It will be unnecessary to remind those familiar with Glacier Park of the
trail which hugs the mountain above timber-line, and extends toward the
pass for a mile or so, in a long semicircle which curves inward.
At the end it turns to the right and mounts to an acre or so of level
ground, with snow and rocks but no vegetation. This is the Piegan Pass.
Behind it is the Garden Wall, that stupendous mass of granite rising to
incredible heights. On the other side the trail drops abruptly, by means
of stepladders which I have explained.
Tish now told us of her plan.
"The unfortunate part is," she said, "that the Ostermaiers will not see
us. I tried to arrange it so they could, but it was impossible. We must
content ourselves with the knowledge of a good deed done."
Her plan, in brief, was this: The sham attacking party was to turn and
ride away down the far side of the pass, up which the Ostermaiers had
come. They were, according to the young man, to take the girl with them,
with the idea of holding her for ransom. She was to escape, however,
while they were lunching in some secluded fastness, and, riding back to
the pass, was to meet there a rescue party, which the Ostermaiers were
to meet on the way down to Gunsight Chalet.
Tish's idea was this: We would ride up while they were lunching, pretend
to think them real bandits, paying no attention to them if they fired at
us, as we knew they had only blank cartridges, and, having taken them
prisoners, make them walk in ignominy to the nearest camp, some miles
farther.
"Then," said Tish, "either they will confess the ruse, and the country
will ring with laughter, or they will have to submit to arrest and much
unpleasantness. It will be a severe lesson."
We reached the pass safely, and on the way down the other side we passed
Mr. Oliver, the moving-picture man, with his outfit on a horse. He
touched his hat politely and moved out on a ledge to let us by.
"Mind if I take you as you go down the mountain?" he called. "It's a
bully place for a picture." He stared at Aggie, who was muffled in a
cape and had the dish towel round her head. "I'd particularly like to
get your Arab," he said. "The Far East and the Far West, you know."
Aggie gave him a furious glance. "Arab nothing!" she snapped. "If you
can't tell a Christian lady from a heathen, on account of her having
lost her hat, then you belong in the dirty work you're doing."
"Aggie, be quiet!" Tish said in an awful voice.
But wrath had made Aggie reckless. "'Dirty work' was what I said," she
repeated, staring at the young man.
"I beg your pardon. I'm sure I--"
"Don't think," Aggie went on, to Tish's fury, "that we don't know a few
things. We do."
"I see," he said slowly. "All right. Although I'd like to know--"
"Good-morning," said Aggie, and kicked her horse to go on.
I shall never forget Tish's face. Round the next bend she got off her
horse and confronted Aggie.
[Illustration: "The older I get, Aggie Pilkington, the more I realize
that to take you anywhere means ruin."]
"The older I get, Aggie Pilkington," she said, "the more I realize that
to take you anywhere means ruin. We are done now. All our labor is for
nothing. There will be no holdup, no nothing. They are scared off."
But Aggie was still angry. "Just let some one take you for a lousy
Bedouin, Tish," she said, "and see what you would do. I'm not sorry
anyhow. I never did like the idea."
But Tish dislikes relinquishing an idea, once it has taken hold. And,
although she did not speak to Aggie again for the next hour, she went
ahead with her preparations.
"There's still a chance, Lizzie," she said. "It's not likely they'll
give up easy, on account of hiring the Indians and everything."
About a mile and a half down the trail, she picked out a place to hide.
This time there was a cave. We cleared our saddles for action, as Tish
proposed to let them escape past us with the girl, and then to follow
them rapidly, stealing upon them if possible while they were at
luncheon, and covering them with the one real revolver and the three
wooden ones.
The only thing that bothered us was Bill's attitude. He kept laughing to
himself and muttering, and when he was storing things in the cave, Tish
took me aside.
"I don't like his attitude, Lizzie," she said. "He's likely to giggle or
do something silly, just at the crucial moment. I cannot understand why
he thinks it is funny, but he does. We'd be much better without him."
"You'd better talk to him, Tish," I said. "You can't get rid of him
now."
But to tell Tish she cannot do a thing is to determine her to do it.
It was still early, only half-past eight, when she came to me with an
eager face.
"I've got it, Lizzie," she said. "I'll send off Mona Lisa, and he will
have to search for her. The only thing is, she won't move unless she's
driven. If we could only find a hornet's nest again, we could manage. It
may be cruel, but I understand that a hornet's sting is not as painful
to a horse as to a human being."
Mona Lisa, I must explain, was the pack-horse. Tish had changed her name
from Jane to Mona Lisa because in the mornings she was constantly
missing, and having to be looked for.
Tish disappeared for a time, and we settled down to our long wait. Bill
put another coat of stove polish on the weapons, and broke now and then
into silent laughter. On my giving him a haughty glance, however, he
became sober and rubbed with redoubled vigor.
