I looked at Corlaer for support, but his attention was centered on the pathless trail ahead of us, and I felt myself outvoted. There was nothing for it but to keep on. Both these men I had known for years. With them I had tracked the Eastern Wilderness. But never had I known them so perverse as this night. What folly to nourish a belief in an absurd totemic tradition! It was amazing. Corlaer was a white man like myself. Tawannears might be red, but he was as well educated as I, according to the white man's theory, better far than Corlaer.
"Oooow-woouuow-aarrrgh!"
Louder and louder rose that cry of dreadful menace. The gray shapes were now so many rustling bulks in the moonlit darkness. Looking back I could see eyes that gleamed red or green as the silver light caught them, fluffy brushes flicking high, the drive of powerful shoulders and haunches. They were big brutes!
I stopped abruptly, and swung musket to shoulder. Before I could pull trigger I heard the sucking fall of snowshoes behind me, and Tawannears laid his hand on my arm.
"Of what avail, brother?" he asked gently. "If you shoot one, the others will be driven mad by the smell of blood. They will overwhelm you."
"Why don't you mention yourself?" I snarled.
"Heed me, and they will do us no hurt," he said, ignoring my thrust. "They do not know. When they learn who we are, it will be different."
"Do you mean to tell me you will risk our lives on your ridiculous heathen theory?" I demanded.
"I am trying to save all our lives, which, I fear, may be lost if you persist, brother."
I flung the gun over my shoulder.
"Have it your way," I said sullenly. "It is on your head."
"On my head," he agreed.
"Rocks," grunted Corlaer in front of us.
I looked up eagerly. A few hundred yards away a cube of rock projected from the snow dominating the country for miles, the one break in the level of the high plateau.
"Good," said Tawannears. "We will talk to the brothers there. Perhaps we can make a camp."
"Ja," assented Corlaer. "Andt trees."
His keen eyes had identified a scraggly patch of timber that clustered around a cleft in the side of the rock-mass. The moon shone on the snow-flecked, dark-green boughs of evergreens, but for the most part it was little better than dried-up bushes and dwarf growths. Yet such as it was it meant shelter and warmth again—if we could shake off that stealthy procession of ghostly figures behind us. They had quickened their pace as they sensed our approach to the rock. The howls became frankly savage and lustful. Close at hand I heard the snapping of frantic jaws.
"Don't run," urged Tawannears' voice in my ear. "The man on snowshoes is at a disadvantage, brother. We have time."
Time, but no more. In that cold that was so severe as to make it agony to touch fingers to steel I gained the mouth of the rock-cleft with the sweat dribbling down my back. And it was not the sweat of haste, but of fear. All around us the pattering of feet sounded like the swishing of women's skirts in the lightly packed snow. A half-circle of gray figures formed, red tongues lolling over flashing white teeth, steam rising from five-score panting chests. Eyes glinted like pricks of flame. They were silent—snapping at each other, yawning,grr-rr-rrhing!softly, but no more baying their mournful challenge to the sky.
They waited. And we waited.
"If we build a fire——" I suggested in a whisper.
"Wait, brother," Tawannears replied. "They fear a fire."
I cursed impartially.
"Are you for savingtheirlives?"
He stood in front of me, very erect, as Indian as old Nadoweiswe.
"Otetiani forgets that we are of the totem of the Wolf. Their—" he gestured toward the gray half-circle—"emblem is on my chest. It is forbidden to slay the totem-beast of your Clan."
"That may mean something to you, but certes, it little interests me," I said disagreeably.
"It means much to Otetiani." His voice was stern. "Did not Otetiani become a member of the Wolf Clan? Will not what he does affect not only himself, but his Clan brothers? Be wise. Stay your hand. These gray brothers are curious and hungry, but they do not know us. We will tell them, and they will go away."
I laughed shortly.
"Try!" I invited him. "My gun is loaded, and I propose to climb a tree. It won't be comfortable, but I'll last as long as I can."
"Foolishness," remarked Corlaer dispassionately. "You watch Tawannears. He knows."
"What?" I jeered.
"Der wolfs."
As if in acknowledgment of this remark, Tawannears handed his musket to the Dutchman and opened his leather shirt across his chest. Then he stepped forward three paces, and faced the half-circle of gray, slavering shapes, with his arms flung wide.
"Brothers!" he began.
And I swear a whine as of interest rose from the half-circle.
"You are hungry. You have followed a scent that was different. You have turned aside from the buffalo and the deer, the antelope and thewapiti, to follow this different scent. For a long time you have tracked us. You could have had meat for the taking, but you must savor this new meat that smelled different."
Not a sound from the half-circle, except the rhythmic panting of powerful lungs. The scores of eyes, so luminous, so impersonally cruel, were riveted upon the orator.
Tawannears advanced another step. He might have been addressing the Hoyarnagowar.
"You have been wrong, brothers. You knew not what you did. See!"
He stooped before them, stripping his chest to show the wolf's head painted upon it.
"Tawannears is of the totem of the Wolf. These others with me are of the totem of the Wolf. We are sworn to brotherhood with you. We may not slay you nor eat your meat nor wear your fur. We are your brothers."
A big, deep-chested beast threw back his head and sent out a mournful howl. Others answered him.
"Go back, brothers," continued Tawannears. "If you touch us Hawenneyu will punish you, just as he would punish us if we harmed you. When there is free meat on the trail it is not for brothers to hunt each other. You have done wrong, already; but you did not know. Go back."
And he walked directly into their ranks, and set his open palm against the chest of the wolf that had raised the first howl. And the wolf bent his head and licked the hand that rested on his chest!
"Go, brothers," repeated Tawannears.
They were gone! I rubbed my eyes, and stared into the darkness. Yes, there flitted a dull, gray shape. Snow crunched under their pads. A click of teeth as one snapped at another. Then the hunting-call of the leader, quavering toward the stars.Yap-yap-yap!in answer. Howl and counter-howl, yelps of discovery, the quick, rasping bay announcing a fresh scent. Fainter—and fainter——
I sunk my fingers in Corlaer's bulbous arm.
"What were they?"
I felt him shrug his shoulders.
"Wolfs."
"Real? Did I imagine that?"
"It may be they were spirit wolves, such as Nadoweiswe warned us of," said Tawannears at my other side, taking his musket from the Dutchman's charge.
I could not see his face, but his voice was serious.
"You mock me," I answered.
"Why, brother? Who knows? We have passed beyond the world of men, I think."
"You touched one, did you not?" I insisted.
He considered.
"True." He raised the hand to his nostrils, sniffed. "And it left on me the rank wolf smell. Yes, they were no spirit beasts, brother, but it does not matter. Spirit beasts or flesh and blood, they would never have touched me."
"Why not?"
"Why did the wild horse walk up and suffer Otetiani to mount him?"
"Because I did not fear him or have thought to harm him."
"Otetiani speaks always with a straight tongue," said the Seneca gravely. "There was no fear in my heart of the wolf brothers, nor did I think of harming them."
"But a wolf is not a horse!" I protested.
"True. But he is our brother. Did not Otetiani see me show them the Clan insignia on my chest?"
