CHAPTER XIIThe black chasm which separated us from the trail of the wild hunter was not as formidable a barrier as the unfathomable abyss which separates the reader from what he thinks he would have done had he been in my place, and what really would have been his plan of action.There were a lot of burning questions which I had privately made up in my mind to propound to the Wild Hunter, or the even wilder medicine bear, upon the occasion of our next meeting. But when the lad was standing before me, with bended bow and flashing eyes, the burning importance of those questions did not appeal to me as forcibly as did the urgent necessity of sheltering my body behind the friendly stone. To be truthful, it must be admitted that the proposed inquiries were, for the time, entirely forgotten, andI even breathed a sigh of relief when the boy suddenly clambered up the face of the cliff, turned, gave us a fierce look of defiance, made some quick energetic gestures with his hand and disappeared.He scaled that precipitous rock with the rapidity and self-confidence of a gray squirrel running up the trunk of a hickory tree, squirrel-like, taking advantage of every crack, cranny and projection that could be grasped by fingers or moccasin-covered toes.Not until the Indian had disappeared down a dry coulee did I venture from the shelter of the protecting rock, or realize that my carefully planned interview must be indefinitely postponed.With his arms folded across his chest, his blond hair sweeping his shoulders, his blue eyes fixed upon a rocky rib of the mountain behind which the boy had disappeared, Big Pete still stood like a statue. But gradually the statuesque pose resolved itself into a more commonplace posture, and the musclesof the face relaxed until the familiar twinkle hovered around the corners of his eyes. “What did he say when he made those motions, Pete?”“Waugh! he said he was not afraid of any whitefaced coyote like us.” And bringing forth his pipe, Pete filled it from the beaded tobacco pouch which hung on his breast, and by means of a horn of punk, a flint and steel, he soon had the pipe aglow and was puffing away as calmly as if nothing unusual had occurred. Presently he exclaimed, “Gol durn his daguerrotype, what good did it do him to throw that sheep down the gulch? Reckon Le-loo and me could find a better grave for mutton chops than that canyon bottom. The mountains didn’t need the sheep an’ we did. But, I reckon it was his own sheep you killed, ’cause it had a porcupine collar same pattern as the trimmings of his shirt.”Turning his great blue eyes full upon me, he suddenly shot this inquiry, “Be he bar, ecutock or werwolf?”“He is the finest adjusted, easiest running, most exquisitely balanced, highest geared bit of human machinery I ever saw,” I answered enthusiastically.“Wall, maybe ye are right, Le-loo, an’ maybe ye hain’t; which is catamount to saying, maybe it is a man and maybe it tain’t.”“Steady, Pete, old fellow, let us go slow; now tell me at what you’re driving?” I pleaded.“It looks to me this hea’-a-way,” he explained. “I’ve seed his trail onct or twice, an’ I’ve seed him onct, but I never yet seed his trail and the Wild Hunter’s trail at the same time and place. ’Pears to me that a man who, when it’s convenient, kin make a wolf of hisself, might likewise make a boy of hisself whenever he felt that way. Never heared tell on enny real laid who cud climb like a squtton and shoot a bow better nor a Robin Hood or Injun, and that’s howsomever!”“Well, it does look ‘howsomever,’ and no mistake,” I admitted, “and what makes it worse, our dinner is at the bottom of this infernal gulch. Come, let us be moving; the breeze from the snowfields chills me. Let us hit his trail now while it is fresh.”This was a simple proposition to make, but a difficult one to carry into execution; for to all appearances that trail began upon the other side of the chasm, and there was no bridge in sight by which we could cross. Big Pete carefully put a cork-stopper in his pipe, extinguishing the fire without wasting the unconsumed contents; he then carefully put his briarwood away and began to uncoil a lariat from around his middle. As he loosened the braided rawhide from his waist his gaze was roaming over the opposite rocks. Presently he fixed his attention upon a pinnacle which reared its cube-like form above the top of the opposite side of the chasm; the latter was of itself much higher than the brink upon which we stood. Swinging the looparound his head he sent it whistling across the chasm, where it settled and encircled the projecting stone, the honda striking the face of the cliff with a sullen thud. The rope tightened, but when we both threw our weight on our end of the lariat to try it, the cube-like pinnacle moved on its base.“I oughter knowed better than to try to lasso a piece of slide rock,” said Pete in disgusted tones, as he cast the end of the braided rawhide loose and watched it for a moment dangling down the opposite side of the canyon.“Now, Le-loo, we must get over this hole or lose the best lariat in the Rocky Mountains. We kin look for that boy’s trail on this side, for even if he be an Ecutock, I’ll bet my crooker bone ’gainst a lock of his hair that he can’t jump th’ hole, an’ I’ll wager my left ear that he’s got a trail an’ a bridge somewhar—’nless he turns bird and flops over things like this,” he added, with a troubled look.“Pete,” said I, “never mind the birdbusiness. I’ll admit that there is a lot of explanation due us before we can rightly judge on the events of the past few weeks; still I think it may all be explained in a rational manner; but what if it cannot? We have but one trip to make through this world, and the more we see the more we will know at the end of the journey. I am as curious as a prong-horned antelope when there is a mystery, so put your nose to the ground, my good friend, and find the spot where this Mr. Werwolf, witch, or bear flies the canyon, and maybe, like the husband of ‘The Witch of Fife,’ we may find the ‘black crook shell,’ and with its aid fly out of this ’lum.”“I believe your judication is sound, Le-loo; stay where you be an’ if he hain’t a witch I’ll bet my front tooth agin the string of his moccasin that I’ll find the bridge, and I’ll swear by my grandmother’s hind leg that that little imp will pay for our sheep yit.”As Pete finished these remarks there was a sudden and astonishing change in his appearance.His head fell forward, his shoulders drooped, his back bowed and his knee bent. It was no longer the upright statuesque Pete the Mountaineer, but Peter the Trailer, all of whose faculties were concentrated upon the ground. With a swinging gait the human bloodhound traveled swiftly and silently along the edge of the crevasse, noting every bunch of moss, fragment of stone, drift of snow or bit of moist earth, reading the shorthand notes of Nature with facility which far excelled the ability of my own stenographer to read her own notes when the latter are a few hours old. But a short time had elapsed before I heard a shout, and, hurrying to the place where my big friend was seated, I inquired, “Any luck?”“Tha’s as you may call it. Here is wha’ tha’ boy jumped,” he replied, pointing to some marks on the stone which were imperceptible to me, “an’ tha’s wha’ he landed,” he continued, pointing to a slight ledge upon the face of the opposite cliff at least twenty feet distant. “He’s a jumper, an’ no mistake—guessI might as well have my front tooth pulled, fur I’ve lost my bet,” soliloquized the trailer, as he sat on the edge of the cliff, with his legs hanging over the frightful chasm.The ledge indicated by Big Pete as the landing place of the phenomenal jumper might possibly have offered a foothold for a bighorn or goat, but I could not believe that any human being could jump twenty feet to a crumbling trifle of a ledge on the face of a precipice, and not only retain a foothold there, but run up the face of the rock like a fly on a window-pane. Yet I could see that something had worn the ledge at the point indicated and when I stood a little distance away from the trail I could plainly note a difference in color marking the course of the trail where it led over the flinty rocks to the jumping place.“Wull, Le-loo! What’s your opinion of the Ecutock now? Do he use wings or ride a barleycorn broom?” asked Pete, with a triumphant smile.CHAPTER XIIIApparently there was no possible way by which we might hope to cross the canyon, and I threw myself prone upon the top of the stony brink of the chasm and peered down the awful abyss at the silver thread, shining in the gloom of the shadows, which marked the course of a stream, and wondered what the Boy Scouts of Troop 6 of Marlborough would do under the circumstances.I studied the face of the opposite cliff in a vain search for some hint to the solution of the problem before us, looking up and down from side to side as far as allowed by the range of my vision. At length my attention wandered to the perpendicular face of the cliff, on the top of which my body was sprawled; there was an upright crack in the face of the stone wall, and as I examined the fracture I saw that a piece of wood had lodgedin the crack; a piece of wood in a crevice in a rock is not so unusual an occurrence as to excite remark; but when it occurred to me that we were then far above the timber line, my interest and curiosity were at once aroused.The end of the stick was within a short distance from my hand, and reaching down I grasped the wood and brought forth, not a short club or stick, as I thought to be concealed there, but a very long pole. The result of my investigations was so unexpected that I came dangerously near allowing the thing to slide through my fingers and fall to the bottom of the canyon. It was a neatly-smoothed, slender piece of lodge-pole pine which was brought to view, and it had a crooked root nicely spliced to one end and bound tightly in place with rawhide thongs. Big Pete was wholly absorbed in the trail, the study of which he had resumed, and when I looked up he was down on all fours, minutely studying the ground. Presentlyhe cried, “Le-loo, tha’ pesky lad ha’ been over wha’ you be after sompen and he took it back tha’ again afore he made his jump! If you’re any good you’ll find what the lad was after.”“He was after his barleycorn broomstick,” I replied, proudly, “and here it is, although I must confess it is a pretty long one for a fellow of his size, and it looks more like a giant Bo-Peep’s crook than a witch’s broom.”Big Pete eagerly snatched the pole from my hands and examined it carefully. At length he said, “This hyer is the end used for the handle; one can see by the finger marks, an’ this crook is used to scrape stone with, one kin see, with half an eye, by the way the end is sandpapered off. Over tha’ air some marks on the stone which look almighty like as if they’d been made by the end of this yer hook slipping down the face of the rock.“Now, I wonder wha’ cud be up tha’ on the top of the rock that the boy wanted,” mused Big Pete, and for a moment or so hestood in silent thought; at length he exclaimed, “Why, bless my corn-shucking soul, if I don’t believe he’s got a lariat staked out tha’ an’ crosses this ditch same as we-uns aimed to do!” With that he began raking and scraping the top of the opposite rock with the shepherd’s crook, and presently there came tumbling and twisting like a snake down the face of the cliff, a long braided rawhide rope with a loop at the bottom end.“Waugh, Le-loo! tha’s no witchcraft ’bout this ’cep the magic of common-sense; but we hain’t through with him yit!” By this time Pete had the end of the rawhide rope in his hands and was testing the strength of its anchorage upon the opposite cliff. The point where it was fastened projected some distance over the ledge, where the supposed landing-place was located, thus making it possible for one to swing at the end of the rope from our side without danger of coming into too violent contact with the opposite cliff.As soon as my big friend was satisfied thatthe rope was safe he grasped it with his two hands, and with one foot in the loop and the other free to use as a fender, he sailed across the abyss and landed safely upon the crumbling ledge opposite.Holding fast to the rawhide rope with his hands and bracing his feet against the rock, Pete could walk up the face of the cliff by going hand-over-hand up the cable at the same time. He had almost reached the top when I was horror-stricken to see a small hand and brown arm reach over the precipice; but it was neither the grace nor the beauty of this shapely bit of anatomy which sent the blood surging to my heart, but the fact that the cold gray glint of a long-bladed knife caught my eyes and fascinated me with the fabled “charm” of a serpent. The power of speech forsook me, but with great effort I succeeded in giving utterance to the inarticulate noise people gurgle when confronted in their sleep by a shapeless horror. Big Pete heard the noise, but he was not unnervedwhen he saw the knife, neither did he show any nightmare symptoms, although he was dangling over the terrible abyss with a full knowledge that it needed but a touch of the keen blade of that knife to sever the straining lariat and dash him, a mangled mass, on the rocks below. The danger was too real to give Pete the nightmare; there was nothing spooky to him in the glittering knife blade, and only ghosts and the supernatural could give Big Pete the nightmare. Calmly he looked at the hand grasping the power of death with its strong tapering fingers. Suddenly and in a firm, commanding