"Your looking like that's a distinct advantage, Aggie," she said. "Like
as not they'll throw up their hands the minute they see you. I know I
should. You'd better ride first when we get near."
"Like as not they'll put a hole in me," Aggie objected. "And as to
riding first, I will not. This is your doing, Tish Carberry, and as for
their having blank cartridges--how do we know someone hasn't made a
mistake and got a real one?"
Tish reflected on that. "It's a possibility," she agreed. "If we find
that they're going to spend the night out, it might be better to wait
until they've taken off all the hardware they're hung with."
But we did not come up with them. We kept on finding traces of the party
in marshy spots, and once Tish hopped off her horse and picked up a
small handkerchief with a colored border and held it up to us.
"It's hers," she said. "Anybody would know she is the sort to use
colored borders. They're ahead somewhere."
But it seemed strange that they would go so far, and I said so.
"We're far enough off the main trail, Tish," I said. "And it's getting
wilder every minute. There's nothing I can see to prevent a mountain
lion dropping on us most any time."
"Not if it gets a good look at Aggie!" was Tish's grim response.
It began to grow dark in the valley, and things seemed to move on either
side of the trail. Aggie called out once that we had just passed a
grizzly bear, but Tish never faltered. The region grew more and more
wild. The trail was broken with mudholes and crossed by fallen logs.
With a superb disdain Tish rode across all obstacles, not even glancing
at them. But Aggie and I got off at the worst places and led our horses.
At one mudhole I was unfortunate enough to stumble. A horse with a
particle of affection for a woman who had ridden it and cared for it for
several days would have paused.
Not so my animal. With a heartlessness at which I still shudder the
creature used me as a bridge, and stepped across, dryfoot, on my back.
Owing to his padded feet and to the depth of the mud--some eight feet, I
believe--I was uninjured. But it required ten minutes of hard labor on
the part of both Tish and Aggie to release me from the mud, from which I
was finally raised with a low, hissing sound.
"Park!" said Aggie as she scraped my obliterated features with a small
branch. "Park, indeed! It's a howling wilderness. I'm fond of my native
land," she went on, digging out my nostrils, so I could breathe, "but I
don't calculate to eat it. As for that unfeeling beast of yours, Lizzie,
I've never known a horse to show such selfishness. Never."
Well, we went on at last, but I was not so enthusiastic about teaching
people lessons as I had been. It seemed to me that we might have kept on
along the trail and had a mighty good time, getting more and more nimble
and stopping now and then to bake a pie and have a decent meal, and
putting up our hair in crimps at night, without worrying about other
folks' affairs.
Late in the afternoon of that day, when so far as I could see Tish was
lost, and not even her gathering a bunch of wild flowers while the
horses rested could fool me, I voiced my complaint.
"Let me look at the map, Tish," I suggested. "I'm pretty good at maps.
You know how I am at charades and acrostics. At the church supper--"
"Nonsense, Lizzie," she returned. "You couldn't make head or tail of
this map. It's my belief that the man who made it had never been here.
Either that or there has been an earthquake since. But," she went on,
more cheerfully, "if we are lost, so are the others."
"If we even had Bill along!"
"Bill!" Tish said scornfully. "It's my belief Bill is in the whole
business, and that if we hadn't got rid of him we'd have been the next
advertising dodge. As far as that goes," she said thoughtfully, "it
wouldn't surprise me a particle to find that we've been taken, without
our knowing it, most any time. Your horse just now, walking across that
bridge of size, for one thing."
Tish seldom makes a pun, which she herself has said is the lowest form
of humor. The dig at my figure was unkind, also, and unworthy of her. I
turned and left her.
At last, well on in the evening, I saw Tish draw up her horse and point
ahead.
"The miscreants!" she said.
True enough, up a narrow side cañon we could see a camp-fire. It was a
small one, and only noticeable from one point. But Tish's keen eye had
seen it. She sat on her horse and gazed toward it.
"What a shameful thing it is," she said, "to prostitute the beauties of
this magnificent region to such a purpose. To make of these beetling
crags a joke! To invade these vast gorges with the spirit of
commercialism and to bring a pack of movie actors to desecrate the
virgin silence with ribald jests and laughter! Lizzie, I wish you
wouldn't wheeze!"
"You would wheeze, too, Tish Carberry," I retorted, justly indignant,
"if a horse had just pressed your spinal column into your breast bone.
Goodness knows," I said, "where my lungs are. I've missed them ever
since my fall."
However, she was engrossed with larger matters, and ignored my
petulance. She is a large-natured woman and above pettiness.
We made our way slowly up the cañon. The movie outfit was securely
camped under an overhanging rock, as we could now see. At one point
their position commanded the trail, which was hardly more than a track
through the wilderness, and before we reached this point we dismounted
and Tish surveyed the camp through her glasses.
