The band of gold grabbers, whose prisoner Miss Maclan had become, had met the snowstorm supinely. They had, besides, obeyed their prudent leader by remaining buried in its protective mantle until the day was broken. The ravine crest had quickly been banked up, so that shielded them; and the marshland, offering no poor resistance to the tempest, had turned no gusts back. They had suffered the least of any exposed in that time of anguish. The danger over, they set to cleaning the camp with coarse jokes, and thronged to breakfast at a bugle call, after having worked on a cup of coffee alone with the wolfish appetite of sojourners in that high latitude. They were well provisioned, none of the wormy "crackers," rank pork, and burnt horse bean coffee of commerce, but good flour bread, deer and bear meat, and honest salt pork. Captain Kidd would have lost half the troop in this onerous wintry expedition with an inferior table.
For the leaders a marquee had been erected, raised of the canvas that sheltered them nightly, in which a folding table stood on picket pins for legs, so that the guests could squat around. Well loaded with hearty fare and various liquors, it was the article of furniture most prominent.
The captain and his lieutenants were received by a youth of eighteen, who took their rifles with the address of an experienced servant, and a Negro.
As soon as he arrived Kidd bade the latter withdraw.
"¡Vamos!'moosey!" he cried, "For your big ears are not wanted.The Drudgewill do the waiting. Tell the señora to breakfast with her new toy! I have a business conference to make with my partners. Mind, none of your sneaking curiosity, or I'll sell you to the Blackfeet for a slave. They are swarming out there!"
The Negro dived under a flap of canvas with a terrified face, as much afraid of his threat as of his master, thus evading a tin plate that was wantonly skimmed after him, and might have cut his head.
"Sit to it, gentlemen," said Kidd, rubbing his hands, "and don't let the good things get cold."
They had not waited for this apology for grace to begin the meal like so many carnivora. For about a quarter of an hour no one uttered a word except "Pass the mustard," "Don't let that bottle go to sleep thar!" and so on, whilst "Drudge" was kept on the trot.
He was only about eighteen, we repeat; but he appeared older from being tall, large in the joints, muscular, and especially from the resolution on his manly countenance; he was sallow, and his restless eyes dark. He seemed a prey to incurable melancholy. Though he was too crafty to let his true sentiments be exposed, it was clear that he served these ruffians with inward repugnance, not to say hatred. Two of them in particular filled him with disgust, and they always spoke in a scornful and threatening tone; they even struck him and kicked him, as if they considered him their thrall. These were "Quarry Dick" and "Lottery Paul," Kidd's next men, of whom Mr. Filditch has made an unflattering mention. Their more intimate acquaintance is about to be given.
The chief was the first to break the silence with a remark that summed up the prevailing sentiment, no doubt, as all growled or grinned approvingly.
"The storm was no feather," he said, "but it has blown over nicely. Old Nick has taken first-rate care of his chicks."
"I don't think anything less would have pulled us through so far," said his right hand neighbour sarcastically.
"And so he ought. We work mighty hard for him, you bet!" said his opposite, emphatically.
"To say nothing of what we are going to do pretty soon 'on,'" concluded the one facing the captain, upon which all four laughed.
"Yes, it's blown over, and our old friends in Texas are catching it about this time. I hope it will wash the slate of some of my unpaid scores in barrooms I could tell you of! But care killed a cat; I'll have none of that in my tumbler. There's only one thing kept me awake last night, and that was not the thought of the storm."
"What, my friend Corky Joe?" inquired the captain, who seemed to feel peculiar affection for this lieutenant.
This singular, or even comic title, that of the wolverine, otherwisecarcajieuof the Canadian trappers, the wickedest wild beast of Northwest Americanfauna, seemed no misnomer for a daredevil, spirited, malicious, alert, quick to whip out a knife or draw a pistol to back his impudent and defiant speech. The finest shot with either hand was he, the best horseman and the most tireless and reliable sentinel of the band.
"I only would like to know who cut off our friends in the narrow ways."
"Oh, as for that, the girl whom we brought in alone knows; but I am sure they knew we were 'no good settlers,' to have laid our representatives low. I am reserving the questioning of that girl till our more important 'talk' is over. Light your pipes, gentlemen, if you are done polishing your eyeteeth, and let us hold the council."
"There's one thing sure," observed the Frenchman, "the more I look on this forsaken country, through smoke or with a clear eye, whither the Cap. has brought us, the more firmly I wish I had it well behind me. It's enough to make a man wish he was a grizzly; nothing else can thrive here."
"Come, come, Frenchy," remonstrated the leader, "we are no more delighted than you. It is not here I mean to lay out Kiddville! But there is no other way to the port whereto I steer."
"Port! More like alkali water; there's not an ounce of anything worth a man's stooping to pick up over all the tracks we've crossed. The fact is, the hangers round Varina have 'stuffed' you with yarns of the wonderland which gets farther away the nearer you come to it! Gammon about the valley covered with surface gold! I know what gold bearing earth is, having been in Californy in the good old years!" with a smack of the lips. "This volcanic tract is burnt out. Any metal has long since melted and run away miles below. Either you have swallowed the old trapper's drunken mouthings for gospel, or you have let Corky Joe here get you in a coil! The bigger lies he tells, the more you like him, I believe! I wouldn't copper his layout onesou!You hear me!"
"You keep my name out of it!" cried the individual alluded to, with an unfriendly tone.
"I'll kick you out of it if you lead us astray! I am not to be bluffed off by you, ugly face! This is a free country, ain't it? And my opinion is that you fawn on the chief to have the longest pull at his bottle of select brandy!"
Scarcely were the words spoken before the Wolverine reached across the low board with a gleaming bowie knife. Luckily, the Frenchman knew the man he had taunted, and threw himself back, which gave Kidd time to shove himself between.
"Put up your knives," he roared. "What do you friends want to waste a stab and a cut for when we are literally surrounded by the enemy? It's only when we have eaten the last round of horseflesh that we should carve one another, and we have not come to that corner yet. Come, come, don't rilemewith your snarling!"
"All right, old man, that's past now," returned the Parisian, "only we'll come to a settlement before we come to the settlement, or I am much mistaken—"
"Still at it, confound you!" cried the captain, laying his hand on his revolver butt.
"Oh, no, that's only a leetle friendly caution. Here's his health! All I have to say is that if you had listened to Dick and me, who wanted to 'clean up' the new mines at Deadman, Wyoming, instead of this uncombed savage, thecarcajieu, who bolsters you up in your obstinate fit to keep on going ahead, we should not be where snowstorms rage. Why, you knew us down south, but the Wolverine was no acquaintance of yours a month before you gathered the gang; my pile on that for a fact!"
"That's so, Paul," returned the leader, dreamily.
"Why not even have gone through the Mormon country? We all know they are 'temperance folk'; but, bless you! It's next door to a teetotal town that one drinks the best tarantula juice."
"That's true!" said Dick.
"I daresay," replied the chief bandit, "that I have gone a trifle out of my way, but you ought to know that I was bound to leave no 'pointer' on my path as to my true aim. Things were getting too hot for us on the border—we are well out of sheriffs' and vigilance committees' curiosity. I do not like there being so many folks afoot just where I believed we should find a desert, but perhaps last night's blizzard has scattered them like so many loose pebbles. What do you think of our scrape?" he demanded of Corky Joe.
