'Beat, I think,' said Snap a little later; and, indeed, it looked as if man could go no higher than the point to which, by infinite toil, the boys had now attained.
'You two stay here a little,' he added to the two Winthrops, 'and take care of the grub and the rifle,' for, in spite of the difficulties of the ascent, Wharton had insisted on bringing one rifle and his 'six-shooter,' as well as a handkerchief full of bread per man.
'Dick, you will come with me, won't you?' he asked, and, as the old trapper nodded his head in assent, he added, 'Very well, then: do you get a good grip of something so that you could hold my weight up if necessary, and give me the other end of that lariat round my waist.'
The place to which they had attained was a narrow ledge of granite, ending in a niche in the rock, with an overhanging roof to it. Above was a smooth needle of solid rock, broken and ragged at the summit, but for two hundred feet as smooth and perpendicular as a pillar of marble. There were no crannies in this into which to insert toes and fingers, however strong and daring. The storms and snows of ten thousand years had worn the granite until its face was polished like the face of a jewel, and it was hard as a diamond.
'I don't think even the Alpine Club could tackle that,' Frank had said when they first saw the peak.
'I'm not so sure of that,' Snap answered; 'they couldn't from here, of course, but perhaps there's a way round. Remember, they climbed the Dru.'
And now, with the dogged pluck which characterised the boy, he was going to look for what he called a way round. The position was this. The hollow in which the party lay ended abruptly. Beyond it was the polished rock, without a blade of grass or a twig upon it. Above was two hundred feet of the same, bending, if anything, a little towards the would-be climber, as if the giant spire were about to tumble over into the gulf of clouds and mist which lay below. If any of our little party toppled out of their nest they had a clean run for two or three thousand feet, as old Dick said, and 'nothing of any consequence to hinder 'em between that and the prairie.'
The lariat was fast round old Dick's waist, and securely fastened, too, to Snap's leather belt, which he had taken the precaution of fixing well up under his armpits. A close scrutiny of the rock to the right of the crevice had shown the boys that, though there was no cranny big enough for a sparrow to perch upon above, there was just one narrow, thread-like crack running from the end of their niche towards the sharp edge of the needle, which, jutting out some fifteen feet from them, formed a corner round which they could not see anything.
'That's our chance,' said Snap; 'I can get my fingers in here, and, as I can see it all the way, I expect it gets larger further on.'
All the party looked white and drawn except Snap; it was a desperate risk, and all knew it, and old Dick would gladly have persuaded the boy to rest content with their present quarters. But it was too late now. As the old foreman knelt with his face inwards, gripping the rock, ready at any moment to take the strain which Snap's fall would put upon the rope, the latter was digging his fingers deeply into the solitary crack. He had taken off his moccasins, and was barefooted and in his shirt-sleeves. Even his cap was off. He wanted no encumbrances, however slight, just now. Two or three times he tried his grip, and then, clinging with his bare feet to the smooth rock, he let himself go and hung spread-eagled against the granite wall.
ON THE FACE OF THE CLIFFON THE FACE OF THE CLIFF
As he hung dangling by the first joints of his fingers over the horrid abyss a cold wind came and struck him. It blew his damp hair back from his face, it seemed to chill his straining fingers, and to threaten to tear him from his precarious hold. But not for one half-second did he hesitate. He had considered the peril and braced himself to meet it. Slowly, a foot at a time, he worked his way along. The first foot or two was the difficult part of his journey, for there, as he shifted his hold, his body hung literally upon four fingers and no more. But he comforted himself with the thought of the stout lariat round his waist and the strong arms which held it in the niche he had left. After the first few feet he was able to get more of his hands into the rock, and, though his eye had not noticed them, his bare feet found little inequalities and rough spots to which they clung like the feet of a fly to the ceiling.
As he drew near the corner his excitement grew, hope and fear alternating in his breast. At last he could look round it, and he saw that the proverb was again justified, 'Where there's a will there's a way.'
'A precious bad way,' thought Snap, 'but still better than this,' and, so thinking, he crept round the corner, and after what had seemed an age to him again got his foot on a firm hold. For here round the corner was a broad ledge, as if made by the falling away from the cone of some great chip of granite when that convulsion had taken place which had rent the cone from its very summit to where he stood. Now too he saw clearly that, though solid on the other side, a great crack ran down the peak on this side, just big enough for a man to squeeze into at the bottom, and slowly widening, until at the top the cone was divided into three distinct peaks, on the largest of which the balloon was anchored.
Snap had arranged with Dick that three sharp tugs at the lariat meant 'Come along, I can hold you.' First he passed a bit of the lariat round a jutting corner of the broken rock, and then he gave the three tugs agreed upon.
With eyes shut and heart beating he clung to the rock, and prayed that Dick might not slip. It seemed an hour of waiting until he heard a loud gasp at his side, and Dick's voice panting out:
'Wal, I reckon that's summat of a crawl, but blow me if I think Natur' ever meant me to do them bluebottle tricks.'
As he spoke it seemed as if a thaw had suddenly set in in Snap's heart, the relief was so great, and, clinging hard to the rocks, they both laughed until the boys in the crevice heard them, and wished that they were there to share in the merriment.
'Wal, now, Snap, what next? You couldn't set us an easier one this time, now, could you?' asked Dick.
'Yes, Dick, it's not so bad this time, it's only what mountaineers call a chimney, and then we shall be there.'
'Oh, only a chimney, he says,' muttered Dick; 'fust you turns bluebottle, then you turns sweep—all quite natural, of course—and then you're there. And, unless we turn balloonatics when we git there, there, it seems to me, we'll stick!'
'You follow me, Dick,' said Snap, 'and do as I do; shove your elbows and knees against the opposite sides of the crack as soon as you have room to, and wriggle up.'
Dick obeyed, talking away to himself all the while, so that, had the danger been less, the inclination to laugh would have taken the strength out of Snap's arms and let him down with a crash.
'Look out for stones, Dick!' cried Snap all at once, as a few great fragments of granite came rattling down.
'All right, sonny,' cried the voice from below; 'never mind the "sut," but tell us when the top brick's a-comin'.'
'Now, Dick,' said Snap, after about fifty feet of this work, 'you'll have to shove your back and hands against one side and your feet against the other, like this, and shove your way up so.'
'All right, pard, I understand: I've got to sit on about 5,000 feet of nothing at all and keep going up'ards. Quite simple. Go ahead!'
'Hang it, Dick, do be serious,' replied Snap, laughing.
'Well, so I am, ain't I?' replied the old man; 'you don't suppose I'm here for enjoyment, do you?'
Snap, looking down between his legs at the cowboy below him, would have exploded with laughter had he dared to. The old chap was growling away to himself, and puffing and blowing with the unusual exercise, but gripping the rock with hands like eagles' claws, and pushing with his strong legs until, as Snap told him afterwards, he was in momentary dread of seeing the opposite wall come down.
'Now hold on a bit, Dick,' cried the voice above after a pause, 'and toss that lariat up my way if you can.'
There was a good deal of grumbling, but at last the lariat lay across Snap's legs, and, getting hold of it, he made cast after cast at a little spike of rock some ten feet above him. It was difficult shooting with a noose at such a mark in such a position, and he heartily wished old Dick could change places with him. But that was impossible.
