Raw Gold: A Novel Page 10

  CHAPTER X.

  THE VANISHING ACT, AND THE FRUITS THEREOF.

  Being aware that it was near the time Goodell had named for starting, Ireturned to the stables, and, getting my horse, rode to the commissary.There I found Goodell engineering the final preparations. Four men,besides myself, made up the party: the sergeant, Hicks thehairy-wristed, another private, and a half-breed scout. They werelashing an allowance of food and blankets on a pack-horse, and two otherhorses with bare _aparejos_ on their backs were tied to the horn of thebreed's saddle--for what purpose I could easily guess.

  While I sat on my _caballo_ waiting for them to tie the last hitch arattle of wheels and the thud of hoofs drew near, and presently a bluewagon, drawn by four big mules and flanked by half a dozen MountedPolicemen, passed by the commissary building. The little cavalcadestruck a swinging trot as it cleared the barracks, swung down into thebed of Battle Creek, up the farther bank, and away to the west. And alittle later we, too, left the post, following in the dusty wake of thepaymaster's wagon and its mounted escort.

  For ten or twelve miles we kept to the MacLeod trail at an easy pace,never more than a mile behind the "transient treasury," as Goodellfacetiously termed it. He was a pretty bright sort, that same Goodell,quick-witted, nimble of tongue above the average Englishman. I don'tknow that he was English; for that matter, none of the three carried thestamp of his nationality on his face or in his speech. They were men ofwhite blood, but they might have been English, Irish, Scotch or Dutchfor all I could tell to the contrary. But each of them was broke to thefrontier; that showed in the way they sat their horses, the way theybore themselves toward one another when clear of the post and itsatmosphere of rigidly enforced discipline. The breed I didn't take muchnotice of at the time, except that when he spoke, which was seldom, hewas given to using better language than lots of white men I have known.

  At a point where the trail seemed to bear north a few degrees, Goodellangled away from the beaten track and headed straight across country forPend d' Oreille. At noon we camped, and cooked a bite of dinner whilethe horses grazed; ate it, and went on again.

  About three o'clock, as nearly as I could tell, we dipped into a woodedcreek bottom some two hundred yards in width. The creek itself wentbrawling along in a deep-worn channel, and when my horse got knee deepin the water he promptly stopped and plunged his muzzle into the stream.I gave him slack rein, and let him drink his fill. The others kept on,climbed the short, steep bank, and passed from sight over its rim. Iswung down from my horse on the brink of the creek, cinched the saddleafresh, and rolled a cigarette. If I thought about them getting thestart of me at all, it was to reflect that they couldn't get a lead ofmore than two or three hundred yards, at the gait they traveled. Judgethen of my surprise when I rode up out of the water-washed gully andfound them nowhere in sight. I pulled up and glanced about, but theclumps of scrubby timber were just plentiful enough to cut off a clearview of the flat. So I fell back on the simple methods of the plainsmanand Indian and jogged along on their trail.

  Not for many days did I learn truly how I came to miss them, how and whythey had vanished from the face of the earth so completely in the fewminutes I lingered in the gulch. The print of steel-rimmed hoofs showedin the soft loam as plainly as a moccasin-track in virgin snow. Around agrove of quaking-aspens, eternally shivering in the deadest of calms,their trail led through the long grass that carpeted the bottom, andsuddenly ended in a strip of gravelly land that ran out from the bed ofthe creek. I could follow it no farther. If there was other mark oftheir passing, it was hidden from me.

  Wondering, and a bit exasperated, I spurred straight up the bank, andwhen I had reached the high benchland loped to a point that overlookedthe little valley a full mile up and down. Cottonwood and willow,cut-bank and crooning water, lay green and brown and silver-whitebefore, but no riders, no thing that moved in the shape of men camewithin the scope of my eyes. But I wasn't done yet. I turned away fromthe bank and raced up a long slope to a saw-backed ridge that promisedlargely of unobstructed view. Dirty gray lather stood out in spumy rollsaround the edge of the saddle-blanket, and the wet flanks of my horseheaved like the shoulders of a sobbing woman when I checked him on topof a bald sandstone peak--and though as much of the Northwest as oneman's eye may hope to cover lay bared on every hand, yet the quartetthat rode with me from Fort Walsh occupied no part of the landscape. Icould look away to the horizon in every direction, and, except for onelittle herd of buffalo feeding peacefully on the westward slant of theridge, I could see nothing but rolling prairie, a vast undulating spreadof grassland threaded here and there with darker lines that stood forcreeks and coulees, and off to the north the blue bulk of the CypressHills.