voice he gave the order, “Drap tha’ knife!”Ever since I had been in the company of this masterful forest companion I had obeyed his commands as a matter of course, and so was not surprised to see the fingers instantly relax their grasp and the knife go gyrating to the mysterious depths. In a few moments Big Pete was up and over the edge of the rock and hidden from my view.Seizing the long-handled shepherd’s crook, I caught the dangling end of the lariat, and was soon scrambling up the face of the cliff, leaving a trail which the veriest novice would not fail to notice and sending showers of the crumbling stones down the path taken by the knife; it was several minutes before I had clambered over the face of the projecting crag and was safe across the black chasm which lay athwart our trail.If the Wild Hunter was indeed my father, he certainly was a woodcrafter and scout to bring pride to a fellow’s heart, for I doubted not that the Indian boy was his retainer because the porcupine quill decorations on his buckskin shirt had the same peculiar pattern as that on the wamus of the Wild Hunter himself as well as on the collar of the pet sheep I had killed, and also on the buckskin bag of gold.CHAPTER XIVOnly those persons who have made solitary trips over snow-capped mountain ridges can appreciate the overwhelming feeling of solitude that I felt on looking about me. To whatever point of view I turned my eyes were greeted with a tumbled sea composed of stupendous petrified billows.The occasional fields of snow were the white froth of the stony waves and the turquoise colored glacial lakes between the crags rather added to the effect of an angry ocean than detracted from it.On a closer examination, some of the rocks appeared to be rough bits of unfinished worlds still retaining the form they had when poured from the mighty blast furnaces of the Creator. It was God’s workshop strewn with huge fragments, still bearing the marks of His mallet and chisel; yet these cold barren wastes were the pasture lands of the shaggy-coatedwhite goats and the lithe-limbed bighorned sheep.Suddenly a shrill whistle pierced the air and with a jump I instinctively looked for a vision of the Wild Hunter, but a moment later realized that the sound I heard was but the warning cry of a whistling marmot. Again the silence was broken, this time by a low rumbling sound which increased in volume until it roared like a broadside from an old forty-four-gun man-of-war, each crag and peak taking up the sound and hurling it against its neighbor, until the reverberating noise seemed to come from all points of the compass.Away in the distance I could see a white stream pouring from the precipitous edge of an elevated glacier; this seeming mountain torrent I knew was not water, but ice, thousands of tons of which having cracked and broken from the edge of the glacier, were now being dashed over the hard face of the rock into minute fragments.The white stream could be seen to decrease perceptibly in size, from a broad sheet to a wide band, a narrow ribbon, a line, a hair and then disappear altogether. While the distant mountains were still growling, mumbling and playing shuttlecock with the echoes a timid chief hare went hopping across a green half-acre of grass at the damp edge of a melting snow patch in my path. Overhead a golden eagle sailed with a small mammal in its talons; strange reddish-colored bumblebees busied themselves in a bunch of flowers growing in a crevice in the rocks at my feet.But my eye could discern no larger creatures in this Alpine pasture land; not only could I see no sheep or goats, but not a sign of my friend. He had vanished from the face of the picture as completely as if the master artist had erased him with one mighty sweep of his paint brush.When I viewed the lonely landscape with no human being in sight, I confess to experiencing a creepy sensation and a stronginclination to flee, but I knew not in what direction to run. I was in a rough basin-shaped depression among the mountain peaks, and I sat on a large rock with my back to a black chasm. From my elevated position I could see a long distance. Strange fancies creep into one’s head on such occasions and play havoc with previous well-founded beliefs. To me, poor fool of a tenderfoot, Big Pete had melted into the thinnest of thin air, such as is only found in high altitudes, and somehow I wondered whether the Wild Hunter had had anything to do with it.How could I tell that I myself was not invisible?I hauled myself up short there for I realized that such folly was not good to have tumbling around in my brain. I figuratively pulled myself back to earth, and to steady my nerves reached into my pack and brought out several hard bits of bannock that I had stored there. I was dreadfully hungry and I munched these with enthusiasm, meanwhilekeeping a sharp eye out for Big Pete, and between times making the acquaintance of the little chief hare who, as he scuttled about among the rocks, looked me over curiously.A short distance to my left was a huge obsidian cliff, the glassy walls of which rose in a precipice to a considerable height. On account of its peculiar formation, this crag of natural glass had several times attracted my attention, and on any other occasion I would have been curious enough to give it closer inspection. Once, as I turned my head in that direction, I thought I heard a wild laugh and later concluded that it was only imagination on my part, but now, as I again faced the cliff, I unmistakably heard a shout and was considerably relieved to see silhouetted against the sky the figure of Big Pete.“Hello, Le-loo,” he shouted. “Through chasin’ that ’ere spook Indian kid be you? It’s about time. Gosh-all-hemlocks! I been breakin’ my neck tryin’ to keep up with you, doggone yore hide,” shouted the big guide as he started to climb down toward me.“Hello, Pete! You bet I’m through and I’m blamed near all in. Where are we, do you know?” I called to him.“Top o’ the world, my boy. Top o’ the world, that’s whar we be,” he said with a grin.I had seen no game since I had lost the bighorn, and the sunball was now hung low in the heavens. It appeared to me that there was every prospect for a supperless night, too. But Big Pete evidently had no such idea, and he “’lowed” that he would “mosey” ’round a bit and kill some varmints for grub.There seemed to be plenty of mountain lion signs, and I was surprised that they should frequent such high altitudes, but Pete told me that they were up here after marmots, and were all sleek and fat on that diet. I would not have been surprised if my wild comrade had proposed a feast on these cats. But it was not long before Pete’s revolvers could be heard barking and in a short time he returned with two braces of white ptarmigan, each with its head shattered by a pistol ball, and I confess these birdswere more to my liking than cat meat. Up there ’mid the snow fields the ptarmigan apparently kept their winter plumage all year round, and their natural camouflage made them utterly invisible to me, but to Pete, a white ptarmigan on a white snowfield seemed to be as easy to detect as if the same bird had been perched on a heap of coal. I had not seen one of these grouse since we had been in the mountains and was not aware of their presence until my companion returned with the four dead birds.Without wasting time, Pete began to prepare them for cooking. He soon built a fire of some sticks which he gleaned from one or two twisted and gnarled evergreens that had wandered above timber line and cooked the birds over the embers. He gave a brace to me, and sitting on a boulder with our feet hanging over the edge we ate our evening meal without salt or pepper, and then each of us curled up like a grey wolf under the shelter of a stone and slept as safely as if we were inour bed rolls down in the genial atmosphere of the park in place of being in the bitingly cold air of the bleak mountain tops.I, at least, slept soundly, and, thanks to the clothes Pete had so kindly made for me, I do not remember feeling cold. When I awoke again it was daylight and I could scarcely believe that I had been asleep more than five minutes since my friend bade me good-night. Big Pete was up before me, of course, and when I opened my eyes I found him cooking breakfast and making tea in a tin cup over those economical fires he so loved to build even when we were in the park where there was fuel enough for a roaring bonfire. It’s queer how difficult it is to make water boil on a mountain top.“Well, now fer the witch-b’ar track agin,” said Big Pete, wiping his mouth.“Witch-bear!” I exclaimed. “Oh—yes—you don’t mean to tell me you kept following the track of that two-legged bear this far, Pete?” I exclaimed, suddenly recalling that wehad started out following a mysterious moccasin trail that had later turned into bear tracks.“Sartin’ sure. Didn’t you figger out that that tha’ b’ar war the Injun or tha’ Wild Hunter who put on moccasins made o’ b’ar feet when he thought we’d foller him?” asked Pete.“Yes, I did, but I forgot—maybe that ram was the Wild Hunter himself—blame it. Nothing will astonish me in this country.”“Yes, you fergot everything, even yore head when you started to foller that tha’ ram yesterday. But I didn’t. I jest kept peggin’ away at them tha’ rumswattel b’ar tracks and I followed ’em right up to yonder cliff. They go on from tha’, but I left ’em last night to come over by you. Come on, we’ll pick ’em up agin.” And off he started.It was soon evident that it was an exceedingly active bear which we were following for it could climb over green glacier ice like a Swiss guide and over rocks like a goat. It led us a wild, wild chase over crevasses, friableand treacherous stones covered with “verglass,” over dangerous couloirs and all the other things talked of in the Alps but forgotten in the Rockies, to high elevations, where frozen snow combed over the beetling crags, and the avalanches roared and thundered down the rocks, dashing the fragments of stone over the lower ice fields. We were not roped together like mountain climbers in the Swiss or Tyrolean Alps; we got the real thrills by using our own hands and feet without ice pick, staff or hobnailed shoes.But Big Pete never hesitated and I followed him without a word, and when the trail led along the edge of a dizzy height I could look at the middle of Big Pete’s broad back and then my head would not swim. It required quick and good judgment to tell just how much of a slant made a loose stone unsafe to step upon. It was exciting and exhilarating work, and the violent exercise kept me so warm that I carried most of my clothes in a bundle on my back. Presently our path ledus into a goat trail, one of those century old paths made by shaggy white Alpine animals, and used by them as regular highways. There were plenty of fresh goat signs, and the broad path led us over a saddle mountain to the verge of a cliff, beyond which it seemed impossible for anything but birds to pursue the trail. Here we sat down to rest and to make a cup of tea over a tiny fire, although wood was plentiful at this place, it being in the timber line.Below us lay a valley, into which numerous small glaciers emptied their everlasting supply of ice and blocks of stone, and horse-tail falls poured from the melting snow fields. It might have presented enchanting prospects to an iceman or a bighorn, or a Rocky Mountain goat, but for two tired men it was a gloomy, dangerous and desolate place and I felt certain that even a witch-bear would not choose such a dangerous place as a camping ground. We had finished our tea and I was feeling somewhat refreshed when I noticed apeculiar stinging sensation about my face; I felt as if I had been attacked by some peculiar form of insect. But there were none in sight.Pete, at this time, was some distance away prospecting the “lay of the land.” I saw him suddenly pull the cape of his wamus over his face, and reasoned that he also had been attacked by these invisible insects.To my surprise, the big fellow seemed very much alarmed, and every time I shouted to him it greatly excited him. As he was hurrying to me as rapidly as possible, I desisted from further inquiry. When Big Pete reached my side he pulled a handkerchief from around my neck and put it over my mouth, making signs which I did not comprehend. At last he put his muffled mouth to my ear and shouted through the cape of his wamus. “Shut yer meat-trap or you’re food for the coyotes. It is the WHITE DEATH!”CHAPTER XVClothes and stage trappings can neither add nor detract from our respect for death. He is the same grim old gentleman, be his mouldy bones naked, or clothed in robes of the most gaudy or brilliant hues. A blue death, a red death or a yellow death is just as grizzly and awe-inspiring as one of any shade of gray. Even a black death excites no emotions not touched by the first name, for it is the dread messenger himself whom we respect and not his fanciful robes of office.As far as I am personally concerned, I confess that Big Pete’s painful suggestion about the coyotes had more to do with keeping my mouth shut than any terror inspired by the lily-like purity of the garments of the white death; what made my bones ache was the thought of the wolves gnawing them.Overhead the sun shone with an unusualbrilliancy, and the atmosphere had that peculiar crystalline transparency which kills space and brings distant objects close to one’s feet. Where then was the terrible white messenger? Why must my head be muffled like a mummy? Why must I keep my mouth shut, while the curiosity mill within me was working overtime grinding out questions I should dearly love to ask?Again and again I looked around me to see where this ghostly white terror might lurk, and now, as I gazed at the mountains, I was surprised and annoyed to discover that the distant peaks were gradually disappearing, being blotted out of the landscape before my eyes; a ghost-like mantle was creeping over and enshrouding the mountains.Like Big Pete, the witch-bear, the ptarmigan and the stinging insects, the mountains themselves had joined in the weird game and were donning their fernseed caps of invisibility. Now the air around and about me seemed to be filled with powdered dust of mica thatglinted, sparkled and scintillated in the sunshine. The breeze which was tossing about the bright atoms loosened the handkerchief which swathed my nose and mouth, and I was seized with a violent fit of coughing.It was no gentle hand which Big Pete laid on my shoulder before he again bound the handkerchief around my face and motioned for me to follow him.Evidently my guide had been making good use of his time while I was engaged in idle speculation, for he led me to a point about fifty yards from the goat trail where there was a possible place to descend the cliff to a ledge fifty feet below. By this time I had become enough of a mountaineer to follow my guide over trails which a few weeks previous would have seemed to me impossible to traverse, and after a hasty and daring descent we reached the ledge, where I discovered the black mouth of a cavern; into this hole Pete thrust me and led me back some twenty yards into the darkness, ordered me to disrobe tothe waist, then he began a most vigorous and irritating slapping and rubbing of my chest; so insistent and persevering was he that I really thought my skin would be peeled from shoulders to waist. At last he desisted and ordered me to put on all my clothes.