'I reckon my back 'll hold out about three more shies, Snap,' said the voice from below; 'there ain't much starch left in it.'
'All right, Dick,' replied Snap, 'I've lassoed the rock now, firm and fast. One minute!'
The old man saw the boy hang on to the rope and scramble by its help to the point above mentioned.
'Now, Dick!' he cried, and Dick caught the rope and scrambled up after his companion.
'All easy-going now, like going upstairs,' said Snap; and so indeed it was, for the two were now on the last torn pinnacle of the summit, which was so cracked and riven that a child could have climbed it.
'Poor chap! So that's his story!' exclaimed Wharton ten minutes later, as a great bird, gorged and heavy, rose sullenly from a cup-like hollow in the top of the main peak and slid on silent wings into the deep sky beyond.
Where the bird rose, lay what had been a man, and that not many days ago; but the elements and the fowls of heaven had not left enough of the poor clay to tell whether he was white or red. On closer inspection a grey Tyrolese hat with green riband, and tuft of izzard's hair set in it as a plume, told Snap even his nationality, and a broken pair of spectacles confirmed his guess and almost enabled him to re-clothe those poor bones in his mind's eye with the very flesh of the German professor which once covered them.
The balloon, which was still well inflated, had dragged its anchor amongst these rocks and at last struck a firm hold amongst them, and still, as they reached it, tugged and strained at its mooring with a semblance of life in ghastly contrast to the everlasting peace which had fallen upon its helmsman and master.
'The jerk when that there thing pulled up sudden chucked him out, I guess,' said Dick, pointing at the bones; 'and look here, it's broke his arm in two places, and his thigh. Poor wretch, pity but what he didn't fall clear over the edge anyway!'
'That's not what he thought, Dick,' said Snap, who had picked up a log-book which lay by the dead man's side and bore on its cover of calf-skin more than one mark of the vulture's prying beak. '"Gott sei Dank," he begins—and it looks as if he had written it in his own blood, poor fellow—"thank God," he says, "that I shall have time to write——"'
'Yes, well, never mind that now, pard; I guess we'll have lots of time to read that by-and-by. There ain't much room up here, and I guess we'd better go as near giving this foreigner Christian burial as circumstances will allow; you don't happen to recollect a prayer as will suit, do you now, Snap?'
'What do you mean, Wharton? you can't dig a grave in this rock.'
'No, lad, I know that,' he replied, 'and I ain't goin' to try. But we've got to live here, maybe some days, and there's hardly room for us as are alive, even if dead men's society was as attractive as it ain't.'
Whilst he spoke the old man had approached the figure, which half lay, half sat, in the hollow, its limbs broken and its face torn away by birds of prey. Reverently the old man lifted his hat, saying to the thing at his feet:
'You'll forgive us, pard, but we're kinder cramped for room up here, and if so be as you're gone aloft a few thousand feet more or less between you and these bones of yourn won't make no odds.'
Snap looked at Dick in some horror, but the old man's manner was so reverent and yet so determined that he did not interfere.
Tearing a rug, which before his strength left him he must have got somehow or other from the car of the balloon, into fine strips, Dick spliced them together into a cord. Then he rolled the remains up in the long cloak in which they lay, wound his cord of strips round and round it, and then turned again to Snap:
'Snap, my lad, don't take on at what I'm doing,' he said; 'there ain't no place for the dead among the living, nor can be neither. You don't believe as these bones is him, do you? Very well, then, I want you to help me bury them down there,' and the foreman pointed out over the brink of the precipice.
The afternoon had passed now, and one or two stars were beginning to show faintly in the sky. Down below, the mists were rising thickly from the wet bottom-lands and from the bed of the stream, and were drifting through the gorges of the mountains and up and up, until, looking over from then: dizzy stand, Dick and Snap saw nothing but heaving billows of heavy white clouds. It wanted but very little fancy to imagine that those clouds were white waves breaking round the base of the cliff on which they stood.
'Take the other end of the pack, Snap,' commanded Wharton; 'now, boy, have you got a prayer handy?'
'No, Dick,' faltered Snap, 'I don't know what to say.'
'Then just you do as I do,' said the old man, 'just say good-bye to the poor chap; I remember a mate told me years agone that good-bye meant "God be with you." I reckon that ain't a bad prayer.'
With his head averted the boy did as he was told.
'Good-bye,' said Dick, 'good-bye, pard!'—and 'good-bye' echoed Snap—their voices sounding faint and strange as they stood up there close to the stars, with the white clouds below and the dead man between them.
GOOD-BYE, PARDGOOD-BYE, PARD
'Swing it, Snap, and let go,' said Wharton, and the boy's hands let go as the light burden which they bore flew outwards over the edge.
By some fascination which he could not resist Snap looked down, and saw the dreadful bale spin round and down with awful velocity, until as it plunged into the billowy clouds of mist for a moment he fancied an arm broke loose from its bandages and stretched up towards him as the body disappeared from view.
And then all was over. No sound came back to tell them that it had reached its resting-place. The stars stood still in the heavens, and Snap hated them for their cold, unsympathising stare. The granite rocks looked cold and hard and terrible, and the sky itself looked as hard and as merciless as the rocks.
A strong hand gripped Snap's shoulder at that moment, and a kind, strong voice was in his ear:
'Come out of that, lad; if you look over them rocks any longer they'll kinder draw you down after him.'
'I guess our young 'uns will be feeling as if the old birds had deserted,' said Dick after a time. 'How do you reckon to get them up, Snap?'
'Well, I've just been looking over the top of that other point,' said Snap, indicating one of the other points of the peak, 'and I find we can get down pretty easily to within about 150 feet of them, but from there down it's like ice, the rock is so smooth.'
'Let's see if we can pull this balloon in,' said Dick; 'may be, there is a rope in the car;' and as he spoke he and Snap got hold of the rope which held the captive balloon, and hauled on it. To their surprise it came in easily, though now and then it gave a tug which threatened to jerk them off their feet. When they had got it so close that they could see into the car Snap was on the point of getting in.
'Steady, boy, hold on! If you let go I may not be able to keep her down, and then there you'll be hung up like a bird in a cage,' roared Dick.
'Well, what are we going to do?' panted Snap.
'Just pay out the rope again steadily, pard; don't let it go with a jerk, whatever you do,' replied Wharton.
'And now?' asked Snap when the balloon was once more at the end of its tether.
'Now,' replied Dick, 'we'll make another halter for that there airy steed. Lend us the lariat.'
Taking off his belt, which fastened with a great metal hook, Wharton cut the latter off the belt and fastened it to one end of the lariat; the other end he made fast to a rock.
'Now, my lad,' said he, holding the hook in his teeth, 'haul him in again,' and, yo-ho-ing like sailors at the capstan, they soon had the balloon alongside.
'Bear on the rope with all your might, pard!' said Dick, leaning back and throwing all his weight on one hand, whilst with the other he hitched the hook at the end of the lariat into one of the ropes round the car.
'Now let go, you can let her rip! I guess she'll not break away from them moorings,' said Dick; 'and if you'll get in and look what there is inside you'll have no trouble in getting out again and no fear of being flown away with.'