"My God!" I exclaimed. "One of us is mad!"
"Oof," remarked Corlaer, with his rare fluency. "Nobody is madt. But der white man does not know eferything. Dot is all. Andt now we make a goodt hut andt a fire—eh? It is coldt.Ja, I take this tree."
So far on our journey the obstacles thrown in our path by hostile men had outweighed those opposed by nature. From now on the reverse was true. The men we met were feeble savages, ignorant, superstitious, easily put to flight. But nature loomed as a foe of overawing strength. Each day brought its tests of endurance, daring, brawn or skill. Time meant nothing in face of the difficulties we must conquer. A month passed after our escape from the wolf pack before we even sighted the gigantic barrier of the Sky Mountains, and the passage of their snowy summits required additional months of effort.
But this is to gallop in advance of my story. Yet I scarce know how to set down in sober language the magnitude of the forces we encountered, the supreme majesty of that unknown country, the Godlike splendor of the Winter scenery, the awful, silent loneliness. And of all the wonders that lent emphasis to our own puny might I think the one that affected us most was the absence of man from the plains and forests that intervened betwixt the Teton villages and the mountains. For months we were companied only by the myriads of beasts that had fled the intense cold of the heights for the milder temperature below the timber-line.
The great deer which Tawannears called Wapiti, red deer, antelope, buffalo, wild goats and wild sheep we saw in millions. We killed fresh meat with our hatchets, and had it always at need. They moved about the low-lands—which, of themselves, were sufficiently high, inasmuch as the country shelved upward, mile after mile—in search of such food as could be afforded by tree-bark and the herbage left beneath the snow; and in their sore want and innocence of man they did no more than step aside from our path and stare after us. Of wolves we saw many and heard some, but they never again came near us—explain it as you choose. For myself, I have no more to say, being convinced by marvels I was yet to behold that Corlaer was right past disputation when he said, "der white man does not know eferything."
That was a Winter of unprecedented cold. Late in coming, it developed protracted periods of severe frost, linked by tumultuous storms, after which the forest would be scattered with wild things frozen in their tracks. Taught by experience, we became apt at seeking shelter with the first hint that the Wind Spirits were plucking the wild geese in the North, careful not to move across open country unless the weather signs were favorable; and whilst this delayed us, 'tis beyond question it preserved our lives. With a roof, four walls and fire, men may defy nature's worst attacks, no matter how make-shift the covering.
I said it was a month before we sighted the Sky Mountains—but they were still many miles away. We had followed a fork of the river which flowed through the Teton country. It carried us northwest, and after several weeks brought us within view of a range of ragged peaks, which, at first, we took to be our immediate goal. But the river banded the broken country at their base, and we came presently into a wide upland somewhat like the savannahs that lined the Missouri.* The ragged peaks dwindled behind us; the horizon was empty ahead—until a day of unusually brilliant sunshine with a cloudless sky revealed a serrated glory in the west, cones and saddlebacks and hulking ridges, square and round and oblong and eccentrically-shaped rock-masses, all draped in snow.
* It seems probable that Ormerod refers here to the Medicine Bow range and the Laramie Plains.—A.D.H.S.
A storm delayed us another week, but we picked up the trail with light hearts, and each sunset was an inspiration to faster progress. It was as if a giant's paint-pots had been upset and splashed harmoniously over the mountain-wall—soft reds, purples, yellow, and the half-tones that run between. Or the Painter's mood would be different, and they would be slung on in harsh, contrasting belts of color that jarred your eyes. Amazing! And it continued after we were at the very foot of the towering wall, poking this way and that to find a gateway to the mystery land beyond. The heights close by might lose their potent spells, but in the hazy distance, North or South, the Painter worked his will at random.
In my youth I marched with the Duke of Berwick into the Pyrenees. That was child's play compared to the undertaking we confronted. For we had no knowledge whatsoever of the secret of this jumbled prospect. Forests cloaked the mountains' lower flanks, and under the trees the snow was heaped so deep we must have been swallowed to suffocation but for our snowshoes. Above the timberline began the dominion of the rocks, and here all was snow and ice, either smoothly slippery or treacherously loose. Upon our first attempt to gain a height we precipitated a slide which carried us into the tree-tops of a forest. We were cripples for days.
Again and again we probed ravines and valleys in hopes they would lead up to a practicable pass, but we passed no more than time. We wasted weeks on protracted journeys which led to the brinks of precipices or dead-walls—dangerous work as well as tiresome, for the snow-slides were frequent and impossible to forecast. Enough sun on a certain spot to start a thaw, and a whole hillside might go.
In the beginning we worked north along the base of the range, in accordance with a theory advanced by Tawannears that possibly the fork of the river we had followed might break through the Sky Mountains, and when we demonstrated this was not so he suggested that the other, or southern fork, might do so. Neither Corlaer nor I had a better plan to offer, and we retraced our steps to the south, and presently struck into a likely valley that ended in a ramp of precipices. So we tried again, and a third time, always without success.
It was after this third try that we were snowed up in a hut we threw together in a rock-hollow. There was nothing to do, except eat, sleep and keep the fire going. None of us was talkative. We were too disappointed, too tired. But some time in the afternoon of the second day Corlaer woke up Tawannears and me.
"I hafe foundt der way," he announced.
"What way?" I yawned.
"Ofer der mountains."
Tawannears looked interested, but I was resentful at being disturbed.
"Oh, it starts here in the hut?" I jeered.
"Perhaps," he answered, unmoved.
"What is in Corlaer's mind?" asked the Seneca eagerly.
Peter made up the fire before replying. Talking was an effort for him, and he usually required time to sort out his words.
"We follow der animals," he said at length.
"What?" I exclaimed.
But Tawannears nodded.
"True. Corlaer is right, Otetiani. If there is a pass, the wild things must know of it. We have only to watch them."
"But it is quite probable that in this weather no pass will be practicable, especially for animals," I objected.
"Spbring is coming soon," replied the Dutchman.
"We have only to wait and watch," added Tawannears.
I had to admit that they were right. And when the storm blew itself out two days later, having doubled the mountains' snow blanket, we abandoned our frontal attack upon the barrier in favor of a reconnaissance of its approaches. For a week we pushed on south through the foothills, and were finally forced to a halt by a spur-range, which ran eastward. Manifestly, 'twas a waste of time to envelop this, and we retraced our steps again, by no means so confident that Corlaer's suggestion had been as canny as we first supposed, for we had seen not a single indication that the animals were entering or leaving the higher altitudes.
But at the end of this week a thaw set in which continued from day to day. The hillsides were soon running with tiny rivulets. The snow underfoot was soggy, and packed hard. The avalanches were worse than ever. Every hour or two there would be a rip and a roar and a swish of breaking trees, and bowlders and pebbles would rain down upon us. It was one of these slides which was instrumental in showing us a way across the barrier. We had abandoned our set path, and hugged the protecting face of a high cliff, knowing any slide that topped it would over-shoot us, when a mountain sheep came bounding out of a little gulley we had passed without paying it any special notice.
Corlaer raised his arm, and pointed.
"'Tis the first animal we've seen as high as this," I admitted.