  I got off and sat me down upon a rock, rolled another cigarette, andwaited. The way to Pend d' Oreille led over the ridge, a half mile oneither side of me, as the spirit moved a traveler who followed anapproximately straight line. Whatever road they had taken, they couldnot be more than three or four miles from that sentinel peak--for thereis a well-defined limit to the distance a mounted man may cover in agiven length of time. And from my roost I could note the passing ofanything bigger than a buffalo yearling, within a radius of at least sixmiles. Therefore, I smoked my cigarette without misgiving, and keptclose watch for bobbing black dots against the far-flung green.

  I might as well have laid down and gone to sleep on that pinnacle forall the good my waiting and eye-straining did me. One hour slipped byand then another, and still I did not abandon hope of their appearance.Naturally, I argued with myself, they would turn back when I failed toovertake them--especially if they had thoughtlessly followed somedepression in the prairie where I could not easily see them. And while Ilingered, loath to believe that they were hammering unconcernedly ontheir way, the sun slid down its path in the western sky--slid down tillits lower edge rested on the rim of the world and long black shadowsbegan to creep mysteriously out of the low places, while buttes andridges gleamed with cloth of gold, the benediction of a dying day. Onlythen did I own that by hook or by crook--and mostly by crook, I wasforced to suspect--they had purposely given me the slip.

  A seasoned cowpuncher hates to admit that any man, or bunch of men, cantake him out into an open country and shake him off whenever it isdesired; but if I had been a rank tenderfoot they couldn't have jarredme loose with greater ease. It was smooth work, and I couldn't guess theobject, unless it was a Mounted Policeman's idea of an excellentpractical joke on a supposedly capable citizen from over the line.Anyway, they had left me holding the sack in a mighty poor snipecountry. Dark was close at hand, and I was a long way from shelter. Sowhen the creeping shadows blanketed pinnacle and lowland alike, and allthat remained of the sun was the flamboyant crimson-yellow on thegathering clouds, I was astride of my dun _caballo_ and heading for Pendd' Oreille.

  But speedily another unforeseen complication arose. Before I'd gone fivemiles the hoodoo that had been working overtime on my behalf got busyagain. The clouds that were rolling up from the east at sundown piledthick and black overhead, and when dark was fairly upon me I was, forall practical purposes, like a blind man in an unfamiliar room. Itdidn't take me long to comprehend that I was merely wasting the strengthof my horse in bootless wandering; with moonlight I could have made it,but in that murk I could not hope to find the post. So I had no choicebut to make camp in the first coulee that offered, and an exceeding leancamp I found it--no grub, no fire, no rest, for though I hobbled myhorse I didn't dare let his rope out of my hands.

  About midnight the combination of sultry heat and banked clouds producedthe usual results. Lightning first, lightning that ripped the sky openfrom top to bottom in great blazing slits, and thunder that cracked andboomed and rumbled in sharps and flats and naturals till a man couldscarcely hear himself think; then rain in flat chunks, as if somemalignant agency had yanked the bottom out of the sky and let theaccumulated moisture of centuries drop on that particular portion of theNorthwest. In fifteen minutes the only dry part of me was the crown ofmy head--thanks be to a good Stetson hat. And my arms ached from thestrain of hanging onto my horse, for, hobbled as he was, he did his bestto get up and quit Canada in a gallop when the fireworks began. To makeit even more pleasant, when the clouds fell apart and the little starscame blinking out one by one, a chill wind whistled up on the heels ofthe storm, and I spent the rest of that night shivering forlornly in myclammy clothes.