"We'd better wait until dark," Tish said. "Owing to the padding they
have not heard us, but it looks to me as if one of them is on a rock,
watching."
It seemed rather strange to me that they were keeping a lookout, but
Tish only shrugged her shoulders.
"If I know anything of that red-headed Oliver man," she said, "he hates
to let a camera rest. Like as not he's got it set up among the trees
somewhere, taking flashlights of wild animals. It's rather a pity," she
said, turning and surveying Aggie and myself, "that he cannot get you
two. If you happen to see anything edible lying on the ground, you'd
better not pick it up. It's probably attached to the string that sets
off the flash."
We led our horses into the woods, which were very thick at that point,
and tied them. My beast, however, lay down and rolled, saddle and all,
thus breaking my mirror--a most unlucky omen--and the bottle of olive
oil which we had brought along for mayonnaise dressing. Tish is fond of
mayonnaise, and, besides, considers olive oil most strengthening.
However, it was gone, and although Aggie comforted me by suggesting that
her boiled salad dressing is quite tasty, I was disconsolate.
It was by that time seven o'clock and almost dark. We held a conference.
Tish was of the opinion that we should first lead off their horses, if
possible.
"I intend," she said severely, "to make escape impossible. If they fire,
when taken by surprise, remember that they have only blank cartridges. I
must say," she added with a confession of unusual weakness, "that I am
glad the Indians escaped the other way. I would hardly know what to do
with Indians, even quite tame ones. While I know a few letters of the
deaf-and-dumb language, which I believe all tribes use in common, I fear
that in a moment of excitement I would forget what I know."
The next step, she asserted, was to secure their weapons.
"After all," she said, "the darkness is in our favor. I intend to fire
once, to show them that we are armed and dangerous. And if you two will
point the guns Bill made, they cannot possibly tell that they are not
real."
"But we will know it," Aggie quavered. Now that the quarry was in sight
she was more and more nervous, sneezing at short intervals in spite of
her menthol inhaler. "I am sorry, Tish, but I cannot feel the same about
that wooden revolver as I would about a real one. And even when I try to
forget that it is only wood the carving reminds me."
But Tish silenced her with a glance. She had strangely altered in the
last few minutes. All traces of fatigue had gone, and when she struck a
match and consulted her watch I saw in her face that high resolve, that
stern and matchless courage, which I so often have tried to emulate and
failed.
"Seven o'clock," she announced. "We will dine first. There is nothing
like food to restore failing spirits."
But we had nothing except our sandwiches, and Tish suggested snaring
some of the stupid squirrels with which the region abounded.
"Aggie needs broth," she said decidedly. "We have sandwiches, but Aggie
is frail and must be looked to."
Aggie was pathetically grateful, although sorry for the squirrels, which
were pretty and quite tame. But Tish was firm in her kindly intent, and
proceeded at once to set a rabbit snare, a trick she had learned in the
Maine woods. Having done this, and built a small fire, well hidden, we
sat down to wait.
In a short time we heard terrible human cries proceeding from the snare,
and, hurrying thither, found in it a young mountain lion. It looked
dangerous, and was biting in every direction. I admit that I was
prepared to leave in haste, but not so Tish. She fetched her umbrella,
without which she never travels, and while the animal set its jaws in
it--a painful necessity, as it was her best umbrella--Tish hit it on the
head--not the umbrella, but the lion--with a large stone.
Tish's satisfaction was unbounded. She stated that the flesh of the
mountain lion was much like veal, and so indeed it proved. We made a
nourishing soup of it, with potatoes and a can of macédoine vegetables,
and within an hour and a half we had dined luxuriously, adding to our
repast what remained of the sandwiches, and a tinned plum pudding of
English make, very nutritious and delicious.
For twenty minutes after the meal we all stood. Tish insists on this, as
aiding digestion. Then we prepared for the night's work.
I believe that our conduct requires no defense. But it may be well again
to explain our position. These people, whose camp-fire glowed so
brazenly against the opposite cliff, had for purely mercenary motives
committed a cruel hoax. They had posed as bandits, and as bandits they
deserved to be treated. They had held up our own clergyman, of a nervous
temperament, on a mountain pass, and had taken from him a part of his
stipend. It was heartless. It was barbarous. It was cruel.
My own courage came back with the hot food, which I followed by a
charcoal tablet. And the difference in Aggie was marked. Possibly some
of the courage of the mountain lion, that bravest of wild creatures, had
communicated itself to her through the homely medicine of digestion.
"I can hardly wait to get after them," she said.
However, it was still too early for them to have settled for the night.
We sat down, having extinguished our fire, and I was just dozing off
when Tish remembered the young man who was to have listened for the
police whistle.
