IN THE CLUTCHES OF THE GRIZZLY.
Blinky's conviction that the signaling had something to do with Rob
would have been strengthened if he could have been so stationed as to
watch the making of the first smoke telegraph Merritt noticed. On the
distant hilltop Clark Jennings, Hank Handcraft and Bill Bender were
stooped over a fire of green wood, alternately covering and uncovering
it with a horse blanket. The signaling was being done under Clark's
direction, as neither of the Easterners knew anything about the Indian
smoke language. Clark, during his long residence in the West, had picked
up his knowledge of it from Emilio Auguardo, the halfbreed who had once
worked on his father's ranch. Through this man, too, he had become quite
an intimate of the Moquis, as we have seen.
"Douse it! Uncover it. Douse. Uncover. Douse. Uncover."
Clark Jennings's commands came in regular rotation, with differing
intervals between each order. In all essentials, those three enemies of
the boys were using a telegraph code antedating by centuries the system
in use to-day on our telegraph lines.
"Ought to be getting an answer soon," muttered Clark, shading his eyes
with his hand and standing erect on an upraised slab of rock, the better
to command a view of the distant hills in the section in which he had
reason to believe the Moquis had proceeded.
"Hold on! Douse that fire!" he cried suddenly.
Against the sky, not more than five miles distant, an answering thread
of smoke had unrolled, like the coils of a slow serpent. Up it wavered
and then stopped abruptly, to be followed by another puff. It was as if
a locomotive lay beyond the distant hill. The puffs of smoke resembled
the vaporous belchings of an engine stack when it is starting up.
"They say for us to wait here and they will send a messenger," announced
Clark finally.
"Well, I guess we can wait as well as anything else," rejoined Hank
Handcraft, extending himself lazily on the sun-warmed ground. "Are they
going to send a pony?"
"Don't know," rejoined Clark shortly. "Wonder what we'll do if Harkness
hits our trail?"
"Don't bother about that. He'll be too busy rounding up that boy Rob,"
replied Bill Bender. "Queer where that kid went to."
"Queer is no word for it," agreed Clark; "and what bothers me is that we
are likely to have trouble with him yet if we're not careful."
"You think he is alive, then?"
"Must be, unless he melted into thin air."
"That's so."
"By the way, Clark," struck in Hank Handcraft suddenly, after a period
of deep thought, aided by the consumption of sweet grass stalks,
"wouldn't the present time be a good one to drop in on Harkness's
mavericks?"
"By thunder! you're right," was the reply. "Harkness is pretty sure to
have the whole ranch force, or every one he can spare, spread out,
seeking for that young cub. The Far Pasture will be pretty sure to be
left unguarded. You're right, Hank; we'll see what the chief has to say,
and then, if we can get a few Indians to help us, we'll make the big
drive. Ha, ha! won't Harkness be sore if he finds the boy, to discover
that it's cost him the loss of a few thousand dollars' worth of beef!"
In further discussion of their plans the three worthies spent the next
hour or so. By that time it was dark, and the thin, silver nail-paring
of the new moon showed above the eastern hilltops. It grew very still,
the deep silence being broken only by the hoot of an owl or the chirping
of some night insect.
Suddenly, and quite near at hand, a twig snapped loudly. Instantly the
hands of each of the three flew to their weapons, but an instant later
they perceived that they, at least, had no cause for alarm from the
newcomer who had thus announced his arrival. It was an Indian that stood
before them while they still stared in a startled way into the dark
shadows.
"Chief Black Cloud!" exclaimed Clark, as the figure silently glided into
the small circle, shrouded in the folds of a heavy blanket.
The chief had tied his pony some distance away, and had advanced with
customary stealth on the camping place of his allies.
"How!" grunted the chief, squatting down on his haunches. "You want
talk?"
"Well, that's the reason we lighted up our little wireless plant,"
grinned Hank.
"Hum! My brother with the hair on his face is foolish," snapped the
chief, while the others laughed aloud at Hank's discomfiture. He did not
again adopt a flippant tone toward the impressive figure which sat in
council with them.