"If we go in there we shall need more meat," said Tawannears.
And he quickly strung his bow, notched an arrow and loosed. The animal dropped a scant fifty yards away, and I ran to pick it up. But Corlaer was close on my heels, and he hoisted the carcass on his broad shoulders.
"Oof," he squeaked. "Der is still light. We don't wait to cut up der sheep. We go on, eh?Ja, we go on."
I nodded, and Tawannears was equally willing. We made no attempt to persuade the Dutchman to let us carry the dead sheep, for neither of us could have handled it and our equipment at the same time, especially on the tricky footing of the snow-covered rocks, with snowshoes to manage. But it was no effort at all to Peter. He strode along after us as easily as though he had been carrying a rabbit.
The entrance of the gulley was perhaps twenty feet wide. It threaded back into the hills, widening gradually, until it turned an elbow of rock and became a respectable defile. The bed was strewn with bowlders of all sizes, and with the melting snow and a trickle of water that in time would become a fair-sized stream it was anything but a pleasant place for walking. The one satisfaction we had was that the side-walls were so steep as to assure us some protection from the eternal avalanches, our most dangerous foes.
The ascent was easy, and toward evening we rounded another elbow and found ourselves in the throat of a lovely rock-bound valley, locked away in the heart of the hills. Above it lifted peaks that pierced the clouds, their lower flanks garbed in jade-green pine forests. Its floor was similarly tree-covered, but at intervals the forest yielded to open parks, where herds of mountain goat and sheep and antelope rooted for food beneath the snow. In the center was a little lake, its frozen surface glinting like a scarlet eye under the sunset glow.
Not a sound marred the magic stillness. It was like a picture painted on a screen, a highland solitude, which, so far as we could determine, had never before been visited by men. Certes, the wild creatures were tamer than the stags and hinds I remember to have chased as a new-breeched younker in the deer-park of Foxcroft in Dorset, where first I saw the light. The blows of our axes felling trees for a hut and the crackling of the campfire were bait to lure them closer.
The valley was miles in length, and we reached the opposite exit too late to pass through the next day; but the second morning we dived into a replica of the defile by which we had passed the eastern barrier range. And that night we shivered around a scanty fire in a small area we cleared of snow amongst the rocks, fearful lest the constricted crevice become an impasse like those that had baffled us for months. But fortune stood our friend, and we emerged at high noon of the fourth day of our wanderings upon a land of rambling foothills. Behind us reared the snowy peaks of the Sky Mountains, seemingly more impassable than ever.
We had done what no man I have ever met could fairly claim to have done. I know there are those who pretend to have traversed the Western Wilderness, and would prate of marvels done and seen; but show me the man who can make good his boast. There are Jesuit missioners andcouriers du boiswho have beheld the Sky Mountains afar, but I have the word of Charles Le Moyne, himself, that none hath come to him or his people with such a tale as we can tell.
But again I wander from my story. Patience, prithee!
The inanimate ferocity of nature lacks the dramatic quality of men's individual hates and struggles, but no achievement of my comrades and I can compare with the battles we fought against mountain, forest and stream. Mark you, a living opponent, man or animal, you can touch, hurt, visibly overcome. But what satisfaction can you wring from nature after beating her? None, I say, unless it be the right to live. You do not even know for sure that the victory is yours until the zest of combat is long forgotten.
A day's journey from the Western base of the Sky Mountains we saw men again for the first time in near five months. They were a stunted, long-haired people, dressed in stinking skins, who beset us with arrows as we lay in a valley, but fled in panic at the first discharge of our muskets, leaving one of their number with a wounded leg. Him we caught, but no sign of intelligence showed on his brutal face as Tawannears put question after question in the Dakota tongue, except when he was asked where lay the seat of Wakanda, the Great Spirit. Whether he caught the meaning of the word or was cunning enough to perceive that we were seeking a certain place, I cannot say, but he lifted his arm and pointed to the Northwest, with a chatter of gibberish that meant nothing to us. So we left him with his wound bound up and enough meat for a day, and departed in the direction he had indicated.
I should pursue no useful purpose if I recounted in detail our ensuing wanderings. This country beyond the Sky Mountains was more savage and desolate than the Great Plains which stretched westward from the Mississippi, and more varied in character. We found many minor mountain ranges, some of them not lightly to be surmounted. We near died of thirst on deserts of parched grass. We hungered amongst a weird world of jumbled sun-baked rocks. But always we advanced in a direction north of west.
Usually game was easy to find. The Indians were more scattered than on the plains, and for the most part they were a debased race, leading a hand-to-mouth existence, Occasionally we were attacked, but they always ran at the reports of our guns, and those we captured refused even to show intelligence at the word Wakanda, so that after a while we became discouraged, and decided that our first prisoner had pretended recognition of it simply as a device to be rid of us.
But we had no better course to follow, and continued toward the northwest until we came to a considerable river that flowed due north, with a line of hills showing dimly in the blue distance a long way to the west.* We decided to make use of the river to save time and ease our weary bodies, and repeated our expedient for crossing the Mississippi, constructing a raft of tree-trunks bound together with withes; but this came to pieces in the first rough water it traversed—rough enough in all conscience—and we went on afoot as far as a village of fishing Indians, who possessed canoes hollowed with fire and stone hatchets out of logs. At my suggestion, we traded an extra knife with these people for a small craft barely large enough to hold us all, evaded by bare luck an attempt they made to trap us in our sleep, and again took to the river.
* Probably the Snake River, the border line between Idaho and Oregon.—A.D.H.S.
As we expected, this stream, after flowing north for several hundred miles, turned the flank of the distant mountains we had seen and headed west. A week later it joined a larger stream flowing from the north, which, holding south for a day's paddling, likewise was diverted to the westward.* But what interested us most was the sight of another snowy barrier, incomparably higher than the Sky Mountains, which gleamed in early morning or late afternoon across the western horizon north of the river.
* Undoubtedly, the Columbia.—A.D.H.S.
Another two days' paddling down-stream, and we came abreast of an Indian village which drew an exclamation of excitement from Tawannears. The houses were long, oblong structures of wood, with the smokes of many fires rising above their roofs, buildings almost identical with those long houses which furnished the Iroquois their distinctive name; and a fleet of canoes put off from shore to intercept us. With the odds so heavy against us it seemed foolish to fight unless we were compelled, and we put by our paddles and waited with muskets ready to abide the issue. But our fears were immediately set at rest. These Indians were the handsomest, most straightforward race we had seen since leaving the Dakota. They were eager in their signs of peaceful intent, and as eagerly beckoned us ashore.
"Shall we go?" I asked doubtfully.
"Why not?" returned Tawannears, shrugging his shoulders. "We have come far with little success. If these people are kind perhaps they will set our feet on the true path."
"If they are kind," I repeated.
Peter, in the stern, swept his paddle in a curve that steered us toward the bank.
"Ja," he grunted. "Andt berhaps we get something different to eat."
