Cal Evans, sitting by the fire and toasting his bacon in the camp of the Apaches, knew nothing of what was to happen that day in all those other places. He was ignorant of what had already occurred, except to himself. His strongest feeling, at that moment, was grief for what he knew must be the anxiety of his father, and for what he feared that his mother would suffer when his father should get home without him. He had passed a wonderful night, and it seemed to have made an older boy of him.
The dawn was brightening fast when he took his first cup of coffee. He was very hungry, and he picked up a piece of corn bread to eat with it. The fact that it was stale, and that it had been upon the ground, did not make any difference to a fellow who had been staked out, and who was very likely to be upon his back again very soon, or tied to a torture-post.
As for his two guards, he did not know nor care that they had aroused several other braves, and that all of them were rummaging the forest, near the cypress, in search of any trail he might have left behind him. Each brave in turn had re-examined the forked stakes and had expressed his wonder.According to them, Cal was "Heap snake" and "Heap bad medicine." They were at work upon their mystery, and he upon a piece of toasted bacon, when he heard an almost musical "Ugh," behind him, followed by other grunts, in which there was no music whatever.
The first sound came from a woman's voice, and, when he turned around, there stood Wah-wah-o-be. She had risen early in order that the chief's breakfast might be ready for him upon his return from his morning look at the corral. The other exclamations were uttered by three dog-soldiers, whose patrol duty had brought them to that camp-fire.
"How," said Cal, holding out his hand. "Good squaw. Give boy water."
Then he remembered that she had answered him very well in Spanish, and he said something in that tongue about the coffee and bacon, and told the three dog-soldiers that they were very fine-looking fellows.
It was not impudence, and it was not cunning, for it was nothing more nor less than desperation, but he could not have acted more wisely. While he was exchanging morning greetings with the dusky policemen, yet another brave came hurriedly up, and, the moment he saw Cal, he uttered an astonished whoop. He was one of the pair set to watch him, and he had come in great trepidation to announce the escape of the prisoner. Under other circumstances he might have even used violence, but a captive was safe in the hands of the dog-soldiers, and he did but stare in Cal's face as if in doubt as to his being there.
Cal's mocking coolness was not at all exhausted,for he felt too badly to be afraid. He held out his hand.
"How," he said. "Good-looking Indian. Drive heap stick."
"Ugh!" said the puzzled savage. "How boy get away?"
"Leave stick there," said Cal. "Pull off arm. Put hand on again. Cut off foot. Put on again. Want coffee."
He explained more fully, by signs, that he had taken himself to pieces to get out of his wooden fetters, and had put himself together again to come and eat his breakfast.
Almost all Indians have a vein of satirical fun in them, and Cal's explanation was thoroughly appreciated by his hearers, excepting the wrinkled-faced warrior who was made to look like a cheated watchman. Wah-wah-o-be laughed aloud, and a deep, sonorous voice behind them joined her in what was half-way between a chuckle and a cough.
"Ugh!" it added. "Heap boy. Son of long paleface chief. How boy like stake out? Kah-go-mish!"
"Kah-go-mish is a great chief," said Cal. "Steal heap pony. Hear a great deal about him. Bad Indian."
He had touched, half bitterly, the right chord—the Apache leader's intense vanity about his fame. Wah-wah-o-be was also pleased to hear that the pale-faces talked about Kah-go-mish.
Before the chief could unbend for any more conversation, however, his duty required that he should investigate the affair of the forked stakes. They were a mystery even to him for a moment. Hereprimanded the two guards severely for using them at all. They were needless. They had been carelessly put down. The braves who had done it were mere squaws, and did not know how to drive a stake. He was stooping over one of the fetters when he said that, and the truth flashed upon him. Cal had driven it down hard, and it was plain that no human ankle had ever been under that fork. The chief's derision of the unlucky guards broke out afresh, but he expressed great admiration for the skill and conduct of the young pale-face brave, the worthy son of the long, broad-shouldered chief of the Santa Lucia cowboys.
Wah-wah-o-be had no need to explain to the dog-soldiers that Cal was to be permitted to finish his breakfast in peace. They were decidedly inclined to favor a youngster who had performed a feat so remarkable, and whose courage was evidently equal to his cunning.