"Chief Black Cloud," began Clark, "in the Far Pasture of Harkness, the
rancher, below the places of the dwellers in the cliff, are many young
cattle. They are unbranded, and if we can cut them out and get them
away we can all be rich--make heap money."
"Um!" grunted the chief, waiting for what was to come.
"Harkness and his men are all away, seeking for a lost boy----"
"Hum! Black Cloud know," interpolated the Indian.
"Then you _did_ take him off!" burst out Bill Bender. "Why didn't you
have sense enough to keep him?"
"Hush!" ordered Clark sharply. He was sufficiently conversant with
Indian character to know that the chief might be mortally offended by
adverse comments on anything his tribe might have seen fit to do. But
Black Cloud paid no attention to the interruption.
"What you want Moquis to do?" inquired the chief, going right to the
heart of the matter, for he had quite acumen enough to reason that from
the conciliatory tone Clark adopted he had some service to ask.
"That you will help us on the cattle drive," rejoined Clark boldly.
The Indian shook his head.
"No can do," he said decisively. "Mayberry, the Indian agent, is in the
mountains seeking us now."
Here the chief permitted himself a grim smile.
"But Mayberry kind man. If we go back to reservation, make no trouble,
everything all right. All the same as before. But if we steal the cattle
of the white men, then the white man visit us with his anger."
"It will be easy and no chance of being found out," urged Clark.
But the chief shook his head.
"No. My people here for snake dance. Not for steal white man's cattle."
"Then you won't help us?"
"No."
"You'll be sorry for it, you old idiot!" snapped out Clark, foolishly
letting his temper get the better of him for an instant.
The Indian drew himself up with haughty dignity. Slowly he gathered the
folds of his blanket about him. Then, and not till then, did he speak.
"Black Cloud is never sorry for his deeds. But perhaps white men will
sorrow for theirs," he said, with extraordinary dignity and force, and
the next instant he was gone.
"Say, Clark, it seems to me you've put your foot in it," muttered Hank,
as the offended Indian strode off.
"He looked Black Cloud by nature, as well as by name," commented Bill
Bender. "He glared at you as if he would read your thoughts, Clark."
"I hope not," laughed the young ranchman, though with a rather uneasy
note in his assumed carelessness, "for they had a lot to do with him, I
can tell you."
"What do you mean?"
"That we'll have to do the Indian act again."
"How do you mean?"
"Why, steal the cattle, disguised as Moquis. But come on, hit the trail.
We'll be getting back to the ranch. I'll tell you as we go."
As my readers will have seen, the above conversation throws a strange
side light on Indian morality. The Moquis, of whom Chief Black Cloud was
patriarch, had had not the slightest objection to "hold up" the boys and
to capture Rob for ransom, but at the seriously punishable crime of
cattle stealing they balked. What the consequences of this decision were
to be to Clark Jennings and his companions we shall see later on. At the
Jennings ranch they met Jess Randell, and here the four sat late,
discussing the big coup which they hoped was to retrieve all their
fortunes. At length they arrived at a decision, and arranged a plan
which they deemed offered every security against discovery.
* * * * *
It is now time to revert to the fortunes of Rob, of whom we last heard
when the three worthies into whose camp he had been catapulted with such
velocity were searching in vain for a clew to his whereabouts. As will
be recalled, after leaping on the back of Hank Handcraft's pony, the boy
had dashed off down the trail at top speed, without a very clear idea of
where he was bound for. As he rode he heard the sounds of the pursuit,
and simultaneously with the sharp report of Bill Bender's gun, he felt
his pony halt and stagger beneath him.
For an instant of time it seemed to Rob as if he was bound to be
captured by his pursuers, but in his extremity his mind worked with the
lightning-like rapidity common to quick intelligences in moments of
great stress.
At the precise instant that his little mount gave a groan and plunged
forward into the dust of the trail, Rob reached above his head and
seized the low-hanging branch of a small, stout tree. With the activity
of the practiced athlete, he swung himself up into the thick greenery as
the poor pony lay in its death struggles below. Rapidly working his way
among the branches, he was soon several feet from the trail.
While Bill Bender and Clark Jennings were hanging over the dead pony and
searching in vain for the boy's trail, Rob was noiselessly making his
way over rocks and stones down into a deep-timbered gully. He could
hardly keep himself from an exultant laugh as he pictured the chagrin
and amazement of his old enemies at his total disappearance.