“Are you mad, Pete? Has the rarefied air of the mountains upset your brain? If not, will you kindly tell me what on earth all this means and why we are hiding in this gloomy hole?” I asked as soon as I got the breath back in my body.“Le-loo, you be a baby, and need a keeper to prevent you from committing susancide several times a day. Tenderfoot? Well, I should say so. No one but a short-horn from the East would keep his mouth open gulping in the frozen fog, filling his warm lungs with quarts of fine ice. I reckon it would be healthier to breathe pounded glass, fur it hain’t sharper nor half as cold. Why, Le-loo, tha’ be a dose of fever and lung inflammation in every mouthful of this frozen fog.”He held my face between his two strong hands so that the faint light that filtered through the murky darkness from the cavern’s mouth dimly illuminated my countenance, and as he watched the streams of perspiration falling in drops from the end of my nose his frown relaxed and a broad grin spread over his handsome features.“You’re all right this time,” he added “I calculate that I’ve melted all the ice in your bellows, so just creep up tha’ and sweat a bit more to make it slick and sartin that we’ve beat the White Death this trip.” I did as he said, not because I wanted to sweat but because habit made me obey the commands of my guide.Evidently this cavern had been in constant use by some sort of animals as a sort of stable for many, many years, and I have had sweeter couches, but by this time my rough life had transformed me into something of a wild animal myself, and it was not long before I was comfortably dozing. During the timethat I slept I was dimly conscious of being surrounded by a crowd of people; as the absurdity of this forced itself through my sleep-befuddled brain and I opened wide my eyes, what I saw made me open my eyes still wider.I was about to start to my feet when I felt Big Pete’s restraining hand on my shoulder, and not until then did I realize that the cave was crowded with the shaggy white Rocky Mountain goats, and not weird, white-bearded old men. Few persons can truly say that they have been within arm’s length of a flock of these timid and almost unapproachable animals; but we had invaded their secret place of refuge, and they had not, as yet, taken alarm at our presence in their castle. It may be that the frozen fog had driven the goats to the cavern for shelter, and it is possible that never having been hunted by man, these animals feared the White Death more than they did human beings, and did not realize the dangerous character of theirpresent visitors; whatever the cause of their temerity, the fact remains that men and goats slept that night in the cavern together.I did not awake next morning until after the departure of the goats and opened my eyes to find myself alone in the cavern.Having all my clothes on, no time was wasted at my toilet, but I made my way directly to the doorway and was gratified to discover that Big Pete was roasting some kid chops over the hot embers of a fire.After breakfasting on the remains of the kid, Big Pete arose and scanned the sky, the horizon and the mountain tops, and turning to me said, “Now, Le-loo, that Wild Hunter-b’ar-wolf man has fooled us by doubling on his trail an’ as it hain’t him we’re after now but the trail out of the mountains, I mean to go by sens-see-ation, but you must keep yer meat-trap shut and not speak, ’cause soon as I know I’m a man I hain’t got no more sense than a man. I must say to myself, ‘Now, Pete, you’re a varmint and varmintsknow their way even in a new country.’ Then I just sense things and trots along ’til I come out all right.”I had often heard of this wonderful instinct of direction, the homing instinct of the pigeon, which some Indians, Africans, Australian black boys and a few white men still possess; I say still possess because it is evident that it was once our common heritage, a sort of sixth sense which has been lost by disuse. That Big Pete possessed this sixth sense I little doubted, and it was with absorbing interest that I watched the man work himself into the proper state of mind.For quite a time he stood sniffing the air and looking around him while his body swayed with a slow motion. Then suddenly, as if he had seen something or as if answering the call of something, he started off almost at right angles to our trail, acting very much like a hound on an old scent, but keeping up a pace that tried my endurance.It was truly wonderful the way this man, ina trance-like state, was guided by an invisible power over the most dangerous ground, but no one, after a careful survey, could have selected a better trail than that chosen by Big Pete. On and on we went, scrambling over rock-skirting precipices and crumbling ledges. A dense fog settled around us, making each step hazardous, but with an instinct as true and apparently identical with that of our four-footed brothers, my guide kept the same rapid pace for hours, and then, all of a sudden, came to an abrupt stop.For several seconds he stood in his tracks, his body keeping the same swaying motion, but after a short while he crept cautiously forward in the fog, with me at his heels, and we found ourselves at the edge of a giant fault, similar to the one in Darlinkel Park, but there was apparently no pass to let us down the towering precipices to the valley below.“Well, that was a wonderful trip,” I cried.“Shut up!” shouted Pete savagely, butI had spoken and the spell was broken; reason, not instinct, must now lead us.Vapor and clouds concealed the low grounds from our view; however, we were determined not to spend another night in the mountains, so while I rested and regained my breath, Big Pete went on to explore the ledges.Presently my guide hove in sight and motioned me to follow him; he led me to a place where another goat trail went over the edge of the precipice, this time not in ten and fifteen feet jumps, but by a steep diagonal path. Down the treacherous trail we slipped and slid with a wall of rocks on one side and death in the form of a bluish white space on the other side.As we were clambering carefully around the face of a big rock Pete suddenly whispered that he smelt a “Painter,” and upon peering around the corner we found ourselves face to face with a large cat; the animal was crouching upon a flat-topped projecting stone immediately in our path. That it was not thepuma of the low-lands, its reddish-colored coat and great size proclaimed. It was a so-called mountain lion and a grand specimen of its kind.The cat’s small head lay between its muscular forepaws, its hair adhered closely to its body, its long tail was full and round and waved slowly from side to side, while its eyes gleamed like electric sparks.We were in a most awkward position; our guns were swung by straps over our backs, so that we might use our hands, and we were clinging to the face of the big rock while our toes were seeking foothold in the treacherous shale of the trail. To loosen our hands was to fall backwards into the bluish white sea of unknown depths, and to retrace our steps was out of the question.Pete often expressed the opinion that no predaceous creature, from a spider up to a cougar, will attack its prey while the latter is immovable.As a corollary to this proposition he saidthat when a person is suddenly confronted by a dangerous wild beast, the safest plan to pursue is to remain perfectly quiet, or, as he quaintly put it, “to peetrify yourself in the wink of an eye.”Truth to tell, on this occasion I found no difficulty in following his directions. I was “peetrified” by fear; my feet were cold and numb, chills in wavelets washed up and down my spine, a sudden rash seemed to be breaking out all over my body and the skin on my back felt as if it had been converted into goose-flesh.Had we been able to travel a few feet further we would have both found a comparatively safe footing and had our arms free and a fighting chance with the big catamount in place of hanging suspended to the face of the rock like two big, helpless, terrified bats.CHAPTER XVIWith an imperceptible movement, as steady and almost as slow as that of a glacier, my guide twisted his neck until his face was turned from the puma and the side of the mouth pressed against the flat surface of his rock. I was crowded up against Big Pete, who occupied a position but slightly in advance and a little above me. My agony of fear having somewhat subsided I ventured to steal a momentary glance at my comrade’s face. To my unutterable surprise I discovered a whimsical twinkling at the corners of his eyes and a mirthful expression of mischief in his countenance. This was incomprehensible to me, for I could imagine no more awe-inspiring position than the one we then occupied.While my thoughts were still busy trying to fathom the cause of Pete’s untimely mirth, the long-drawn howl of the big timber wolf floated over the valley and sent a new lotof shivers down my back. It was the rallying call used by the wolves to call the band together when game is in sight. The sound increased in volume until it reverberated among the crags like the voice of a winter’s storm, and then it gradually died away. Big Pete was not only a good mimic but he proved himself to be a ventriloquist of no mean ability; by the help of the rock against which his cheek was pressed he had been able to throw his voice off into space in such a manner that it baffled me for several moments.The gray wolves are old and inveterate enemies of the panther or cougar, hunting the cats on all occasions. Consequently all panthers know the meaning of that wild lonesome howl, the assembling call, as well as the oldest wolf in the pack, and its effect upon the lion in our path was instantaneous. The hair, which had a moment before been as slick as if it were oiled, now rose upright until the fuzzy hide gave the animal’s body the appearance of being twice its original size.Scarcely had the big cat vacated the path before we scrambled to the firm foothold and I breathed a great sigh of relief when it was reached. But Big Pete was convulsed with suppressed laughter at the practical joke he had played on the mountain lion.