Other Indians and other squaws came and went, and boys and girls, although the larger part of the band was inclined to sleep a little late that morning.
Kah-go-mish came back from his inspection of the stakes, and he came with another part of his plan ready for action. He now felt pretty sure of getting back Ping and Tah-nu-nu without giving up too many horses, and he had decided upon a safe method for opening negotiations with the pale-faces. Nothing whatever could be done successfully as long as the blue-coats were in the way. He had dealt with army officers before, and their methods had been unpleasant. They had always persisted in speaking of captured horses as stolen property, and they were ina sort of league with the Mexicans as to such matters. His first business was to get beyond their reach, after letting them know that he held a hostage for their present good behavior. He ate his breakfast while he was thinking over the matter, and then he summoned one of his most cunning warriors and told him to bring his swiftest horse and a cactus-leaf.
Cal's heart jumped for joy when he found that he was to write to his father, even with such materials. He took the leaf and he used his knife for a pen. He saw the Apache messenger spring upon his horse and ride away, and it seemed to him that one of the heaviest parts of his burden had been taken off.
Kah-go-mish took pains to explain to his prisoner that if he should run away to the northward he would die of thirst in the desert, and if to the southward, he would only lose himself among forests and mountains.
"Stake him out again?" said Cal. "Pull up stakes and come for coffee."
Once more the grim Apache smiled not unkindly, and there was less danger of any sort of handcuffs or shackles.
As soon as the entire band had eaten its morning meal, Cal had something worth looking at. The packs taken from the Mexican army mules had not been searched, up to that hour, except for present supplies. It was now needful to ascertain exactly what they contained, and they were all brought out and laid upon the ground in order. It was speedily evident that a company of Mexican cavalry, with a reinforcement of mounted militia, required few luxuries, but meant to have enough of such as it wanted.
CAL USED HIS KNIFE FOR A PEN.CAL TOOK THE LEAF, AND USED HIS KNIFE FOR A PEN.
CAL TOOK THE LEAF, AND USED HIS KNIFE FOR A PEN.
Corn-meal for tortillas, or Mexican cakes, was plentiful, and the Apache squaws knew what to do with it. So was bacon. There was an abundance of coffee and a fair supply of sugar. There were several small bales of tobacco in the leaf, for cigaritas, and some in manufactured shape. There were whole mule-loads of blankets, for possible use in mountain camps. There was ammunition, as if Colonel Romero had expected much fighting. Miscellaneous plunder filled out the list, and the band of the great Kah-go-mish considered itself very rich indeed.
The needs of human beings are very much the same the world over, but they are satisfied in different ways. The tilted wagon from Santa Fé brought to Santa Lucia coffee and sugar of a better quality than the Apaches found in the packs of the Mexican army mules, but it was sugar and coffee after all. The magazines and papers had been full of news and information for Vic and her mother, and the escaped train-guard brought very interesting matter to Colonel Romero. Letters came with the wagon, but not one so interesting as was the epistle which Cal had written upon the cactus-leaf. No story of any sort, in any of the books or pamphlets which Vic turned over so eagerly, was likely to be more absorbingly interesting to her or to any other reader than were to Ping and Tah-nu-nu the tales told by the old Chiricahua under the shadow of the mesquit bushes near the Manitou Water. He told more, that evening. Some of them were about himself and some were about things that he had seen among the blue-coats at the forts where he had been. They were in a good frame of mind for listening, since the sign-language letter brought to them by the messenger of Kah-go-mish. They knew from him that their band was to leave no trail behind it, andthat the son of the long chief of the cowboys was as much a prisoner as they were. If they did not give up the idea of trying to make their own escape, they felt more contented, and could joke and laugh about their captivity.
"Ping pale-face by and by," said Tah-nu-nu, almost merrily. "Heap blue-coat chief. Kah-go-mish make Cal big Apache brave."
Her quick ears had caught his name, but Ping more frequently spoke of him as "Heap pony."
Before the arrival of that quiet evening hour, Cal had added somewhat to his rapidly growing list of new experiences. He felt better after writing the cactus-leaf letter, and he ate a fair second breakfast, cooked for him by Wah-wah-o-be. He made her acquaintance very fast, but Kah-go-mish had his hands full of duties belonging to his pack-mule cargo, and he did not come again.