"About as bad as they make 'em," was the unhesitating answer.
"What's your opinion, Dick?"
The English ex-convict shook his head sulkily.
"It's a beast of a country," he grumbled. "There's more snow falls in an hour here than would fill St. James' Park for a week! It will be almost a treat to be a roast at a redskin's torture fire."
"I concur," added Lottery Paul, laughing. "All right, Quarryman, we are two of a pair, and I'll stick to you when you say we must claw out of this trap."
"What's the use of this bullying bounce?" cried the captain, "We are all in the same box, aren't we?"
"I don't know so much about that. Paul and me are new to this wild tramping business, and never came to such passes as these deuced mountain passes before. The Californian Sierra is molehills to it!"
"In short," took up the Frenchman, "we believe your gold mine is a fraud. Your course so far tends to take us over the Rockies, where many a better man has left his bones, and though a solid chunk of gold as big as a house awaits me yonder, I have my reasons not to go over to the Pacific coast."
"Same here," subjoined the English felon, scowling.
"What I go on to say is, every step forward means harder fare—the tracts you assured us were desolate are growing Injins, your gold mine does not show up, and so, give us a couple of hundred dollars apiece for having escorted you so far, and we'll march off on our own hooks."
"That's my say, too," coincided Dick, delighted with the Parisian's eloquence.
"I have heard you out," proceeded the captain, smoothing his brow with an effort. "Now, hearken to me. You are green to these parts—very well. From my youth up I have heard stories of a Wonderland on whose threshold we now are. The Indians regard it with awe, and only peer into it from afar; but trapper and hunter have penetrated it by design or hazard, and all their tales cannot be campfire lies. Moreover, they have brought palpable evidences to the border. At Santa Fe I gambled with a trapper, whose jacket was bright with diamond buttons, stones that he found in a marvellous garden where the berries were turned to petrifaction as they grew; the chokecherries were rubies, the blueberries turquoises, the pigeon berries garnets, the Indian pears flawless crystal. He had collected a pouchful in half an hour, for which a Jew at St. Peter's gave him eight hundred dollars as they were turned over to him in the rough."
"Did you ever meet 'Oregon Ol,'[1]in your rustling about? He's a Nor'wester who has traversed this region more than most; he never wants for gold, and he hardly takes a trap out with him, and often brings back the powder he started with. And Marcellin's Choctaw Boy, and Hopeful Ed., and Simmins the Knifer, all familiar with the Yellowstone River to its uppermost forks. They have lined their pockets without handling the spade, on surface flakes alone. And Jim Ridge, the father of the Old Birds of the Sierras—with his copper face companion the Cherokee!" he went on, with a deep and sudden frown and a baleful glance, "Look at their equipments, at the way they buy the cream of everything, and take two or three trains a year up into the highlands. What is all that for? Provisioning themselves for staking out all the best spots in an auriferous region—the motherland of the gold and silver of which mere washings go down thither by driblets! Those mountaineers are leagued with the Yager, and they have found an enormously rich hole in the Yellowstone Basin. There's enough to make each of us twenty times, ay, fifty times a millionaire, and those dozen hunters selfishly stand us off! Go your way, if you are bent on it, without any dollars from me. I will persevere, though I am left alone, in striving to wrest this secret from that crew. I tell you, boys, I have had enough of a hard life with the prospect of walking off a mule's back till a rope round my neck brings me to a short stop. I want, with the worst kind of want, to go see Europe with a big draft on the Bank of England, and have some of these Eye-talian princelings black my boots before I die in 'em."
Then, seeing that he had kindled his hearers with cupidity, he concluded:
"Who loves gold galore, comes along with Mr. Pirate King!"
"I catch on," cried Joe, as if inspirited.
"They do say, though, that the Yellowstone Valley is haunted—spirits of Injin devils guard the incalculable treasures, spit hot poison at the invader, smother him in scalding mud, shower rocks upon him from tall bluffs—so if you are afraid of what hasn't daunted Old Jim and his band, why, leave me and Joe to have the first chop 'rise' on you when we meet in Nevada City, me and Joe regularly bulging out with whisky, good hotel grub, and gold and diamonds, and you scraping the gutter for the dimes swept out of the stores! Look here! If in ten days we are not knee deep in golden sands, in a vale where eternal summer reigns, then lead me out and shoot me!"
There was a pause: the Frenchman's eyes blazed like fanned coals, the Englishman panted noisily and ground his teeth with a bulldog's anticipatory glee.
"We are on a sure soft thing now," pursued the captain, clinching the nail which he had driven home. "I don't know how it is, but I am confident our vein of bad luck has fined out to a hair, and that fortune is going to do a smile."
"All right," said Dick, after a glance at the Frenchman, who nodded, "we'll tail on for ten days."
"Then another drink round. Joe, pick me out four or five fellows who can use snowshoes without laying themselves up with themal du racquet(snowshoe lameness), and let them scout about to see if the Indian sign crops up over the new snows."
The lieutenant having left the tent, the captain pulled out a map on sheepskin, and explained in detail where he surmised the treasure of the trappers to be, and where he also hoped to surprise Jim Ridge in his mountain recess. His enthusiastic promises and the effect of the liquors restored the recalcitrant pair to good-humoured allegiance.
In two hours' time, one of the scouts returned, pleading that his snowshoes were unable to help him over a snow coatedciénaga, or bad swampy stretch, where he would have sunk and been smothered. But, in the captain's ear, he whispered a communication which set that worthy to reflection. At the end of it, he directed Lottery Paul to take the rackets and go off investigating in a certain direction, ordered Joe to keep good guard over the camp, and took Dick with him on an exploration of his own.
Installed without any hostile spies at his elbow as provisional commander, Corkey Joe smiled to himself, and muttering: "Nothing could have been better; hang them all three!" he proceeded towards the rocks, where Drudge was standing on guard over a mysterious doorway.
[1]See The Treasure of Pearls in this series.
[1]See The Treasure of Pearls in this series.
When Corkey Joe had almost come up beside Drudge, the latter exchanged a knowing glance with him, and, drawing a sheet of tarpaulin aside from the doorway in the rocks, glided like a serpent within. As the canvas fell behind him, the bandit captain's representative calmly took the sentinel's place.
Drudge entered a kind of passage between rocks, covered over with tree stuff and mud, with the snow heaped on that again to hermetically roof it in. Thus to a second doorway of a cave, he found a hanging of buffalo robes fastened on a cottonwood rod.
He hemmed and hawed a couple of times to give a polite notification of his approach, and after making sure he was alone, stepped within the furportière.
Prairie travellers are like the Turks in carrying with them such furniture as may transform a cave or a hut into a nest of luxury. Captain Kidd had, therefore, had a delightful snuggery made of the dugout, lined with rugs, blankets and furs, so that cold, damp, and wind were excluded. In the centre of this lair, too, a large silver chafing dish, which might have been stolen from some Central American church treasury, contained clear pine knots, which diffused rather an agreeable and, certainly, a wholesome odour. The low seats were all folding, to be transported readily, but were heaped with furs. A couch of the same valuable material was occupied by a sleeping girl: it was poor Miss Maclan, making up with a prolonged rest for her exhaustion.