“Gosh darn my magnolia breath! That painter went as if he had a ball of hot rorrum tied to his tail,” cried my guide.It was difficult for me to realize that it was Big Pete himself who had given vent to that shuddering howl, and now the danger was over I pleaded with him to give another exhibition of his skill in wolf calls.The good-natured fellow at first seemed reluctant to repeat his performance, but at length consented and put his hands to his mouth, forming a trumpet, then bent forward his body, stooping so low that his face was was below his waist, after which he began again that wild cry which so closely resembles in sentiment and tone the shriek of the wind. As the sound increased in volume the manwaved his head from side to side; continuing the movement he gradually assumed an upright pose, and ended by making a low obeisance as the sound died away.The imitation was perfect and I was expressing my delight and appreciation when my ear caught a distant sound which put a sudden stop to our conversation.Was it the wind which I now heard? No! there was not a breath of air stirring, neither was it an echo. There could be no doubt about it, the long-drawn sepulchral howl which filled and permeated the shivering air was an answering cry to Big Pete’s call.Scarcely had the sound waves faded away when in the mysterious distance came another and another answer, until it seemed as if a troop of lost souls were vocalizing their misery. I unslung my gun and loosened my revolvers in their fringed holsters, but Big Pete only shrugged his shoulders and said,“Come, let’s be moseying. ’Taint nothin’ but wolves.” A fact of which I was as wellaware of as Pete, but I, tenderfoot that I was, could not treat howling of wolves with the same unconcern as did my guide.We soon reached a point where the goat trail turned again up the mountain and we forsook that ancient path for a diagonal fracture very similar to the one by which we had ascended, which led down the face of the precipice “slantendicularwise,” Big Pete said, and soon plunged into the bluish gray sea which filled the valley. We were now enveloped in a dense fog, which added materially to the dangers of the journey. I had had so many thrills in the last few moments that my nerves were becoming dull and failed to vibrate on this occasion, so that descending the cliff in a fog by a diagonal fracture in the rock became only an incident of our journey; this trail, however, was wider than the one by which we ascended.The Rocky Mountains are full of new sensations and I got a new one when I discovered that the fog through whichwe had been traveling was in reality a cloud, and, all unexpectedly, we emerged into the clear mellow light below the floating vapor. It was an enchanting scene which met our eyes; below us stretched a beautiful valley.For the first time in months I saw a human habitation. The blue smoke from the chimney ascended slowly in a tall column and then floated horizontally in stratified layers. There were fields of ripe grain, orchards, groves, pasture lands and a winding stream fringed with poplars, which flowed in a tortuous course across the valley. As I feasted my eyes on the peaceful scene a great longing took possession of my soul.Big Pete, too, was lost in thought, conjured up by the scene below us. He stood leaning on his rifle with his eyes fixed on the enchanting picture; so full of unconscious dignity was his pose, so immovable stood the mountain man that he looked like a grand statue done by a master hand.But what thoughts were conjured up in theguide’s brain by the unexpected sight of this ranch could not be interpreted from the expression of his countenance, for that showed no more trace of emotion than an American Indian at the torture stake, or the marble face of a Greek god. Presently he shifted his pose, threw back his head, and Big Pete’s eyes were fixed on the valley in front of us, as with distended nostrils he sniffed the mountain air, his brows contracted to a frown, his eyes lost their gentle angelic look and seemed to change from China blue to a cold steel color, and his tightly closed mouth had a stern expression about the corners which appeared altogether out of keeping with the occasion.“Rot my hide!” he exclaimed, “if I hain’t had a neighbor all these years and never knowed it. Waugh! Some emigrant—terrification seize him!—has found another park an’ squatted, t’ain’t more’n eight miles as a crow flies from mine, nuther, Le-loo.” He looked at the sun and muttered. “Hang me,but ’tis t’other end of my own park,” then he paused a moment and added fiercely, “if these geysers know when they are well off, they’ll steer shy of Darlinkel Park. If I catch ’em scoutin’ ’round my claim, I’ll send ’em a-hoppin’.”“Bless me, you are neighborly,” exclaimed a voice in smooth, even tones.“What!” said Pete, looking sternly at me. “Did you speak?”“I said nothing,” I replied.Big Pete’s countenance changed and he ran his hands over the cartridges in his belt in the old familiar manner, and with a motion quicker than I can describe it, whipped out his revolvers and wheeled about face, at the same time snapping out the words, “Throw up your hands!”CHAPTER XVIIWe were standing on the surface of a flat table-rock, which jutted out from the face of the towering cliff and overhung the valley that was spread out like a map beneath us. About twenty feet back from the edge of the rock was a pile of debris heaped up against the face of the cliff; but the remaining surface of the stone was clean bare and weather-beaten. The talus against the cliff was composed of loose fragments of stone and other products of wash and erosion. This was overgrown with a thicket of stunted shrubs, wry-necked goblin thistles and murderous devil’s clubs. These bludgeon-shaped plants, thickly covered with sharp thorns, reared aloft their weapons as if in menace to all living things; the unstable ground and thorny thicket formed the only shelter wherewe could be ambushed in the rear, and it was not a likely spot to be chosen for such a purpose by man or beast.When Big Pete wheeled about face with his trusty revolvers in hand, I quickly followed his example, and our mutual surprise may be imagined when we found ourselves gazing in the faces of a semicircle of gigantic wolves. The animals were squatting on their haunches at the foot of the talus, their wicked slant eyes fixed upon us and their red tongues lolling out from their cavernous mouths.I cannot tell why, whether it was the state of my nerves or the effect of the rare air of the high altitude, or what, but I felt no fear at facing this strange wolf pack. Indeed, to me they appeared all to be laughing and their red tongues lolled from their open mouths in a very humorous fashion.The whole scene appeared to me to be exceedingly funny and, in a spirit of utter reckless bravado, I doffed my fur cap, with exaggerated politeness made a low bow, and,addressing the largest and most devilish-looking wolf in the pack, exclaimed,“Ah! this is Monsieur Loup-Garou, I believe. Pardon me, Monsieur, but did you speak a moment since?”But Big Pete Darlinkel looked at the wolves, and great beads of sweat stood on his forehead. It was his turn to have the shivers. There was no more color in his face than in a peeled turnip. His gun shook in his left hand like a aspen, while the spangled gun in his right hand dropped its muzzle towards earth and there was scarcely strength enough in his nerveless fingers to have pulled a hair-trigger.Pete’s great baby-blue eyes turned helplessly to me; but it was now my innings, and with a cheery voice I cried,“Why, Pete, old fellow, what ails you?” Then meanly quoting his own words, I added, “They hain’t nothing but wolves!”There is not a shadow of a doubt that Pete expected the wolves to answer me withhuman voice, and I am willing to confess that, even to me, there seemed to be no other alternative for the slant-eyed bandits to pursue. But for the present they appeared to prefer to maintain a solemn silence.The middle wolf had been looking intently at us for some time before a well-modulated voice said,“I have answered your call, gentlemen; how can I serve you?”I was more than half expecting some such answer, but if it had not been so evident that Big Pete was badly frightened and had lost all his self-possession, I should have thought he was again practising his art as ventriloquist.Of course I deceived myself. The wolves had no more power of speech than a house-dog. But I really thought the wolves were doing the talking until I caught sight of a tall man of handsome and distinguished appearance seated among the weird goblin-thistles just above the wolves. The stranger appeared to be a man of almost any age; he might beyoung but, if old, he was wonderfully well preserved. He was clad in a light-colored buckskin suit of clothes, edged and trimmed with fur, a fur cap on his head and moccasins on his feet. And I noticed, with a start, that he had that same red porcupine quill ornament on his hunting shirt that the young Indian wore.When I saw how his dress blended perfectly with his surroundings I excused myself for not sooner detecting him. I could not help but admire his easy grace and the sense of reserved strength in his strong figure. The calmness and repose forcibly reminded me of the mountain lion we had lately encountered.“You kin hackle me and card my sinews, if it hain’t the Wild Hunter himself an’ his pack,” said Big Pete under his breath.The color now began to return to his face and at the recollection of his late rude words the big fellow blushed like a school girl. Gradually he recovered his self-possession, and, doffing his cap, made a low bow as graceful and as courtly as that of any polishedcourtier. This was an entirely new side to my friend’s character and I listened with interest when he said,“Sir, whether you be loup-garou, werwolf, witch-b’ar or all them to onct, I do not care. What I want ter say is ef that tha’ ranch yander be your’n, you may hamstring me ef I hain’t proud to have such a man for a neighbor. Whatever else you be yore no shavetail or shorthorn, an’ that’s howsomever. I don’t mind sayin’ that yore a better shot an’ all around hunter an’ mountain man than Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, Bison McClean and Jim Baker all rolled in one. Yore the slickest woodsman on the divide. I’m powerful proud of you as a neighbor and would be still prouder ef I might call you my friend.”Our strange visitor displayed a beautiful white set of teeth as a frank smile played over his smooth face. But his only answer at that moment was an inclination of his head and a muttered command to the wolves,which they instantly obeyed by silently disappearing in the underbrush.After a pause the tall stranger came forward, and, removing his own cap, made a bow even more courtly than that of Big Pete, as he thus replied: “Sir, I feel highly honored at this flattering expression of commendation. I can honestly say that it is the greatest compliment I have ever received from a stranger, and,” he added with another winning smile, “you are the first stranger with whom I have held converse in nearly twenty years. That I am not unfriendly I have already proved by some trifling services, but the honor of the acquaintance is mine.”After the formalities of our meeting were over the stranger stood for a few moments with his chin resting on his breast. He was evidently thinking over some serious subject. His head was bare, his fur cap being in his hands, and his hands locked behind his back. A mass of light colored hair fell over his forehead and shoulders.Presently he looked at us again, with that same grave smile on his face, and said that if we would consent to be blindfolded and trust ourselves implicitly to his care, he would be glad to take us to his home and would feel honored if we should choose to visit him.“You can proceed no further on this trail for it ends here, and not even a goat can go beyond the rock on which we stand, therefore we must retrace our steps a few hundred yards,” he explained, as he apologized for his strange proposition. He securely bandaged our eyes with our own handkerchiefs, and after turning us around until I at least had lost all sense of direction, he placed thongs in our hands, and then we discovered that we were to be led by some sort of animals, presumably wolves. Whatever else they were, they proved to be careful and sagacious leaders.After a short distance of rough climbing where we constantly needed the personal help of our mysterious host, we began to descendand soon our feet told us that we were traveling on a comparatively smooth though steep trail. Now and again our guide would speak to warn us of stones or other obstructions in our path, but, with the exception of these necessary words of caution and brief words expressing approval or reproof to the animals, we made the journey in silence and in due time reached the bottom, and our feet told us that we were walking on a level shale-covered path.At this point the creatures leading us were dismissed and we could hear them scrambling back over the trail. We heard the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cattle and all the multiplicity of noises so familiar on a well-stocked farm, and we could easily detect the different odors as familiar and characteristic as the noises. We enjoyed to its fullest extent the novelty of the homely sensations aroused by the smell of new-mown hay and the familiar medley of sounds peculiar to the farm.In due time we found ourselves at the footof a couple of wooden steps, which we ascended, and, crossing a broad veranda, entered a doorway. Here we stood awaiting further commands in utter ignorance of our surroundings. Of course, we surmised we were in the ranch house which we saw from the table rock, but this was only a surmise.“Gentlemen,” said the strange old man, “you are welcome to my home, and allow me to add that you are the only white men who have ever crossed the threshold of this house.”As he ceased speaking he removed the bandages from our eyes.CHAPTER XVIIIIt was a strange place, indeed, in which I found myself. Our eyes were unbandaged after we entered the portal of the ranch house, and when Big Pete and I turned toward our guide, we were facing in a direction that gave us a sweeping view of the entire ranch. And what we saw made us marvel.This farm, between the towering, almost insurmountable mountains, had evidently been wrenched from what two decades before had been as much of a wilderness as the Darlinkel Park across the divide. Timber clothed the mountains on either hand but the fertile valley bottom was as rural as a district of the middle west. On one hand stretched acres and acres of ripened grain. Beyond was pasture land dotted with strange whitefaced animals, which later proved to be hybrid buffalos, a strange cross between wild anddomestic cattle.[3]In other pastures and on the hillsides I could see goats and sheep, and these too were evidently a cross breed of wild and domestic stock, the goats having a very strange resemblance to the fleet-footed shaggy old fellows we had seen on the mountains, while the sheep closely resembled usual domestic sheep.