  Still a-shiver at dawn, I saddled up and loped for the crest of thenearest divide to get the benefit of the first sun-rays. But alas! thehoodoo was still plodding diligently on my trail. I topped a littlerise, and almost rode plump into the hostile arms of a half-dozenbreech-clout warriors coming up the other side. I think there were abouthalf a dozen, but I wouldn't swear to it. I hadn't the time norinclination to make an exact count. The general ensemble of war-paintand spotted ponies was enough for me; I didn't need to be told that itwas my move. My spurs fairly lifted the dun horse, and we scuttled inthe opposite direction like a scared antelope. The fact that the averageIndian is not a master hand with a gun except at short range was mysalvation. If they'd been white men I would probably have been curled ina neat heap within two hundred yards. As it was, they shot altogethertoo close for comfort, and the series of yells they turned loose in thatpeaceful atmosphere made me feel that I was due to be forcibly separatedfrom the natural covering of my cranium if I lost any time in gettingout of their sphere of influence.

  The persistent beggars chased me a good ten miles before they drew up,concluding, I suppose, that I was too well mounted for them to overhaul.But it might have been a lot worse; I still had my scalp intact; thechase and its natural excitement had brought a comfortable warmth to mychilled body; and I had made good time in the direction I wished to go.On the who
le, I felt that the red brother had done me rather a goodturn. But I kept on high ground, thereafter, where I could see a mile ortwo, for I was very much alive to the fact that if another of thosesurprise-parties jumped me now that my horse was tired they would have agood deal of fun at my expense; and an Indian's idea of fun doesn'tcoincide with mine--not by a long shot!

  I made some pointed remarks to my horse about Mr. Goodell and hiscompanions, as I rode along. If Pend d' Oreille hadn't been the nearestplace, I'd have turned back to Walsh and made that bunch of exhumerscome back after me, if it were absolutely necessary that I should pilotthem to the graves. Personally, I thought those two old plainsmenwouldn't thank Major Lessard or any one else for disturbing their last,long sleep; the wide, unpeopled prairies had always been their choice inlife, and I felt that they would rather be laid away in some quietcoulee, than in any conventional "city of the dead" with prim headstonesand iron fences to shut them in. A Western man likes lots of room; deador alive, it irks him to be crowded.

  I fully expected to find the four waiting for me at Pend d' Oreille, andI was prepared to hear a good deal of chaffing about getting lost. Whatof my waiting on the ridge that afternoon, and bearing more or less awayfrom the proper direction at night, I did not reach the post till noon;and I was a bit puzzled to find only the men who were on duty there. Iwas digesting this along with the remains of the troopers' dinner, whenGoodell and his satellites popped over the hill that looked down on Pendd' Oreille, and, a few minutes later, came riding nonchalantly up to themess-house.

  "Well, you beat us in," Goodell greeted airily. "Did you find a shortcut?"

  "Sure thing," I responded, with what irony I could command.

  "Where the deuce _did_ you go, anyway, after you stopped in thatcreek-bottom?" he asked, eying me with much curiosity. "We nearly playedour horses out galloping around looking for you--after we'd gone a mileor so, and you didn't catch up."

  "Then you must have kept damned close to the coulee-bottoms," I retortedungraciously, "for I burnt the earth getting up on a pinnacle where youcould see me, before you had time to go very far."

  "Oh, well, it's easy to lose track of a lone man in a country as big asthis," he returned suavely. "We all got here, so what's the odds? Iguess we'll stick here till morning. We can't make the round trip thisafternoon, and I'm not camping on the hills when it's avoidable."

  It struck me that he was uncommonly philosophical about it, so I merelygrunted and went on with my dinner.

  That evening, when we went to the stable to fix up our horses for thenight, I got a clearer insight into his reason for laying over thatafternoon. They had been doing some tall riding, and their livestock wassimply unfit to go farther. The four saddle-horses looked as if they hadbeen dragged through a small-sized knothole; their gauntness, and thedispirited droop of their heads, spelled complete fatigue to any man whoknew the symptoms of hard riding. By comparison, my sweat-grimed dun wasfresh as a morning breeze.