In a hammock of grass cloth, hung low, another girl, younger and slighter, with a truly American complexion and contour, gently was swinging. She was well within her teens; a sweet and lofty type of beauty such as Raphael and Murillo painted in their most inspired moments. Her large black eyes seemed to reflect thoughts oftener of heaven than of earth; her transparent skin, fine as satin, showed the blue network of the delicate veins, and offered a violent contrast to black hair in thick and long tresses. Her irresistible charm was heightened by the permanent sadness which covered her lineaments and compelled pity. She smiled faintly on beholding Drudge, and bade him welcome in a tuneful voice as she gave him her little hand.
"But I ought to scold you, friend," she said, "for coming too often. If that hateful man, whose very slave I am, should catch you here, where you could find no excuse to be, ill would befall you."
"That's so, señorita," the youth replied, lightly enough, "but you need not be alarmed about me this time. My only danger is that you will think me intrusive. Captain Kidd has left the camp, and the depth of the snow makes going so slow, that I should not wonder if he made a long stay of it. They have been having another jangle, all in my hearing, for," he went on, with a bitter smile, "they reckon me as an idiot, and go on as if nobody were by."
"Poor Leon!" she sighed, kindly.
"Don't be sorry about that, señorita," he hastened to proceed, "for that's my safeguard. Otherwise I could not watch over you as over a sister. The hour is nigh for me to prove my devotion, methinks."
"I very well know that I can count on Leon with entire trust. Is not our cause, our hope, the same? Misfortune unites us. But I must own that, knowing your implacable hatred for this wretch who holds us in his power, I am often afraid that you will burst out into some imprudence that will destroy you and leave me without a friend in the world. Unless," she added, with a glance at the sleeper, whom their subdued tones did not affect, "this is a new friend whom heaven has accorded me in my distress."
"Rather a spy whom the odious captain thinks to plant in your confidence," returned Leon, with jealousy and doubt. "Coming from the captain, I would not take an angel as a being of light."
"You are wrong there. We have not exchanged many words, Leon, but already we are sisters. Think! She has lost a father lately, and has been hunted by Indians! Poor girl! Her fate is at least as dreadful as mine, and her heart wounds still bleeding. We can trust her, though I have not told her all."
"Tell her nothing superfluous," he cried. "The slave must be cunning and prudent, or he will never have the chance to obtain his freedom. Many a time, though, I have let go the chance to obtain it alone."
"You were right! For what would have become of a boy like you in these deserts in a storm such as shook the earth last night? You would be a mite!"
Leon the Drudge smiled disdainfully, and his pale face was set in an expression of energetic will.
"That is not the fear that held me, señorita," he replied. "I am young, but Indian boys go on the warpath at my age. I have broken in horses that great men about this camp have shrank from backing, and can back a mule or fire a shot to the centre with any of them. But for my double oath, I should have been alone—yes, but free on the prairie, long before this!"
"Explain! For you speak beyond my comprehension."
"Señorita, I made a vow to be revenged on this horde of villainous men, and not to fly save with you. You have not been spared so long but for some fiendish end which a man of honour is bound to loathe beforehand and baffle when discovered. That is why I remain, and why, however tempting the opportunities to slip away, I shall remain until it is possible for you to follow me."
"Alas! I am too closely guarded for that. A princess could not be more narrowly watched if she were affianced to the grandest king on earth and by her hand her father would be saved from ruin."
"Maybe you are more free than you imagine, señorita."
"Now, pray do not fill me with any baseless hopes. And talk less loud, lest you awake that poor slumberer. Alas! I weep, it being only a girl—a child who is incapable of doing anything but wail and pray for deliverance."
"Your defenders, if not deliverers, are at hand."
"At hand? I see no one but you, poor boy, and this sorrowing woman, who can only pray with me."
"I talk of men—men determined, able, and daring—one of whom you have seen."
"The man they call the Wolverine!" she ejaculated, hiding her eyes like a child to whom Bogey was promised to appear, "A man that terrifies me! He is the second self of this horrid Captain Kidd. His name pourtrays him, and his sight fills me with dread."
Drudge smiled softly.
"What has his name and his appearance got to do with it?" he cried. "Both may be put on! The gem and gold are not at all prepossessing when natural. How does the domestic dog escape being devoured by the prairie wolves when abandoned at a camp? He joins them, frisks with them, and howls more loudly than they! If Corkey Joe resembled a missionary, he would stand pretty conspicuous out from our gang of Border Terrors. It is by putting on their style that he has hoodwinked them."
"Oh, if I could be sure that you are not cheated, and that this fright of a man is truly what you say!"
"I say so straight. The Carcajieu may or may not be a beauty, but his look is only skin-deep anyhow. I'll answer for his faithfulness with my own head. I know what he is worth."
"Then, tell me—"
"No, I cannot, señorita," he interrupted sharply. "I promised to keep the secret. No more, beyond his being your most devoted."
"Now, Leon, do not fill me up with a belief of which the removal would be heartbreaking!"
"No fear of that, señorita!"
"Very well; spite of the repulsion he causes, I will be polite to him, kind—I will even speak to him—"
"Why not at once?"
"Oh, not at once!"
"I say that is best, for it's a first-rate chance, the captain and the chiefs being out of the camp, and Joe the ruling spirit. Do you consent to receive him?"
"But I would rather—that is, a little preparation. Let me consult with this young lady."
"It is not her secret! Do you waver? Do you recoil?"
"No!" she cried, at the taunt, with a decisive tone, which startled and thrilled him; "Let him come! Go, bring him, Leon!"
"He waits yonder, as the sentry in my stead."
"Let him come, and heaven grant that you are not deceived!"
As Drudge departed the young girl leaned breathlessly forward with an anxious gaze for the person who replaced him in the doorway.
Behind Corkey Joe the screen fell, forming a dark background to set his figure off. The right-hand man of the gold seekers' leader had not modified his aspect or apparel, and yet there was a change which elicited an exclamation of surprise from the girl. His step was firm, his usually stern and spiteful face beaming with pity and frankness. The features that had originated invincible repulsion were still there, but, with the morose and mocking expression, had vanished all foundation for distrust and dread. He stepped forward and saluted her respectfully.
She glanced towards the sleeper.
"Let her repose," he observed, with even more sympathy in his eyes of cold steel blue; "she will need her strength restored for what we all may have to pass through."
"No doubt," she sighed. Fixing a clear gaze on the man, she smiled faintly, and promptly held out her hand, saying, "Heaven bless you, unsuspected friend, for being alone in this host of heartless men, to take some interest in a poor orphan!"
"Señorita," answered Joe, in Spanish-American, which tongue she had used, "I have only joined this bad set at the peril of my life, in pursuance of my duty, incidental to which comes in the rescue of you."
"Leon told me so."
"Then he spoke the truth."
The brief silence was broken by the prisoner.
"I am almost sorry, though, that you have ventured to speak to me," she said; "the captain is so jealous a tyrant, that anything makes me tremble. Still, your voice inspires a confidence of which I was very much in want, and, notwithstanding your not engaging appearance—" for the sunshine seemed to have left Lieutenant Joe's countenance again, so that he glowered unpleasantly as ever—"something within tells me that your heart is too good to deceive me, and that you really intend to do me a good service."