"I absolutely forgot him," she said regretfully. "I suppose he is
hanging round the foot of Piegan's Pass yet. I'm sorry to have him miss
this. I shall tell him, when I see him, that no girl worth having would
be sitting over there at supper with four moving-picture actors without
a chaperon. The whole proceeding is scandalous. I have noticed," she
added, "that it is the girls from quiet suburban towns who are really
most prone to defy the conventions when the chance comes."
We dozed for a short time.
Then Tish sat up suddenly. "What's that?" she said.
We listened and distinctly heard the tramp of horses' feet. We started
up, but Tish was quite calm.
"They've turned their horses out," she said. "Fortune is with us. They
are coming this way."
But at first it did not seem so fortunate, for we heard one of the men
following them, stumbling along, and, I regret to say, using profane
language. They came directly toward us, and Aggie beside me trembled.
But Tish was equal to the emergency.
She drew us behind a large rock, where, spreading out a raincoat to
protect us from the dampness, we sat down and waited.
When one of the animals loomed up close to the rock Aggie gave a low
cry, but Tish covered her mouth fiercely with an ungentle hand.
"Be still!" she hissed.
It was now perfectly dark, and the man with the horses was not far off.
We could not see him, but at last he came near enough so that we could
see the flare of a match when he lighted a cigarette. I put my hand on
Aggie, and she was shaking with nervousness.
"I am sure I am going to sneeze, Lizzie," she gasped.
And sneeze she did. She muffled it considerably, however, and we were
not discovered. But, Tish, I knew, was silently raging.
The horses came nearer.
One of them, indeed, came quite close, and took a nip at the toe of my
riding-boot. I kicked at it sharply, however, and it moved away.
The man had gone on. We watched the light of his cigarette, and thus, as
he now and then turned his head, knew where he was. It was now that I
felt, rather than heard, that Tish was crawling out from the shelter of
the rock. At the same time we heard, by the crunching of branches, that
the man had sat down near at hand.
Tish's progress was slow but sure. For a half-hour we sat there. Then
she returned, still crawling, and on putting out my hand I discovered
that she had secured the lasso from her saddle and had brought it back.
How true had been her instinct when she practiced its use! How my own
words, that it was all foolishness, came back and whispered lessons of
humility in my ear!
At this moment a deep, resonant sound came from the tree where the movie
actor sat. At the same moment a small creature dropped into my lap from
somewhere above, and ran up my sleeve. I made frantic although
necessarily silent efforts to dislodge it, and it bit me severely.
The necessity for silence taxed all my strength, but managing finally to
secure it by the tail, I forcibly withdrew it and flung it away.
Unluckily it struck Aggie in the left eye and inflicted a painful
bruise.
Tish had risen to her feet and was standing, a silent and menacing
figure, while this event transpired. The movements of the horses as they
grazed, the soft breeze blowing through the pines, were the only sounds.
Now she took a step forward.
"He's asleep!" she whispered. "Aggie, sit still and watch the horses.
Lizzie, come with me."
As I advanced to her she thrust her revolver into my hand.
"When I give the word," she said in a whisper, "hold it against his
neck. But keep your finger off the trigger. It's loaded."
We advanced slowly, halting now and then to listen. Although brush
crackled under our feet, the grazing horses were making a similar
disturbance, and the man slept on. Soon we could see him clearly,
sitting back against a tree, his head dropped forward on his breast.
Tish surveyed the scene with her keen and appraising eye, and raised
the lasso.
The first result was not good. The loaded end struck a branch, and,
being deflected, the thing wrapped itself perhaps a dozen times round my
neck. Tish, being unconscious of what had happened, drew it up with a
jerk, and I stood helpless and slowly strangling. At last, however, she
realized the difficulty and released me. I was unable to breathe
comfortably for some time, and my tongue felt swollen for several hours.
Through all of this the movie actor had slept soundly. At the second
effort Tish succeeded in lassoing him without difficulty. We had feared
a loud outcry before we could get to him, but owing to Tish's swiftness
in tightening the rope he was able to make, at first, only a low,
gurgling sound. I had advanced to him, and was under the impression that
I was holding the revolver to his neck. On discovering, however, that I
was pressing it to the trunk of the tree, to which he was now secured by
the lariat, I corrected the error and held it against his ear.
He was now wide awake and struggling violently. Then, I regret to say,
he broke out into such language as I have never heard before. At Tish's
request I suppress his oaths, and substitute for them harmless
expressions in common use.
"Good gracious!" he said. "What in the world are you doing anyhow?
Jimminy crickets, take that thing away from my neck! Great Scott and
land alive, I haven't done anything! My word, that gun will go off if
you aren't careful!"
I am aware that much of the strength of what he said is lost in this
free translation. But it is impossible to repeat his real language.
"Don't move," Tish said, "and don't call out. A sound, and a bullet goes
crashing through your brain."