Quite a different sort of fellow did come, for the wrinkled-faced old warrior was ready to burst with curiosity as to how Cal had managed to get out of his forked-stake prison. With Wah-wah-o-be's help he managed to say so, and Cal volunteered to show him. Several other braves went with them to the foot of the giant cypress, and in a minute or so more that Apache was described by all the voices around him as "The-old-man-who-put-a-peg-into-a-gopher-hole." He already had a fine long warrior name of his own, or the new one would have stuck to him for the remainder of his life. As it was, he evidently regarded Cal with more than a little admiration.
"What do now?" he said. "No more get away?"
"More eat, by and by," said Cal. "See red pony, now. Medicine pony."
There was no reason why the prisoner, under a sufficient guard, should not be permitted such a privilege, and the wrinkled-faced brave nodded. He dropped his long Apache names, however, both of them, and used one which Cal discovered had been given him at the Mescalero Reservation.
"Crooked Nose go," he said. "Pull Stick see medicine pony."
The now numerous drove of quadrupeds belonging to the prosperous and wealthy band of Kah-go-mish were no longer picketed. Free of lariats, but attended by watchful red drovers, they had been conducted to a strip of natural prairie at some distance from the rear of the camp where Cal had eaten his breakfast.
They were of all sorts, good, bad and middling, horses, ponies, and mules; and Cal was able to pick out, as he went along, quite a number that had come all the way from the bank of Slater's Branch. He was looking around him for one horse that was worth more than all the rest, in his opinion, when a loud neigh sounded from behind some bushes near him.
Very much to the surprise of Crooked Nose, the handsomest mustang he had ever seen came out with a vigorous bound, a cavort, and a throwing up of heels, and dashed straight towards Pull Stick, as he had several times called Cal Evans.
"Ugh!" he exclaimed. "Heap pony!"
"Hurrah, Dick!" shouted Cal, and he threw his arms around the neck of the red mustang.
One of the dog-soldier keepers of the horses came riding towards them at that moment, however, and Crooked Nose touched Cal on the shoulder.
"Pull Stick come. Pony stay."
He added a string of Apache words that Cal could make nothing of, but that described Dick as being now the property of The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead. He conversed for a minute or two with the mounted Apache, and the latter pointed sternly towards the camp. There was no such thing as disputing with a Mescalero policeman, and Dick himself received a sharp blow from the loose end of a lariat when he attempted to follow the only master he recognized as having any right to him.
Cal was glad to find that his four-footed friend was in good condition, after his pretty severe share in the adventures which began in the chaparral. Still, it was an uncomfortable thing to think of, that the red mustang was likely to end his days as an Apache pony instead of as the pet of all the household at Santa Lucia.
The camp was regained, and Cal at once took note of changes. The fires had been kindled the previous evening, in a straggling line along the bank or a small stream of water. Tangled bushes marked the course of the stream, and great trees leaned over it, dropping the swinging ropes of vines from their branches to its very surface. The more distant fires had been entirely hidden, except for the glare they made.
The band had bivouacked that first night, but now there were lodges going up, and Cal knew what that meant.
"They mean to stay here," he said to himself. "I might as well be in jail."
It was nearly so. The neighboring wilderness had been found to be full of game, and the plan of Kah-go-mish called for liberal supplies of fresh meat, in addition to what he had found upon Colonel Romero's pack-mules. He felt sure that any Mexican force hunting after him would look almost anywhere else, and none was likely to come for a long time. He and his band were happy; they were safe; they could have a good time until continued happiness and safety might require another move.
Cal and Crooked Nose were met by a summons to come before the chief, and went to find him waiting their arrival.
"Pull Stick here! Ugh!" said Crooked Nose.
"Kah-go-mish is a great chief!" remarked the Apache commander dignifiedly, but he had more to say. He repeated to Cal his previous counsel against an attempt to escape, but after that he raked out some hot coals from the smouldering camp-fire near him.
"Boy see?" he said, as he pointed at the red warning. "How boy like? Ugh!"
Cal shuddered and nodded, but he could not find a word to say in reply.