He rapidly sped on, and after an hour or more of traveling, feeling
himself safe once more, he halted. Up to that moment he had pressed on
without feeling much fatigue. The excitement of the rapid happenings
since he had slipped upon the Indian pony's back had sustained him. Now,
however, that he felt comparatively safe, the inevitable relapse came.
Rob's knees began to feel strained and weak, as they had never felt
before. His head, too, buzzed queerly, and a feeling of overpowering
lassitude assailed him in every limb.
"Good gracious! am I going to play out?"
The boy asked himself the question with every feeling of dismay.
He was in a solitary, remote part of even those wild mountains, and
although he was on a small eminence, he could see nothing at any point
of the compass but dreary, monotonous woods or rocky patches of
sun-burned wild oats and foxtail. By the height of the sun and its
direction, he guessed that it was about noon, and that he had been
traveling in a southerly direction, but even of this, in his sudden
collapse, he had no very clear notion. All he really knew was that he
craved food with a wild, aching longing in his every fibre that had
never before assailed him.
"I wonder if starving men in cities ever feel like this?" the boy asked
himself. "Woof! I could eat a horse raw cheerfully."
Then came an interval of utter lassitude of mind and body, in which the
boy lay stretched out on the hot ground, without a thought of anything.
A strange ringing began to sound in his ears and his head felt dizzy.
"Got to get out of the sun," he thought in a dim, remote sort of way.
He voiced his thought aloud, and his tones sounded faint and far away to
him, like the accents of another person.
"Brace up, Rob, brace up," he began repeating to himself, as he made for
a patch of deep shadow under a bush covered with a kind of purple
berry.
But in spite of his determination to "brace up," even the slight effort
of crawling to the grateful shade bothered him so badly that, having
reached it, he could only lie on his side and pant like an exhausted
creature.
All at once a sound was borne to his ears that made him sit up
erect--the bright light of hope gleaming in his eyes.
Heavy footsteps were coming toward him. The boy cared little whether the
advancing individual was friend or foe. His coming meant food, at least;
for surely no enemy could be so inhuman as to refuse nourishment to a
boy in the pitiable condition of Rob Blake.
"There's something queer about those footsteps, though," mused the boy,
as the sounds drew nearer, accompanied by a sort of low, growling
grumbling.
What can it be?
"Sounds like--like---- Great Scott! Silver Tip!"
Into the small clearing on one side of which Rob lay beneath his
sheltering bush, there had suddenly lumbered the half-legendary monarch
of the Santa Catapinas.
It was Silver Tip, the giant grizzly! For a second the monster's small,
piglike eyes glared in blank astonishment at the encounter. He was
hunting honey, and this sudden meeting with a white boy in the wildest
part of his own particular domain evidently had struck him "in a heap,"
so to speak.
The next instant, however, the expression of his wicked little optics
changed to one of active malevolence. He swung his great bulk savagely
about--like the giant heavings and swayings of a picketed elephant. The
small spot of snow-white hair that gave him his name shone out on his
dark, shaggy hide like a bull's-eye. It was right over his heart. If Rob
had had a rifle, he could have pierced it as unerringly as a target.
[Illustration: With a crazy yell, the boy leaped to his feet and rushed
straight at his monstrous shaggy opponent.]
But the lad was weaponless, and almost unconscious from fatigue and
exhaustion. Indeed, delirium had been dangerously near when Silver Tip
came lumbering into the clearing. The sight of the monster had tipped
the delicately adjusted balance.
With a crazy yell, the boy leaped to his feet and rushed straight at his
monstrous shaggy opponent. In sheer astonishment, Silver Tip reared his
immense bulk upward.
"Ha, ha! I'll kill you, you old thief, you old murderer!" yelled Rob
deliriously, as he hurled his slight form straight against the monstrous
hairy tower of rugged strength.
The great forepaws--armed with claws as sharp and heavy as chilled-steel
chisels--extended. In another instant the lad would have been in the
monster's death grip, when an intervention, as sudden as it was
unexpected, occurred.