"The little bird in your bosom sings the truth, señorita. If needs must, I shall lay down my life to save yours—though that's no more than an American is brought up to do for the fair sex. As for my looks, those artist fellows don't come out here to paint tailor's models and opera lobby heroes. Besides, if you ever saw a church procession in Mexico, you may remember the Devil that the monks flog and the boys pluck by the tail. He's no pattern of manly beauty; but, very often, he is the widow's son and the best young man of the town, come to shuck off his mask and shear off the claws. 'Shouldn't wonder," he went on, smiling, "but that, without paint and powder, your bridegroom would be pretty jealous if he had me for best man and I drew the bridesmaids' eyes to my corner. At present, my ugly mug, and my talk, and my warpath gait are too useful to be laid on the shelf. I thank you sincerely, young lady, for the confidence you are kind enough to put there, in my hand, and it will not be a parrot's age before I shall try to justify it."
"I believe you, señor, and I, too, shall be glad to have the time come."
"And now, moments being counted, to business! We may never get such a chance again."
In quick, clear tones, the double playing lieutenant of the prairie pirate resumed his speech.
"A full explanation about me would lead us afar, so come to the essential point," said he. "To begin with, when you want to ask or tell me something, let Drudge know it. He is completely devoted to you."
"I know that, señor."
"And as we must look ahead, it being likely that Captain Kidd may be in a whim, or for good reasons forbid you visitors, here is a little scroll in Spanish, with what is called a Table of Second Sight Signals, used by conjurors. The questions are innocent and commonplace enough, but they stand for phrases of meaning. You can address me thus direct on the march, and not a soul can suspect we are carrying on a correspondence."
"I'll soon have that by heart, señor," she exclaimed.
"And teach this young friend the same. The captain will have his work cut out with two women leagued against him and a spy in the garrison, I promise you. Nevertheless, you must bear in mind that patience and stratagem will alone bring us success. Keep up your bearing of dislike to me, in order that nobody can guess we are secretly in tie."
"Understanding all the importance of that advice, I shall conform to it."
"Captain Kidd is sly, and at the faintest hint of our relations, it would be all over with me."
"I shall obey you in all ways, señor, and you shall be satisfied with your pupil," she said, gently, but firmly.
"One question: what is Captain Kidd's behaviour towards you?"
"So, so; his is an overbearing character of self-will, and he is insensible to sentiment; often days pass without his thinking to throw a word, good, bad or indifferent towards me; but I must honestly confess that he never forgets the respect due to my sex, age, and education. However impulsive, absurdly freakish, and even passionate he might be too, many a daughter is less ill treated than me his prisoner."
"It's a comfort to learn that there is one bright spot in that dark heart. My plans as regards him depend on the information I heap up. So tell me if you ever knew the captain before he stole you away from your boarding school at New Orleans, kept by the Misses Featherley?"
"I really cannot answer you with a certainty, señor. Still, there is now and then a tone of his voice, and even a look of his eyes (which I remarked to be very strong to require spectacles) not altogether new to me. I may be deceiving myself as to that, but I am pretty sure that he is disguised more or less."
"If he were known to you in your earliest years, where would that be?"
"Why, señor, as I speak Spanish and English as if they were born in me, having only had to acquire French at New Orleans, I have always believed what was told me, that my father was an English merchant, who married a Mexican lady, and that I lost both of them by an Indian attack."
"Who introduced you at that school, where the terms were high, I have heard say?"
"It was, indeed, a fashionable seminary. I was an orphan, true, but some near kinsman was taking care of my future."
"Who was this?"
"I never saw him, and his steward only once. I cannot even describe him, but an elder schoolmate pictured him as a middle-aged man, stout and strong, not particularly tall, stern and dark, with a shifting eye and rough skin."
"And his name?"
"Thismajor-domowas called Mathias Corvino. One of the Miss Featherleys told me that he had become an independent gentleman, and lived in New York in great style."
"Do you suppose that in the husk of Captain Kidd could abide this same Mathias Corvino, señorita?"
"I have not the skill to say so, but when the captain is angry, I am reminded of that man."
"Your information is to the point, and has its value. Well, whatever the disguise of our friend the captain, depend upon it that in time I shall have him at bay, and he will show his real traitorous face!"
"And now, may I just put one question to you, señor?"
"Go ahead."
"You know many things," she observed, very gravely, and lapsing into English unwittingly. "Pray tell me, have I parents, have I kinsfolk?"
"Yes. A mother, no; a father, yes—if he has not passed away during a year. A brother younger than you too!"
"A brother! Oh, tell me about him."
"I am sorry to say that I am quite ignorant of the fate of your brother Lewis."
"Lewis!"
"But you must not despair, señorita. Mark this, whatever mishap your brother ran, you have been watched by at least one friend of your father's, and had the villain who abducted you from your home attempted to suppress you by murder, an avenger, if not a defender, would have appeared by your side in the New Mexican gentleman named Don Gregorio Peralta."
"I know him, the grey headed gentleman who spoke to me when the school was out on promenade. He told me he was my friend. Where is he? Pray tell me."
"The accomplices of your abductor tried to kill him to prevent Captain Kidd being followed. His wound, however, was serious without being mortal. I will warrant that, as soon as he could fork a steed, he set out on the pursuit of you."
"Oh, then you hope he will overtake us?"
"He or another will be at our side soon," answered the false lieutenant, ambiguously.
"You are not trifling with me?"
"I am not that kind of Wolverine," answered Master Corkey Joe with a forced laugh. "I say Don Gregorio, spite of his age, is on our track, because he loved your father. Your father is also afoot, and, at last accounts, hoped to enlist in his aid some mountain trappers. They are not sordid men—often have they been known to lay aside a whole season's harvest of incredible toil to rescue a man or woman of their colour from the red men, or to flock to the border when the cry of an Indian outbreak commanded all gun bearers to fill a loophole in the forts. But this troop which surrounds us is bent on a mission hostile to the first explorers of this region, and its stores of fiery spirit and ammunition are intended to be sold to the Indians, clean counter to the laws of the United States and British Dominion, and to the regulations of the fur trade companies. So Captain Kidd's organisation is doomed! And you must be saved when it is crushed."
"Have I, indeed, friends in this vast loneliness?"
"In the midst of those mountains draped in untrodden snows, in those unfathomable canyons, upon the plain and within the caverns that profoundly tunnel the glaciers, upwards of fifty brave, strong, and honest men, are invisibly repeating my call to them."
"Your calls?"
"I have been talking to them whilst we were conversing here."
"I do not understand, señor."
"On these immense wastes, the voice is insignificant, but the clear air allows the vision to travel far. Not only is there one general code of signals by fire at night and smoke by day, but the trappers, who are now independent since the ruin of the American fur companies, retain in use the alphabet they employed. Since the captain left me control of the camp, I have had the fires placed as I chose, and their position as the columns of smoke ascend has telegraphed for miles around that one of their allies—I—is here in want of assistance. Not a soul suspects it, but already I am sure some of the hunters are carefully proceeding hither and inspecting the camp. Soon I shall sally out and meet one or other of them, and the end will be arranged for."