"Look!" said the chief again, pointing to the ground a few paces away, and Cal looked.
There lay the forked sticks which he had escaped from that very morning, and the meaning of Kah-go-mish was very plain indeed.
"Boy, son of pale-face chief," he said. "No heap fool. Go. Ugh."
"Pull Stick come," said Crooked Nose, in a not unfriendly manner, and Cal walked away with him, to be more minutely informed that he could do about as he pleased, until further orders, unless he chose to do something like trying to escape, which would make it proper for his excellent Apache friends to stake him out again, and "make heap fire all over Pull Stick."
That second afternoon, after the arrival of the tilted wagon at Santa Lucia, was dull enough, in spite of the ample supply of news and literature. All the news from all the world seemed worthless without news from Cal and his father. All the stories ever told were uninteresting until they should come home and tell the story of their expedition after Kah-go-mish and his Apaches. It had been so all day. The projected improvements, in and around the old hacienda, had somehow lost their attraction, and were discussed no more. In fact every time one of them had been referred to it had compelled somebody to mention the absent man or boy who was likely to have an opinion to be consulted concerning it. Vic and her mother went out on horseback in the morning, and they made an uncommonly long ride of it, for they went to Slater's Branch and back, galloping almost all the way home, and putting each other in mind of Cal's dash upon the back of the red mustang to warn them that the Indians were coming.
Duller and duller, yet more unquiet had the day grown after dinner, and now the shadows were growing longer, and they seemed to bring more anxiety with them.
"Mother," said Vic at last, "I've been trying my best not to think of Cal or of father, and I can't."
"It's the best thing we could do," almost sighed Mrs. Evans.
"They may be fighting!" said Vic.
"Most likely they're going into camp somewhere, all tired out," said her mother.
"Oh, I do hope," said Vic, "they are on their way home. I can't read, and I won't."
So all the printed things were put aside, and it may be that some of Vic's thinking made pictures for her a little like the reality that was enacting at Cold Spring and in the Mexican forest. No imagination of hers could have drawn anything quite equal to either of them.
Something almost as well worth making a picture of was taking place a number of long miles farther westward. Away up among the crags and forests of the Sierra, but below the snow-range at that season, there lay all day in the sunshine a very tranquil little lake. All around the lake were the steep sides of mountains, and at no point was there any visible outlet. Streams of various sizes ran into it, and one of them came plunging over the edge of a perpendicular rock, in a foamy, feathery waterfall. There was plenty of room in the valley for the lake to grow larger in, but the trees at its margin seemed to say that this was its customary size. On the northern side the sloping steep went up, up, up, until all its rocks became hidden under a covering of snow.
Just above the snow-line the June sun had been working hard, day after day, melting snow for the lake, until it had undermined a vast icy mass severalacres in extent. Nobody could guess how many winters had been required to make that heap of frost so deep and hard, or how many summers had made everything ready for that hot day to finish the work.
Just before sunset a moaning sound came down the mountain and filled the valley. Then something like thunder, or the report or a cannon, echoed among the crags.
The avalanche had broken its bonds! Down it came, slowly at first, then more swiftly, and the tall pines were snapped off and swept away, and great bowlders were caught up and carried with it. Down, down, down it came, and at last, with a great surging plunge, it went head foremost into the lake. Crash! splash! dash! the flying sheets of water reached the tree-tops on the margin. The avalanche found deep water, for it almost disappeared, but it made the lake several feet deeper, and then its own fragments came up from their dive to be floated around and to be dashed against the shore by the waves.
It did not take a great while for the surface of the lake to become calm again, with the snow-cakes and the ice-cakes almost motionless in the fading light. Not any human eye had seen the avalanche fall, or had noted its grandeur or any of its consequences.
All things were peaceful at Cold Spring. Everybody had eaten supper long before sunset, and was glad of feeling sure that only the coming night was to be spent in a spot where nothing more civilized than a jackass rabbit seemed to have any permanent business.
Colonel Evans had said all he had to say aboutCal, and he stood near the spring, making vague speculations as to how and when he should get into better communication with Kah-go-mish. Near him, sitting upon a ledge, were Ping and Tah-nu-nu, and the old Chiricahua, who seemed to be telling his young friends something more about the bubbling water, when Captain Moore strolled up to within a few paces.