In another minute Snap was in the car, and cried out to Dick: 'Hurrah! here is everything we want; heaps of rugs and two coils of rope; but it's very thin stuff,' he added.
'Chuck it out, my boy!' cried Wharton, and two coils of new yellow hemp came tumbling to his feet, followed by a buffalo-robe and two blankets.
'Four-point blankets!' remarked Dick, 'and a thirty-dollar robe, anyway. Is there anything else?'
'Yes,' replied the boy, 'some instruments—a dozen, I should think—a big flask, a big pipe, and a lot of round tins of provisions with "Silver, Cornhill" on them.'
'Throw them down, Snap, I'll catch them,' cried Dick, 'and bring the pipe and the flask with you, and then we'll try to get to the boys.'
Snap obeyed, and in another minute swung himself out of the car and dropped beside his companion.
'It is pretty thin rope, this,' remarked Dick, handling one of the coils which Snap had thrown to him, 'but it seems uncommonly strong too. What is this, anyway?' he added, pointing to a thin red strand which ran through the rope.
Snap looked at it for a moment, and then, clapping his hand on Dick's shoulder, rejoined, 'We're right now, old chap; that is an Alpine Club rope, or at any rate made like them, and is as tough as wire. Whales wouldn't break it or razors cut it, never fear; if it's long enough we'll have Towzer and Frank up here in no time.'
By splicing the ropes together Snap found that he could just reach his friends, so that he and Dick started without more ado, and, climbing down the chimney again for some time, got on to its other wall, and thence to a point from which the rope could be lowered to Frank's crevice. As it hung for some time unnoticed by the boys, Dick began to fidget.
'I reckon they've gone to sleep. That Towzer's a holy terror for slumbering,' he remarked.
'They can't have fallen out, can they, Dick?' asked Snap anxiously.
'No, no, not they!' replied he; 'and I expect it's just because they don't want to that we don't get a bite at our line. Swing it in a bit if you can; you see they daren't reach out for it.'
'True for you!' said Snap, and began vigorously to agitate the rope. But he soon found that it requires time and considerable skill to make the end of a rope 200 ft. long obey your bidding, and he was almost in despair, when the rope suddenly began as it were of itself to swing in the right direction.
'At last!' he ejaculated as the rope after swinging in a little further than usual failed to return.
On the end of the rope they had fastened a note to Towzer in these words: 'Tie Frank on to the line securely, give two tugs when you are ready, and let him swing out gently; we'll haul him up.'
It seems easy enough to do when you only read about it, but to a man crouching in a cranny in the rock, with thousands of feet of a sheer fall below him and no twig even for his hands to clutch, it is a terrible thing to tie the rope under his arms and let himself go out into space, one thin thread only connecting him with this world—a mere atom swinging helplessly in space. What if the rope should break? what if the friendly hands above should grow cramped, or even if their strength should fail for a moment? What? Why, only a short, sharp rush through the air, and then—long rest! The right way to manage such an ascent is, of course, to have a bar at the end of your rope. On this the person to be hauled up sits, one leg on either side of the rope, and face inwards, so that by touching the rock with the feet the climber may steer himself a little or at any rate resist that tendency to spin round like a roasting-jack which is so terrible.
Never did a rope take more adjusting than that rope round Frank. Towzer tried every knot and every strand again and again with desperate care. He felt that his brother's life depended on him, and when he said good-bye before giving those two terrible tugs the tears rushed to the poor boy's eyes and his hands clung to Frank's as if they would never leave them.
Up at the top, too, those two strong men were gazing anxiously into each other's faces. It was a long pull, and Frank a terribly heavy fellow. If he began to swing, could they get him up? It was a heavy responsibility, but one at least out of the two felt that, rather than let go of the rope which held the man whose life was entrusted to him, that rope should drag him too over the cliff to the hereafter.
And then the tugs came, sharp and firm, Frank's brave old fist giving them, and he even managed to make a poor little joke as he swung out, although he knew it was useless, for Towzer had turned and was cowering breathless, his eyes hidden against the back of the little cave. The young one felt as if his brother had gone to execution and his hand had sent him.
Steadily foot by foot the rope came home, the two men coiling it round a rough natural pillar of rock as they got it in, until they saw Frank's hands grip the top; and then with one great pull they dragged him roughly over, 'high and dry,' as Wharton said, out of the great deep. What matter if that last pull tore his clothes on the ragged granite and hurt his wounded arm? It was pleasant even to be hurt by the solid rock beneath you after dangling so long in mid-air.
Dick and Snap lay down, like dogs who have done a hard day's work, flat on their bellies. Cold as it was, the perspiration poured from their faces and their limbs trembled with fatigue and excitement, so that they could not stand upright. To Frank they hardly spoke. By-and-by each came and shook hands in silence—that was all. Then Dick spoke:
'Snap, we must get young Towzer up; there are three now, and he is only a light weight.'
Carefully they overhauled every inch of the rope and then let it down again. This time it was soon caught, and they all stood back and waited for the tug. When it came they all hauled with a will.
'Why, he's no weight at all,' said Snap after taking in the first handful or two of slack rope.
'That's just it!' said Wharton, 'there is no one on the rope; you hold hard whilst I go and look,' and as he spoke Dick went to the edge and looked over.
'No!' he sang out, 'there's no one on; let the rope go again, there must be some mistake.'
Again the rope swung into the crevice, was caught, held, and returned, and again no one was on it.
This time the men hauled it up, thinking Towzer must have found some fault in the rope. All that they found was a note and these words: 'Dear Frank, forgive; I know I'm a little idiot, but I can't come. I should go mad if I saw myself hanging by that thread. I'll stay here until to-morrow, and then perhaps I can get down and up some other way. Don't mind me, it's awfully jolly here.—TOWZER.'
'"Awfully jolly here!" poor little chap, he's got the horrors, and if we leave him he'll go looking over until he can't help throwing himself down,' said Dick. 'Let's go to him, one of us.'
'No!' said Frank, and his voice sounded hard and cruel, and his fair skin was all aflame, 'we'll send this down, please;' and with shaking hand he wrote: 'For shame, remember you are a Winthrop; will you let these fellows see that you are afraid?'
At his word the two sound men lowered the rope again, and this time when the tugs came there was a weight at the end of it—a weight that swung and spun and tried their strength more even than Frank had done. At last they dragged him to the top, and as his head came over the edge they looked to see his hands grip the ground, but in vain! Like a log he rolled on the top and lay there, his head hanging limply, like the head of a dead snowdrop, and Frank wrung his hands as he thought that his pride had killed 'the little one.'
'It's all right, pard, don't you take on like that,' said Wharton cheerfully; 'he's swooned away or gone to sleep with dizziness. He'll come round again directly.'
Picking the boy up gently, they got him across to the nest, as Dick called the hollow by the balloon.
'Better carry him like this than if he was awake and mad with fright, poor chap,' said Wharton; and then, when he had rolled his charge up in a buffalo-robe, and poured some spirits from the flask down his throat, he begged the other two to lie down and rest.
'We shall want all our strength if we mean living through the next few days,' said the old foreman, 'and I can't do with more nor one invalid at a time.'