"Oh, señor, this incredible good news fills me with joy! At last I am happy!" she exclaimed, with her eyes full of tears. "Oh, be true to me, man whom I have misjudged, and yet who evinces so much devotion! Be true to me, for if this, is a cheat, you might as well have driven a dagger through my heart!"
"Keep faith in me, señorita. I mean to save you as surely as to punish a great scoundrel! This I have sworn, or the buzzards will have a meal off my bones."
"I will rely on you, my friend," giving him her hand cordially.
"Besides," said he, "it looks as if my friends were already at work. Three of the band have been cut off already."
"Nay, sir," interrupted a third voice, "you are only half right now. Who the remover of two of them is, I can tell you: not a dweller in these parts, but a young Englishman, who has done so much out of attachment to—to my father."
It was Miss Maclan. Her sleep had been interrupted at last by the dialogue, and, sitting up, she had listened for a few minutes before she presumed it meet to interpose.
In well-chosen words, she hastened to inform Corkey Joe fully on the attempt at her rescue, and of the abrupt apparition of the Half-breed who had dragged away Mr. Dearborn.
"Cherokee Bill!" ejaculated the false bandit, in great glee. "What did I tell you, señorita? Why, we are living right among friends!"
He seemed to forget the ladies, who affectionately embraced, as he reflected on the incident no longer a mystery to him.
"Farewell," he said at last, "above all, do not let this joyous hope of yours be manifested. You must wear a mask, too, whatever singular events may occur. This Cherokee Bill is an inseparable companion of the oldest trapper of the Rocky Mountains, and there is no trick too artful or impudent that he may not essay. Rest assured the Yager of the Yellowstone Valley, as this trapper is called, will give Kidd a teaser before long."
He bowed and left the excavation. Soon after he might have been seen perambulating the camp, cold, calm, and wary, directing the nourishing of the fires, and puffing easily at a huge meerschaum pipe with a very short stem, secured by a string to his buttonhole against loss. No one suspected what a chat he had with the beautiful prisoner.
After leaving his camping ground, Captain Kidd soon parted from the Englishman, whom he sent on through a valley, where he disappeared. Kidd had not much practice in using snowshoes, for he was a horseman of southern plains life; and the inevitable pain at the instep forced him to reach the higher land of the valley divide or crest, and trudge on with the rackets at his back. Here the wind had left but an inch or two of snow; and he walked for a couple of hours without noteworthy inconvenience. Finally, he came within half a mile of the Red River Half-breeds' ill-fated encampment.
When "Quarry Dick" preceded him there, he found the Canadians still digging out the wagons, and binding up their wounds and frostbites. He was much surprised at seeing so many women and girls; and, at the first words addressed to him, was still further filled with astonishment. Instead of going on to the place where—whether he knew it or not—the Botany Bay convict had prepared an enviable reception, his captain chose an elevated knoll, cut some long sticks with his hatchet knife, laid them upon the snow, and across one another in strata, so as to form a platform, and kindled a fire upon this greenwood, a tolerably familiar act in the winter. Soon the flame sprang up, hot enough to roast a buffalo whole; but he threw a couple of handfuls of stinkwood upon it to cause a black pillar of smoke.
On spying this token that his leader was at hand, the "Sydney Duck" remained in the Bois Brulés' camp as a hostage, according to usage, though the precaution would have been waived, and their captain came forth to confabulate with the other commander. Gliding along over the snow with the Canadians' expertness on what are national footwear to them, the Half-breed speedily hailed the man quietly seated at his fire.
"Who comes?" challenged the latter, cocking his rifle, for form's sake.
"Dagard, the Bois Brulé, one of the leaders of the Red River Rovers!"
"I am the leader of a large band of gold hunters," was the reply. "Glad to see you; come on."
Captain Dagard was one of those independent spirits, who would always be in conflict with the town authorities in civilisation; and also, in the wilds, did pretty much as he pleased, and executed, with delightful nonchalance, many an unjustifiable deed. His mixed blood made him now hate the whites—now scorn the reds—but all the time resist government in general, and the British Colonial one in particular. It is to be borne in mind, too, that never were two more incongruous elements in one country than the Scotch and the French settlers of Canada—the one sober, steady, strict Puritans; the other volatile, indolent for periods out of proportion to their fits of activity, and staunch upholders of the feasts of the Church.
Unprejudiced beholders cannot see any difference in the treatment by the rulers of either people; but still the French Canadians, and principally these Half-breeds, never cease complaining that they do not enjoy the same privileges as the conqueror race.
Kidd and the Manitoban sat down by one another.
"You might as well have come on into my camp," said l'Embarrasseur, reproachfully, "though we are a little upset by the storm. The moment I learnt from your adherent—a stout fellow, eh? Though a bit of a brute!—That you were so kind as to help me when the Crows were in our midst, you could be sure you were as my brother!"
"Yes, of course," stammered Kidd, at a loss to understand the allusion. "I—I came in—in the nick, didn't I?"
"Like a miracle! We thought we were gone under, sure, when you poured in that volley, and made the Crows take the back track. By all that's blue! You gave them such a share that we have seen not a feather of them since! That is one kind thing for which we are all grateful. Now, is it in our power to repay you?"
"That depends."
"You are prospecting; is our local knowledge any use to you?—it is freely yours, captain."
"I can say neither yes nor no now, for my comrades must be consulted. We are going into the Yellowstone Basin after gold—"
"Ha, ha!" laughed Dagard; "Another dive into the famous Northern El Dorado, where the way is paved with gold and silver, and the fishponds are boiling water whence one draws thepoisson d'avrilready cooked!"
"Do you not believe it is likely?" queried Kidd, earnestly.
"As you say, neither yes nor no. We gave the 'Firehole' a wide berth, for we are not at home in sulphur marshes, soda lakes, and burning pits, like that of the bad place. If there be gold there, though—"
"I promise you that," returned Kidd, confidently; "all points to it. Will you join us—sharing and sharing alike—if my men agree to the union? There is enough and to spare for all of us. Besides, blood being spilt of the Indians, I am afraid my men need be five hundred, and yet prove feeble. These mountain Indians are hardy, not given to the rum bottle, and warlike above all their brethren of the plains."
"They fought like devils incarnate, I repeat. Half my command is disabled or dead, and we were lost irretrievably but for your intervention. I say that again. But what am I to do with the women?"
"What women?"
"I have under my charge sixteen women, that is, those over twenty-five years, and fourteen young girls, to say nothing of still tenderer children—"
"Oh, pshaw! If you are dragging your families about with you," began the gold hunter, contemptuously.
"You are off the track. These are valuables, not encumbrances," rejoined Dagard, tartly. "In two words, they are the captives of the Dakotas, taken away from their burnt cabins in recent raids, and they were placed in my charge so that the Indian agents might discover no traces of them. Thus I have secured the friendship of the Sioux, and if the English come to attack our little Red River Republic, they will find us reinforced by plenty o' fighting men!"
"And," proceeded Kidd, with a chuckle, "if the redcoats defeat you and you take flight back into Uncle Sam's territory, you can obtain his protection by a handing over of the captives whom you charitably snatched from the wigwam. Well conceived, Captain Dagard!"