"Do you see that, colonel?" he said. "I know sign language well enough if I can't understand the words. There's no wonder they're superstitious about Fonda des Arenas."
"Cold Spring?" replied the colonel. "What do they say about it?"
"Ask the scout. He says it's Manitou Water in the old tongue. I can't work the Apache syllables."
Neither could Colonel Evans, when the Chiricahua repeated them. He was even eager to tell more, and what he did tell was curious, if true. Just before the great and noble Chiricahuas and Apaches came to own that country, he said, there had been a hill there, a sort of mountain with forests, and there was no desert there, and no chaparral. The Chiricahuas would have preferred a hill and trees and grass, but the old manitou who had lived there had to go away, and everything sunk down to a level. The trees died and rotted away, and all was dry and desolate, until one terribly hot day when a band of Apaches reached the rocky level, almost dying of thirst. Their ponies were unable to go any farther, and they had given up all hope. They sat around upon the rock, and their ponies lay down. All night long they sat there, and then, just as the sun was rising, they sawsomething white spring into the air in the middle of the wide rock. A new manitou had arrived, friendly to the Apaches. He brought the Manitou Water, and it had run continually to the present time. Generally it was quiet, but if the manitou heard good news, the water would sometimes jump away up, as it did when it first came.
"Very pretty story," began Captain Moore, but at that moment the air suddenly was filled with excited exclamations.
The old Chiricahua uttered a loud whoop as he sprang to his feet.
"Ugh!" he said. "Heap manitou!"
He added a few rapid sentences in his own tongue, while Ping and Tah-nu-nu darted away to the edge of the chaparral and stood there, clinging to each other as if in terror.
"Colorado!" shouted Sam Herrick. "What on earth's got into Cold Spring?"
The colonel and the captain also retreated rapidly, shivering from the shock of a sudden cold bath, for they both were wet to the skin.
Twenty feet high sprang the water, with a sharp hiss and a report like a pistol-shot. The first leap subsided, but was instantly followed by another and another, each less lofty than the one before it. Then the stream became fairly steady, but with about three times its customary supply, so that quite a rill of water ran away across the quartz, to be absorbed by the thirsty sand and gravel among the bushes.
Neither Ping nor Tah-nu-nu nor the Chiricahuas could be induced to come near the fountain again,but all the white men gathered around it and made guesses as to what had made it jump.
"Something volcanic," said the captain.
"Been an earthquake somewhere, it may be," said the colonel.
All that evening there was more or less discussion of the remarkable performance of Cold Spring, and everybody missed the right guess. It was only a splash caused by the avalanche when it plunged into the mountain reservoir which supplied the chaparral and the sage-hens and the jackass rabbits and the other wild animals there with water. Nothing could well be more simple, and there was no soundness whatever in the grave remark made to Ping and Tah-nu-nu by the old Chiricahua.
"Ugh!" he said. "Manitou Water heap good medicine. Good Apache manitou. Kah-go-mish get away now. Keep all pony."
Ping and Tah-nu-nu had had no good reason for complaining of their captivity. They had been well fed, they had each a magnificent handkerchief and a looking-glass medal, they had heard any number of new stories from the old Chiricahua, and they had seen how high the old manitou could make the spring jump when he heard good news. They were almost conscience-smitten to find how friendly were their feelings towards all those wicked cowboys and blue-coats, but they were sure that they could get over it all and be good Apaches again as soon as they should get out of that camp.
One thought came, every now and then, to trouble Tah-nu-nu. Colonel Evans had said that he meant to take Ping home with him and make a farmer of him, and Tah-nu-nu's mind drew a humiliating picture of The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead come down to work in a cornfield with a hoe.
She spoke about it to Ping, and he replied with some awful reminders of stories he had heard of the cruel manner in which little Indian girls were sometimes treated by hardhearted pale-face squaws. She might have felt worse but for a memory she had of a beautiful ribbon given her by a white lady at the Reservation headquarters.
