Peters was thinking less of the pain in his arm than he was of the rascally work of Peter Markham. The fellow must be mad, to make such an attack! He had planned the whole thing, of course, and had armed himself before leaving Morton’s. Reaching the butte ahead of Peters, he had gone into hiding against the moment Peters should come skating down the river. Then, by way of making his treachery more contemptible, he had called to Peters for help, only to threaten him with a revolver and steal his skates.
“You bet I’ll tell Bailey!” muttered Peters. “I reckon this’ll cook your goose with Goddard, even if you do get to Roscommon in time to have the sheriff head off the bronks! What can a fellow make of a man like him, acting thataway?”
With difficulty, Peters removed his coat and shoved up the shirt and sweater sleeves. The wound was in the forearm, and was bleeding profusely. With a bandanna handkerchief he bound up the injury tightly, knotting the handkerchief corners with his fingers and his teeth; then, getting into his coat again, he began considering his next move.
It was twelve miles by river to Roscommon, and eighteen miles back to the ranch. Even if it was now useless for him to get to the town, in order to carry the news of the horse stealing to the sheriff, returning to Morton’s would have been a fierce pull on his strength, and he dared not attempt it. He would make his way to Roscommon. If he could reach the settlement before Markham left it, he would lodge a complaint against the treacherous scoundrel, and have him held in the town jail. Peters was burning for revenge. Yes, that is what he would do.
He got up, feeling a little dizzy and faint, and started down the river. His feet struck against Markham’s skis, and another idea came to him. Perhaps he could tinker up the splintered ski and use the runners. After the accident that had lost him the jump at Devil’s Lake, Peters had bought a little fine wire for the mending of his own broken runner. That wire was still in his trousers pocket, and it might be that he could use it in fixing Markham’s splintered ski.
Picking up both runners, and holding the damaged one between his knees, he struck a match and made a careful examination. The stout ash had been cracked under the binding mechanism. A few wraps of fine wire might yet make the runner serve. With his jack-knife, Peters dug a shallow groove across the ski’s bottom, and in this he imbedded the half dozen coils of wire that he wove over and over and made fast on the upper surface.
For himself, he had never fancied that Bilgeri binding. Although light,and well made, it was not nearly so strong or dependable as the Lilienfield binding, with which Peters’ own skis were equipped.
Peters’ work had been done at a tremendous disadvantage. He could work with one hand only, and in lieu of his other hand he made shift to use his teeth. The moon, although brilliant, left much to be desired in the matter of light for such fine and exacting labor, and sense of touch had to help him where that of sight failed. In the main, however, he did very well, all things considered, and when he had secured his feet in the bindings he arose on the ash runners with a feeling of exultation in his breast. Where was the stick? His search for it carried him to the overhang, and there he found, not only the ski stick, but two strips of gunny sacking, each heavily knotted in the middle.
Those strips of sacking rather puzzled Peters. Markham had brought them as an aid in getting up the steep eastern slope of the butte. But why had he prepared himself with them if his object was to waylay Peters and secure the skates?
“Markham always figures a matter out both ways,” Peters reflected. “He brought the gun to help corral the skates, but, if I happened to beat him to the butte, then he’d have to keep right on over the rise. If he couldn’t do one thing, then he was ready to do the other. What’s more, he splintered that ski a-purpose, and he didn’t do it until he knew I was behind him at the overhang. He didn’t want me to have a chance to use the ski, that’s all. It never occurred to him that I’d have something along to use in patchin’ up the runner. That’s once, anyhow, that a saphead fooled him.”
Peters shuffled his way to a point beyond the overhang, then paused to tie the strips of cloth around the skis, knot side down. This maneuver would help to keep him from sliding backward.
He flashed an upward look at the difficult grade he was to negotiate. If his heart failed him for a moment, because of his useless arm and the shock his whole body had suffered because of the wound, it only resulted in letting him get a firmer grip on his resolution and strength. The wound was nothing serious, being merely a clean gash through the fleshy part of the forearm. He would not allow it to endanger the success of his night’s exploit. Markham must be made to suffer for his lawlessness, and it was up to Peters to see that he did not escape.
The first easy slopes of the butte were taken just as one might travel over level ground—a forward movement, in long, gliding steps. The skis were merely advanced, never lifted. As the ascent stiffened, Peters turned out the ends of the runners slightly, in what is known as the “half fishbone step.” There was a trick in this, and Peters had long since acquired it. Steeper and steeper became the course as the snowy slope was climbed, and the full fishbone step was gradually brought into requisition.
For such a long ascent the work was extremely tiring, and Peters was forced to do a number of “serpentines,” tacking back and forth, and executing the difficult “about face” at each turn.
A good deal of time was required in making the climb, but Peters’ handicap of awkwardness had taught him how to be patient and doggedly resolute in carrying out his aims. He kept unflinchingly to his tiresome task, and in due course was rewarded by finding himself on the flat crest of Bear Butte, ready for the long glissade. By this time his sporting blood was aroused, and he looked forward with keen enjoyment to the breathlessly swift glide that lay ahead of him.
He rested a few moments, tucked the hand of his injured arm into the front of his coat, removed the knotted stripsfrom the runners, took firm hold of the ski stick, and then let himself over the butte’s crest.
With skis so close together that they touched, the point of one leading the other by a foot, body not bent, but inclined forward, Peters was off down the steep slope like a bullet out of a gun.
He was at a disadvantage in not having both hands for use with the stick. Where it was necessary to brake, and avoid a small crevasse or a bowlder, Peters did it entirely with the skis, by executing the “telemark swing.” It was not often that he was confronted by such an emergency, but he was proficient in that method of dodging possible disaster, and unhesitatingly availed himself of it.
At lightning speed he shot down the butte, the air humming in his ears and snowy particles stinging his face. His exhilaration mounted higher and higher. In his delight over the coasting he forgot the stolen horses, the treachery of Markham, and the reprisal he was counting upon when he should reach Roscommon. His every faculty was called into play, and busied itself with the flying skis to the exclusion of everything else.
The slope flattened, and Peters’ speed lessened perceptibly, although he was still going at a rate comparable to that of a limited express train. On and on, mile after mile, his sensation was that of one falling through space. He scarcely realized that he had any connection whatever with the white-clad earth beneath him.
At last, in the distance, he saw a twinkling light, and a confused blur of buildings. Roscommon! The town jumped toward him as though crazily bent on fouling his course. He gave rather more attention to Roscommon than to the slope ahead of him, and suddenly he pitched into the air as the runners hit an obstacle. He fell with the skis braided around his neck, fell hard upon the cleared tracks of the Roscommon railroad yards, and so suddenly that he had no time to realize he had gone over the embankment at the side of the network of rails.
Instinctively he tried to lift himself, only to drop in an awkward huddle, with a blaze of shooting stars criss-crossing before his eyes. Then the bright lights faded, and Nixon J. Peters quietly went to sleep.