The black chasm which separated us from the trail of the wild hunter was not as formidable a barrier as the unfathomable abyss which separates the reader from what he thinks he would have done had he been in my place, and what really would have been his plan of action.
There were a lot of burning questions which I had privately made up in my mind to propound to the Wild Hunter, or the even wilder medicine bear, upon the occasion of our next meeting. But when the lad was standing before me, with bended bow and flashing eyes, the burning importance of those questions did not appeal to me as forcibly as did the urgent necessity of sheltering my body behind the friendly stone. To be truthful, it must be admitted that the proposed inquiries were, for the time, entirely forgotten, andI even breathed a sigh of relief when the boy suddenly clambered up the face of the cliff, turned, gave us a fierce look of defiance, made some quick energetic gestures with his hand and disappeared.
He scaled that precipitous rock with the rapidity and self-confidence of a gray squirrel running up the trunk of a hickory tree, squirrel-like, taking advantage of every crack, cranny and projection that could be grasped by fingers or moccasin-covered toes.
Not until the Indian had disappeared down a dry coulee did I venture from the shelter of the protecting rock, or realize that my carefully planned interview must be indefinitely postponed.
With his arms folded across his chest, his blond hair sweeping his shoulders, his blue eyes fixed upon a rocky rib of the mountain behind which the boy had disappeared, Big Pete still stood like a statue. But gradually the statuesque pose resolved itself into a more commonplace posture, and the musclesof the face relaxed until the familiar twinkle hovered around the corners of his eyes. “What did he say when he made those motions, Pete?”
“Waugh! he said he was not afraid of any whitefaced coyote like us.” And bringing forth his pipe, Pete filled it from the beaded tobacco pouch which hung on his breast, and by means of a horn of punk, a flint and steel, he soon had the pipe aglow and was puffing away as calmly as if nothing unusual had occurred. Presently he exclaimed, “Gol durn his daguerrotype, what good did it do him to throw that sheep down the gulch? Reckon Le-loo and me could find a better grave for mutton chops than that canyon bottom. The mountains didn’t need the sheep an’ we did. But, I reckon it was his own sheep you killed, ’cause it had a porcupine collar same pattern as the trimmings of his shirt.”
Turning his great blue eyes full upon me, he suddenly shot this inquiry, “Be he bar, ecutock or werwolf?”
“He is the finest adjusted, easiest running, most exquisitely balanced, highest geared bit of human machinery I ever saw,” I answered enthusiastically.
“Wall, maybe ye are right, Le-loo, an’ maybe ye hain’t; which is catamount to saying, maybe it is a man and maybe it tain’t.”
“Steady, Pete, old fellow, let us go slow; now tell me at what you’re driving?” I pleaded.
“It looks to me this hea’-a-way,” he explained. “I’ve seed his trail onct or twice, an’ I’ve seed him onct, but I never yet seed his trail and the Wild Hunter’s trail at the same time and place. ’Pears to me that a man who, when it’s convenient, kin make a wolf of hisself, might likewise make a boy of hisself whenever he felt that way. Never heared tell on enny real laid who cud climb like a squtton and shoot a bow better nor a Robin Hood or Injun, and that’s howsomever!”
“Well, it does look ‘howsomever,’ and no mistake,” I admitted, “and what makes it worse, our dinner is at the bottom of this infernal gulch. Come, let us be moving; the breeze from the snowfields chills me. Let us hit his trail now while it is fresh.”
This was a simple proposition to make, but a difficult one to carry into execution; for to all appearances that trail began upon the other side of the chasm, and there was no bridge in sight by which we could cross. Big Pete carefully put a cork-stopper in his pipe, extinguishing the fire without wasting the unconsumed contents; he then carefully put his briarwood away and began to uncoil a lariat from around his middle. As he loosened the braided rawhide from his waist his gaze was roaming over the opposite rocks. Presently he fixed his attention upon a pinnacle which reared its cube-like form above the top of the opposite side of the chasm; the latter was of itself much higher than the brink upon which we stood. Swinging the looparound his head he sent it whistling across the chasm, where it settled and encircled the projecting stone, the honda striking the face of the cliff with a sullen thud. The rope tightened, but when we both threw our weight on our end of the lariat to try it, the cube-like pinnacle moved on its base.
“I oughter knowed better than to try to lasso a piece of slide rock,” said Pete in disgusted tones, as he cast the end of the braided rawhide loose and watched it for a moment dangling down the opposite side of the canyon.
“Now, Le-loo, we must get over this hole or lose the best lariat in the Rocky Mountains. We kin look for that boy’s trail on this side, for even if he be an Ecutock, I’ll bet my crooker bone ’gainst a lock of his hair that he can’t jump th’ hole, an’ I’ll wager my left ear that he’s got a trail an’ a bridge somewhar—’nless he turns bird and flops over things like this,” he added, with a troubled look.
“Pete,” said I, “never mind the birdbusiness. I’ll admit that there is a lot of explanation due us before we can rightly judge on the events of the past few weeks; still I think it may all be explained in a rational manner; but what if it cannot? We have but one trip to make through this world, and the more we see the more we will know at the end of the journey. I am as curious as a prong-horned antelope when there is a mystery, so put your nose to the ground, my good friend, and find the spot where this Mr. Werwolf, witch, or bear flies the canyon, and maybe, like the husband of ‘The Witch of Fife,’ we may find the ‘black crook shell,’ and with its aid fly out of this ’lum.”
“I believe your judication is sound, Le-loo; stay where you be an’ if he hain’t a witch I’ll bet my front tooth agin the string of his moccasin that I’ll find the bridge, and I’ll swear by my grandmother’s hind leg that that little imp will pay for our sheep yit.”
As Pete finished these remarks there was a sudden and astonishing change in his appearance.His head fell forward, his shoulders drooped, his back bowed and his knee bent. It was no longer the upright statuesque Pete the Mountaineer, but Peter the Trailer, all of whose faculties were concentrated upon the ground. With a swinging gait the human bloodhound traveled swiftly and silently along the edge of the crevasse, noting every bunch of moss, fragment of stone, drift of snow or bit of moist earth, reading the shorthand notes of Nature with facility which far excelled the ability of my own stenographer to read her own notes when the latter are a few hours old. But a short time had elapsed before I heard a shout, and, hurrying to the place where my big friend was seated, I inquired, “Any luck?”
“Tha’s as you may call it. Here is wha’ tha’ boy jumped,” he replied, pointing to some marks on the stone which were imperceptible to me, “an’ tha’s wha’ he landed,” he continued, pointing to a slight ledge upon the face of the opposite cliff at least twenty feet distant. “He’s a jumper, an’ no mistake—guessI might as well have my front tooth pulled, fur I’ve lost my bet,” soliloquized the trailer, as he sat on the edge of the cliff, with his legs hanging over the frightful chasm.
The ledge indicated by Big Pete as the landing place of the phenomenal jumper might possibly have offered a foothold for a bighorn or goat, but I could not believe that any human being could jump twenty feet to a crumbling trifle of a ledge on the face of a precipice, and not only retain a foothold there, but run up the face of the rock like a fly on a window-pane. Yet I could see that something had worn the ledge at the point indicated and when I stood a little distance away from the trail I could plainly note a difference in color marking the course of the trail where it led over the flinty rocks to the jumping place.
“Wull, Le-loo! What’s your opinion of the Ecutock now? Do he use wings or ride a barleycorn broom?” asked Pete, with a triumphant smile.
Apparently there was no possible way by which we might hope to cross the canyon, and I threw myself prone upon the top of the stony brink of the chasm and peered down the awful abyss at the silver thread, shining in the gloom of the shadows, which marked the course of a stream, and wondered what the Boy Scouts of Troop 6 of Marlborough would do under the circumstances.
I studied the face of the opposite cliff in a vain search for some hint to the solution of the problem before us, looking up and down from side to side as far as allowed by the range of my vision. At length my attention wandered to the perpendicular face of the cliff, on the top of which my body was sprawled; there was an upright crack in the face of the stone wall, and as I examined the fracture I saw that a piece of wood had lodgedin the crack; a piece of wood in a crevice in a rock is not so unusual an occurrence as to excite remark; but when it occurred to me that we were then far above the timber line, my interest and curiosity were at once aroused.
The end of the stick was within a short distance from my hand, and reaching down I grasped the wood and brought forth, not a short club or stick, as I thought to be concealed there, but a very long pole. The result of my investigations was so unexpected that I came dangerously near allowing the thing to slide through my fingers and fall to the bottom of the canyon. It was a neatly-smoothed, slender piece of lodge-pole pine which was brought to view, and it had a crooked root nicely spliced to one end and bound tightly in place with rawhide thongs. Big Pete was wholly absorbed in the trail, the study of which he had resumed, and when I looked up he was down on all fours, minutely studying the ground. Presentlyhe cried, “Le-loo, tha’ pesky lad ha’ been over wha’ you be after sompen and he took it back tha’ again afore he made his jump! If you’re any good you’ll find what the lad was after.”
“He was after his barleycorn broomstick,” I replied, proudly, “and here it is, although I must confess it is a pretty long one for a fellow of his size, and it looks more like a giant Bo-Peep’s crook than a witch’s broom.”
Big Pete eagerly snatched the pole from my hands and examined it carefully. At length he said, “This hyer is the end used for the handle; one can see by the finger marks, an’ this crook is used to scrape stone with, one kin see, with half an eye, by the way the end is sandpapered off. Over tha’ air some marks on the stone which look almighty like as if they’d been made by the end of this yer hook slipping down the face of the rock.
“Now, I wonder wha’ cud be up tha’ on the top of the rock that the boy wanted,” mused Big Pete, and for a moment or so hestood in silent thought; at length he exclaimed, “Why, bless my corn-shucking soul, if I don’t believe he’s got a lariat staked out tha’ an’ crosses this ditch same as we-uns aimed to do!” With that he began raking and scraping the top of the opposite rock with the shepherd’s crook, and presently there came tumbling and twisting like a snake down the face of the cliff, a long braided rawhide rope with a loop at the bottom end.
“Waugh, Le-loo! tha’s no witchcraft ’bout this ’cep the magic of common-sense; but we hain’t through with him yit!” By this time Pete had the end of the rawhide rope in his hands and was testing the strength of its anchorage upon the opposite cliff. The point where it was fastened projected some distance over the ledge, where the supposed landing-place was located, thus making it possible for one to swing at the end of the rope from our side without danger of coming into too violent contact with the opposite cliff.
As soon as my big friend was satisfied thatthe rope was safe he grasped it with his two hands, and with one foot in the loop and the other free to use as a fender, he sailed across the abyss and landed safely upon the crumbling ledge opposite.
Holding fast to the rawhide rope with his hands and bracing his feet against the rock, Pete could walk up the face of the cliff by going hand-over-hand up the cable at the same time. He had almost reached the top when I was horror-stricken to see a small hand and brown arm reach over the precipice; but it was neither the grace nor the beauty of this shapely bit of anatomy which sent the blood surging to my heart, but the fact that the cold gray glint of a long-bladed knife caught my eyes and fascinated me with the fabled “charm” of a serpent. The power of speech forsook me, but with great effort I succeeded in giving utterance to the inarticulate noise people gurgle when confronted in their sleep by a shapeless horror. Big Pete heard the noise, but he was not unnervedwhen he saw the knife, neither did he show any nightmare symptoms, although he was dangling over the terrible abyss with a full knowledge that it needed but a touch of the keen blade of that knife to sever the straining lariat and dash him, a mangled mass, on the rocks below. The danger was too real to give Pete the nightmare; there was nothing spooky to him in the glittering knife blade, and only ghosts and the supernatural could give Big Pete the nightmare. Calmly he looked at the hand grasping the power of death with its strong tapering fingers. Suddenly and in a firm, commanding voice he gave the order, “Drap tha’ knife!”