"Well or ill conceived, it is not my invention."
"Well, anyway, no fool thought of it."
"That's where you are wrong. It's the idea of a lubberly man of mine, Dave Steelder, 'Daft Dave.' He's aninnocent,as we Bretons say, an idiot, if you prefer the word."
"Oh, Daft Dave!" exclaimed Kidd, with a sparkle of the eye under his snow goggles.
"Do you know him?"
"I met him at the Humboldt Washup when the flume burst and carried away his hut and savings. They say that drove him stupid. That was in 1869, or so, but others make out he was cranky before."
"If he is an acquaintance of yours, perhaps you would like to see him. Shall I whistle him over?"
"Well, no, some other occasion! He may have the delusion that I look like one of the awkward cusses that broke a plank in the flume and let the flood spoil the diggings. Astonishing what a family likeness the red flannel shirt, the patched pants, and the high up boots gave us all at the gold mines. I have often been taken for another!" concluded Kidd, with a wink.
"How unfortunate!" said l'Embarrasseur, drolly laughing. "Then, I should not advise you to run against Dave. He's apt to tear when he's mad. Still, his strength makes him useful about a camp, though he's not bright, and though he's not trusted on guard, he throws out valuable hints now and again, as these dullards do. But this is wind work, mere talk. What have you come over to propose?"
"Well, I am thinking that you and I might work in double harness."
"Strike a bargain, eh? There's no knowing! There will be a stir up on the frontier—the Britishers are pressing on that railroad. I want all the friends I can cluster. What's your proposal?"
"Assist me to find the gold hoard in the Firehole, and I, who am not without friends in Congress, will engage to restore your captives in so glorious a manner to their relatives, that you will become a hero and have a monument in every Western city! It is true the Sioux will sharpen their knives to punish your breach of faith, but I never heard that there were many Sioux in the hotels of the Eastern States!"
"Then we unite! And instead of my being a poor leader of only a score hale men, I become a subchief of over two hundred!"
"My lieutenant! The sooner I reinforce you the better, eh? White women in the mountains and Indians within rifle range: it's a temptation they can't withstand. I ought to add that another danger exists. They say in the towns that that old rogue, Jim Ridge, boasts that he regulates this chain of the sierras."
"His friends the trappers lynch a horse thief now and then, and shoot offhand anyone robbing cachés, but that's sound trapper law."
"If he and his friends block our entrance into the Yellowstone 'Park,' what would you do?"
"Oh, when there's a man between me and what my empty pocket gapes for, either he or I go under!"
"You're the true colour," ejaculated Kidd, using a gold miner's phrase, and not, of course, reflecting on his colloquist's complexion—a sore point with mixed bloods. "I will send you a dozen men from the camp the moment I return, and you can join me at our next tent pitching, of which they will bear you word. By the way, tell Quarry Dick to make straight for that Blackstone of a Negro head shape as well as hue. I will meet him there by a circuit, for I can make no way on these confounded snowshoes."
"It comes by practice, my brave captain," said Dagard merrily, "like spending money.Au revoir!Our rally word is—"
"Gold!"
"And the countersign?"
"Beauty!"
They drank each from the others pocket flask in token of absolute trust, and the gold hunter was left to raise his little camp after carefully smothering the fire to prevent firing the brushwood of the vale beneath.
More uneasy about the Indians, whom Captain Kidd knew to be embittered when repulsed at an almost victory, and about the trappers whom he rightly conjectured to have interfered to save the Canadians from annihilation, he moved leisurely to the rendezvous with the convict in order to examine the ground. But nothing was visible to accentuate his fears, and, spying the fantastic block of lava stone in question, he hastened to congratulate Dick on the splendid lie by which the gold seekers were given the credit of saving the Bois Brulés. As he expected, the Englishman, not having his own cause to move slowly, was already at the tryst. At all events, a figure in all points resembling his was before the stone, clearly outlined against it, though he was puzzled to account for a second object, human in form, but of an abnormal flesh colour, like a "raw" corpse, pendant a foot or two from the ground as if hung to a jutting point of the natural obelisk.
"Fool that I am!" suddenly ejaculated Captain Kidd, who had stopped with a chill to the heart, "It's the strange light before nightfall that is giving me a scare! Why, it's nothing but a young bear that he has killed and flayed!—Bear's steak for supper! Ha, ha!"
Indeed, with their peculiar long paws, nothing more resembles a man, excepting cousin monkey, than uncle bear, slim with wintering.
On a nearer approach, any doubt about Dick's identity with the form calmly leaning on the rifle was impossible. Nevertheless, the silence and the immobility of the bandit appalled the other, and the hanging figure, drumming with its heels on the upright stone as the spinning and unspinning of its cord of support oscillated it, increased in ghastliness and its likeness tohomorather thanursa.
Pausing again anew, he let himself be attracted to understand the puzzle, and, as Dick made no movement, far less a reply to his now frenzied appeal, he darted madly to the butte where the lava stone rose like a monument. There the explanation was ample.
Some merciless hand had slain the Englishman, beheaded him, and flared him, with the skin of the neck only left intact, and after suspending the body like an artist'sécorchéalong the pillar, stuffed the human hide out with snow so that not a wrinkle showed. The cold had frozen this effigy into the semblance of a marble statue. Whilst the captain gazed horrified, some scratches on the obelisk near the suspended corpse caught his eyes. He read with redoubled apprehension:
"—, known as 'the Sydney Duck,' 'Sydney Dick,' and 'the Convict,' escaped from Australian prisons, murderer of Californian miners, of Don Gregorio Peralta, and of his daughter, Mrs. Filditch, tried, found guilty, and executed by Us,""THE MEN OF THE MOUNTAIN."
"—, known as 'the Sydney Duck,' 'Sydney Dick,' and 'the Convict,' escaped from Australian prisons, murderer of Californian miners, of Don Gregorio Peralta, and of his daughter, Mrs. Filditch, tried, found guilty, and executed by Us,"
"THE MEN OF THE MOUNTAIN."
"Hands off!This is the buzzard's bait, do you hear?"
Then the drawing of a rifle and crossed knives, and the fur trademarks of Jim Ridge, Cherokee Bill, and the name "S. G. Filditch," firmly graven.
At the end of reading this weird death sentence, which was a warning too, Captain Kidd uttered a terrible execration, and clutching his rifle and knife, as if he expected the wild justiceers to spring out upon him from around the monolith, darted frenziedly from the unhallowed eminence.
But he had no pursuers, and reflection came to him after half an hour's mad floundering in the snow, that he would be safer among his men than solitary. Besides, Lottery Paul had probably returned, and might, in the chiefs absence, preach that doctrine of retreat to the gin palaces of the frontier which was, on the face of it, superior to the present outlook. His iron hand could alone contain the bandits if any could.
"Besides," murmured he, "what would 'Dave Steelder' say if he knew me to turn such a skulk? After all, what a riddance that rough brute is! As for me, I have had some very close calls, but fortune has carried me through."