By-and-by Towzer came round, but his eyes were wild and his mouth twitched, so that he could hardly speak distinctly. Wharton noticed Frank's face as he watched his brother, and, coming over to him, he laid a great knotted fist on the elder Winthrop's shoulder:
'Look here, my lad,' he said, 'I saw what you wrote, and I let it go, because I knowed that if we didn't get the boy up to-night we'd never see him again: but don't you get thinking hard things about your brother. He's got grit enough for anything. Pluck's a matter of constitootion, and his is just upon played out. He'll be better when he has had some grub and a sleep. Now give us a match,' and, selecting one from the bundle offered to him, he solemnly lifted a leg, rubbed the match smartly on the seat of his trousers, and applied it to the bottom of one of the provision tins before alluded to.
'Well,' Snap said, 'that's ingenious; how did you know how to manage them?'
'How?' replied Dick, 'I guess if you'd lived the life I have you'd know all a man can know about tinned meat. Why, blow me if I don't think you could start a dividend-paying tin-mine where we first lived when we started ranching on the Rosebud, and all the tin you'd ever find there came outside our grub.'
'Oh, I've seen tinned meats before, Dick,' answered Snap, 'but a tinned fire to cook it by, that's what gets over me.'
The tin in question was an ingenious contrivance with a roll of wick saturated with spirit underneath the tin pot, which held (in this instance) an excellent curried fowl. A roll of soft lead covers the saturated wick, and all the traveller has to do is to tear off the lead and light the wick. In ten minutes' time the curry will be ready, and if then he is not satisfied with his supper the traveller must be very hard to please. Whoever invented these ingenious tins deserves a monument to be erected to his memory by the hunters, travellers, mountaineers, and others whom he has fed.
After doing substantial justice to the fare before them, or, as Dick put it, 'after wolfing two of them tins,' and drinking more whisky neat than they had ever done at one sitting before, even Towzer began to recover. But Dick wouldn't hear of his talking, and at the first attempt rolled him up in a buffalo-rug and, sitting solemnly down on his legs, lit the great pipe of the German professor.
In ten minutes, to all intents and purposes, Dick was alone, for, though the bodies of the three boys breathed at his side, their minds were far away in the land of dreams and slumber. For some time the old man puffed away in silence—the stars above winking solemnly down at him as he kept that one bright spark alight with infinite care, close to the end of his nose.
'I'm jiggered if I don't think they're a-laughin' at us,' he muttered, looking at the stars, 'and I don't wonder. It's been a pretty tough job gettin' here, but how we're goin' to get out beats me. Howsomdever, Dick, my lad, bed!—bed-rock it is, my hearty!' and, grumbling and growling, he poked his finger into his pipe, extinguished the ashes, and crawled under a corner of Towzer's robe.
A sudden rushing wind struck Snap upon the cheek, and he awoke; awoke with a smell of carrion in his nostrils and a dark cloud floating over his eyes. As he sprang to his feet it was gone, but the view that suddenly confronted him—the narrow bed on which he had slept, and the yawning abyss beneath—made him reel and stagger with horror. Recovering himself as his faculties came back from dreamland, he heard a harsh 'croak! croak!' and saw the cloud which had broken his slumbers floating, on wings which scarcely moved, round and round the summit, turning its ugly head enquiringly towards him every time it passed.
'You fiend!' he muttered, shaking his fist at the raven, 'I wonder, after the hundred years you've lived about this peak and its graveyards, that you don't know a live man from a dead one; perhaps that will teach you,' and as the bird came by again he hurled a lump of granite at it with an accuracy and energy which would not be denied.
The stone caught the bird full, and sounded hollow on its great wing. For a moment it staggered, and two black feathers fluttered ever so slowly down, until it made Snap sick to watch them going, going, as if they never would stop; but the raven righted himself, and with a fierce croak sailed on out of sight.
'Sounded as if he was a cursing of you, didn't it, Snap?' said Wharton's voice at the boy's side; 'a nice old party he is! But I wish we had his wings.'
'Yes, Dick,' replied Snap, 'even without those two pen-feathers I knocked out of him.'
'If Warwolf had seen you do that,' remarked Wharton, 'he would never have been happy again, That bird is "Great Medicine" with the Blackfeet.'
'Great humbug,' retorted Snap indignantly.
'Just so, that's the way as I always translate it myself,' replied the foreman; 'but I say, I wonder if Warwolf got clear away?'
'I hope he did,' said Snap, 'I should like to see the poor old Cradle again.'
'What, that horse?' answered Dick; 'wal, if the chief didn't get clear away, I reckon neither you nor me will want any hoss again.'
'No, I suppose not, Dick,' replied Snap grimly; 'I wonder if these chaps realise what a corner we are in,' he added, pointing over his shoulder to his sleeping comrades.
'Frank may,' said Dick; 'I'm not rightly certain whether the young 'un understands anything yet.'
'What do you mean, Dick? you don't mean that he has gone off his head, do you?' replied Snap a little vaguely.
'He wasn't sane when we pulled him up yesterday, but may be he'll be all right to-day,' was the answer, and at that moment the object of their solicitude woke and sat up.
'Is that you, Dick?' asked Towzer's voice feebly.
'Yes, my lad, that's me. Don't you try to get up yet, you've been a bit ill. Mustn't let him look over that edge yet at any price,' he whispered aside to Snap.
'Lie still, old fellow,' added Snap soothingly as he bent over him, 'how do you feel?'
'Oh, only a bit faint and as if I was sea-sick, Snap,' he replied, 'but I've had such a dreadful dream.'
Snap didn't ask him what it was, he guessed that the boy half remembered yesterday's experiences; but Towzer went on addressing Frank, who was now sitting up beside him.
'I dreamed,' he said, 'that I was a coward, that you called me one, Frank, and then they put me on a roasting-jack for a punishment, and hung me on to the bottom of the world, and I went round and round and round——'
'Here, dry up that soft talk,' interposed Dick roughly, 'we don't want no talk of dreams here: you get a knife into that tin, Towzer, and let's have breakfast,' and, so saying, the old man handed the boy a tin of meat and a knife, 'just to prevent him thinking,' as he explained later on.
'I think he is all right now,' said Frank after breakfast, 'let's tell him a little; we can't go on like this.'
'Very well, but take care how you do it,' assented Dick.
Then they told him, not all, but most of that last day's doings, concluding with: 'And when we got you on the rope you must have bumped your head against the rock, or spun round until you went nearly silly and fainted; and so now you must keep quiet and promise not to look over the edge again until we give you leave. Is that a bargain?'
'Yes,' sighed Towzer, 'I suppose it is; but I must be a terrible nuisance to you fellows. What a little brute you must think me!'
All that day and the next the boys lay in their narrow bed watching the sun rise and set, and the clouds go hurrying by. Sometimes a few rugged brown clouds would drift up, and then a little flurry of wind and rain would almost wash them out of their exposed position, while the balloon creaked and strained at her moorings in an alarming fashion.
'Snap,' said Dick on the second day, 'them Injuns can't see the balloon from below, and they're getting more daring, now they think the great bird has gone.'
'How is that, Dick?' asked Snap.
'Well, you see we have drawn the balloon out of sight by mooring it close alongside among these crags. Leastways I reckon that's so, for the Crows have come out of cover. Look for yourself.'