Ever since I had been in the company of this masterful forest companion I had obeyed his commands as a matter of course, and so was not surprised to see the fingers instantly relax their grasp and the knife go gyrating to the mysterious depths. In a few moments Big Pete was up and over the edge of the rock and hidden from my view.
Seizing the long-handled shepherd’s crook, I caught the dangling end of the lariat, and was soon scrambling up the face of the cliff, leaving a trail which the veriest novice would not fail to notice and sending showers of the crumbling stones down the path taken by the knife; it was several minutes before I had clambered over the face of the projecting crag and was safe across the black chasm which lay athwart our trail.
If the Wild Hunter was indeed my father, he certainly was a woodcrafter and scout to bring pride to a fellow’s heart, for I doubted not that the Indian boy was his retainer because the porcupine quill decorations on his buckskin shirt had the same peculiar pattern as that on the wamus of the Wild Hunter himself as well as on the collar of the pet sheep I had killed, and also on the buckskin bag of gold.
Only those persons who have made solitary trips over snow-capped mountain ridges can appreciate the overwhelming feeling of solitude that I felt on looking about me. To whatever point of view I turned my eyes were greeted with a tumbled sea composed of stupendous petrified billows.
The occasional fields of snow were the white froth of the stony waves and the turquoise colored glacial lakes between the crags rather added to the effect of an angry ocean than detracted from it.
On a closer examination, some of the rocks appeared to be rough bits of unfinished worlds still retaining the form they had when poured from the mighty blast furnaces of the Creator. It was God’s workshop strewn with huge fragments, still bearing the marks of His mallet and chisel; yet these cold barren wastes were the pasture lands of the shaggy-coatedwhite goats and the lithe-limbed bighorned sheep.
Suddenly a shrill whistle pierced the air and with a jump I instinctively looked for a vision of the Wild Hunter, but a moment later realized that the sound I heard was but the warning cry of a whistling marmot. Again the silence was broken, this time by a low rumbling sound which increased in volume until it roared like a broadside from an old forty-four-gun man-of-war, each crag and peak taking up the sound and hurling it against its neighbor, until the reverberating noise seemed to come from all points of the compass.
Away in the distance I could see a white stream pouring from the precipitous edge of an elevated glacier; this seeming mountain torrent I knew was not water, but ice, thousands of tons of which having cracked and broken from the edge of the glacier, were now being dashed over the hard face of the rock into minute fragments.
The white stream could be seen to decrease perceptibly in size, from a broad sheet to a wide band, a narrow ribbon, a line, a hair and then disappear altogether. While the distant mountains were still growling, mumbling and playing shuttlecock with the echoes a timid chief hare went hopping across a green half-acre of grass at the damp edge of a melting snow patch in my path. Overhead a golden eagle sailed with a small mammal in its talons; strange reddish-colored bumblebees busied themselves in a bunch of flowers growing in a crevice in the rocks at my feet.
But my eye could discern no larger creatures in this Alpine pasture land; not only could I see no sheep or goats, but not a sign of my friend. He had vanished from the face of the picture as completely as if the master artist had erased him with one mighty sweep of his paint brush.
When I viewed the lonely landscape with no human being in sight, I confess to experiencing a creepy sensation and a stronginclination to flee, but I knew not in what direction to run. I was in a rough basin-shaped depression among the mountain peaks, and I sat on a large rock with my back to a black chasm. From my elevated position I could see a long distance. Strange fancies creep into one’s head on such occasions and play havoc with previous well-founded beliefs. To me, poor fool of a tenderfoot, Big Pete had melted into the thinnest of thin air, such as is only found in high altitudes, and somehow I wondered whether the Wild Hunter had had anything to do with it.
How could I tell that I myself was not invisible?
I hauled myself up short there for I realized that such folly was not good to have tumbling around in my brain. I figuratively pulled myself back to earth, and to steady my nerves reached into my pack and brought out several hard bits of bannock that I had stored there. I was dreadfully hungry and I munched these with enthusiasm, meanwhilekeeping a sharp eye out for Big Pete, and between times making the acquaintance of the little chief hare who, as he scuttled about among the rocks, looked me over curiously.
A short distance to my left was a huge obsidian cliff, the glassy walls of which rose in a precipice to a considerable height. On account of its peculiar formation, this crag of natural glass had several times attracted my attention, and on any other occasion I would have been curious enough to give it closer inspection. Once, as I turned my head in that direction, I thought I heard a wild laugh and later concluded that it was only imagination on my part, but now, as I again faced the cliff, I unmistakably heard a shout and was considerably relieved to see silhouetted against the sky the figure of Big Pete.
“Hello, Le-loo,” he shouted. “Through chasin’ that ’ere spook Indian kid be you? It’s about time. Gosh-all-hemlocks! I been breakin’ my neck tryin’ to keep up with you, doggone yore hide,” shouted the big guide as he started to climb down toward me.
“Hello, Pete! You bet I’m through and I’m blamed near all in. Where are we, do you know?” I called to him.
“Top o’ the world, my boy. Top o’ the world, that’s whar we be,” he said with a grin.
I had seen no game since I had lost the bighorn, and the sunball was now hung low in the heavens. It appeared to me that there was every prospect for a supperless night, too. But Big Pete evidently had no such idea, and he “’lowed” that he would “mosey” ’round a bit and kill some varmints for grub.
There seemed to be plenty of mountain lion signs, and I was surprised that they should frequent such high altitudes, but Pete told me that they were up here after marmots, and were all sleek and fat on that diet. I would not have been surprised if my wild comrade had proposed a feast on these cats. But it was not long before Pete’s revolvers could be heard barking and in a short time he returned with two braces of white ptarmigan, each with its head shattered by a pistol ball, and I confess these birdswere more to my liking than cat meat. Up there ’mid the snow fields the ptarmigan apparently kept their winter plumage all year round, and their natural camouflage made them utterly invisible to me, but to Pete, a white ptarmigan on a white snowfield seemed to be as easy to detect as if the same bird had been perched on a heap of coal. I had not seen one of these grouse since we had been in the mountains and was not aware of their presence until my companion returned with the four dead birds.
Without wasting time, Pete began to prepare them for cooking. He soon built a fire of some sticks which he gleaned from one or two twisted and gnarled evergreens that had wandered above timber line and cooked the birds over the embers. He gave a brace to me, and sitting on a boulder with our feet hanging over the edge we ate our evening meal without salt or pepper, and then each of us curled up like a grey wolf under the shelter of a stone and slept as safely as if we were inour bed rolls down in the genial atmosphere of the park in place of being in the bitingly cold air of the bleak mountain tops.
I, at least, slept soundly, and, thanks to the clothes Pete had so kindly made for me, I do not remember feeling cold. When I awoke again it was daylight and I could scarcely believe that I had been asleep more than five minutes since my friend bade me good-night. Big Pete was up before me, of course, and when I opened my eyes I found him cooking breakfast and making tea in a tin cup over those economical fires he so loved to build even when we were in the park where there was fuel enough for a roaring bonfire. It’s queer how difficult it is to make water boil on a mountain top.
“Well, now fer the witch-b’ar track agin,” said Big Pete, wiping his mouth.
“Witch-bear!” I exclaimed. “Oh—yes—you don’t mean to tell me you kept following the track of that two-legged bear this far, Pete?” I exclaimed, suddenly recalling that wehad started out following a mysterious moccasin trail that had later turned into bear tracks.
“Sartin’ sure. Didn’t you figger out that that tha’ b’ar war the Injun or tha’ Wild Hunter who put on moccasins made o’ b’ar feet when he thought we’d foller him?” asked Pete.
“Yes, I did, but I forgot—maybe that ram was the Wild Hunter himself—blame it. Nothing will astonish me in this country.”
“Yes, you fergot everything, even yore head when you started to foller that tha’ ram yesterday. But I didn’t. I jest kept peggin’ away at them tha’ rumswattel b’ar tracks and I followed ’em right up to yonder cliff. They go on from tha’, but I left ’em last night to come over by you. Come on, we’ll pick ’em up agin.” And off he started.
It was soon evident that it was an exceedingly active bear which we were following for it could climb over green glacier ice like a Swiss guide and over rocks like a goat. It led us a wild, wild chase over crevasses, friableand treacherous stones covered with “verglass,” over dangerous couloirs and all the other things talked of in the Alps but forgotten in the Rockies, to high elevations, where frozen snow combed over the beetling crags, and the avalanches roared and thundered down the rocks, dashing the fragments of stone over the lower ice fields. We were not roped together like mountain climbers in the Swiss or Tyrolean Alps; we got the real thrills by using our own hands and feet without ice pick, staff or hobnailed shoes.
But Big Pete never hesitated and I followed him without a word, and when the trail led along the edge of a dizzy height I could look at the middle of Big Pete’s broad back and then my head would not swim. It required quick and good judgment to tell just how much of a slant made a loose stone unsafe to step upon. It was exciting and exhilarating work, and the violent exercise kept me so warm that I carried most of my clothes in a bundle on my back. Presently our path ledus into a goat trail, one of those century old paths made by shaggy white Alpine animals, and used by them as regular highways. There were plenty of fresh goat signs, and the broad path led us over a saddle mountain to the verge of a cliff, beyond which it seemed impossible for anything but birds to pursue the trail. Here we sat down to rest and to make a cup of tea over a tiny fire, although wood was plentiful at this place, it being in the timber line.
Below us lay a valley, into which numerous small glaciers emptied their everlasting supply of ice and blocks of stone, and horse-tail falls poured from the melting snow fields. It might have presented enchanting prospects to an iceman or a bighorn, or a Rocky Mountain goat, but for two tired men it was a gloomy, dangerous and desolate place and I felt certain that even a witch-bear would not choose such a dangerous place as a camping ground. We had finished our tea and I was feeling somewhat refreshed when I noticed apeculiar stinging sensation about my face; I felt as if I had been attacked by some peculiar form of insect. But there were none in sight.
Pete, at this time, was some distance away prospecting the “lay of the land.” I saw him suddenly pull the cape of his wamus over his face, and reasoned that he also had been attacked by these invisible insects.
To my surprise, the big fellow seemed very much alarmed, and every time I shouted to him it greatly excited him. As he was hurrying to me as rapidly as possible, I desisted from further inquiry. When Big Pete reached my side he pulled a handkerchief from around my neck and put it over my mouth, making signs which I did not comprehend. At last he put his muffled mouth to my ear and shouted through the cape of his wamus. “Shut yer meat-trap or you’re food for the coyotes. It is the WHITE DEATH!”
Clothes and stage trappings can neither add nor detract from our respect for death. He is the same grim old gentleman, be his mouldy bones naked, or clothed in robes of the most gaudy or brilliant hues. A blue death, a red death or a yellow death is just as grizzly and awe-inspiring as one of any shade of gray. Even a black death excites no emotions not touched by the first name, for it is the dread messenger himself whom we respect and not his fanciful robes of office.
As far as I am personally concerned, I confess that Big Pete’s painful suggestion about the coyotes had more to do with keeping my mouth shut than any terror inspired by the lily-like purity of the garments of the white death; what made my bones ache was the thought of the wolves gnawing them.