In a half-hour, however, I saw Tish beckoning to me from a distance, and
I went to her. I soon saw that she was holding her handkerchief to one
cheek, but when I mentioned the fact she ignored me.
"I have found a nest, Lizzie," she cried. "Slip over and unfasten Mona
Lisa. She's not near the other horses, which is fortunate."
I then perceived that Tish's yellow slicker was behind her on the ground
and tied into a bundle, from which emerged a dull roaring. I was
wondering how Tish expected to open it, when she settled the question by
asking me to cut a piece from the mosquito netting which we put in the
doorway of the tent at night, and to bring her riding-gloves.
Aggie was darning a hole in the tablecloth when I went back and Bill was
still engaged with the weapons. Having taken what she required to Tish,
under pretense of giving Mona Lisa a lump of sugar, I untied her. What
followed was exactly as Tish had planned. Mona Lisa, not realizing her
freedom, stood still while Tish untied the slicker and freed its furious
inmates. She then dropped the whole thing under the unfortunate animal,
and retreated, not too rapidly, for fear of drawing Bill's attention.
For possibly sixty seconds nothing happened, except that Mona Lisa
raised her head and appeared to listen. Then, with a loud scream, she
threw up her head and bolted. By the time Bill had put down the stove
brush she was out of sight among the trees, but we could hear her
leaping and scrambling through the wood.
"Jumping cats!" said Bill, and ran for his horse. "Acts as though she'd
started for the Coast!" he yelled to me, and flung after her.
When he had disappeared, Tish came out of the woods, and, getting a
kettle of boiling water, poured it over the nest. In spite of the
netting, however, she was stung again, on the back of the neck, and
spent the rest of the morning holding wet mud to the affected parts.
Her brain, however, was as active as ever, and by half-past eleven,
mounting a boulder, she announced that she could see the Ostermaier
party far down the trail, and that in an hour they would probably be at
the top. She had her field-glasses, and she said that Mrs. Ostermaier
was pointing up to the pass and shaking her head, and that the others
were arguing with her.
[Illustration: "It would be just like the woman, to refuse to come any
farther and spoil everything"]
"It would be just like the woman," Tish said bitterly, "to refuse to
come any farther and spoil everything."
But a little later she announced that the guide was leading Mrs.
Ostermaier's horse and that they were coming on.
We immediately retreated to the cave and waited, it being Tish's
intention to allow them to reach the pass without suspecting our
presence, and only to cut off the pseudo-bandits in their retreat, as I
have explained.
It was well that we had concealed the horses also, for the party stopped
near the cave, and Mrs. Ostermaier was weeping. "Not a step farther!"
she said. "I have a family to consider, and Mr. Ostermaier is a man of
wide usefulness and cannot be spared."
We did not dare to look out, but we heard the young lady speaking, and
as Aggie remarked later, no one would have thought, from the sweetness
of her voice, that she was a creature of duplicity.
"But it is perfectly safe, dear Mrs. Ostermaier," she said "And think,
when you go home, of being able to say that you have climbed a mountain
pass."
"Pass!" sniffed Mrs. Ostermaier. "Pass nothing! I don't call a wall a
mile high a pass."
"Think," said the girl, "of being able to crow over those three old
women who are always boasting of the things they do. Probably you are
right, and they never do them at all, but you--there's a moving-picture
man waiting, remember, and you can show the picture before the Dorcas
Society. No one can ever doubt that you have done a courageous thing.
You'll have the proof."
"George," said Mrs. Ostermaier in a small voice, "if anything happens, I
have told you how I want my things divided."
"Little devil!" whispered Aggie, referring to the girl. "If that young
man knows when he is well off, he'll let her go."
But beyond rebuking her for the epithet, Tish made no comment, and the
party moved on. We lost them for a time among the trees, but when they
moved out above timber-line we were able to watch them, and we saw that
Mrs. Ostermaier got off her horse, about halfway up, and climbed slowly
on foot. Tish, who had the glasses, said that she looked purple and
angry, and that she distinctly saw the guide give her something to drink
out of a bottle. It might, however, have been vichy or some similar
innocent beverage, and I believe in giving her the benefit of the doubt.
When at last they vanished over the edge of the pass, we led out our
horses and prepared for what was to come. Bill had not returned, and,
indeed, we did not see him until the evening of the second day after
that, when, worn but triumphant, we emerged from the trail at the Many
Glaciers Hotel. That, however, comes later in this narrative.
With everything prepared, Tish judged it best to have luncheon. I made a
few mayonnaise-and-lettuce sandwiches, beating the mayonnaise in the
cool recesses of the cave, and we drank some iced tea, to which Aggie
had thoughtfully added sliced lemon and a quantity of ginger ale.
Feeling much refreshed, we grasped our weapons and waited.