Peering over the little parapet which ran round their resting-place, Snap could see camp-fires on the prairie below, and through his glasses he made out a line of sentries set all round the foot of the mountain, not near it, but still hemming it in in such a way that escape from it across the open prairie to the forest beyond the camp-fires was impossible.
'They know that we're trapped,' said Frank, 'and mean to starve us out, though they are still afraid to put foot on the mountain.'
'That's so,' replied Wharton, 'and young Towzer is opening the last tin of meat but one. It must be only one tin between four to-night, and if Warwolf doesn't bring his Blackfeet to-morrow we had better try to run the gauntlet, and get away separately to-morrow evening before hunger makes us too weak to fight.'
'It wouldn't do, Dick,' whispered Snap, drawing him aside, 'Towzer could never get down the mountain, and even if Frank got through he could never find his way in the forest. But I have a better idea than that.'
'What is it, lad?' asked Wharton.
'Never mind yet, old fellow, it will keep,' replied the boy; 'besides, I'm not quite sure yet if it is practicable, and if Warwolf turns up I would much rather not try it. But look here,' he added, turning to the others, 'I've got some interesting reading in this poor old German's log-book.'
'Let us have it after dinner, Snap,' said Frank.
'Them's my sentiments exactly,' put in Dick; 'I never can hear reading comfortably unless I've got a pipe in my mouth.'
So after dinner, that is after everyone had played as long as he could with his small share of the last tin but one, Snap took the book and read, whilst Dick smoked a double allowance of tobacco to console his ill-used stomach for the loss of at least three-fourths of his share of the curry, which the good old chap had managed to add to the boys' portions unobserved.
'I don't call it kinder fair on you, boys,' he remarked, 'my doing all the smoking; won't you try a pull? it's wonderfully satisfying.'
Snap took the offered pipe and enjoyed the first few whiffs immensely, but, as he remarked, 'almost at once struck ile.'
'Thank you, Dick, kindly,' he said, handing the pipe back hurriedly, 'but I think my jaw will work without oiling. I'd rather read and see you smoke.'
Dick laughed and resumed his pipe, while Snap read as follows:
'"Sunday, 15.—Thank God, I have still an arm left to write. It is I who am in fault. The balloon was by me too suddenly stopped, and I was at once outthrown, and my leg and arm altogether broken——"
'Then there is a stop, as if the pen had fallen from his hand,' said Snap.
'Fainted from pain, I guess,' said Dick, taking his pipe out of his mouth and blowing away a lot of little rings of smoke.
This was a favourite trick of Dick's, and you might see him often send three rings one through the other in succession.
'The next entry is the 17th, and it is a long one,' continued the reader. '"I know right well," he writes, "that I cannot much longer stay. The end must soon come. Ach Gott! how it will good be. Now hear I, day and night, the roaring of the winds of heaven, like the beating of surf on the shore. If it were not that my limbs were so heavy with pain, these winds would snatch me from my hard couch and give me back to my native earth and peace. Ah me! how the clouds spin, and the peak keeps bending, bending—— I have had no food since my fall and die of hunger and weakness. God grant I die before that foul black bird, which comes croaking nearer and nearer, tears my eyes out! But I think death is very near now, the pain is gone, and I can think clearly. I have one work to do, and then I die peacefully. Some man may find me—when, God knows; who he will be, He too knows—but, as He has put a thing into my mind, I would leave it to my brother men. It is this. In the small box, A, in the car of the balloon, is a paper. This paper contains a design for steering balloons. All my life I have sought this, now have I found it—too late. Henceforth the air shall be as navigable as the sea or the dry land. But I would have this design patented and to bear my name. So much earthly ambition clings to me still. Take, then, thou, who mayest find these bones, this box, A, to Professor von Bulberg of Berlin. There it shall be patented in my name. I would have the honour; and for your service, since I have no kin, I leave you as reward whatever I may die possessed of, here or in Potsdam: here, a few priceless instruments; there, a little house or two, I think, and, should there be any, half the proceeds of this my invention; the other half to go to the Royal Society of Aeronauts, Berlin."
'By Jove!' said Snap at this point, 'it is just as well that he had no more to write; if he had, I could not have read it, although his shaky hand is very sharp and clear; but it is shaky towards the end—just look at it,' and he passed it to Frank.
'What luck it is that you took up German instead of Greek, Snap!' said Frank.
'Well, I don't know,' replied he, 'we could have read it anyhow. Here is another paper, in another language, which I found tucked under him when we lifted him up.' And, so saying, the boy handed his companions the following:
'Let's have a look at that,' said Dick, stretching his arm out for the paper. When he had studied it a little the old foreman handed it back again to Snap, saying:
'That's downright smart of the German: it's not the first time as he's been amongst Injuns; I call that a lot easier to read than your pothooks and up-and-down strokes, don't you, Snap?'
'Well, it's not difficult, certainly. I suppose he means, if the Indian takes Box A to any gentleman in a beard, breeches, and sombrero, he will get rum and a rifle; if, on the other hand, he runs off with Box A, the attractive-looking person with a spear will make it hot for him—isn't that it?' replied Snap.
'That's so, sonny!' replied Wharton, delighted at Snap's intelligence, 'and, as Injuns don't generally wear beards, breeches, or sombreros, that chap in the pictur' is a white man. The fellow with a bear's head and a spear is Okeeheedee, the devil of the Blackfeet.'
'Well, if we ever get away we must try to take the poor fellow's box and send it to Professor Bulberg at Berlin, though I don't expect to become a millionaire out of my share of the profits under his will,' said Snap.
'Your share! Why, if there was any to take, Snap, it would be all yours, of course,' remonstrated Towzer.
'You don't understand, dear boy,' replied Snap. 'In the Bull Pine Firm we have all things in common—fresh air and famine, for instance, just at present—and, as we all got here about the same time, we shall all be equally entitled under the will, as my uncle in the Temple would say; isn't that right, Dick?'
'Wal, share and share alike is prairie law, when you do make a find,' Wharton answered, 'but I'd sell my share for a sight of Rosebud and a square meal of beans and bacon right now!'
After a pause the little party crept to the edge of their nest and, looking over, could see the Indian watch-fires glowing in the gathering gloom of night. Long columns of blue smoke rose up among the pines, and a camp like the camp of an army was pitched on the edge of the prairie.
'I doubt if Warwolf would do much good even if he did get through,' said Wharton. 'Those Crows we put up have just gone back to the fishing-camp and brought the whole tribe about our heels. There are a couple of hundred men there, if there is one.'
No one had an answer to make to this speech, so they all lay there watching. It seemed such a strangely cruel lot to be hung like Mahomet's coffin halfway between heaven and earth, cut off from both—still alive, and yet beyond reach of the living. Surely no sailor on a desert island was ever so deserted as they; he at least could swim in the element which hemmed him in, but for them there was no way of escape. It was doubtful even whether the strongest of them could ever climb down the way they came. For the other two such a feat was certainly impossible. And what could swim in the element which closed them in? The eagle, and the raven, and——
Snap stopped thinking, and broke the silence.
'Dick, there is only one way out of this, and we've got to try it. We can't stay here and starve,' he said.
