A TOPOGRAPHICAL map of that portion of the Saguache known as the
Elk Mountain Range--the spur which forms the watershed between the
Gunnison and the Grand--will include a primeval valley gashing the
range southeastward from Tourtelotte on the Ashcroft trail, and heading
fifteen miles farther wildernessward in a windswept pass across the
summit of the watershed. Its watercourse, a tumbling torrent fed by
the melting snows in the higher gulches, is a tributary of the Roaring
Fork; and a disused pack-trail, which once served a scattered pioneer
corps of prospectors, climbs by tortuous stages to the windswept pass,
now swerving from bank to bank of the stream, and now heading a lateral
gulch or crossing the point of a barrier spur.
It is a crystalline afternoon in mid-autumn. Indian summer on the
high plateaus of the continent's crest there is none, but instead,
a breathing space of life-giving days, with the bouquet of fine old
wine in the keen-edged air, and of frosty nights when the stars swing
clear in illimitable space. Positive coloring, other than the sombre
greens of pine and fir, is lacking. The season of bursting buds and
quickening leaf tints is over, and what little deciduous vegetation the
altitude permits is present only in twig traceries and sun-cured range
grass. In the heart of the valley the heights are heavily wooded, and
the sombre greens wall out the world to the sky-line; but farther on
bald slopes and ridges stretch away above the pines and firs, and the
blue arch of the firmament springs clear from snow-capped abutments of
fallow dun and weathered gray.
In the upper levels of the valley the disused trail leaves the stream
and begins to climb by loops and zigzags to the pass. On the reverse
curve of one of the loops--the last but one in the upward path--a
solitary horseman sends his mount recklessly onward, heedless alike
of stones of stumbling and the breath-cutting steepness of the way.
His head is bandaged, and he rides loose in the saddle like a drunken
man, swaying and reeling, but evermore urging the horse by word and
blow and the drumming of unspurred heels. His feet are thrust far into
the stirrups, and at every fresh vantage point he steadies himself by
pommel and cantle to scan the backward windings of the trail. A man
riding desperately for his life and against time, with a handicap of
physical unfitness, one would say; but there would seem to be fierce
determination in the unrelenting onpush, as if wounds and weariness
were as yet no more than spurs to goad and whips to drive.
The reverse curve of the loop ends on the crest of the last of the
barrier spurs, and at the crown of the ascent the forest thins to right
and left, opening a longer backward vista. On the bare summit the
rider turns once more in his saddle, and the rearward glance becomes a
steady eye-sweep. In the bight of the loop which he has just traversed
the trail swings clear of the gulch timber, and while he gazes two
dark objects advancing abreast and alternately rising and falling to
a distance-softened staccato of pounding hoofs cross the open space
and double the loop. The wounded one measures his lead. For all his
spurrings the distance is decreasing; and a hasty survey of the trail
ahead is not reassuring. From the bald summit of the spur the bridle
path winds around the head of another gulch, and the approach to the
pass on the farther side is a snow-banked incline, above timber line,
uncovered, and within easy rifle-shot of the hill of reconnaissance.
What will befall is measurably certain. If he attempts to head the
traversing ravine on the trail, his pursuers will reach the bald
summit, wait, and pick him off at their leisure while he is scaling the
opposite snowbank.
At the second glance a dubious alternative offers. The gorge in the
direct line may not prove impassable; there is a slender chance that
one may push straight across and up the opposing slope to the pass
before the guns of the enemy can be brought into position. Wherefore
he sends the horse at a reckless gallop down the descent to the gorge,
making shift to cling with knee and heel while he disengages a rifle
from its sling under the saddle-flap, and fills its magazine with
cartridges from a belt at his waist.
At the bottom of the ravine the alternative vanishes; becomes a thing
inexistent, in fact. The gorge in its lower length is a canyoned slit,
a barrier to be passed only by creatures with wings. To return is
to meet his pursuers on the bald summit of the spur; to hesitate is
equally hazardous. The horse obeys the sudden wrenching of the rein,
spins as on a pivot, and darts away up the canyon brink. Fortunately,
the timber is sparse, and, luckily again, a practicable crossing is
found well within the longer detour traced by the trail. For the second
time that day it is a race to the swift; and, as before, an accident
comes between. Horse and man are across the ravine, are clear of the
stunted firs, are mounting the final snow-banked incline to the pass
with no more than a trooper's dash between them and safety, when the
sure-footed beast slips on the packed snow of the trail, and horse and
man roll together to the bottom of the declivity.
A few hours earlier this man had been the football of circumstances,
tossed hither and yon as the buffetings of chance might impel him. But
the pregnant hours have wrought a curious change in him, for better or
worse, and before the breath-cutting plunge is checked he is free of
the struggling horse and is kicking it to its feet to mount and ride
again, charging the steep uprising with plying lash and digging heels
and shouts of encouragement. Ten seconds later the trail is regained
and the summit of the pass cuts the sky-line above him. Ten other
flying leaps and a resolute man may hold an army at bay. But in the
midst of them comes a clatter of hoofs on the rocky headland across the
gulch, and a nerve-melting instant wherein the hoof-beats cease and the
bleak heights give back a muffled echo in the rarefied air. The hunted
one bends to the saddle-horn at the crack of the rifle, and the bullet
sings high. A second is better aimed, and at the shrill hiss of it the
snorting horse flattens its ears and lunges at the ascent with flagging
powers fear-revived. A scrambling bound or two and the final height is
gained, but in the pivoting instant between danger and safety a third
bullet scores the horse's back and embeds itself in the cantle of the
saddle with a benumbing shock to the rider.