Both of them knew that the cowboys and the blue-coats intended to march away early the next morning, and it added more than a little to their respect for the Apache manitou who managed the Cold Spring water-works. They believed that the great jump of the fountain had produced such an effect upon the pale-faces that their chiefs had determined to give up the pursuit of Kah-go-mish. The old Chiricahua was still detailed to watch the movements of the chief's children, but they were not tied up that night.
Neither had Cal been all day in the camp where he had been staked out the night before. He had seemed to listen so attentively to the stern warnings given him against any attempt at running away, and he had shown such good sense that very morning, that he was allowed to walk around as he pleased. He did so, and he succeeded in putting on an air of easy unconcern, although he knew that his movements were all closely noted by the keenest kind of human eyes. He could hardly for a moment be beyond the range of those of the dog-soldier police, but their watch was blindness itself compared to that of the squaws and the young people.
The boys, of all sizes, avoided coming too near him, but it was not long before he made up his mind that every large tuft of weeds around that camp contained a Mescalero in his teens or under them. Little six-year-olders stepped away from behind trees, or sauntered out of bushes, or seemed to have errands which led them right past him. All of his own faculties were in a state of strained wakefulness, and he did not allow such things to escape him.
"I'll see the whole camp, anyhow," he said to himself, somewhat late in the day, after he had become accustomed to the queer sort of freedom given him. "I won't give them any excuse for piling fire upon me, but I want to know all about this place."
The stream along which the camp lay was hardly more than two yards wide in many places, but it ran slowly and seemed to be deep. There were places clear of bushes, here and there, where it could be seen, and it had a black look, from the density of the shadows which lay upon it. It was good water, pretty cool, and the Apaches had taken some fine fish out of it, but there was something remarkable in the fact that it ran in a straight line.
Cal walked slowly on, glancing at lodge after lodge. Most of them were pretty well peopled, and one that was not so had a guard before it, for it contained the treasures of the Mexican pack-mule train. There was not an Apache in the band wicked enough to have stolen anything out of that storehouse lodge, and the solitary dog-soldier who lounged in front of it was not there as a protection against human thieves. He was to keep out dogs, snakes, and any other kind of "bad medicine" that might attempt an investigation of the good things the loss of which Colonel Romero's cavalry were at that time growling about. He probably had other duties, but none of them related to Pull Stick, and Cal sauntered on, barely catching a glimpse of a pair of Apache boys who were doing the same among the trees on the other side of the brook.
He had never seen finer trees, nor had he ever before noticed precisely such a run of water, for justa little distance beyond the last of the widely separated lodges he came to a point where the stream turned off at right angles.
"It never did that of its own accord," suddenly flashed into the mind of Cal, and he added, aloud: "Some time or other it was dug out!"
"Ugh!" exclaimed a voice behind him. "What Pull Stick see?"
Cal pointed to the water and tried to explain himself, startled as he was a little by finding Crooked Nose so near him.
The deeply wrinkled, forbidding face of the Apache brave put on a look of very dark solemnity as he lifted a hand and pointed at something about a hundred yards beyond the turn in the stream.
"Ugh!" he said. "Pull Stick good eye."
The first thing that caught Cal's attention was an enormous dead tree, whose gaunt, leafless arms reached grimly out above a great mound that it leaned over. He looked again, following the line of the water, and saw something else that was remarkable. The small rill which fed that long, deep, shadowed channel fell into it out of a massive stone tank. The masonry was overgrown with vegetation everywhere except at the place where the rill poured out.
At some unknown day, away back in the past, when not one of those old trees had been more than a sapling, some people had been civilized enough and prosperous enough to construct that granite reservoir.
Cal stared intently, for the shadows were beginning to deepen, and he knew that he would beinterfered with if he went too far in his first ramble. The stone tank did not contain all the masonry over which the dead tree was leaning. The mound itself arose four-square.
"It's one of those Mexican pyramids," exclaimed Cal. "I've read about them. Didn't know that any of them were ever found away up here."
He may or may not have been correct about that, but in a moment more he turned to Crooked Stick.
"Sun go down?" he asked.
"Ugh! No. Pull Stick get heap water."
The deepening of the shadows had not been altogether because that notable day of Cal's life had nearly gone. It was rather because black masses of thunderclouds had suddenly arrived, and had hidden all the sky above that part of the ancient Aztec forest.