'Not pleasant, is it?' replied Wharton; 'but what are we going to do? We can't eat bed-rock and we can't fly.'
'Yes, we can,' was Snap's unexpected answer, 'at least that balloon can; and if you are game we'll try it to-morrow.'
'What! go up in that thing? not I, sonny,' replied the old cowboy; 'I don't mind your hanging me out on a clothes-line again over them rocks if so be as you think my constitution requires it, but I'll be dog-goned if I'll go up in that thing.'
Now, 'dog-goned' was a rare expression with Dick and was generally supposed by his friends to mean that he had issued an ultimatum. If in the old days at the ranche he had said that he would be 'dog-goned' if So-and-so shouldn't git next day, you might as well say good-bye to So-and-so, for next morning, 'bright and early,' he invariably 'got.' So, then, this rebellion of Dick's was rather a formidable thing, and one not to be treated lightly.
Snap tried to argue with the old man, but it was useless. Reason against prejudice never had much chance. Dick never had been a 'blooming balloonatic,' he said, and didn't 'kinder cotton to becoming one now.'
'Well, Dick,' said Snap, 'it's just this. If we stay here it means death—a long, lingering, painful death. If we try the balloon, of course it may drop us like a stone, and then that's death too, but a quick, painless one. We should be dead before we got to the bottom.'
'That's right enough, lad,' persisted Wharton, 'but if that is all that you are hankering after who is to hinder your jumping over the edge here—that's death too, a pretty certain one, and painless, says you!'
'Quite so, Dick, but I don't think the balloon would let us down. Why should it? There is a lot of ballast in. We'll throw that out, and then away we go sailing over the heads of these Redskins until somewhere or other we come softly and slowly down again, safe and sound, and out of danger. I can't think why we have stayed here so long,' Snap concluded, having succeeded, as many a man has done before, in talking himself into belief in his own scheme.
'I'm not a-goin' to say, Snap,' said Dick slowly, 'as there ain't something in your idea; but sailing in that thing don't seem natural to me somehow. Howsomdever, if we can't get away before this time to-morrow in any other way, you boys can try it if you like, and I'll jest try to wriggle through them reptiles down below in my own way.'
And that was the most the boys could get out of Dick, and with it they had to be content: though Snap had not the least intention of going without the old man. 'All or none' was his motto, and he meant to stick to it.
That night Snap slept little. Whenever he closed his eyes visions of Fairbury floated before them, and of that kind, sweet face, with eyes shining through their tears—the one face which had always had a smile for him, which was always ready to confront those who said 'That young Hales is a thorough ne'er-do-weel, he'll never be good for anything, mark my words.' She had always believed in him; had always trusted her boys with him, though the neighbours shook their heads and thought, as one old lady said, 'that those dear lambs would never come to any good with that boy, always fighting and disgracing himself.' And then, when the expulsion from Fernhall had thrown his guardian into a white heat of virtuous indignation, and even dear old Admiral Chris had looked askance, it was the same little woman who had drawn out the whole story, had tried to look serious over it, and finally re-told it to her brother in such a way that that old warrior had forgotten his gout and roared with laughter till it sounded as if a gale was blowing.
Always Mrs. Winthrop. Whenever he opened his eyes there was the great white balloon quivering and poising in the moonlight; and whenever he closed them there was the face of the woman who had been more than a mother to him, who had put every good thought into his mind, and helped him, ever since he could remember, to grow up a gentleman. And round him lay her sons, and in his heart he knew that next to God she trusted him for their safety.
Getting up softly, he climbed into the car of the balloon, which rocked like a cradle as he sat in it. The addition of his weight made no perceptible difference to it, except perhaps to steady it. He noticed, as he sat there alone among the clouds, that, besides the box A, there were quite a dozen heavy little parcels in the car—scientific instruments for taking astronomical observations, and such like. Besides these there were a number of lumps of what appeared to be lead or iron, used obviously for ballast. Altogether, Snap thought, there was a good deal to throw out, and even four such men as Frank might possibly not be too much for the balloon. If the crew eventually appeared to be too heavy, why, then Dick and he must try to climb down, whilst the two Winthrops trusted to the ship of the sky.
That there had been a considerable escape of gas from the balloon Snap saw only too plainly; its outlines were no longer full, rounded curves, as they should have been. In places there was a deplorable flatness and falling away from the true lines of beauty. Still, knowing very little of these things, Snap thought it might do, and crept back a good deal consoled to his lair alongside Dick Wharton.
That old hero slept, like the proverbial weasel, with one eye open.
'Been overhaulin' that craft of yourn, Snap?' he whispered.
'Yes, Dick,' the boy answered in the same low tones, 'and I think she will do.'
The old fellow lay back again for a few minutes, and then began again:
'I've been thinking, Snap,' he said.
'Yes?' interrupted Snap, 'perhaps you have; I should get a better chance of sleeping if you didn't think so loud.'
'Never mind, sonny, I dare say I do breathe a bit hard at times, but I never knowed a "high-blower" yet as wasn't a good horse; what I was a-goin' to say is that if you mean goin' in that consarn I'll come along. If you ever did get down again to prairie level, you'd be like babies without Dick Wharton to tote you round.'
Snap was not going to argue about his reasons, it was enough for him that his old friend would come; so he sat up and shook hands upon it, clinching the bargain there and then.
Another day dawned, and saw the sun rise up and sink far towards the west again, before old Wharton gave up all hope of relief. He had been peering steadily down on the encampment for a couple of hours before he turned to Snap with:
'Sonny, it's got to be done. Them Redskins have almost got over their skeer, and I guess poor Warwolf has been tortured and scalped by this time.'
'Yes, Dick,' said Snap quietly; 'then suppose we get ready.'
'Why, what is there to do, pard, except get right in and go?' asked his companion.
'Well, first of all we must try whether the balloon will carry us all. She certainly won't unless we take some of the cargo out.'
'All right, bear a hand, Towzer. You are boss of this show, Snap,' was the reply.
Snap climbed into the car and handed out the instruments and a bag or two of sand, the balloon straining wildly at its moorings as he did so.
'Come in with me, Frank,' he cried, 'and help me steady her.'
Frank climbed in.
'Now, Towzer!' Snap added; and Towzer joined the other two.
'That is very nearly a load, I think,' said Snap, 'and there won't be much fear of our going up too high when Dick gets in.'
'No,' said Frank, 'we had better throw out something more.'
'Very well,' said Snap, throwing out everything he could lay his hands on, 'but if it won't carry us now I don't know what we shall do. Come on, Dick.'
Dick stepped in, and still the balloon strained upwards.
'She'll fly all right,' cried Towzer.
'Then cut the cord and take care that you don't roll out,' commanded Snap.
The cord was cut, and suddenly the earth and the mountain peak began to recede from the balloon. At least so it seemed to the boys. As for the balloon, it seemed exactly poised in the air, steady as an eagle on widespread wings, and even as they sat and gazed the earth drew back and faded until it was gone, and they hung alone, in a sad and absolute silence, whither no voice of bird or insect ever penetrated.