Overhead the sun shone with an unusualbrilliancy, and the atmosphere had that peculiar crystalline transparency which kills space and brings distant objects close to one’s feet. Where then was the terrible white messenger? Why must my head be muffled like a mummy? Why must I keep my mouth shut, while the curiosity mill within me was working overtime grinding out questions I should dearly love to ask?
Again and again I looked around me to see where this ghostly white terror might lurk, and now, as I gazed at the mountains, I was surprised and annoyed to discover that the distant peaks were gradually disappearing, being blotted out of the landscape before my eyes; a ghost-like mantle was creeping over and enshrouding the mountains.
Like Big Pete, the witch-bear, the ptarmigan and the stinging insects, the mountains themselves had joined in the weird game and were donning their fernseed caps of invisibility. Now the air around and about me seemed to be filled with powdered dust of mica thatglinted, sparkled and scintillated in the sunshine. The breeze which was tossing about the bright atoms loosened the handkerchief which swathed my nose and mouth, and I was seized with a violent fit of coughing.
It was no gentle hand which Big Pete laid on my shoulder before he again bound the handkerchief around my face and motioned for me to follow him.
Evidently my guide had been making good use of his time while I was engaged in idle speculation, for he led me to a point about fifty yards from the goat trail where there was a possible place to descend the cliff to a ledge fifty feet below. By this time I had become enough of a mountaineer to follow my guide over trails which a few weeks previous would have seemed to me impossible to traverse, and after a hasty and daring descent we reached the ledge, where I discovered the black mouth of a cavern; into this hole Pete thrust me and led me back some twenty yards into the darkness, ordered me to disrobe tothe waist, then he began a most vigorous and irritating slapping and rubbing of my chest; so insistent and persevering was he that I really thought my skin would be peeled from shoulders to waist. At last he desisted and ordered me to put on all my clothes.
“Are you mad, Pete? Has the rarefied air of the mountains upset your brain? If not, will you kindly tell me what on earth all this means and why we are hiding in this gloomy hole?” I asked as soon as I got the breath back in my body.
“Le-loo, you be a baby, and need a keeper to prevent you from committing susancide several times a day. Tenderfoot? Well, I should say so. No one but a short-horn from the East would keep his mouth open gulping in the frozen fog, filling his warm lungs with quarts of fine ice. I reckon it would be healthier to breathe pounded glass, fur it hain’t sharper nor half as cold. Why, Le-loo, tha’ be a dose of fever and lung inflammation in every mouthful of this frozen fog.”
He held my face between his two strong hands so that the faint light that filtered through the murky darkness from the cavern’s mouth dimly illuminated my countenance, and as he watched the streams of perspiration falling in drops from the end of my nose his frown relaxed and a broad grin spread over his handsome features.
“You’re all right this time,” he added “I calculate that I’ve melted all the ice in your bellows, so just creep up tha’ and sweat a bit more to make it slick and sartin that we’ve beat the White Death this trip.” I did as he said, not because I wanted to sweat but because habit made me obey the commands of my guide.
Evidently this cavern had been in constant use by some sort of animals as a sort of stable for many, many years, and I have had sweeter couches, but by this time my rough life had transformed me into something of a wild animal myself, and it was not long before I was comfortably dozing. During the timethat I slept I was dimly conscious of being surrounded by a crowd of people; as the absurdity of this forced itself through my sleep-befuddled brain and I opened wide my eyes, what I saw made me open my eyes still wider.
I was about to start to my feet when I felt Big Pete’s restraining hand on my shoulder, and not until then did I realize that the cave was crowded with the shaggy white Rocky Mountain goats, and not weird, white-bearded old men. Few persons can truly say that they have been within arm’s length of a flock of these timid and almost unapproachable animals; but we had invaded their secret place of refuge, and they had not, as yet, taken alarm at our presence in their castle. It may be that the frozen fog had driven the goats to the cavern for shelter, and it is possible that never having been hunted by man, these animals feared the White Death more than they did human beings, and did not realize the dangerous character of theirpresent visitors; whatever the cause of their temerity, the fact remains that men and goats slept that night in the cavern together.
I did not awake next morning until after the departure of the goats and opened my eyes to find myself alone in the cavern.
Having all my clothes on, no time was wasted at my toilet, but I made my way directly to the doorway and was gratified to discover that Big Pete was roasting some kid chops over the hot embers of a fire.
After breakfasting on the remains of the kid, Big Pete arose and scanned the sky, the horizon and the mountain tops, and turning to me said, “Now, Le-loo, that Wild Hunter-b’ar-wolf man has fooled us by doubling on his trail an’ as it hain’t him we’re after now but the trail out of the mountains, I mean to go by sens-see-ation, but you must keep yer meat-trap shut and not speak, ’cause soon as I know I’m a man I hain’t got no more sense than a man. I must say to myself, ‘Now, Pete, you’re a varmint and varmintsknow their way even in a new country.’ Then I just sense things and trots along ’til I come out all right.”
I had often heard of this wonderful instinct of direction, the homing instinct of the pigeon, which some Indians, Africans, Australian black boys and a few white men still possess; I say still possess because it is evident that it was once our common heritage, a sort of sixth sense which has been lost by disuse. That Big Pete possessed this sixth sense I little doubted, and it was with absorbing interest that I watched the man work himself into the proper state of mind.
For quite a time he stood sniffing the air and looking around him while his body swayed with a slow motion. Then suddenly, as if he had seen something or as if answering the call of something, he started off almost at right angles to our trail, acting very much like a hound on an old scent, but keeping up a pace that tried my endurance.
It was truly wonderful the way this man, ina trance-like state, was guided by an invisible power over the most dangerous ground, but no one, after a careful survey, could have selected a better trail than that chosen by Big Pete. On and on we went, scrambling over rock-skirting precipices and crumbling ledges. A dense fog settled around us, making each step hazardous, but with an instinct as true and apparently identical with that of our four-footed brothers, my guide kept the same rapid pace for hours, and then, all of a sudden, came to an abrupt stop.
For several seconds he stood in his tracks, his body keeping the same swaying motion, but after a short while he crept cautiously forward in the fog, with me at his heels, and we found ourselves at the edge of a giant fault, similar to the one in Darlinkel Park, but there was apparently no pass to let us down the towering precipices to the valley below.
“Well, that was a wonderful trip,” I cried.
“Shut up!” shouted Pete savagely, butI had spoken and the spell was broken; reason, not instinct, must now lead us.
Vapor and clouds concealed the low grounds from our view; however, we were determined not to spend another night in the mountains, so while I rested and regained my breath, Big Pete went on to explore the ledges.
Presently my guide hove in sight and motioned me to follow him; he led me to a place where another goat trail went over the edge of the precipice, this time not in ten and fifteen feet jumps, but by a steep diagonal path. Down the treacherous trail we slipped and slid with a wall of rocks on one side and death in the form of a bluish white space on the other side.
As we were clambering carefully around the face of a big rock Pete suddenly whispered that he smelt a “Painter,” and upon peering around the corner we found ourselves face to face with a large cat; the animal was crouching upon a flat-topped projecting stone immediately in our path. That it was not thepuma of the low-lands, its reddish-colored coat and great size proclaimed. It was a so-called mountain lion and a grand specimen of its kind.
The cat’s small head lay between its muscular forepaws, its hair adhered closely to its body, its long tail was full and round and waved slowly from side to side, while its eyes gleamed like electric sparks.
We were in a most awkward position; our guns were swung by straps over our backs, so that we might use our hands, and we were clinging to the face of the big rock while our toes were seeking foothold in the treacherous shale of the trail. To loosen our hands was to fall backwards into the bluish white sea of unknown depths, and to retrace our steps was out of the question.
Pete often expressed the opinion that no predaceous creature, from a spider up to a cougar, will attack its prey while the latter is immovable.
As a corollary to this proposition he saidthat when a person is suddenly confronted by a dangerous wild beast, the safest plan to pursue is to remain perfectly quiet, or, as he quaintly put it, “to peetrify yourself in the wink of an eye.”
Truth to tell, on this occasion I found no difficulty in following his directions. I was “peetrified” by fear; my feet were cold and numb, chills in wavelets washed up and down my spine, a sudden rash seemed to be breaking out all over my body and the skin on my back felt as if it had been converted into goose-flesh.
Had we been able to travel a few feet further we would have both found a comparatively safe footing and had our arms free and a fighting chance with the big catamount in place of hanging suspended to the face of the rock like two big, helpless, terrified bats.
With an imperceptible movement, as steady and almost as slow as that of a glacier, my guide twisted his neck until his face was turned from the puma and the side of the mouth pressed against the flat surface of his rock. I was crowded up against Big Pete, who occupied a position but slightly in advance and a little above me. My agony of fear having somewhat subsided I ventured to steal a momentary glance at my comrade’s face. To my unutterable surprise I discovered a whimsical twinkling at the corners of his eyes and a mirthful expression of mischief in his countenance. This was incomprehensible to me, for I could imagine no more awe-inspiring position than the one we then occupied.
While my thoughts were still busy trying to fathom the cause of Pete’s untimely mirth, the long-drawn howl of the big timber wolf floated over the valley and sent a new lotof shivers down my back. It was the rallying call used by the wolves to call the band together when game is in sight. The sound increased in volume until it reverberated among the crags like the voice of a winter’s storm, and then it gradually died away. Big Pete was not only a good mimic but he proved himself to be a ventriloquist of no mean ability; by the help of the rock against which his cheek was pressed he had been able to throw his voice off into space in such a manner that it baffled me for several moments.
The gray wolves are old and inveterate enemies of the panther or cougar, hunting the cats on all occasions. Consequently all panthers know the meaning of that wild lonesome howl, the assembling call, as well as the oldest wolf in the pack, and its effect upon the lion in our path was instantaneous. The hair, which had a moment before been as slick as if it were oiled, now rose upright until the fuzzy hide gave the animal’s body the appearance of being twice its original size.
Scarcely had the big cat vacated the path before we scrambled to the firm foothold and I breathed a great sigh of relief when it was reached. But Big Pete was convulsed with suppressed laughter at the practical joke he had played on the mountain lion.
“Gosh darn my magnolia breath! That painter went as if he had a ball of hot rorrum tied to his tail,” cried my guide.
It was difficult for me to realize that it was Big Pete himself who had given vent to that shuddering howl, and now the danger was over I pleaded with him to give another exhibition of his skill in wolf calls.
The good-natured fellow at first seemed reluctant to repeat his performance, but at length consented and put his hands to his mouth, forming a trumpet, then bent forward his body, stooping so low that his face was was below his waist, after which he began again that wild cry which so closely resembles in sentiment and tone the shriek of the wind. As the sound increased in volume the manwaved his head from side to side; continuing the movement he gradually assumed an upright pose, and ended by making a low obeisance as the sound died away.
The imitation was perfect and I was expressing my delight and appreciation when my ear caught a distant sound which put a sudden stop to our conversation.
Was it the wind which I now heard? No! there was not a breath of air stirring, neither was it an echo. There could be no doubt about it, the long-drawn sepulchral howl which filled and permeated the shivering air was an answering cry to Big Pete’s call.