Swiftly enough came a darkness that walked in among the tree-trunks and covered them so that they could not be seen at twenty feet away.
A vivid gleam of quivering lightning made everything stand out clearly for a second. Then came a deafening roll of thunder, and that was followed by another burst of sound that Cal did not recognize. He did not even know the Apache word for cougar, which sprang to the lips of Crooked Nose. The beast which had uttered the terrified roar, however, came leaping past with tremendous bounds, as if the thunderbolt had fallen near him and he hoped to get away from it. Cal stood still, mainly because no time was given him for doing anything else, but the cougar almost brushed his shoulder as it sprang by him.
"Ugh!" said Crooked Nose. "Pull Stick great brave by and by. Good!"
Flash after flash, almost incessantly, followed the tremulous glare of lightning, and peal on peal followed the thunder, during a full minute, before any rain fell. Then it seemed to Cal as if one awful flash went through everything around him, bringing its rattling volume of deafening thunder with it. He was half-blinded, half-stunned, for a moment.
"That flash must have struck close by," he exclaimed.
So it had, for the next gleam showed him the gigantic trunk of the withered tree splintered through near the earth, its whitened stem, with its drapery of vines, toppling over to come down with a great crash upon the mound above which it so long had stood sentinel.
The next instant all was densely dark, for the rain came down in sheets, and all other sounds except that of the thunder were drowned in the roar of a great wind. Cal Evans had come into that forest to witness a hurricane.
Cal had been all day in a chaparral without water, and he knew by experience how very dry an alkali desert could be, whether under a hot sun or a brilliant moon. He had seen sudden storms before, for he was a ranch-boy, and there are wonders of electricity and rain at times upon the plains. Up to the moment when the hurricane struck the tree-tops, however, he had never fully understood what could be done by wind and water and thunder and lightning, at their very best working strength, working together. No wonder a poor cougar should be in a hurry to get under safe cover if he had any clear idea that all this was coming.
As for the trees, the healthy ones stood up to it admirably. They had all been through hurricanes time and again, and were, moreover, something of a protection to each other. Any tree whose strength had at all been sapped by internal decay, however, or which had failed to send out roots in due proportion to its height, was in more or less danger. Every now and then the crash of some old forest prince made Cal look up at the trees near him to see how they were doing. Crooked Nose crouched upon the ground in silence, not looking at anything. Thetrunk behind which they were partly sheltered was apparently worthy of especial confidence, it was so very thick and seemed so completely beyond the power of any wind to break.
"If any tree can stand it, this will," said Cal to Crooked Nose.
"Ugh!" grunted the Indian. "Heap wind. Heap bad manitou."
The trunk of that tree fully justified Cal's confidence. It did not snap. At that very moment, however, there was a strong hand of the hurricane upon its broad top, and the general uproar was increased by a groaning, tearing sound.
"It's coming! it's coming!" shouted Cal, as he made a great spring into the gloom at its left, but Crooked Nose only lay flat upon the ground.
Ripping, tearing, splitting the earth on the windward side of the tree, and breaking off, with reports like pistol-shots, the roots of the giant growth gave way. Down, down, down came the grand old oak, crashing through branches and smaller trees in the way. It left a great hollow where its roots had been, but Cal need not have stirred one inch. If he had been twenty feet high he could have walked under that fallen trunk without touching it.
"Safest place there is," he said to Crooked Nose. "Hear that?"
"Ugh!" replied he. "Bad medicine!"
Bad for something, perhaps, for it was the squall of an enormous cat in fright and trouble. It seemed as if the hurricane must have come for that particular tree, since it began at once to die away after the crash. The thunder ceased and the flashes grewfainter, while the small remains of daylight came back and made the dripping forest visible. The spirits of Crooked Nose did not at once return. He glanced at the mound, where the lightning-splintered wreck of the dead tree had fallen. He looked up at the oak-trunk over him, and he shivered as if from cold.
Once more the cry of the cat in trouble sounded just across the brook. The carbine carried by Crooked Nose lay upon the ground, and Cal picked it up. It was loaded, and its owner did not make the least objection when Cal took the weapon, sprang across the narrow channel, and began to search for that angry cry.