"A woman!" he said in most unflattering amazement. "Great Jehoshaphat, a
woman!"
This again is only a translation of what he said.
"Exactly," Tish observed calmly. She had cut the end off the lasso with
her scissors, and was now tying his feet together with it. "My friend,
we know the whole story, and I am ashamed, ashamed," she said
oratorically, "of your sex! To frighten a harmless and well-meaning
preacher and his wife for the purpose of publicity is not a joke. Such
hoaxes are criminal. If you must have publicity, why not seek it in some
other way?"
"Crazy!" he groaned to himself. "In the hands of lunatics! Oh, my
goodness!" Again these were not exactly his words.
Having bound him tightly, hand and foot, and taken a revolver from his
pocket, Tish straightened herself.
"Now we'll gag him, Lizzie," she said. "We have other things to do
to-night than to stand here and converse." Then she turned to the man
and told him a deliberate lie. I am sorry to record this. But a tendency
to avoid the straight and narrow issues of truth when facing a crisis is
one of Tish's weaknesses, the only flaw in an otherwise strong and
perfect character.
"We are going to leave you here," she said. "But one of our number,
fully armed, will be near by. A sound from you, or any endeavor to call
for succor, will end sadly for you. A word to the wise. Now, Lizzie,
take that bandanna off his neck and tie it over his mouth."
Tish stood, looking down at him, and her very silhouette was scornful.
"Think, my friend," she said, "of the ignominy of your position! Is any
moving picture worth it? Is the pleasure of seeing yourself on the
screen any reward for such a shameful position as yours now is? No. A
thousand times no."
He made a choking sound in his throat and writhed helplessly. And so we
left him, a hopeless and miserable figure, to ponder on his sins.
"That's one," said Tish briskly. "There are only three left. Come,
Aggie," she said cheerfully--"to work! We have made a good beginning."
It is with modesty that I approach that night's events, remembering
always that Tish's was the brain which conceived and carried out the
affair. We were but her loyal and eager assistants. It is for this
reason that I thought, and still think, that the money should have been
divided so as to give Tish the lion's share. But she, dear, magnanimous
soul, refused even to hear of such a course, and insisted that we share
it equally.
Of that, however, more anon.
We next proceeded to capture their horses and to tie them up. We
regretted the necessity for this, since the unfortunate animals had
traveled far and were doubtless hungry. It went to my heart to drag them
from their fragrant pasture and to tie them to trees. But, as Tish said,
"Necessity knows no law," not even kindness. So we tied them up. Not,
however, until we had moved them far from the trail.
Tish stopped then, and stared across the cañon to the enemy's camp-fire.
"No quarter, remember," she said. "And bring your weapons."
We grasped our wooden revolvers and, with Tish leading, started for the
camp. Unluckily there was a stream between us, and it was necessary to
ford it. It shows Tish's true generalship that, instead of removing her
shoes and stockings, as Aggie and I were about to do, she suggested
getting our horses and riding across. This we did, and alighted on the
other side dryshod.
It was, on consulting my watch, nine o'clock and very dark. A few drops
of rain began to fall also, and the distant camp-fire was burning low.
Tish gave us each a little blackberry cordial, for fear of dampness, and
took some herself. The mild glow which followed was very comforting.
It was Tish, naturally, who went forward to reconnoiter. She returned in
an hour, to report that the three men were lying round the fire, two
asleep and one leaning on his elbow with a revolver handy. She did not
see Mr. Oliver, and it was possible that it was he we had tied to the
tree. The girl, she said, was sitting on a log, with her chin propped in
her hands.
"She looked rather low-spirited," Tish said. "I expect she liked the
first young man better than she thought she did. I intend to give her a
piece of my mind as soon as I get a chance. This playing hot and cold
isn't maidenly, to say the least."
We now moved slowly forward, after tying our horses. Toward the last,
following Tish's example, we went on our hands and knees, and I was
thankful then for no skirts. It is wonderful the freedom a man has. I
was never one to approve of Doctor Mary Walker, but I'm not so sure she
isn't a wise woman and the rest of us fools. I haven't put on a skirt
braid since that time without begrudging it.
Well, as I have stated, we advanced, and at last we were in full sight
of the camp. I must say I'd have thought they'd have a tent. We expected
something better, I suppose, because of the articles in the papers about
movie people having their own limousines, and all that. But there they
were, open to the wrath of the heavens, and deserving it, if I do say
so.
The girl was still sitting, as Tish had described her. Only now she was
crying. My heart was downright sore for her. It is no comfort, having
made a wrong choice, to know that it is one's own fault.
Having now reached the zone of firelight Tish gave the signal, and we
rose and pointed our revolvers at them. Then Tish stepped forward and
said:--
"Hands up!"