We had no cause to regret the decision. These people, who called themselves Tsutpeli,* were both kind and considerate, and much impressed by the white skins that Corlaer and I still possessed, despite thick coats of grease and sunburn. They were likewise very intelligent. After we had been escorted to the house of a chief, in which dwelt the families of all his sons, and had eaten of several different foods, in particular a large fish which I suspect to have been a kind of salmon, besides berries and a stew of roots, leaves and twigs—much to Peter's enjoyment—our hosts began a humorous attempt to strike a common ground of intercourse with us.
*Nez Percés—although it is difficult to understand how they got so far West.—A.D.H.S.
They would point to various objects, and give their names for them, then question us for ours; and we, or rather, Tawannears, who was spokesman for us, would reply with the Seneca terms. In this way, in the course of the weeks we spent in this village, we came to acquire a working vocabulary, and were able, with the help of signs and guess-work, to engage in simple conversations.
They told us that they had not always held the river to the point they now occupied, but had recently conquered it from a tribe they called the Chinook, who were notably fine sailors and who still controlled the lower reaches where were the best fisheries. With some difficulty, Tawannears made them understand the general purpose of his quest, but all the principal men disowned any knowledge of a Land of Lost Souls. Very different, however, was their reception of the legend Nadoweiswe had recounted of the abiding-place of the Great Spirit. Their faces lighted at once, and Apaiopa, the leading chief, signed to us to follow him from the lodge.
It was sunset, and the mountain wall we had discerned to the north of the river appeared as a string of isolated peaks, three or four of them towering in lordly majesty above the indefinite blue outline of the lesser ridges. The farthest one we could see was the mightiest. It bulked across the horizon with the effect of a monstrous personality, dazzling white, its crest ripping the clouds apart. At that distance it had the look of sitting in the heavens, detached, not earthbound.
"Tamanoas,"* said Apaiopa, pointing. "The Great Spirit! The Chinook told us about Him when we came here. Sometimes He is angry—Bang! Like this." He touched my musket. "Sometimes He goes away into the sky. He is the Great Spirit!"
* Obviously, Mt. Rainier.—A.D.H.S.
Tawannears expelled his breath with a sigh of contentment, and I rushed into hurried speech to restrain the certain disappointment I felt he was laying up for himself.
"Nonsense, 'tis only a mountain, bigger than others," I said. "Think, brother! You will—"
"It may be a mountain," returned Tawannears quietly. "But is that a reason why it may not be the Great Spirit Himself?"
"Ja," affirmed Corlaer, "if der Greadt Spbirit come to earth, I guess he come as a mountain, eh?Ja, dot's it."
I remembered the wolf brothers, and desisted in an attempt which I knew could not succeed. And for the remainder of the evening Tawannears was occupied in securing information on the route to the base of Tamanoas. In the morning, our hosts loaded us with food and saw us on our way. They made no endeavor to restrain us. Indeed, they seemed to think we could accomplish anything. A Great Spirit, which was white, they reasoned, ought to be glad to see two white men. Tawannears, they considered, would be accepted on our guarantee. We bade them farewell with sorrow. They were the noblest Indians we found beyond the Sky Mountains.
We made our last camp in a glade strewn with wild-flowers that was rimmed by one of the dingy glaciers, hanging like out-thrust arms along the mountain's flanks. High overhead, several miles in the still sky, soared the blunted cone of the summit, silver-white at the peak, shading to a deeper tone where black hulks of rock cropped up through the snow-mantle, and steel-gray farther down where the ice-rivers of the glaciers crawled beneath loads of rock-dust and pebble-bowlders, wrenched from earth's fabric by their resistless flow.
Below the glaciers came the zone of wild-flowers, miles and miles of them, casting their pollen into the air in the midst of icy desolation, banding the heights with a cincture of fragrant beauty. Then, a mile nearer earth's level, stood the timber-line; first, straggling dwarf growths, bent and gnarled and twisted by the winds; behind these the massive bulwark of the primeval forest, stout cedars and cumbrous firs, the least of them fit for main-mast to a King's ship, a green frame for the many-colored miracle of the flower-fields and the white splendor above.
"Do you think to climb higher, brother?" I questioned Tawannears, standing with arms folded, his eyes fixed upon the summit that seemed so near in that radiant atmosphere.
He nodded.
"'Tis no more than a mountain," I continued gently. "Do you not see?"
He turned somber eyes upon me.
"It looks like no other mountain Tawannears has ever seen, Otetiani."
I waved my hand from South to North, where gleamed a dozen peaks scarce inferior to the giant upon whose thighs we couched.
"They are not the same," he flamed with sudden passion. "Have not all the people we met told us that this was the Great Spirit? Tamanoas!" He repeated the name with a kind of ecstasy. "Did Otetiani ever see anything more like what the Great Spirit must be? Is He, then, a man like us—with feet and hands and a belly? No, He is Power and Strength and Beauty and Stillness!"
"Ja," agreed Corlaer shrilly. "Andt if we go up high we see all der country aroundt. Dot safes trouble.Ja!"
I unsheathed my tomahawk.
"Very well," I said. "'Tis settled. We try for the top. Therefore, heed what I say. A mountain is a jealous foe, strong, as you have said, eke treacherous. In France there is a mountain like to this, which is called the White Mountain. Men climb it for love of danger, but they go in parties roped together, so that if one falls, his mates may save him. We must cut up our buffalo-robes and braid the strips for rope, and besides, we shall need sticks to help us on the ice. Also, we must make shift to climb by daylight. In the darkness we should slip to our deaths—if, indeed, we do not die, in any case, which I think is most likely."
Concern showed in the Seneca's face.
"Tawannears is selfish," he said quickly. "He thinks only of himself. There is no need for Otetiani and Peter to go with me. Let them wait here whilst I go up and make prayer to Tamanoas."
I laughed, and Corlaer's flat visage creased in a ridiculous simper, which was the Dutchman's idea of derisive mirth.
"These many thousand leagues we have traveled," I answered, "without one venturing alone. Shall we begin now? I say no."
"Ja," said Corlaer. "But we go in der morning, eh? Tonight we eat."
In the morning we cached our muskets and spare equipment in a hollow tree, and started up, with no more encumbrances than our food-pouches, tomahawks, some fifty feet of resilient hide-rope and the staves we had whittled from cedar saplings. Our path was obvious enough. We crossed the zone of the wild-flowers, skirted the glacier which terminated in their midst in a spouting, ice-cold stream of brown water, and found firm footing for half a mile upon a tongue of rock. Beyond this was a snow-field, solid and frozen almost to the consistency of ice, in which we were obliged to cut our steps foot by foot. The glare was dazzling as the bright sunlight was reflected from the smooth, sloping surface, but we won to our objective, another rock-mass, only to discover it too precipitous for climbing, and were forced to entrust ourselves to the glacier, which encircled it.
Here was work to try our souls. The dull, dirt-hued ice-river was riven by cracks and crevices, some a few inches wide, others impassable, from whose dark-green depths came faint tinklings, and blasts of that utter cold that numbs life instantly. But it was not cold on the glacier's top. The warm sun made us sweat as we toiled upward, testing the ice in front of us with our sticks at every step, studying ways to evade the widest crevices, aiding each other to leap those where there was substantial footing on either side.