Yet again it sounded, and now it plainly came from among the branches of the fallen tree.
"That's so," said Cal. "Must be the same fellow. Hid in these bushes and got pinned down."
The frightened cougar had not thought of a trap, when he cowered in a little hollow behind a rotten log. It had not been set for him by either the oak or the hurricane, but it caught him, for a fork of one of the heavier limbs came down over that very hollow.
Cal thought he had never seen any real scratching done until that moment. The earth and leaves and sticks and bits of bark flew fast, as the powerful claws tore a passage out of that captivity.
"He's fighting to get away," said Cal.
"So'd I, if I saw any use in it. I could escape, too, in such a storm as this. If another should come, I'll try and be ready. His head and shoulders are free—there he comes!"
Crack! and the report of the rifle was answered by a loud whoop from Crooked Nose.
Out from his trap came the entire body of the cougar, in a convulsive struggle, and he lay dead upon the wet leaves, an ounce ball through his head requiring no second shot.
Whoop after whoop answered that of Crooked Nose, but Cal stood still, wet, very wet indeed, and almost wondering how he came to kill that tremendous wild beast.
The wrinkled, ugly face of the old Apache peered over his shoulder.
"Ugh! Heap bad manitou gone!"
Boys and braves came hurrying to the spot, and half a dozen angry dog-soldiers were eager to know who had fired a shot within the limits of the camp, contrary to rule.
"Crooked Nose kill cougar," was the first bit of broken English heard by Cal.
"Ugh!" was the reply. "Pull Stick."
There was a kind of fraud at work. The Apaches believed that Pull Stick had faced the very dangerous animal before him without any help. They had heard the wrathful squall, but knew nothing of the trap. Even when Cal explained it, the glory accorded to him was hardly diminished, for there lay the cougar, claws and all. He had performed a feat precisely equal to that of Ping.
Among the last to come was Kah-go-mish himself, and yet he did not look like himself. The red stocking-legs on his arms were soaking wet, and he wore no hat, while his entire visage had a look of intense dejection. It remained there until he caughta glimpse of the cougar's body, and he nearly repeated the exclamation of Crooked Nose: "Bad medicine gone! Ugh! Heap good!"
Slowly Cal began to understand the meaning of several things which Crooked Nose had told him when he pointed at the tank and the mound. That was a place which, as all Apaches knew, was "bad medicine" for them. They ought not to have camped there or put up lodges, and when the hurricane came it aroused all their superstitious fears. They had been dreadfully frightened; as much so as the poor cougar himself, and they would have cowered in any hole just as he did.
Cal's unexpected feat, therefore, had broken a sort of evil charm of that dangerous locality. He had used a gun, however, to which, as a prisoner, he had no right, and there were serious questions to be considered. He had not undertaken to escape, but he had trespassed upon the "bad-medicine" ground. A storm had come and the bad manitou had thrown trees at him to kill him. Then he had sent a cougar to tear him to pieces. The bad manitou had not been strong enough, and Pull Stick had thus far escaped, but it was all very wonderful.
Kah-go-mish beckoned Cal to follow him, and they all recrossed the little stream and walked on to the lodge of the chief. Several other lodges stood near it, for none of them had been blown down, but all things wore a soaked, miserable appearance in the dull gloom now settling down over the "bad-medicine camp." The squaws were trying to rekindle the deluged fires, but without any success.Wah-wah-o-be, at her own heap of wet ashes in front of the lodge, was ready to give up in despair.
Kah-go-mish was exchanging guttural sentences with a group of gloomy-looking, elderly warriors, when Cal took out his pocket-knife, picked up a piece of pine wood and began to make splinters and shavings of it. He then took from an inner pocket a case of wax-matches, and in half a minute more he handed Wah-wah-o-be a blazing bunch of what to her was comfort.
"Ugh!" said Kah-go-mish to his counsellors. "Pull Stick good medicine. Heap bring fire. Friend."
That was the turning-point, and Cal had but barely escaped a much worse fate than that of Jonah. At that very moment, however, a mounted brave galloped in from the forest and drew rein before the chief with a sharp, warning exclamation that was echoed by every tongue. Even Cal exclaimed aloud: "Mexicans? Cavalry? Rancheros? What next?"