The grey sky was darkening, distant objects were already blending into compact masses. Luckily, though not a proven trail finder, Kidd had woodcraft in plenty, and soon hit on the proper homeward direction. On spying an indubitable mark, he uttered a sigh of gratification, and hurried to make up for lost time. He judged that within the hour he would be in camp, when he came upon some fresh and bold prints in the snow crust, hardening as the night brought coolness. No one could doubt that they were made by a grizzly bear, not the black or the brown, but the genuine "Uncle Ephraim" himself. This set the fugitive a-thinking. A braver man than he does not foresee a meeting with Old Eph. without pardonable misgiving.
The grizzly or the grisly—according to whether you name him after his coat or the horror he inspires, is, far more than the lion, the king of beasts, for he is perfect in courage, in strength, steadiness under gunfire, and a noble good humour towards his folk. He is, perhaps, the only animal that dances in sheer love of amusement, and his gambols at a "bears' party" are the drollest sight a hunter ever knows. It is true few have looked on and lived to tell. The Rocky Mountains are the home of the veritable grizzly, and the frequency of his apparition among the mines of the Sierra Nevada won the title of the Grizzly Bear State for California.
Captain Kidd recovered from the recent shock that had unhinged him before a danger that required coolness to temper bravery. He shook his head like a Newfoundland coming out of the water, and growled.
"This lumbering fool has smelt the camp, and has put himself exactly in my way back. I wish he had given those Canadians a visit where there are plenty of dead bodies."
He carefully examined his rifle, slipped in a second bullet in a greased wad, and resumed his march, but with extreme caution. The difficulty was not to stumble on his foe, who, with razor sharp claws six or seven inches long, would make a man look as if he had gone through a "system of saws" in a mill.
He had proceeded some five hundred yards, so as to nearly get out of the tangle wood of deciduous trees, distorted and stunted by the cold winds, when a prolonged cavernous grumbling, arising not far from him, sent an icy shiver all through him. He stopped short, bent forward, and took a wary look. Before attaining a clearing, there was a narrow canyon to cross, profoundly cleft between two perpendicular sides, two yards deep and twenty paces long. About a third of the way up this channel, leisurely sprawling on the snow, in which he was partly embedded on account of his great weight, a grizzly was licking his fore paws and smoothing pine burrs out of his harsh coat. Suddenly, the animal winked its little savage eyes, pricked its snub ears up, and, without glancing round or caring to listen, set to sniffing. Its subtle scenting faculty had been aroused by some unwonted and consequently disquieting emanation. Nevertheless, a fact delighting the captain, it was not he to whom the bear was paying any heed.
"Good luck to the stir in the air that saves me!" he thought. "The creature never imagines that a man is treading on his tail. 'Tis a splendid fur coat; but I am not hunting grizzly just at present, thank you! I don't care for any on my toast!"
Hence, he was taking a backward step and looking about him to try to manage a circuit to avoid the encounter, when he heard what seemed an echo,only a little more so, of the bear's growl. It came from behind him, and was so angrily intoned that he was most surprised to see a second grizzly, no doubt the mate of the first, slouching along towards him, its head lowered in his track.
To be the shuttlecock between two ursine battledores is one of those experiences of which few victims narrate the incidents.
The second antagonist was certain to arrive at him by its unerring scent, and, moreover, was the nearer as well as the larger beast. To shoot and run for his life was all the course which his fright counselled, so he lifted his gun, levelled it steadily at the grizzly's eye, partly veiled by its shaggy fore hair, and pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, whether the piece had been tampered with, or the snow had eaten away the barrel, the charge hung fire, and the peculiar and frightfully loud detonation betokened that the barrel had burst. Without being wounded, the captain pitched forward head foremost into the snow, from not meeting the recoil which he had nerved himself to resist.
Both bears howled together, rattled their claws and gnashed their teeth, and, with a loud snarling, bounded towards the hapless captain. Mechanically, he drew his knife, but, on scrambling to his feet, experienced a fear so inexpressibly appalling that he forgot his determination to resist to the inevitable death, and leaped away in a mad scamper.
Accustomed to riding, he was not a good pedestrian; his winter garments were unsuitable, and he was no longer blessed with youth. Besides, to get over such ragged ground, and among tough, thorny, scrubbyconifera, was impossible for one in blind haste. He could tell by their breathing that the two bears were nearing him, bound for bound. He had lost his knife, and his revolver having been torn out of his belt by a briar too, he was absolutely at the mercy—an unknown element—of his pursuers. He dared not turn his head; in hunters' phraseology, he felt them ruffle his hair with their breath; and, in truth, Old Ephraim and his spouse were not a dozen steps off. His own hair stood up, spite of a cold perspiration, for he felt that he was irremediably lost. In two or three minutes, say five at most, he would become that not unique subject of a well-worn Western epitaph—granting that he was left inburiabletatters—Unknown man gobbled up by grizzly.
He was stopped by the inability to make a further move; both bears reared up, and the least towered a head and shoulders above him. He was, by the force of education, striving to recall a prayer, when a human hand unexpectedly clutched him by the collar and dashed him down, crying in a voice most energetic:
"Laydown, you fool, and give a man a chance to shoot, will you not?"
As the captain again was buried in the snow, two rapid reports of a gun extinguished in their reverberations the growls of the grizzlies. Then arose a couple of painful lamentations from their hoarse throats, and, as Kidd lifted his head, he beheld with stupefied eyes a man disdainfully pursuing the bears and keeping them "on their run" with panic by pelting them with snowballs and splinters of ice till they disappeared over a mound and into some crevice, where the chaser deemed it good sense not to follow further.
"What is this all?" the gold grabber demanded, sitting up, still half dazed and wholly incredulous, and speaking Spanish, as one in dire straits always uses the mother tongue.
"Talk English," responded the other, returning rapidly and recharging his double-barrelled gun, according to hunters' rules, never to carry unloaded firearms in a dangerous country. "And don't talk to me of the courage of the grizzly any more. Are you alive? I mean, are you not wounded?"
"I am not sure how I am," returned the chief of the gold seekers, standing with difficulty, and staring at his rescuer.
It was Ranald Dearborn, clad as a regular hunter; but his face was not burnt and weather beaten yet, like a veteran's, and he had an elegant and almost dandified air, which his recent conduct belied.
He laughed as the captain brushed himself down, and "tried" all his joints, doubtingly.
"Where are the bears?" inquired Kidd, anxiously.
"I drove them into a crack that probably leads to their lair. They shed my shot and my bullet off like rain from a roof; but we may be more lucky in another attack. Shall we have a turn at them?"
"Thank you very much, but I have had all I want of such diversion. Why, when they reared, it was like looking up the side of a church! I am sure their teeth were as long as a hunting knife. Who and what are you, stranger?"
"A hunter—an Englishman wintering in Canada and hereabouts—came out to this New World to see some sport."
"Alone!" cried Kidd, in the tone of one addressing a madman. "Stop, though, I have heard—though I never believed it—that solitary hunters of your nationality do come here with the notion that buffalo are merely wild bullocks, the puma a large edition of the domestic cat, and grizzly himself, a rough badger puffed into balloon size bypinyonfruit. I say, friend," he went on, nervously glancing about, "kindly lend me your arm as far as my encampment. I am in force here, and promise you good entertainment. Not a man of my band but will welcome the preserver of their leader. I owe my life to you doubly; you must not go away till I shall have acquitted myself of the debt."