Scarcely had the sound waves faded away when in the mysterious distance came another and another answer, until it seemed as if a troop of lost souls were vocalizing their misery. I unslung my gun and loosened my revolvers in their fringed holsters, but Big Pete only shrugged his shoulders and said,
“Come, let’s be moseying. ’Taint nothin’ but wolves.” A fact of which I was as wellaware of as Pete, but I, tenderfoot that I was, could not treat howling of wolves with the same unconcern as did my guide.
We soon reached a point where the goat trail turned again up the mountain and we forsook that ancient path for a diagonal fracture very similar to the one by which we had ascended, which led down the face of the precipice “slantendicularwise,” Big Pete said, and soon plunged into the bluish gray sea which filled the valley. We were now enveloped in a dense fog, which added materially to the dangers of the journey. I had had so many thrills in the last few moments that my nerves were becoming dull and failed to vibrate on this occasion, so that descending the cliff in a fog by a diagonal fracture in the rock became only an incident of our journey; this trail, however, was wider than the one by which we ascended.
The Rocky Mountains are full of new sensations and I got a new one when I discovered that the fog through whichwe had been traveling was in reality a cloud, and, all unexpectedly, we emerged into the clear mellow light below the floating vapor. It was an enchanting scene which met our eyes; below us stretched a beautiful valley.
For the first time in months I saw a human habitation. The blue smoke from the chimney ascended slowly in a tall column and then floated horizontally in stratified layers. There were fields of ripe grain, orchards, groves, pasture lands and a winding stream fringed with poplars, which flowed in a tortuous course across the valley. As I feasted my eyes on the peaceful scene a great longing took possession of my soul.
Big Pete, too, was lost in thought, conjured up by the scene below us. He stood leaning on his rifle with his eyes fixed on the enchanting picture; so full of unconscious dignity was his pose, so immovable stood the mountain man that he looked like a grand statue done by a master hand.
But what thoughts were conjured up in theguide’s brain by the unexpected sight of this ranch could not be interpreted from the expression of his countenance, for that showed no more trace of emotion than an American Indian at the torture stake, or the marble face of a Greek god. Presently he shifted his pose, threw back his head, and Big Pete’s eyes were fixed on the valley in front of us, as with distended nostrils he sniffed the mountain air, his brows contracted to a frown, his eyes lost their gentle angelic look and seemed to change from China blue to a cold steel color, and his tightly closed mouth had a stern expression about the corners which appeared altogether out of keeping with the occasion.
“Rot my hide!” he exclaimed, “if I hain’t had a neighbor all these years and never knowed it. Waugh! Some emigrant—terrification seize him!—has found another park an’ squatted, t’ain’t more’n eight miles as a crow flies from mine, nuther, Le-loo.” He looked at the sun and muttered. “Hang me,but ’tis t’other end of my own park,” then he paused a moment and added fiercely, “if these geysers know when they are well off, they’ll steer shy of Darlinkel Park. If I catch ’em scoutin’ ’round my claim, I’ll send ’em a-hoppin’.”
“Bless me, you are neighborly,” exclaimed a voice in smooth, even tones.
“What!” said Pete, looking sternly at me. “Did you speak?”
“I said nothing,” I replied.
Big Pete’s countenance changed and he ran his hands over the cartridges in his belt in the old familiar manner, and with a motion quicker than I can describe it, whipped out his revolvers and wheeled about face, at the same time snapping out the words, “Throw up your hands!”
We were standing on the surface of a flat table-rock, which jutted out from the face of the towering cliff and overhung the valley that was spread out like a map beneath us. About twenty feet back from the edge of the rock was a pile of debris heaped up against the face of the cliff; but the remaining surface of the stone was clean bare and weather-beaten. The talus against the cliff was composed of loose fragments of stone and other products of wash and erosion. This was overgrown with a thicket of stunted shrubs, wry-necked goblin thistles and murderous devil’s clubs. These bludgeon-shaped plants, thickly covered with sharp thorns, reared aloft their weapons as if in menace to all living things; the unstable ground and thorny thicket formed the only shelter wherewe could be ambushed in the rear, and it was not a likely spot to be chosen for such a purpose by man or beast.
When Big Pete wheeled about face with his trusty revolvers in hand, I quickly followed his example, and our mutual surprise may be imagined when we found ourselves gazing in the faces of a semicircle of gigantic wolves. The animals were squatting on their haunches at the foot of the talus, their wicked slant eyes fixed upon us and their red tongues lolling out from their cavernous mouths.
I cannot tell why, whether it was the state of my nerves or the effect of the rare air of the high altitude, or what, but I felt no fear at facing this strange wolf pack. Indeed, to me they appeared all to be laughing and their red tongues lolled from their open mouths in a very humorous fashion.
The whole scene appeared to me to be exceedingly funny and, in a spirit of utter reckless bravado, I doffed my fur cap, with exaggerated politeness made a low bow, and,addressing the largest and most devilish-looking wolf in the pack, exclaimed,
“Ah! this is Monsieur Loup-Garou, I believe. Pardon me, Monsieur, but did you speak a moment since?”
But Big Pete Darlinkel looked at the wolves, and great beads of sweat stood on his forehead. It was his turn to have the shivers. There was no more color in his face than in a peeled turnip. His gun shook in his left hand like a aspen, while the spangled gun in his right hand dropped its muzzle towards earth and there was scarcely strength enough in his nerveless fingers to have pulled a hair-trigger.
Pete’s great baby-blue eyes turned helplessly to me; but it was now my innings, and with a cheery voice I cried,
“Why, Pete, old fellow, what ails you?” Then meanly quoting his own words, I added, “They hain’t nothing but wolves!”
There is not a shadow of a doubt that Pete expected the wolves to answer me withhuman voice, and I am willing to confess that, even to me, there seemed to be no other alternative for the slant-eyed bandits to pursue. But for the present they appeared to prefer to maintain a solemn silence.
The middle wolf had been looking intently at us for some time before a well-modulated voice said,
“I have answered your call, gentlemen; how can I serve you?”
I was more than half expecting some such answer, but if it had not been so evident that Big Pete was badly frightened and had lost all his self-possession, I should have thought he was again practising his art as ventriloquist.
Of course I deceived myself. The wolves had no more power of speech than a house-dog. But I really thought the wolves were doing the talking until I caught sight of a tall man of handsome and distinguished appearance seated among the weird goblin-thistles just above the wolves. The stranger appeared to be a man of almost any age; he might beyoung but, if old, he was wonderfully well preserved. He was clad in a light-colored buckskin suit of clothes, edged and trimmed with fur, a fur cap on his head and moccasins on his feet. And I noticed, with a start, that he had that same red porcupine quill ornament on his hunting shirt that the young Indian wore.
When I saw how his dress blended perfectly with his surroundings I excused myself for not sooner detecting him. I could not help but admire his easy grace and the sense of reserved strength in his strong figure. The calmness and repose forcibly reminded me of the mountain lion we had lately encountered.
“You kin hackle me and card my sinews, if it hain’t the Wild Hunter himself an’ his pack,” said Big Pete under his breath.
The color now began to return to his face and at the recollection of his late rude words the big fellow blushed like a school girl. Gradually he recovered his self-possession, and, doffing his cap, made a low bow as graceful and as courtly as that of any polishedcourtier. This was an entirely new side to my friend’s character and I listened with interest when he said,
“Sir, whether you be loup-garou, werwolf, witch-b’ar or all them to onct, I do not care. What I want ter say is ef that tha’ ranch yander be your’n, you may hamstring me ef I hain’t proud to have such a man for a neighbor. Whatever else you be yore no shavetail or shorthorn, an’ that’s howsomever. I don’t mind sayin’ that yore a better shot an’ all around hunter an’ mountain man than Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, Bison McClean and Jim Baker all rolled in one. Yore the slickest woodsman on the divide. I’m powerful proud of you as a neighbor and would be still prouder ef I might call you my friend.”
Our strange visitor displayed a beautiful white set of teeth as a frank smile played over his smooth face. But his only answer at that moment was an inclination of his head and a muttered command to the wolves,which they instantly obeyed by silently disappearing in the underbrush.
After a pause the tall stranger came forward, and, removing his own cap, made a bow even more courtly than that of Big Pete, as he thus replied: “Sir, I feel highly honored at this flattering expression of commendation. I can honestly say that it is the greatest compliment I have ever received from a stranger, and,” he added with another winning smile, “you are the first stranger with whom I have held converse in nearly twenty years. That I am not unfriendly I have already proved by some trifling services, but the honor of the acquaintance is mine.”
After the formalities of our meeting were over the stranger stood for a few moments with his chin resting on his breast. He was evidently thinking over some serious subject. His head was bare, his fur cap being in his hands, and his hands locked behind his back. A mass of light colored hair fell over his forehead and shoulders.
Presently he looked at us again, with that same grave smile on his face, and said that if we would consent to be blindfolded and trust ourselves implicitly to his care, he would be glad to take us to his home and would feel honored if we should choose to visit him.
“You can proceed no further on this trail for it ends here, and not even a goat can go beyond the rock on which we stand, therefore we must retrace our steps a few hundred yards,” he explained, as he apologized for his strange proposition. He securely bandaged our eyes with our own handkerchiefs, and after turning us around until I at least had lost all sense of direction, he placed thongs in our hands, and then we discovered that we were to be led by some sort of animals, presumably wolves. Whatever else they were, they proved to be careful and sagacious leaders.
After a short distance of rough climbing where we constantly needed the personal help of our mysterious host, we began to descendand soon our feet told us that we were traveling on a comparatively smooth though steep trail. Now and again our guide would speak to warn us of stones or other obstructions in our path, but, with the exception of these necessary words of caution and brief words expressing approval or reproof to the animals, we made the journey in silence and in due time reached the bottom, and our feet told us that we were walking on a level shale-covered path.
At this point the creatures leading us were dismissed and we could hear them scrambling back over the trail. We heard the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cattle and all the multiplicity of noises so familiar on a well-stocked farm, and we could easily detect the different odors as familiar and characteristic as the noises. We enjoyed to its fullest extent the novelty of the homely sensations aroused by the smell of new-mown hay and the familiar medley of sounds peculiar to the farm.
In due time we found ourselves at the footof a couple of wooden steps, which we ascended, and, crossing a broad veranda, entered a doorway. Here we stood awaiting further commands in utter ignorance of our surroundings. Of course, we surmised we were in the ranch house which we saw from the table rock, but this was only a surmise.
“Gentlemen,” said the strange old man, “you are welcome to my home, and allow me to add that you are the only white men who have ever crossed the threshold of this house.”
As he ceased speaking he removed the bandages from our eyes.
It was a strange place, indeed, in which I found myself. Our eyes were unbandaged after we entered the portal of the ranch house, and when Big Pete and I turned toward our guide, we were facing in a direction that gave us a sweeping view of the entire ranch. And what we saw made us marvel.
This farm, between the towering, almost insurmountable mountains, had evidently been wrenched from what two decades before had been as much of a wilderness as the Darlinkel Park across the divide. Timber clothed the mountains on either hand but the fertile valley bottom was as rural as a district of the middle west. On one hand stretched acres and acres of ripened grain. Beyond was pasture land dotted with strange whitefaced animals, which later proved to be hybrid buffalos, a strange cross between wild anddomestic cattle.[3]In other pastures and on the hillsides I could see goats and sheep, and these too were evidently a cross breed of wild and domestic stock, the goats having a very strange resemblance to the fleet-footed shaggy old fellows we had seen on the mountains, while the sheep closely resembled usual domestic sheep.