But the hour came when a great, spreading crack that struck diagonally across it compelled us to abandon the glacier as a highway. We clambered laboriously over the side walls of bowlders it had built in the ages of its descent, and assailed another snow-field, aiming for a series of rock-ledges which lifted, one above the other, toward the summit. The air was like wine, heady, yet strangely thin, and we began to pant out of all proportion to our efforts. Tawannears and Peter, both of them stronger than I, seemed to feel it more; and I was startled to see the big Dutchman sink to his knees.
"I bleed," he gasped. "Who strikes us, eh!"
Tawannears, too, dashed a flux of blood from his nose and collapsed on the snow.
"Tamanoas is displeased," he muttered as I stooped beside him. "Otetiani was right! We die."
His bronze face was ghastly pale, and for a moment I feared he would faint; but he rallied when I shook him by the arm. I was worried more for him than for Peter, in which respect I erred.
"'Tis not Tamanoas," I urged. "At least, brother, 'tis no more than ordinary mountain sickness I have often heard men tell of. Up here, above the world, the air is lighter than we are wont to breathe. We have gone too fast. Let us rest, and grow used to it."
He accepted the explanation with the illogical combination of civilization and barbarism which was the key to his extraordinary character.
"Peter," he grunted, pointing weakly.
I looked around to find the Dutchman in a dead faint, the blood trickling from mouth and nose, to all appearances dying. But after I had bathed his temples with snow for a short while he struggled to a sitting position.
"Who shoots us?" he quavered.
I explained the phenomenon to him as simply as I could—he was actually more ignorant of physics than the Seneca—and once he had comprehended its significance he was for continuing the ascent immediately; but upon my insistence agreed to allow his body an opportunity to readjust itself to the new strains upon it. We occupied the enforced rest by examining the country disclosed to us at this height, a panorama of dense forests and snowy peaks, and westward, in the distance, a winding body of water, too broad for a river, too irregular for a lake.* But nowhere a sign of habitation, of beings, human or otherwise, who might have enjoyed this land of natural happiness and plenty. Indeed, 'twas avoided by the surrounding savages as the abode of that divinity they visualized in the snowy majesty of the mountain, Tamanoas.
* Apparently, Puget Sound.—A.D.H.S.
Tawannears rose first, a look of grim determination in his eyes.
"The sun is high, brothers," he said. "If Corlaer's pain is gone——"
"Oof!" interrupted the Dutchman, with the distaste of any man of abnormal physique for admitting weakness. "We go to der top now. If der air is thin I hafe fat, eh? Dot's enough.Ja."
To us, then, it seemed as though the summit was at most an hour's climb away, but actually our stiffest effort was ahead of us. All of that weary afternoon we climbed, risking precipice and crevice, pausing at frequent intervals for the rest that was essential, if we were not to become light headed and dizzy. Once we slipped and slid a half-mile toward death, bringing up by driving our staves through the ice and checking gradually the impetus of our descent. That meant an hour's work to do over again. We gritted our teeth and did it. Our moccasins were shredded on knife-edged rocks and ice-chunks. Our faces were blistered by the sun-glare. Our hands were cut and sore from constant contact with the ice. We had spells of nausea. But we went up—and up.
I was leading, head bowed, my eyes on the rocks and ice ahead in search of the safest foot-holds, when Tawannears touched my shoulder.
"See, brother," he exclaimed. "Tamanoas breathes."
I looked up, startled. The rim was several hundred yards away, and above it floated what I took to be a cloud low in the sky. But there were no clouds, and I soon saw that the mist in the air above the rim was constantly disintegrating, constantly being replenished. It was like the steam that exudes from the spout of a boiling kettle.
"We shall soon learn what it means," I said. "There is an opening here. Keep to the snow—the rocks are shifty."
We crossed a ramp of snow, sloping easily, and entered a huge gap in the crest. What a spectacle! No, I speak not of the view spread out around the mountain's base. We did not look at that. Our eyes were on the vast bowl, a mile in breadth, that was carved in the mountain's top. Snow filled it deep in many places, poured over the rim through gaps such as that we stood in to form the sources of the glaciers that twisted downward into the flower-zone like gigantic serpents with silver tails and dingy-gray, scale-covered coils. But here and there over the snowy floor were scattered groups of peculiar, black rocks out of which jetted the steamy clouds that Tawannears had noticed.
"Whose fires?" squeaked Corlaer.
The Seneca looked eagerly in all directions, hungry for—— Who can say what vague form his thoughts were molded in?
"The Great Spirit built them," I answered. "Ay, and tends them this moment."
Tawannears bent doubting glance upon my face.
"'Tis so," I affirmed. "Do you remember in the missionary's school, talk of mountains called volcanoes?"
"But those were found only in hot countries—or so they taught us," answered the Seneca.
"Then they taught you wrong. I, myself, have seen such a mountain in Italy, which is in Europe. And here we stand on a mountain that is—or has been—a volcano."
Corlaer jumped perceptibly.
"Volcanoes hafe fires?" he protested.
"Yes," I agreed. "Did not our Indian friends tell us that sometimes Tamanoas exploded—made a loud noise? That is what they meant. Deep down, under all this ice and snow, in the bowels of the rocks, burns the undying fire of the world. And I suppose 'tis not far wrong to say the Great Spirit tends that. From it flows all life, and is not He the Giver of Life?"
"Ja," said the Dutchman thoughtfully. "Andt now we go down pretty —— quick, eh?"
But I pointed to the sun dropping in the West behind a welter of clouds, and then to the miles of icy rocks betwixt us and the timber-line.
"What chance of coming down whole of limb in darkness?" I asked.
Tawannears spoke up before he could answer me.
"Tamanoas is—Tamanoas," he proclaimed in his resonant voice. "As Otetiani has said, under us burns the fire of the Life-giver of the world. Brothers, Tawannears goes to make his prayer to the Great Spirit. Surely, here in His own abode, He will listen!"
And he strode to the nearest rock-pile whence issued the steam of the earth-fires, and flung up his arms in the Indians' dignified gesture of prayer—for I think it incomparably more dignified for man to approach the Great Spirit, in whatever form, not as a suppliant upon bended knee, but as one who craves favor from an honorable master. And his voice rang sonorously again in the rhythmic oratory of the Hodenosaunee, as he stated his case, pleaded his hungry heart, cited his bitter need.
We could not hear his words. They were not for us; and we welcomed the little wind that blew into the crater, twining his stately figure in the mist of the fumeroles and carrying the echoing phrases over the opposite snow-banks. But we watched him enthralled, the while the shadows blackened on the mountain's lower flanks and a pink glow flooded the peak around us, shooting a miniature rainbow through the steam-clouds. Tawannears tossed out his arms in one final appeal, proudly, as though he had a right to ask, then turned, with a light of exultation in his eyes, and walked back to us.
"I think Hawenneyu opened His ears to me," he said simply. "My heart that was sad commenced to sing bravely. It grows strong. All fear has left me."