At half-past twelve we heard a loud shriek on the pass, far overhead,
followed almost immediately by a fusillade of shots. Then a silence,
followed by more shots. Then a solitary horseman rode over the edge of
the pass and, spurring his horse, rode recklessly down the precipitous
trail. Aggie exclaimed that it was Mr. Ostermaier, basely deserting his
wife in her apparent hour of need. But Tish, who had the glasses,
reported finally that it was the moving-picture man.
We were greatly surprised, as it had not occurred to us that this would
be a part of the program.
As he descended, Tish announced that there must be another photographer
on top, as he was "registering" signs of terror--a moving-picture
expression which she had acquired from Charlie Sands--and looking back
frequently over his shoulder.
We waited until he reached timber-line, and then withdrew to a group of
trees. It was not our intention to allow him to see us and spoil
everything. But when he came near, through the woods, and his horse
continued at unabated speed, Tish decided that the animal, frightened by
the shots, was running away.
She therefore placed herself across the trail to check its headlong
speed, but the animal merely rushed round her. Mr. Oliver yelled
something at us, which we were, however, unable to hear, and kept madly
on.
Almost immediately four men, firing back over their shoulders, rode into
sight at the pass and came swiftly down toward us.
"Where's the girl?" Tish cried with her glasses to her eyes. "The idiots
have got excited and have forgotten to steal her."
That was plainly what had happened, but she was determined to be stolen
anyhow, for the next moment she rode into view, furiously following the
bandits.
"She's kept her head anyhow," Tish observed with satisfaction. "Trust a
lot of men to go crazy and do the wrong thing. But they'll have to
change the story and make her follow them."
At timber-line the men seemed to realize that she was behind them, and
they turned and looked up. They seemed to be at a loss to know what to
do, in view of the picture. But they were quick thinkers, too, we
decided. Right then and there they took her prisoner, surrounding her.
She made a desperate resistance, even crying out, as we could plainly
see. But Tish was irritated. She said she could not see how the story
would hold now. Either the girl should have captured them, they being
out of ammunition, or the whole thing should have been done again,
according to the original plan. However, as she said, it was not our
affair. Our business was to teach them a lesson not to impose on
unsuspecting tourists, for although not fond of Mrs. Ostermaier, we had
been members of Mr. Ostermaier's church, and liked him, although his
sermons were shorter than Tish entirely approved of.
We withdrew again to seclusion until they had passed, and Tish gave them
ten minutes to get well ahead. Then we rode out.
Tish's face was stern as she led off. The shriek of Mrs. Ostermaier was
still, as she said in a low tone, ringing in her ears. But before we had
gone very far, Tish stopped and got off her horse. "We've got to pad the
horses' feet," she said. "How can we creep up on them when on every
stony place we sound like an artillery engagement?"
Here was a difficulty we had not anticipated. But Tish overcame it with
her customary resource, by taking the blanket from under her saddle and
cutting it into pieces with her scissors, which always accompany her. We
then cut the leather straps from our saddles at her direction, and each
of us went to work. Aggie, however, protested.
"I never expected," she said querulously, "to be sitting on the Rocky
Mountains under a horse, tying a piece of bed quilt on his feet. I
wouldn't mind," she added, "if the creature liked me. But the way he
feels toward me he's likely to haul off and murder me at any moment."
However, it was done at last, and it made a great change. We moved along
silently, and all went well except that, having neglected to draw the
cinch tight, and the horse's back being slippery without the padding, my
saddle turned unexpectedly, throwing me off into the trail. I bruised my
arm badly, but Tish only gave me a glance of scorn and went on.
Being above carelessness herself, she very justly resents it in others.
We had expected, with reason, that the so-called highwaymen, having
retreated to a certain distance, would there pause and very possibly
lunch before returning. It was, therefore, a matter of surprise to find
that they had kept on.
Moreover, they seemed to have advanced rapidly, and Tish, who had read a
book on signs of the trail, examined the hoofprints of their horses in a
soft place beside a stream, and reported that they had been going at a
lope.
"Now, remember," she said as she prepared to mount again, "to all
intents and purposes these are real bandits and to be treated
accordingly. Our motto is 'No quarter.' I shall be harsh, and I expect
no protest from either of you. They deserve everything they get."
But when, after another mile or two, we came to a side trail, leading,
by Tish's map, not to Many Glaciers, but up a ravine to another pass,
and Tish saw that they had taken that direction, we were puzzled.
But not for long.
"I understand now," she said. "It is all clear. The photographer was
riding ahead to get them up this valley somewhere. They've probably got
a rendezvous all ready, with another camera in place. I must say," she
observed, "that they are doing it thoroughly."
We rode for two hours, and no sign of them. The stove polish had come
off the handles of our revolvers by that time, and Aggie, having rubbed
her face ever and anon to remove perspiration, presented under her
turban a villainous and ferocious expression quite at variance with her
customary mildness.