The boys were smitten as it were with dumbness. No one spoke, though, strangely enough, no fear possessed them—only a great stillness and peace. The balloon had now apparently reached that point at which it could rest in equilibrium, and hung motionless over the peak from which the boys had risen. The cold had grown intense, and the evening was approaching, though the sun's rays still spread colour through the great cloudland below them. At last Frank broke the silence:
'What is this, Snap,' he said, 'floating round the car?' and he drew in his hand covered with minute fragments of ice.
'It looks like powdered ice,' replied Snap.
'I don't much fancy this country to winter in,' broke out Dick; 'I suppose, Snap, you couldn't get this craft of yours to go down a bit, could you?'
Even as Wharton spoke the balloon seemed to have heard him, or at any rate the clouds seemed to be drawing nearer, and the storm of ice-morsels grew thicker.
'I guess this ice, or snow, or hoar-frost, or whatever it is, won't make our shay any lighter,' remarked Dick; 'do you see how it rests on the car and seems to thicken round the balloon?'
'Yes,' said Frank, 'and if it rests on the edge of the car what must it do on the broad top of the balloon?'
'Dick,' whispered Snap at this moment, 'what is that?' and he pointed to the side of the great bubble above them, from which a long wreath of thin white smoke was trailing into space.
Dick looked.
'I'm blowed if I know,' he replied.
'Then I'll tell you,' Snap hissed in his ear: 'the balloon has sprung a leak, that is the gas escaping; the weight of this stuff' (touching the snow) 'on the top has done it, and we are going down fast enough even to suit you. Out with that sack of ballast,' he added, and Wharton and Frank sent the only sand-bag over the side.
This sent the balloon up again a little way, but they were now comparatively near the earth. Round them a regular snow-storm was raging. The particles of ice which they had met with in the higher layer of atmosphere had now gathered into snowflakes. The storm, such as it was, lasted but a few minutes, and then the sinking sun lit up the scene below them.
As they looked down, the boys saw a great billowy ocean of thick, rosy fog. Wave upon wave it seemed to roll, opaque, soft, and beautiful in colour, and as they looked it came up and up to meet them. The snow upon the top of the balloon was still too heavy for them, and they were sinking fast. In another minute the car was engulfed in the rosy clouds, which were already turning to a more sombre colour, and later on changed from rose to purple, and then to sullen grey.
As the balloon passed out of fog-land the sun set, and a quick darkness began to settle on the land. All sounds of the earth had long since been plain to them: indeed, when in the fog, it seemed as if every sound was right alongside. Now they could see as well as hear. They were comparatively close to the earth, much nearer than they had been for days. They were skimming over the prairie some 1,500 feet from the ground, and drifting straight to the Indian encampment, sliding as it were down a gentle descent, the end of which seemed likely to be right amongst the enemy's watch-fires.
'Dick,' cried Snap, 'if we don't lighten the balloon we are lost. She is going to settle right amongst the Crows.'
'Well, sonny, there's only our clothes left to throw away now. I don't mind sacrificing my hat and boots,' said Dick, and, suiting the action to the word, he denuded himself of everything except his flannel shirt and trousers. All followed his example.
'Wal,' he remarked, 'I never knowed it rain ready-made clothes afore. Perhaps them Injuns didn't neither.'
'It hasn't done us much good either, Dick,' said Frank, 'I fancy we are still sinking.'
'We are,' replied Snap; 'but if we could only manage to clear their camp and fall a mile or two beyond them in the forest I should be content to take my chance. We can't hope for much more, I am afraid, now.'
'Much more?' muttered Towzer, 'I shouldn't much care if we did fall amongst the Crows, if they would give us something to eat before scalping us.'
Even at this supreme moment Towzer was true to his schoolboy instincts: as for the others, they had almost forgotten their hunger in the excitement of the scenes which they were passing through.
At this moment they heard a loud shouting in the Indian camp. They were dashing backwards and forwards among the tents, horses were being caught, and the wild yells of the bloodthirsty savages rang in their ears.
'Encouraging sort of welcome to mother earth, isn't it?' said Snap.
'It's strange too,' added Wharton; 'of course they've seen us and know we are dropping like a ripe plum into their mouths, but I wonder at their making such a noise about it. It's not like 'em!'
'Snap,' said Frank, 'I think we can sell them now. If you fellows tied me up a little so as to help my bad arm, we could all hold on to the ring above the car or the cords it is fastened to, and cut the car adrift.'
I suppose most of my readers have seen a big balloon—if not, a word of explanation may be necessary here. The body of the balloon is, of course, a great sack or bag of some excessively fine and light material, such as silk, or layers of india-rubber, between sheets of linen covered with thick coats of varnish. Over the balloon is a kind of net-work of rope. This is its harness and comes to a point towards the bottom, where all the ropes are attached to a great wooden hoop, from which again hang the ropes to which the car itself is attached. Frank's idea was to climb up into the ring and cut the car adrift.
'You've hit the nail on the head, my lad, plum centre this time,' said Wharton, 'but can you get up to the ring yourself?'
'I'll try,' replied Frank, 'but there isn't a moment to lose. Give me a hand, Towzer.'
Between them the others got Frank up into the rigging of the balloon, and tied him securely to the ring, so that he would not be entirely dependent upon his one arm for support.
'Are you all right?' cried Snap from his perch.
'All right, old chap.'
'All right,' came the answers.
'Then cut the ropes near you all together, so as not to drag the balloon, over on one side,' he cried. 'Now!'
Each boy sawed away at the ropes near him with a will, but old Dick did not get his rope cut through quite as soon as the others. The result was that the balloon gave a furious plunge, and then, as the last rope broke, righted herself and darted upwards once more.
Snap looked white and scared, but the colour came back to his face when he saw all his comrades in their places, and old Wharton chimed in with:
'Dang me if this here balloon hasn't got all the vices of a cayuse, and more. Loses its wind and wants to stop, leastways come down, and then, as for bucking, a half-broke cayuse is a fool to it!'
For a while the balloon sailed along on a higher level, but all the time the thin wreath of white vapour marked a leak and a constant escape of gas. Besides this, the evening damp collected and settled on the envelope of the balloon, and all tended to weigh it down.
'We are sinking again,' cried Towzer, 'sinking faster than ever before. Look how the prairie is rushing up to meet us!' and indeed it seemed so, and there was absolutely nothing left to throw out.
'Wal, you may as well go too,' said Dick with a sigh, and he drew his revolver from his breast and dropped this his most precious possession to the earth.
The boys looked at it as it shot downwards swift and straight, swifter and straighter than a skylark falls, and they thought of what might any moment be their own lot, and it made the boldest of them grip the ropes with fresh energy.
'Dick,' said Snap, 'in another five minutes at most we shall drop right among the Crows. They are so still now that one might fancy no one was in camp, but there are the fires, and I can even in this gloom make out the tops of the teepees. I wish something would break the silence to tell us how far we are from the ground.'
'Yes, pard,' replied Dick, 'one can't see much through this mist.'
'If there was not such a crowd of them waiting for us,' said Frank, 'this fog might give us our best chance of escape.'
'Listen!' said Dick, 'if we do come down amongst them, do each of you run for your lives, and each one in a different direction. If anyone gets safely through, let him try to make off to the dead-wood track and hide where Snap fell down until he can get a chance of getting clear back to Rosebud. But it ain't no good talking,' he muttered with a sigh, 'who is a-goin' to get through that crowd of Crows without even a six-shooter? Great Scott! if we could only get beyond 'em in this mist!' he added.