With the approach of night the little wind became a gale that moaned amongst the rocks. The air, deprived of the sun's heat, was deadly cold. We were in the grip of a Winter frost. And true it is we should have died there before morning had it not been for a steam-chamber I found in one of the clumps of black rocks. 'Twas unpleasantly damp, but the warmth gave us opportunity for sleep. We awoke in a different world. The peak was wrapped in a thick, moist blanket of fog. The air that had been briskly cold was now clammy. Water congealed on our foreheads. Our hide garments were stiffened by it. We shivered like people with marsh fever. Our teeth rattled as we ate our breakfast—the last food we had, for in our ignorance we had thought to complete the ascent and return in a single day. Even Tawannears, uplifted by his conviction that he had secured for his quest the aid and endorsement of an unearthly power, was depressed by this outlook.
Having finished our scanty meal, we fumbled our way to the gap in the crater wall by which we had entered the previous evening, and hesitated there, peering into the fog.
"We have two choices," I said at length, shattering the uncomfortable silence. "We can stay here without food in the dampness until the clouds are dispersed—or we perish. Or we can commit ourselves to the hazards of chance in this pit-mirk and essay to go down where yesterday we came up—with every chance, comrades, that a misstep will hurl us all to destruction."
At that instant the fog was rent for as long as the eye can remain open without blinking, and we caught a fair glimpse of the flower-fields and the lordly stands of timber those few short miles away.
"Let us go down, brothers," said Tawannears.
"Ja," squeaked Corlaer. "Here I hafe shifers in my back."
I had been leader on the ascent, but when we came to rope ourselves together Tawannears insisted upon going first.
"Tawannears brought you into this peril, brothers," he declared. "It is for Tawannears to lead you out."
So 'twas he who headed us as we scrambled down the outer side of the crater rim. I came next, and Corlaer, puffing lustily, was third. At the beginning our task was simple. We had only to follow the foot-holes we had chopped in the snow-ramp under the crest, and we made this initial stage at a rapid rate. Below the snow-ramp was a rock-ledge, and we negotiated this with equally swift success; but Tawannears was confused by the swirling gray fog and missed the chain of foot-prints that started from the lower edge of the rocks across the next snow-bank.
We blundered around for a time trying to find them, and finally, in desperation, launched out upon the dim white expanse of the snow-field, here so level that we did not need to chop foot-holds. When we started we had been able to see perhaps a dozen feet ahead. Tawannears, in advance, was a ghostly figure in my eyes, no more than a voice in the mist to Corlaer. But in the middle of this level snow-field the fog suddenly thickened to a soupy consistency, and we all three disappeared, one from another. I could not see the hand I held in front of my face. The clouds were so dense as to seem stifling.
"What shall we do, brothers?" called Tawannears in a voice that was muffled and bodiless.
"Oof!" grunted Corlaer behind me. "We choke to death here, eh?"
"Bide, and give the mirk time to weaken," I advised.
We sat and waited until our garments were so saturated with moisture as to weigh heavy upon us, and our clicking teeth warned us of the danger of inaction. The Seneca rose abruptly.
"Tawannears did wrong to say we should descend, brothers," he said. "But we will die of the cold and wet if we stay here. To try to climb back to the top is as dangerous as to climb down. We have no choice save to continue. If Hawenneyu has his eyes upon us we shall live."
Ten steps farther on I bumped into his crouching figure.
"Back!" he cried fiercely. "Here is death!"
I looked down past his feet at a blue-green gulf that showed in an eddy of the mist and was promptly swallowed up again. We had wandered out upon a glacier, of which the snow-bank was the source, and this was one of those fathomless abysses that descended into the icy vestments of the mountain.
Foot by foot, on hands and knees, we traced the course of the crevice to a snow-bridge that spanned it, an arch of icy masonry. This Tawannears beat upon with his staff to test its resistance. It did not quiver, and he ventured but upon it, whilst Corlaer and I dug our heels into the snow and leaned back to catch him up should it bear him down. Presently the fog swallowed him—and his voice hailed us announcing he had crossed. I followed him with celerity, and gave the word to Corlaer. The Dutchman's figure, distorted out of its true proportions by the shifting mists, swam into our view, stepping cautiously across the arch, when, without warning there was a crackle of splitting ice, and Peter bounded into the air and dug his heels into the very margin of the precipice's brink as the snow-arch sank beneath his weight.
Tawannears and I gasped in horror and braced ourselves for the shock of his fall; but he teetered back and forth for two breaths, there on the verge of eternity, then balanced erect and stepped toward us.
"Oof," he remarked with shrill glumness. "Dot time Peter heardt der angels sing.Ja!"
We worked off the top of the glacier onto a second rock-ledge, none too sure of the direction we were taking, but thinking mainly of escaping the treacherous network of crevices. But we could not have avoided the tangle of glaciers on the mountain's sides with the sun shining to light our way, and in the fog it was a certainty we should stumble onto them so soon as we had reached the lower margin of the rock-island—for that was what it really was—we had gained. We were encouraged, however, by an apparent tendency of the mist to dissipate, which enabled us to achieve almost satisfactory progress across the yawning surface of this second stretch of glacier—probably a lower coil of the one which had nearly trapped us above. But just as we were congratulating ourselves upon our success and hoping that we should soon pass out of the cloud-bank, the wind veered and the thick, gray blanket walled us in again.
We kept on doggedly, now immune to fear—or rather, fearing more the suffering of inertia. Tawannears walked like a blind man, tapping the ground in front of him with his staff, and shouting to us from time to time the nature of the ground ahead. The descent was regular, and for a quarter-mile or so the ice had given excellent footing. I suppose it made him over-confident. The mist was thinning once more, too, and I could discern his figure, a shadow gliding in advance of me a dozen feet away.
"The ice is broken, brothers—beware a bowlder on the right—no——"
He vanished! There was a violent wrench upon the rope hitched around my waist, and I was jerked from my feet, clawing with all my limbs for a hold to stay me. Small stones and ice chunks rattled down as I slid forward. I felt one leg pass over a declivity, sensed that my right arm was beating space. Then some new force was exerted behind me. My descent was arrested. I sprawled half over the precipice, but I did not fall further, as I normally should have done.
"Who is there?" gasped Corlaer out of the fog.
"'Tis I! Ormerod!" I answered. "Tawannears is over the brink."
"Is he dead?"
I mustered courage to peer into a blue-green caldron of writhing mist.
"Tawannears!" I shouted in an oddly cracked voice.
"Yes, brother," he answered calmly, surprisingly near. "I am here."
"Are you hurt?"
"No. I am holding to the rope. I have one foot on an ice-shelf."
"I hear," came Corlaer's voice behind me. "Now, you do what I say. I pull—like——! First comes Ormerod. He lets oudt der rope as he comes. When he is safe, we pull togedder for Tawannears. Readty? Oop!"
The Dutchman's breath came in great, gagging pants. It seemed as though a dozen yoke of oxen were tugging at that rope. An exclamation from Tawannears warned me that the haulage might pull him from his foot-hold on the ice-shelf, with a resulting increase in the strain upon Corlaer, and I managed to wriggle sideways as Peter dragged me up, so as to release a spare coil of the hide-rope. The instant I had all four limbs on hard ice, I shouted to Peter to let be, lifted myself shakily to my knees and crawled to where he sat, with his feet propped on the bowlder Tawannears had warned us against, taking in the slack of the line, hand over hand.
