervals, fearing the noose would be
burned away above. That had not yet happened, and the fire was dying
down. There was a great deal of smoke, yet little fire.
He took the buckskin bag of emeralds and restored it to his pocket.
“I think I’d like to see how that fire is doing,” he said, rising to
his feet. He began to climb the rope, and was soon at the top.
There was still a good deal of fire in the woods beyond, where some
trees were burning, but close by the rocky point there was hardly any
blaze now, and the noose of the rope had been untouched.
He leaned over and looked down at the girl.
“It’s cool enough for one to stand it up here now,” he called to her.
“If you’d like to come up, make a noose and put it under your arms.”
She made and adjusted the noose, and the strong arms of the scout
soon drew her to the top of the precipitous wall.
“Not very pleasant up here even yet,” he said, “but better than down
there; and we have the comforting assurance that we’re out of the
cañon, and that the rope was equal to the strain.”
“If we keep close to the cañon’s edge, perhaps we can get beyond the
fire now,” she suggested. “You have a horse, you said.”
“If the poor fellow hasn’t been roasted. I’m a bit afraid the fire
reached him.”
They set out along the edge of the precipice, Buffalo Bill taking the
rope.
Though the ground was still hot and smoking in places, they were able
to make their way along, and, after a while, they passed out of the
burned area, and came into a region which the fire had not touched.
“There the clever rascal is,” said the scout. “Look at him!--as
peaceful as a lamb!”
His horse had broken the rope by which it had been tied, had run from
the fire, and was now grazing peacefully, not a hundred yards from
where the scout and the girl stood.
The girl had asked many questions about her uncle, about his illness,
and about the emeralds; but she began to talk of these matters again,
when they got beyond the burned area, showing that she had thought of
nothing else all the time, even when she seemed to be thinking only
of getting away from the fire.
The scout went over the story again, giving all the details, until,
by the aid of her imagination, Lena was able to reconstruct the whole
thing.
“About those emeralds,” she said. “What am I to do with them?”
“Whatever you please. It was your uncle’s desire for you to have
them, so that you might be freed from all want, educate yourself
to whatever extent you desired, travel, and enjoy life. It was a
satisfaction to him to believe that you would get them, and that they
would make you independent. I promised him faithfully that I would
deliver them into your hands; and if you hadn’t happened back here
as you did, and I had escaped from that fire, it was my intention to
return immediately to the fort for the purpose of delivering them to
you personally.”
“You are very kind,” she said. “You wouldn’t trust them to the
express or to the stages?”
“I should not have felt it safe to do so.”
“The country is full of road agents.”
“Yes; robbers and outlaws of all kinds.”
She seemed to be thinking of this as they walked on toward the
scout’s horse.
The animal was caught by Buffalo Bill, and he then insisted that she
should ride and that he would walk. He accompanied her to her uncle’s
cabin home, which was not far away. It was situated near the stage
trail that ran from Glendive to the railroad.