"Nonsense! It's all in the day's sport. You would do as much for me, if it had been the other way about."
"I doubt it—I draw the line at grizzly. But you know that such a service obliges the doer as much as the receiver. Come along."
"I tell you, I am used to camp down anywhere I feel sleepy. I have no fear of rheumatism," returned the young man, gaily.
"I beg you to accompany me to my camp, for I am quite lame, and spend at least a night there."
"Do you insist upon that?" inquired Dearborn, with a singular expression.
"Certainly; we must drink to our better acquaintance;" dragging him feverishly along.
"Have your own way."
"You Englishmen are all as rich as you are eccentric, but no man can be too rich. I may be able to relieve myself of some of my obligation yet."
"Not a word of that! As for accompanying you to your camp, please to observe that you entreated me to do so."
"I'd force you if I could."
"This is a queer world, and in this wilderness passions rule unconstrained. Friends overnight shoot at one another at sight at noon of the morrow! If we ever fall out, mind, you must not blame me, since I wanted to be left alone, as I came."
"What trash! You are joking in that dry way which we Spanish well understand. You have saved my life."
"It looks so, does it not? Still, I should feel more certain on that point, and rate myself more of a hero if we had those bearskins—one apiece!"
"I'll send twenty men to track them to the death, and you shall have both. But come on."
Leaning upon the stranger's arm in an affectionate manner, Captain Kidd pressed on as nimbly as his shattered nerves and really crippled state permitted. Not one look behind did he give, and yet, had he been able to see the other side of the rising ground, over which Ranald had driven the terrified bruins, he would have been given food for reflection.
In fact, sitting on their tails, without their heads, which they held in their paws, the bears were laughing with supplementary inner mouths belonging to quite human countenances. These bore a strong resemblance to those of Cherokee Bill and Jim Ridge. They, of few men, had the necessary knowledge of grizzly's fife and demeanour to play the part which had completely deceived Captain Kidd, and would have succeeded with a more skilled hunter. Presently the two disrobed themselves, flung away the osier rods which had swelled out the skins, packed the latter up, and winked drolly at one another.
"I say, Bill, mind you see the editor of theRocky Mountain Squelcher," observed the old trapper, humorously, "and insert the item that Mr. R. Dearborn was introduced to Captain Kidd by Mr. and Mrs. G. Bear!"
It was going on seven o'clock when the unhappy Captain of the gold seekers and his deliverer, as he emphatically termed him, reached the former's camp.
The weather kept cold, and the frost was biting. The cloudless sky of a clear night was lavishly sprinkled with the brightest stars.
Lieutenant Carcajieu was on the point of sending out some scouts to find the captain and missing men as he reappeared. He was warmly greeted. Not that his fellows doated upon him; but, being like seamen navigating an unknown sea, they would have been in a quandary if he had eloped. After thanking them, the leader gave an account of his adventure, upon which the congratulations broke forth afresh for one who had escaped two grizzlies. Three or four men, as they were fully equipped, were directed to go out and bring in the remains of the English convict.
"By the way, where's the Frenchman?" enquired Kidd, though desirous of repose.
"Paul has not returned," responded the lieutenant, to his surprise. "Though it's blamed late for scrambling round in the district overflowing with b'ar."
"I hope nothing's befallen him," observed Kidd, gravely. "Double the force of scouts, and let them move most warily."
Leaving Joe to govern the camp, and seeking the recuperation of which he felt in need, the captain and Dearborn proceeded towards the tent. Wearied, aching, and meditative, Kidd did not remark a quick peculiar sign of "friend!" from the young hunter to his right-hand man. A plate additional was set for Dearborn, and the captain plied a good knife and fork. Soon he gave the Negro Samson an order. In five minutes its purport was made manifest, for the black man ushered in under the canvas flap, Doña Rosario. She came forward in a singularly embarrassed way, a feverish blush on her face, and her eyes curiously enkindled. She seemed struggling between interest in the stranger and a resolve not to exhibit it.
This caution was so quickly mastered, that it was invisible by the time she had taken a seat prepared for her between the two men. Dearborn had gazed at her with no other sentiment than admiration, unless, also, some pity was involuntarily betrayed.
Ordinarily Captain Kidd let no incident escape him; but he was too bruised and too famished not to be exceedingly self-concentrated. Happily for them, therefore, nothing met his eye.
"I must ask your forgiveness,Niña," he said in Spanish, in a voice which he tried to soften, "I ought to have notified you of a stranger guest."
"As the ruler, sir, you can do just as you please," she returned, with indifference.
"Nay, nay, my sweet! I don't want the gentleman to have a poor opinion of me, and suppose I act tyrannically over you."
"I beg pardon, Mr. Kidd," interrupted Dearborn, playing carelessly with his knife, "as everybody has his hands full in minding his own business, I make it a rule never to go out of my way supposing things. At the same time, this foreign language before a guest is not what I was educated to call the correct etiquette. Besides, if you must discuss family matters with this young lady, whom I take to be your daughter, would it not be better to put that by till we are through the meal?"
"Oh, I thought you knew Spanish," returned the captain, smoothly. "The lady is not my daughter, but my ward—a far-removed relative—but I love her as if she were my own child; and there is nothing that depends on me that should not be hers to satisfy her in any way."
The girl smiled mockingly. The captain never moved a muscle as he went on thus:
"I was merely observing, my pet—querida Niña—that I never should have invited a complete stranger hither—one I have only known a few hours—to be our guest but for his having rendered me one of those services utterly unpayable. In plain English, he has saved my life."
"Delighted to hear it," rejoined the young lady, nibbling at the sweet biscuit.
"It is only too true," took up the hunter, laughing, "that, without any vaunt, my interpolation in your trialogue with the grizzly bears alone prevented the last repartee being rather fatal than otherwise to you."
"Ugh! The bare idea makes me shudder!" said the captain, with no intention to jest. "I am gooseflesh all over now!"
"Did this gentleman really save you from the monsters?" queried she, apparently at length interested in the conversation.
"Save is the word!" ejaculated the bandit chief. "I was under the very claws, between the teeth of the horrible beasts. So shake again, Mr. Dearborn," he added, with a fine tragi-comic offering of his hand. "We are brothers right on till death do us part! I am not much given to speechifying, but I have a rare memory for good and evil deeds done me, and as I live, you may ask anything of mine, and halves we go in it, though 'tis my gold placer in the—well yonder!"
"Mind, I'm booking that offer, captain." said the young man, with an Englishman's hearty joviality; "I am not a man to forget easily, either, and I am a great fellow for taking people at their word. So, though I am for claiming nothing just now, do you see, I should not wonder if someday I remind you of your pledge. So hold yourself ready to meet the demand, and cash up."
"There is no reminder needed in my case," said the captain, rather coldly and proudly. "You will find me ready to act up to my pledges."
"Therefore, I shall not dwell on that point. Let us change the subject. You were laughing at me as a foolhardy son of fortune who renounces old country luxuries, and penetrates the American wilderness,quite by himself," he said with a stress meant for the auditress to mark the phrase; "but what the plague brings you into desolation? You have not the look of a merchant. You would not haggle and bicker with Messrs. Lo & Co., as the Yankees playfully call the noble son of the forest."