"Now, we pull Tawannears oudt," he puffed.
I seized the line beside him, but my efforts were not what counted. His immense shoulders bent forward. His back and arm-muscles bulged through his hide shirt. His legs braced like steel pillars against the bowlder, luckily frozen fast to its icy bed. And slowly, very slowly, I was able to collect a few inches of slack. The heavy rope chafed against the dull, rounded edge of the precipice, but it held is no hempen cable could have done.
Tawannears' arms appeared above the brink, clutching for something to hold to. Presently, the Seneca's face rose to view—and Peter's breath came in the same regular, explosive puffs. Then Tawannears got one hand on a level space, found leverage for the other.
"Corlaer has done enough," he panted. "Hold fast! Tawannears can bring himself up the rest of the way."
We held the line taut, the Seneca gave a heave, swung one leg over the edge—and crawled out of danger, carefully, inch by inch, lest the broken ice betray him a second time.
Corlaer straightened to his feet, and released the breath from his lungs in one mighty blast.
"Oof!" he grunted. "Dot was no choke."
"No joke!" I protested. "You saved our lives!"
"Corlaer has added more to the debt which Tawannears can never repay," said the Seneca. "He is stronger than the buffalo bull. He is like the Great Tree which upholds the sky. Tawannears will not forget."
"Ja," mumbled the Dutchman. "Andt now we go down, eh? It is not goodt here. I hafe shifers in my back."
We brushed the moisture from our eyelashes and started forth anew with redoubled caution. The mist was not so thick, but the wind-currents were brisker, and the clouds eddied in a way that was most perplexing. We succeeded in getting off the glacier onto a rock-edge, and this fetched us to a snow-field, so steep that we must resort again to our hatchets to cut steps for our descent—and here, I think, the blinding mist was an advantage, for it prevented us from being confused by the giddy depths below.
I had just taken the lead from Tawannears to rest him from the taxing labor of chopping out the foot-holds, when the whole surface of the field commenced to slip. Corlaer lost his footing first, and was flung head over heels across the snow, dragging Tawannears and me after him. The mass of snow gathered headway as it sped on, but a short distance below the starting-point it was arrested by a terrace in the mountain-side, and only a miniature torrent of ice-chunks attended us on our continued descent. For we, probably because of our individual weight, were bounced off the terrace, and rolled down a farther slope, sometimes flung into each other's arms, occasionally separated by the length of our connecting lines, anon ramming one another in head or stomach.
How far we slid I cannot say, but it must have been several thousand feet. Of a sudden, the clouds around us seemed to thin away, and we rolled out of darkness into the comparative brilliance of an overcast day. I had a fleeting perception of the lowering wrack overhead, glanced down as I turned an involuntary somersault and perceived the wild-flower zone almost at hand, and the next moment we were cascaded over a bluff and dropped into a snow-drift within a quarter mile of the glade from which we had started the ascent.
Bruised and sore, our clothing slashed to ribbons, we were yet sound in limb, and we picked ourselves up from the snow with feeble grins of amusement at the figures of dilapidation we presented. Then, limping through the flowers to our hut, we made a fire, broiled a haunch of green venison and crawled into a bed of sweet-smelling cedar boughs for a sleep that lasted until after sun-up the next morning.
The sun was burning away the fog that had overlain the country since we left the base of the Ice Mountain, and the West breeze carried to our ears the odd muffled booming noise that we had heard once before that day. As the fog lifted, the noise increased. It was like the pounding of great waters over a cataract, but there was no brume in the air such as marked that of Jagara, and we were wholly at a loss until at sunset we fought our way through the briary walls of the forest upon the surface of an open bluff.
The booming noise was the beating of surf upon a rocky shore. Westward and north and south the waters rolled, blue-green off-shore, inland a smother of foam. The combers came lunging in, one after the other, in an endless succession of charges, smashing themselves into fine spray and spume against the cliffs. The bluff on which we stood was spattered by them; the breeze carried a fine mist to drench the near-by forest foliage.
"Here is a sea as vast as the Cadaraqui Lake, brothers," commented Tawannears, as our eyes drank in the picture.
I laughed, for a drop of the spray had reached my mouth.
"Cadaraqui, and all this wonderful land we have traversed, could be dropped into the bosom of this sea, and still fail to span it," I answered. "'Tis the South Sea, the Pacific Ocean, which, the geographers tell us, stretches from this western verge of our continent to the shores of the farther Indies."
"How can Otetiani know that?" exclaimed Tawannears.
"Taste it. 'Tis salt, the water of the open sea."
Both he and Peter stooped and scooped handfuls of it from pools in the rocks—and quickly spat it out again.
"Ja," agreed Corlaer. "Sea water. We hafe gone to der endt of der landt."
Tawannears nodded dispiritedly.
"We have traveled as far as men may go," he admitted. "And we have failed. Hawenneyu has veiled his face from us, after all."
"We have not seen all the land," I reminded him.
"Ja," spoke up the Dutchman. "We go sout' along der shore, eh?"
But Tawannears made no reply. He dragged behind us, dejected and dismayed, as we skirted the irregular shoreline, looking for a convenient camp site. When we found what we sought he aided in the routine duties of the evening, ate his share of the meager meal which was all we could afford, and then took his stand upon a lonely rock that jutted out into the angry waters. An hour later he strode back into the circle of firelight.
"Tawannears forgot that he was a grown warrior," he announced with proud humility. "His heart turned to water. He was very sad. He was afraid. But now he has driven the fear out of his heart. Whatever is worth while the Great Spirit makes difficult to find. We have come a long trail, my brothers, but it may be we have even farther yet to go. Tawannears will not cry again if the thorns cut his feet. Shall we continue?"
"Until you are satisfied, brother," I said.
Peter simply wagged his big head affirmatively.
"It is good," said the Seneca. "In the morning we will start south. Tawannears will take the first watch. A spirit bird is singing in his ear tales of the past."
That was all. When my eyes closed he was sitting outside the range of the firelight, his back against a tree-trunk, his musket across his knees, his eyes fixed on the shadows. His disappointment must have been almost unfathomable. To have come so far, beyond the wildest imaginings of his race, to have risked the legendary as well as the absolute, to have withstood so many risks—and then to find that it was practically all to do over a second time! 'Twas no ordinary shock. And he, who had so lately achieved audience—as he supposed—with the very spirit of Tamanoas, who had inhaled the breath of the Life-giver, was all the more disheartened. Yet he rallied to the shock; he refused to yield to the disappointment. From his reserves of courage he mustered the strength to embark afresh upon the quest he had been confident was approaching a conclusion.
Two days' journey southward we were halted by the estuary of a mighty river, and we turned inland, following its northern bank in search of means to cross. We passed several deserted villages, and on the third day were attacked from ambush by a tribe of tall, lean savages, with heads that sloped back from the eyebrows to a peak. They fled from our musketry, and we pursued them into their village of long, well-built log houses, and helped ourselves to a dug-out canoe in repayment for the ammunition we had expended upon them. They stood at a distance the while, silent and plainly fearful lest we should burn the village, but 'twas never a point with us to do more harm or foray goods other than need required.