SNAP'S SACRIFICESNAP'S SACRIFICE
'Yes, we could slip them well if we did, and all would be saved?' said Snap in a questioning tone, with a strange little shake in his voice which no one ever noticed before. 'Do you think, Dick, you could get us all back to Rosebud if we did drift by the camp in this fog to-night?' he asked again.
'Sure, lad! but what's the good of talking?' he replied.
'No, it isn't, Dick,' said Snap, his face strangely white and drawn, and the big brown eyes looking misty and dim; 'but if any of us do get through (it will be over in a minute now) let the others tell the story at home. Frank, old boy, give the mother my love; tell her Snap did his best.'
The voice was so strange (there was almost a sob in it) that all three turned their eyes from the scene below—the approaching tents and fires, right below them—to Snap. It was too late! As they turned they saw him slip from his seat on the ring; for one moment the strong brown hands clung to it, the brave face looked at them; the fearless lips murmured 'Good-bye, save them Dick!' and then the balloon sprang up again, and, as poor, half-maddened Wharton said, 'twelve stone of the bravest flesh as God ever put breath into' dropped through the darkness, there was a faint thud, heard even by those in the rapidly rising balloon, and Snap had done his duty. He had given his life for his friends. More than that no man can do.
Up and up went the balloon. Twelve stone is a heavy weight to be freed from, and the great globe of gas and silk and cord soared upwards like a bird. Beneath it, in the strange grey light which had come in these higher regions of air with the evening, three human beings still clung to life, although for the moment all its sweetness seemed gone for them. A minute ago a strong, resolute leader was with them, and now their scared white faces stared and stared at the empty place on the hoop, at the cords his hands had held; but his place was empty, no sound came from above or below, the majesty and the sadness of night and the high places of the earth were around them, and the familiar earth and hope were out of reach and out of sight.
'Ah, Snap, it is well with you,' was perhaps the thought uppermost in each one's heart as the dread stillness reigned around and the cold grew, while a faintness and dizziness began to creep over them. In another minute, had nothing been done to prevent their further ascent, it is probable that Dick and Towzer would have been whirling downwards through thousands of feet of air, until Nature's law had been obeyed and earth had reached earth again. As for Frank, tied to the ring and the ropes of the balloon, he had already succumbed, owing probably to his weakness and recent loss of blood, and his nerveless hands were hanging, like his head, weak and unconscious. If brother and friend had fallen he would not have known, but would have rushed higher and higher as the balloon shook off its human load.
Luckily, old Wharton's frame was as tough as steel. Years of a trapper's life, long, lonely nights with the cattle, had hardened him until he hardly felt the cold and scarcely knew fatigue. Rousing himself from the stupor into which Snap's death had thrown him, his quick eyes took in everything.
'Save 'em, Dick, was what he said,' muttered the old man; 'is this saving of 'em, you old fool?'
'Young 'un!' he cried, and a voice which came from the inside of the balloon replied, 'Young 'un!'
They were too high for earth echoes, but his voice was returned to him as it were by the devil that was bearing them away. For so Dick now considered the balloon. It had been their toy and their slave. Men had given it life, they had trusted themselves to it, and now the treacherous fiend had them in its grip and mocked at their puny powers and impotent wills.
'Young 'un,' he cried again, 'which is the rope as he said we was to pull if we wanted to go down?'
'This,' said Towzer dreamily, looking at one of which he had hold.
'Pull it, then, for dear life!' roared Wharton, and a mocking echo came back: 'for dear life!'
'You devil!' cried the old man, his heavy black brows gathering together like a thunder-cloud, 'I'd let your steam out if I'd my six-shooter here.'
'Can't you pull it, Towzer?'
'No, Dick,' said the boy dreamily, 'my arm is too weak, and I can hardly hold on with the other.'
Shifting his seat rapidly, careless of all risk to himself, even at this height from the earth, Wharton reached the boy's side, and, putting one strong arm round him and the rope he clung to, with the other tugged furiously at the gas-valve. The change of Dick's position upset the balloon's equilibrium, and it was a sufficiently horrible sight to see Frank's apparently lifeless body hanging towards them from the opposite side of the ring, limp and helpless, whilst above them leaned the great balloon, the gas going out now with quite a perceptible whistle. It was very soon evident that their upward course had been stayed, and in another minute that they were sinking again fast—too fast, Dick feared, and shut off steam as he called it.
'Are you better now, Towzer?' he asked.
'Yes, Dick, I'm all right now, but I felt very weak a minute ago, and my hand was numb,' replied the boy.
'Hold on while I tie you in,' said Dick, and, unfastening the faithful lariat from his waist, he made the young one safe to the balloon.
'Now you look out for yourself,' he said. 'I'm going round to Frank; he is coming round a bit, and when we get together this brute of a thing will heel over again; so look out,' and, so saying, he edged his way round to Frank.
'Are we going down again, Dick?' he asked feebly.
'Yes, sonny,' replied the old man.
'Tell Towzer to pull the rope; let's go down to Snap and die, if necessary, but don't go up there again,' and an expression of horror indescribable grew in Frank's upward glance.
'We're a-goin' down pretty smart now, sonny!' said Wharton; 'here, give yourself a hoist-up. There, that's better,' he said, as Frank reached a sitting posture on the ring again.
It seemed almost as if, at last, a spirit of peace had entered into the great creature above them. The air was brilliantly clear now, and the first faint stars had come out. Down, down, the balloon kept going, but steadily and evenly. The mists had cleared away now, and in the starlight our voyagers could see the earth spread out like a great map beneath them. It all looked level—almost hollow—as they looked down upon it, and by no means gave them the idea of being part of a solid sphere.
The balloon must have risen into a current of strong wind, for in the short time since they had risen from over the Indian encampment they had passed over the forest-belt and were now descending upon the prairie by the river whereon the Crows used to have their autumn camp, until the Spirit of the Lone Mountain appeared and frightened them away. From point to point it must have been a distance of twenty miles, but what is that to a machine which has been known to travel at the rate of ninety miles an hour? Dick could not help exclaiming, when he saw the distance which they had passed over:
'If you could only break these here critters to stop when you want 'em to, and to be a bit handy in turning, I reckon there would be a considerable fall in railway shares.'
'Yes,' replied Frank, 'if the old German's invention for steering balloons is as good as his invention for keeping the gas in them, it would have made a good fortune for us all. Poor Snap!'
'Never mind Snap, sonny,' said old Wharton, roughly trying to hide his emotion. 'You bet he don't want no fortunes where he's got took to.'
'I suppose it wouldn't do to jump out now,' said Frank after a while, as the balloon swept slowly along, quite close to the ground.
'Not unless you prefer hopping to walking for the rest of your life,' said Wharton. 'You'd be lucky if you only smashed one leg.'
Just at that moment the light of the moon flashed back from a small prairie-lake. Before the buffalo had left the prairie it had been a favourite wallow and drinking-place of theirs. Now it was drying up for want of its old-fashioned visitors, who beat and trampled its mud floor into such a solid substance that it held the water all through the long summer months. Still, there was a very considerable sheet of water left.