But by this the fugitive is fair Berserk-mad, and those who would stay
him must shoot to kill. Once out of range beyond the crest of the pass,
he drags the trembling horse to its haunches and whips down from the
saddle, the wine of battle singing in his veins and red wrath answering
for physical fitness. A hasty glance to make sure that the broncho's
wound is not disabling, and he is back at the summit of the pass,
sheltering himself behind a rock and sending shot after shot across
the ravine at his assailants. The fusillade is harmless; wounds, mad
gallops, and red wrath being easily subversive of accuracy in target
practice; but it has the effect of sending the enemy to the rear in
discreet haste, with the dropping shots beating quick time for the
double quartette of trampling hoofs as the twain gallop out of range
behind the bald headland.
For a resolute half-hour, while the undertow of the ebbing minutes
steadily undermines the props and shores set up by Berserk wrath, the
solitary rifleman lies watchful and vigilant. Thrice in that interval
have the attackers rallied; once in a desperate charge to gain the
cover of the timber on the canyon's brink, and twice in equally
desperate efforts to turn the rifleman's position by following the
looping of the trail. Notwithstanding the bad marksmanship of the
garrison the position has proved--still proves--impregnable; and the
end of the half-hour leaguer finds the intrenched one secure in his
position, with the enemy in permanent check, and only his own waning
strength to warn him that the pass cannot be held indefinitely.
But this warning is imperative, as is that other of the fast westering
sun; and when a movement on the opposite height gives him one more
chance to announce volley-wise that the pass is still manned, he
retreats swiftly, remounts after more than one exhaustive effort, and
canters down the farther windings of the trail into a valley shut in on
all sides by snow-coifed sentinel mountains, and with a brawling stream
plunging through its midst; into this valley and down the length of it
to a narrowing of the stream path, where a rude cabin, with its door
hanging awry, looks across from the heel of the western cliff to the
gray dump of a tunnel-opening in the opposite mountain side.
The sun has already set for the lower slopes of the shut-in valley, and
the frosty breath of the snow-capped sentinel peaks is in the air.
At the door of the cabin the winner in the desperate race slides from
the saddle. His knees are quaking, and because of them he stumbles and
falls over the log doorstone, cursing his helplessness in the jolt
of it. But there remains much to be done, and the sunset glories are
changing from crimson and dusky gold on the snow-caps to royal purple
in the shadow of the western cliff.
With many slippings and stumblings he crosses the foot-log and climbs
to the level of the tunnel-opening opposite, constraining the unwilling
horse to follow. With a stone for a hammer he tacks a square of paper
on one of the struts of the timbered entrance; and after another
struggle feebly fierce the horse is dragged into the low-browed cavern
and tethered out of harm's way. By the leaden-footed step of the man
one would say that the last reserves of determination have been called
in and are far spent; but he will not desist. With four stakes taken
from the heap of wooden treenails used in the tunnel timbering he drags
himself from corner to corner of the claim, pacing its boundaries and
marking the points of intersection with dogged exactness. When the
final stake is driven he can no longer stand upright, and is fain
to win back to the tunnel on hands and knees with groans and futile
tooth-gnashings.
But the aftermath of the task still waits; shall wait until he has
barricaded the tunnel's mouth with an up-piling of timbers, fragments
of rock, odds and ends movable, with a counterscarp of loose earth to
make it bullet-proof--the last scraped up with bleeding hands from the
débris at the head of the dump.
This done, he drags himself over the barricade, finds the saddle-bags
again, and strikes a light. The candle flame is but a yellow puncture
in the thick gloom of the tunnel, but it serves his purpose, which is
to scrawl a few words on a blank page of an engineer's note-book,--sole
reminder of the thrifty forecast of saner days beyond the descent
into the nether depths. An imprecation bubbles up to punctuate the
signature; a pointless cursing, which is no more than a verbal mask for
a groan extorted by the agony of the effort to guide the pencil point.
The malison strings itself out into broken sentences of justification;
mere ravings, as pointless as the curse. "Finders are keepers,--that's
the law of the strong. 'He that hath clean hands shall be stronger
and stronger.' I found it and gave it back, and he drowned it in a
bottle.... Now it is mine; and to-morrow I'll be dead. But she'll know
that I haven't--that I haven't--quite--forgotten."
To pain-blurred eyes the candle flame has faded to a nebulous point in
the darkness, but still the light suffices. He has neither envelope
nor sealing-wax, but he makes shift to seal the book with a wrapping
of twine and a bit of pitch scraped from the nearest strut in the
timbering. After which he seeks and finds the crevice in which Garvin
kept his explosives; and when the note-book is safely hidden, drops
exhausted behind the breastwork, with the rifle at his shoulder,
beginning his vigil what time the first silvery flight of moon-arrows
is pouring upon cliff-face and cabin opposite.