Across the river and equipped with good store of smoked fish and dried meat from the savages' huts, we skirted for several weeks a wondrously healthy wooded country betwixt the sea and mountains scarcely inferior in height to those snow giants we had beheld surrounding the Ice Mountain. We saw or encountered Indians many times, but they were poor creatures of less spirit than the fisher folk by the river, and seldom offered us any hostility. A shot was always sufficient to scatter them. Indeed, 'twas observed by all of us that since we passed the Sky Mountains we had seldom met savages as fiercely valorous as the warrior tribes of the vast central plains.
For these first weeks we wandered aimlessly. We had gone as far Westward as we could, and we had not yet determined on another definite course. But a series of damp winds and clinging sea-fogs such as this country seemed disposed to, set us to figuring upon plans for weathering the approaching Winter. We were clad now in the rags of garments, insufficient to withstand the cold. Tawannears and I were gaunt from hardship, hunger and abnormal physical effort, and if the huge cask of blubber that covered Corlaer's bones was not diminished appreciably, fatigue had grooved deep lines and hollows in his flabby face.
Gone from us was theélanthat had enabled us to dash ourselves without thought upon the barrier of the Sky Mountains. We wanted rest, food in plenty, time to manufacture new clothing. For close on a year and a half we had wandered thousands of miles from one side of the continent to the other, conducting journeys such as no men had ever attempted before—as Master Cadwallader Golden, the Surveyor General of our Province of New York, has assured me to be the fact, he having studied to much advantage the available data on the geography of America.
So there came a night when we huddled close to a scanty fire under a brush shelter and debated our future.
"When the snow comes we shall want more than this," I said, fingering the holes in my moccasins. "I would we had the buffalo robes we sacrificed on the Ice Mountain yonder."
"Otetiani speaks wisely," agreed Tawannears. "We do not know what the Winter in this country will be, but it is not a warm land. There is always snow on the mountain-tops. In Winter, then, the cold must be felt in the low lands."
Corlaer, gnawing infinitesimal shreds of meat from a bone, shrilly growled approval.
"We must have shelter," I continued. "We must have food in plenty. We must take a sufficiency of meat and peltry."
"What of the fisher-tribes?" suggested Tawannears. "It may be they would give us hospitality."
"Ay, and stab us separately some night whilst we slept," I retorted. "I like not these people. They have shifty eyes. They will not stand up in a fight. Moreover, we cannot speak to them, nor they to us."
Corlaer cast aside his bone with a gesture of disgust.
"Go to der mountains," he squeaked. "In der valleys is cofer—andt wood—andt game for der killing—andt no odder mans."
It was true what he said. We had proved it in our wanderings. The valleys at the foot of the high ranges were the favorite haunts of all the animals. They were well-wooded and watered. And the savages of these parts seemed to shun the mountains for the tidal rivers. In the right valley we might expect to find as perfect living conditions as nature afforded. We adopted Peter's counsel, and in the morning struck off southeast into the foothills.
The first valley we came to we rejected for lack of wood. The second was forested, but showed no sign of attracting over-much game. The third was too inaccessible. But after a fortnight of zigzag wanderings we entered by accident a valley which promised all the attractions we desired. It reminded us of the vale in the Sky Mountains through which we had crossed to their Western side. Like that it offered a contrast of forest and savannah. A small river wound down its center. Snow-capped peaks rose all around it. The tameness of its wild inhabitants proved they had never been hunted by man.
We made our camp in the neck of the miniature pass by which the valley communicated with the outside world, happy in the confidence that at last we were assured a resting-place where we might forget for a season the feverish impulses that had hurled us so far from what we each called home. And that night, as we shivered in the wind that blew off the glaciers we had consolation in planning the snug cabin we would contrive in some elbow of the hillside, with a fireplace of mud and bowlders fetched from the river's bed.
We cast lots the next morning, using grass-blades, long and short, to divide the first day's work. And it so fell out that Tawannears must do the hunting, which was necessary to insure us ample food and to start the collection of hides we should need—and we were all three glad of this because he was our best bowman, and we could not afford to use our fast-dwindling stock of powder and lead to fill our bellies. Peter and I were to explore the valley's length, especially with a view to determining a site for the cabin.
It was a glorious day, the sun shining warmly and the wind crisp and invigorating. Footsore and tired as we were, we started upon our errands at a swinging lope, and I shouted a cheery good-by to Tawannears as he disappeared into the standing timber below the little pass, and Peter and I undertook to climb to a narrow shelf of level land that formed a platform midway of the valley's gently-sloping Southern wall. From here we could secure a sweeping view of that side of our domain and likewise gain some idea of the opposite wall which we intended to examine on our way home. Tawannears replied to me with the hunting-whoop, and Peter joined my answering yelp. Then we were alone, only the crackling branches underfoot and the crashing of deer, antelope and wild sheep in the thickets to interrupt our silent progress.
The valley was a broad ellipse in shape, and the encircling hills were terraced by such shelves as the one we trod. We did not keep to it of course, but climbed down or up as the case might be, to examine features of the landscape. But for the most part we held to the hillside, for in the valley-bottom the forest trees obscured the country twenty feet away—except in the occasional savannahs or parks that bordered the river's banks. I think we had traveled all of two French leagues when we came to a place where the shelf on the hillside became a rocky ledge, strewn with pebbles, and a raw out-crop of rock overshadowed it. Peter, in the lead, hesitated, his rifle at the trail, and sniffed the air.
"Make haste," I exclaimed impatiently. "It grows toward noon, and we have to compass the valley before dark."
"I smell something," he returned.
"Smell something!" I laughed. "Sure, man, I can smell a dozen forest odors."
"I smell beast," said Peter gravely.
This made me laugh the more, and I thrust myself in front of the Dutchman and took up the blind trail at a dogtrot.
"Waidt!" he called after me, as I came to a shoulder of rock that projected across the ledge.
I waved my hand in answer, and trotted blithely on around the shoulder. A snarl that sounded like the ripping of a thousand sheets of sail-cloth greeted me. Straight in front, not twenty feet away, stood the biggest bear I had ever seen. We had come from downwind, so it had not smelled us; but its little beady eyes blinked ferociously at me as it hovered over the half-devoured body of a mountain sheep.
In my first burst of astonishment I lost my head. Forgetful of the ground, I jumped backward and lifted my musket, intending to shoot the beast before it could move. But my foot slipped on the pebbly cliff-side, my ankle twisted under me with a stab of pain, and my musket hurtled out of reach down-hill, leaving me crippled and fearful lest the slightest movement should send me after it.
The flash of the steel barrel was enough for the bear. It sensed that I had meant it harm; it saw me prostrate, my fingers tugging frantically at the tomahawk sheathed at my side. And with a snarl that became a bellow of rage it reared on hind-legs and waddled toward me, a fearsome figure, taller than a tall man, thick brown fur bristling, saliva dripping from gaping jaws, great fore-paws poised like a boxer's arms, long, steel-tipped claws quivering out of the immense pads.